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| Rebecca Beatrice Miller |
Still feeling worn from a lingering cold and travel, but I'm back from a day at The Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, Vermont, where my daughter Rebecca and I attended Portfolio Day. (She is currently on extended leave after her sophomore year at Bard College, doing some writing and film jobs this month, and will probably finish up there some year in the future.) We stayed at the Coolidge Hotel for a week for one of their workshops five years ago, when she was a mere sprat of 15. Now she's turning in an application for a 2-year certificate.
We met faculty and staff, Rebecca enjoyed a portfolio review with Jon Chad, and we had a marvelous, jolly private tour with first-year student Josh. The students seem wonderfully pleased with their first year "boot camp" and more advanced work--there's a lovely mix of unleashed imagination and hard work on premises. Evidently they locked any angst-ridden students in the courthouse vault. (Maybe it was a bank once?) The school seems to be in a fair way to transform the town and give it some much-needed support. Physically, it consists of three older, re-purposed buildings--right now they are housed in a grand former post office and later courthouse (or vice versa), Colodny's department store, and the Telegraph Office. The Charles M. Schulz Library had to move from a site by the river during Hurricane Irene (books not liking water), and now is housed in a wing of the Post Office.
I'll have to remember to put aside the graphic novels from this year's judging stint to add to the Schulz collection... (Yes, the National Book Award banquet is Wednesday, and I am taking Rebecca as my companion!)
