CLASS OF 1961 | 2017 | ISSUE 1

A recent posting on Facebook by Richard Corson addresses a librarian’s concern for literacy integrity: “Parsing fake news—Connie retired from the Spence School in 2001. During her time as library director, one of the resource members of her staff created and taught all grade levels with workshops related to information literacy. Even in those early days of Google and other online resources, these librarians were concerned that students should possess the ability to apply critical thinking, judgment, and evaluation to their use of online resources. We have come a long way since the 1990s, but I hope students everywhere still get basic information literacy skills. They are more important than ever.”

Thankfully, the musical arts have sustained and nourished a few of our classmates. Here’s a note (no pun intended) from one of our members: “Jon Magendanz and Bob Johnson were brought together in a Christmas concert, presenting four performances the weekend before Christmas in the magnificent Venice Performing Arts Center in Florida. Jon is a first violinist in the Venice Symphony, a group of more than 60 professional instrumentalists, and Bob is a baritone in the Venice Chorale, consisting of about 100 singers. This was their first collaboration. They will perform there again in March, featuring Bartok, Prokofiev, and the Poulenc Gloria. Jon lives in Bradenton, Bob lives in Nokomis, and both are snow birds.”

And lastly, a word from Phil Rodd: “My wife and I spent a week in August volunteering as English teachers in Spain. We were part of an English language immersion program, so our job was to converse in English for about 12 hours a day. We followed that with a three-week road trip around Sicily (pasta every night).”

Respectfully submitted,

Jon K. Magendanz, DDS | jon@magendanz.com
902 39th Avenue West, Bradenton, Fl 34205