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SOUTH KENT — March Madness will feature seven former South Kent Cardinals who now play on Division 1 NCAA teams.
The top-tier high school basketball program will be well represented with graduates from each of the past three years heading to “The Big Dance.”
Raphael Chillious, head coach at South Kent since 2020, and before that from ‘03 to ‘08, commented on the success of his former players and what it means to be a Cardinal.
“I am beyond proud to see so many recent South Kent Basketball alumni participating in this year’s NCAA Tournament. It is a tribute to the effort, perseverance and commitment to excellence that they had here in the Hillside as well as with their current college programs. I’m sure they will represent us with dignity, class, character and competitiveness on the biggest stage of college basketball.”
The first alum to punch his ticket to the 2024 tournament was Andre Johnson Jr., South Kent (SK) class of ‘22, a sophomore guard at University of Connecticut. The defending champion Huskies are poised to go back-to-back after earning the top seed in the East region this year with a record of 31-3. UConn’s first game will be against (16) Stetson University March 22. Johnson wears jersey No. 40.
Jordan Gainey, SK class of ‘21, helped lead University of Tennessee to a 24-8 regular season record. The Volunteers were seeded 2nd in the Midwest region and will play (15) Saint Peter’s University in the first round March 21. Gainey wears jersey No. 2.
Elmarko Jackson, SK class of ‘23, freshman guard at University of Kansas, will also be dancing this March. A regular season record of 22-10 earned the Jayhawks the 4th seed in the Midwest. Kansas will play (13) Samford University first. Jackson, jersey No. 13, was named a McDonald’s All American in his senior year at South Kent.
Isaiah Watts, SK class of ‘23, is a freshman guard at Washington State, which qualified with a team record of 24-9. The Cougars were seeded seventh in the East and will play (10) Drake University in the first round. Watts wears No. 12.
Jalen Cox, SK class of ‘23, is a freshman guard at Colgate University, which received an automatic bid to the tournament after winning its conference championship. Colgate won the Patriot League for the fourth year in a row and was seeded 14th in the West. Colgate will play (3) Baylor University in the first round. Cox wears No. 3.
Osei Price, SK class of ‘21,a junior guard at Oakland University, helped The Grizz win the Horizon League title. Oakland was seeded 14th in the South and will play (3) University of Kentucky in round one. Price wears No. 13.
Chika Nduka, SK class of ‘21, a junior forward at Montana State, will round out the Cardinals’ reunion attendees. The Bobcats won their third consecutive Big Sky conference tournament and were put in the “First Four” play-in game for the No. 16 seed in the Midwest. Montana State lost to Grambling State on March 20, which went on to play (1) Purdue University.
In the past 20 years, more than 80 South Kent players went on to play for Division 1 colleges and 17 made it to the NBA. The list includes notable names such as Andray Blatche, Isaiah Thomas, Dion Waiters, Jack McClinton and Dorell Wright.
Hotchkiss grads dancing with Yale
LAKEVILLE — Yale University advanced to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament after a buzzer-beater win over Brown University in the Ivy League championship game Sunday, March 17.
On Yale’s roster this year are two graduates of The Hotchkiss School: Nick Townsend, class of ‘22, and Jack Molloy, class of ‘21. Townsend wears No. 42 and Molloy wears No. 33.
Yale was seeded 13th in the East and got matched against (4) Auburn University March 22 in the first round.
On the way to the Ivy League title, Yale defeated Cornell University in the semifinals, denying one South Kent School graduate his ticket to the tournament. Nazir Williams, South Kent class of ‘21, averaged about 13 points per game for Cornell this past season.
Handbells of St. Andrew’s to ring out Easter morning
KENT—There will be a joyful noise in St. Andrew’s Church Easter morning when a set of handbells donated to the church some 40 years ago are used for the first time by a choir currently rehearsing with music director Susan Guse.
Guse said that the church got the valuable three-octave set when Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center closed in the late 1980s and the bells were donated to the church. “The center used the bells for music therapy for younger patients. Our priest then was chaplain there and when the center closed, he brought the bells here,” she explained.
The bells were a significant gift and Guse estimates they would cost $15,000 to $20,000 to replace today. But their potential has never been truly explored. In Kent, they have remained safely ensconced in their cases and used only occasionally by children.
“They range from the C below middle C, all the way up to the C two octaves above middle C for a total of 37 bells,” she said. “Since I arrived at St Andrew’s, individual bells and small groups of bells have been used to accompany psalm singing and Christmas anthems sung by our choir.”
Now Guse has assembled a small group of volunteers, a couple of whom have previous ringing experience and some with musical backgrounds, to learn arrangements for the Easter service. Seven players, all handling at least two bells, will accompany the choir on Easter morning, the clear tones ringing out and blending with the voices.
One should not imagine the clanging a school marm’s bell when thinking of them. Manufactured by Schulmerich Company in Pennsylvania, one of only two such firms in the United States, these are true musical instruments that produce lovely tones. The players sound notes by moving their arms smoothly forward in an arc, producing that tones linger—rather like the singing bowls used in Tibetan ceremonies—until the players damp the bells by holding them to their bodies.
Typically, players handle two bells at a time, but at last Sunday’s rehearsal, with one player absent, Herman Compton was deftly handling three. Compton, a multi-instrumentalist, has played bells since he was a young child in his father’s church.
