Without a doubt, the section of Trinity Per Saecula that is the most fun to put together is “From the Archives.” Time in the School’s archives always feels like a great adventure to me, even after spending as much time as I have among the various parts of the collection; there is always something that I haven’t seen before or that I now see in a new context based upon something else that I have learned. I look forward to everything that I come upon while in the archives.

Sadly, as many of you probably know, Trinity hasn’t always treasured its history in the way that we do now. One of the many things that former faculty member Clarence Bruner-Smith told me was that the School, as it marched uptown from its original location at Wall Street to its present location at West 91st Street, discarded many of its records when leaving each of its previous locations. The archival record that we have available to us today is a much diminished view of Trinity’s history.

Fortunately, what we do have available to us in the archives is being catalogued, conserved, and organized in a way that is appropriate for a 302-year-old institution. One of the great advantages of such a well cared for collection is that I am able to find numerous wonderful images to include in the magazine. I will admit that “From the Archives” is one section where I don’t have an elaborate set of criteria for the selection process. ...

Between this week and next your mail box should be bursting with the 2009-2010 Trinity School Annual Report. It is the longest, and largest, publication that I produce…running eighty-six pages this year. The school is fortunate to have such a generous community and the annual report reflects the scope and breadth of that generosity. Thank you for donating your time and money to the School.

When I arrived at Trinity the annual report was the one publication that everyone in the community received (only the alumni received the magazine the School produced at that time, there was no calendar, and the Internet was something that had only just officially moved beyond the National Science Foundation), so it seemed to me to be a great place to share information about Trinity…information in addition to the lists of donors. The convention that Trinity followed at that time, as did nearly every other independent school in New York, was to have the head of school, president of the board, principals, and the office heads write about the previous year. I think that I can write, without exaggeration, that almost none of these people looked forward to this task as it was too vague and unfocused. “Write about last year” seemed to be the charge and so they did…writing about things that had happened in their various areas of the School. An early publications audit indicated that the community looked forward to reading these articles with about the same level of enthusiasm as they were written. ...

The “Book Notes” department of the magazine is one of the more complicated sections to put together, but it is also one that I believe to be of great importance…one of the few areas in which I have an acknowledged bias in the content of the magazine. I have always been in awe of the ability that great writers have to help us understand or experience the world in ways that we had never done before. So, acknowledging those within the Trinity community who begin with the blank sheet of paper or the blank computer screen and set about the monumental task of writing has always seemed to be to be a necessary part of producing a school magazine. That we have so many writers in the ranks of alumni, faculty, and former faculty, has been an ongoing joy in my work on Trinity Per Saecula.

The hard part comes in finding the right book for the right reviewer...although perhaps I am finding the right reviewer for the right book. All the reviews written for the magazine are produced by members of the School’s faculty. As there are no staff writers for Trinity Per Saecula, this means that I need to discover the kinds of books that interest different members of the faculty. Over the years, of course, this task has become slightly easier as I have come to know the teachers at the School. Some are thrilled to review the books written for children, some prefer works of fiction, and others ...

I’m a process oriented guy, which works out well as Trinity is generally a process oriented place. Several years ago when I decided to add the “Classroom Comment” department to the magazine, I knew that I needed a process to ensure that this new section would be representative of the student body. In advance of asking the students to write on a topic related to the theme in each edition of the magazine, I needed a set of criteria to help identify the students to be approached to participate.

The first decision that I made was that the “Classroom Comment” would move through the three divisions. So, as the spring 2010 edition was written by a Lower School girl, the autumn 2010 edition will be written by a Middle School boy and the spring 2011 edition will be written by an Upper School girl. The second criterion, as you may already have guessed, is that the department alternate between boys and girls…keeping it representative of the student body that is very close to fifty percent boys and fifty percent girls. The third criterion is that every fourth “Classroom Comment” is written by a student of color. While not, strictly speaking, a perfectly accurate reflection of the racial makeup of the School (Over the span of the existence of this section of the magazine, Trinity’s student of color population has been as low as twenty percent and as high as twenty-three percent) I think that once every two years is actually a little ...