Bennington College

• NEW YORK, Feb. 22, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- The Endeavor Foundation announced a national collaborative to address student mental health, an issue the US Surgeon General has declared the "defining health crisis of our time."
• With the Foundation's support, 13 liberal arts colleges have joined forces to establish strategies to enhance student mental health and well-being.
• The 13 colleges will work together to facilitate mental health and well-being by focusing on programs in four thematic areas:
  Curriculum.
• Support for mental health and well-being, including community care, clinical and non-clinical interventions and approaches, peer counseling, and restorative justice.

• Kurt Vonnegut didn’t deliver the famous “Wear Sunscreen” graduation speech published in the Chicago Tribune that was often mistakenly attributed to the celebrated author.
• I don’t even remember who gave my class’s graduation speech, much less a single word the speaker said.
• During the early and mid-1960s, he commanded an avid and devoted following on campuses before he had produced any bestsellers.
• Why was a middle-aged writer born in 1922 adored by a counterculture told not to trust anyone over 30?

Their parents’ generation

• A cultural touchstone, the novel changed the way Americans think and write about war.
• Like Andy Warhol’s soup cans, “Slaughterhouse-Five,” with its jokes, drawings, risqué limericks and flying saucers, blurs the line between high and low culture.
• Cited as one of the top novels of the 20th century, “Slaughterhouse-Five” has been transformed into film, theatrical plays, a graphic novel and visual art.
• He continued to believe all his life in the civic virtues he learned as a student at Shortridge High School in Indianapolis.

Fool or philosopher?

• Vonnegut had the look – sad, kind eyes under that mop of uncontrollable hair, the full droopy mustache.
• Looking like a cross between Albert Einstein and a carnival huckster, Vonnegut had his contradictions on full display.
• A fool or a philosopher?

A forceful defense of art

• He used his own experience in World War II to destroy any notion of a good war.
• “For all the sublimity of the cause for which we fought, we surely created a Belsen of our own,” he lamented, referencing the Nazi concentration camp.
• The military-industrial complex, he told the graduates at Bennington, treats people and their children and their cities like garbage.
• Instead, Americans should spend money on hospitals and housing and schools and Ferris wheels rather than on war machinery.

• SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 17, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- End Well , a 501(c)3 nonprofit at the forefront of the movement to make end of life a human-centered experience, announced today the appointment of Tracy Wheeler as its first Executive Director.
• Since 2017, Wheeler has served as a content and curation consultant for End Well's flagship convenings and digital platforms.
• Most recently, Wheeler orchestrated End Well's 2021 virtual event The End in Mind , the largest mainstream gathering to date exploring the use of psychedelic medicines for people facing serious illness or end of life.
• Prior to working with mission-driven organizations, Wheeler held senior marketing positions in the fashion industry including at Polo/Ralph Lauren, Esprit and Gap, Inc.
  "It is an honor to step into this new role as End Well's first Executive Director at a time when it's absolutely clear that we must do better for those who are seriously ill and dying and those who care for them," said Tracy Wheeler, Executive Director of End Well.