The other member of the new bell choir at St. Andrew’s with previous experience is Bill Watts, who also rang them in his former church.
Guse said American handbells vary from their English cousins in that the clapper moves only one way while English bells move in both directions. English handbells are traditional, with leather clapper heads and handles, while American handbells use modern materials, such as plastic and rubber, to produce the same effect. In both instances, however, the clapper moves only back and forth, unlike school bells where the clapper swings in all directions.
The bells also have springs that hold the clapper away from the casting after the strike to allow the bell to ring freely. The shaft of the clapper is rigid, so the bells can be held with their mouths facing upward.
Handheld bells have a long history. Robert and William Cor are credited with developing them in Aldbourne, England, between 1696 and 1724. The Cor brothers originally made brass bells for horse collars but, for reasons unknown, began fitting them with hinged clappers and tuning their bells to have an accurate tone.
“The thing about bells is that you can’t practice them by yourself,” said Guse. “Each bell is only part of an instrument. You can make a joyful noise, but only with others.”
‘Picasso’s War” by Foreign Affairs senior editor Hugh Eakin, who has written about the art world for publications like The New York Review of Books, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and The New York Times, is not about Pablo Picasso’s time in Nazi-occupied Paris and being harassed by the Gestapo, nor about his 1937 oil painting “Guernica,” in response to the aerial bombing of civilians in the Basque town during the Spanish Civil War.
Instead, the Penguin Random House book’s subtitle makes a clearer statement of intent: “How Modern Art Came To America.” This war was not between military forces but a cultural war combating America’s distaste for the emerging modernism that had flourished in Europe in the early decades of the 20th century.
Eakin was present at The Norfolk Library Saturday, March 16, for a conversation with Robert Dance, author of the 2023 biography “Ferocious Ambition: Joan Crawford’s March to Stardom,” a member of the library’s board of directors and a trustee of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford. The event was a “bonus” part of the Haystack Book Festival, a program presented by the Norfolk Foundation — delayed from the event’s 2023 October panel discussions due to scheduling.
Picasso's 1910 oil painting "Femme et Pot de Moutarde" ("Woman with Mustard Pot") was shown at the 1913 Armory Show in New York, Boston, and Chicago. The Chicago Tribune reported a viewer commenting, “But how did the mustard pot survive after such evident mutilation of the lady’s features?”The Hague
Eakin and Dance’s conversation touched on the 1913 Armory Show in New York City. Also known as the International Exhibition of Modern Art, the Armory Show was a groundbreaking event and marked the inaugural showcase of modern art in the United States. It served as a pivotal platform, acquainting American audiences — for better or worse, per the conservative attitudes of the day — with prominent European avant-garde figures like Marcel Duchamp and Henri Matisse, catalyzing a profound shift in the landscape of American art.
“The one thing to keep in mind is that images circulate easily today, so we’re even familiar with art that we haven’t seen, but the opposite was true 100 years ago,” Eakin said at the Norfolk Library. “Everything had to be seen, you had to confront it, and there was a scarcity, especially of new art. Access to artworks was very limited unless you were traveling to Europe. The [American] taste at the time was: You have a country that is an insecure, powerful new country that’s just arrived on the world scene. What [America] wanted more than anything was to be regarded as a great European power. America wanted to have those Old Master paintings, paintings that were owned by princes and kings.”
This was also the shared opinion of such influential shapers of East Coast America’s established art world, like art collector and philanthropist Isabella Stewart Gardener, who went on to found Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1903; financier John Pierpont Morgan, one of the greatest benefactors of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; and art collector and industrialist Henry Clay Frick, whose collection of distinguished Old Master paintings can be seen today at The Frick Collection on the Upper East Side of New York City.
“Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” ("The Young Ladies of Avignon") by Pablo PicassoThe Museum of Modern Art
“The idea of new art having value was a shocking concept,” Eakin continued. “There was also a larger tradition of insecurity, but also theorizing about deviant art — what would come to be called ‘degenerate art.’ We think of this as a Nazi term, but actually, the conversation about degeneracy in art starts in the United States, and it starts very much with shows like the Armory Show.”
Picasso had actually shown work in America prior to the 1913 Armory Show. In 1911, Alfred Stieglitz, an American photographer and gallerist who would go on to marry modernist painter Georgia O’Keeffe, showcased the first exhibition of Picasso’s drawings in the United States in his gallery 291, located on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue. Eakin noted that 83 cubist drawings by Picasso were shown, each priced at $12 dollars. Only one sold — to American artist and critic Hamilton Easter Field. The two had already met in Paris.
For a pop culture perspective of Picasso at the time, we can look to James Cameron’s 1997 blockbuster “Titanic,” where Kate Winslet’s American socialite character Rose has brought Picasso’s 1907 pro-cubist oil painting “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” aboard the RMS Titanic. This is a bit of historical revisionism, as “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” did not sink with the ship but is hanging in The Museum of Modern Art thanks to an acquisition by the museum’s patron, Lillie P. Bliss, who features prominently in the later half of Eakin’s book. Still, the remark by Rose’s fiancé, an American industrialist, rings true for the time and his own social circles: “Something Picasso… He won’t amount to a thing. Trust me, he won’t.”