Portraits fuming at poor hanging

Scene: The lower reading room of the Williams College Library
Time: About 3 am.
A kind of late-night emptiness, accentuated by the buzzing of fluorescent lights, pervades the room. All the dawn-scribblers and midnight-oilers have left. From across the campus the gym clock sounds its three o’clock dirge, and the dark portraits, silent for generations, finally speak.
First to break the hollow silence are Charles Dewey, 1824-1866, a weak-eyed, rather pale former trustee; and to his right the stern nobly-bewhiskered benefactor Frederick Ferris Thompson, he of the Memorial Chapel and the science buildings.

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Rock of Ages

The hits just kept on happening through a decade that summoned the energy of a renaissance and a revolution in what was called a youth culture — us, the children of warriors, raised in an era of unparalleled wealth, our college years bracketed by assassinations, against a backdrop of a civil rights movement that defined the era.

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Our cartoonist looks at Trumpland

My own mental health has definitely taken a hit. From late last summer through early December, I drew a topical cartoon (the Daily Cartoon) five days a week for newyorker.com. I was forced to stay extremely well-informed in order to make jokes about the very stuff that was turning my head into a dark, scary place, and wreaking havoc on my digestive system. (It’s my habit to read or watch news during meals.) At night, I lay in bed, sleepless for hours, replaying the day’s events.

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Multiculturalism at the New Williams – The Davis Center

The Davis Center at Williams? That was after our time. Until recently it was called the Multicultural Center? Still after our time. Or was it? Though the Center was not founded until the late 1980’s, it grew out of the movements at the core of our tumultuous 1960’s. The Davis Center was founded as the […]

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Clarence Chaffee

Our class had the good fortune of attending Williams while a number of “gentleman” coaches were still in residence. They came of age between the wars when the ideal of the amateur athlete was still dominant, and they brought the values of hard work, fair play, and building character to Williams.

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