When walking down the halls of Lick-Wilmerding High School, students might wonder, what does that mysterious adult watch in their free time? What do they read? What is their favorite music? The wonderful, smart and creative Facilities, Math and Visual Arts departments are here to share their recommendations from music to books to film!
Facilities give their music recommendations.
Mark Wallace was immediately hooked by the Italian band Rhapsody, specifically their album Symphony of Enchanted Lands (1998). “Power metal has always been one of my favorite genres of metal since high school, think D&D, sword and sorcery with high octane speed metal riffs,” Wallace said.
Molly French loves to dance and can’t help but move to the song “Uptown Funk”(2015) by Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars. French also recommends the band PhoneBoy (which her nephew is a part of!) for its catchy songs.
Maurice Williams recommends “teachme” (2007) by Musiq Soulchild for its deep messages on love and communication. “I incorporate the meaning into my daily life, as it helps us all understand how to treat and respond to one another’s feelings and existence by communicating efficiently,” Williams said.
doodle by Linda Palmer
Visual arts give their film recommendations.
Oleg Osipoff found the French film Un Illustre Inconnu(2014) particularly interesting. The film is a mysterious thriller that takes one of Osipoff’s favorite approaches: psychological. “It is about a person who is never satisfied being themselves and has to assume other people’s identities,” Osipoff said.
Robert Sanborn, a former film teacher, said “there is a ratio to the frame and the placement of subject matter within that frame. A fine movie in my opinion must abide by these principles of how things are ordered within the space of thescreen.” With these rules in mind, Sanborn is a lover of the classic black and white films. In particular, he is a fan of the Kurosawa Samurai movies, 8 ½(1963), and The Seventh Seal(1953).
Karmin Williams recommends The Apu Trilogy(1955-1959) directed by one of her favorites, Satyajit Ray. Williams said, the director “frames the faces of the characters and lingers on them and by doing so we, the viewers, enter into the character’s feeling life.” Through the series, the viewer follows a young Bengali boy into adulthood and through a life filled with challenges, joys, and hopes.
doodle by Linda Palmer
Math gives their literature recommendations.
Want a series with everything? Yetta Allen is on it! For a series with crazy fight scenes and beautiful love arcs during an epic journey, Allen recommends The Condor Series(1957-1961) by Jin Yong. This series is composed of three Wuxia novels, fiction of martial art adventures in ancient China.
José Perez is drawn to books that explore identity and absurdity. He recommends The Stranger(1942) by Albert Camus which dives into the philosophy behind human existence. Perez also recommends Carceral Capitalism (2018) by Jackie Wang that focuses on incarceration and policing.
Avery Pickford has always been interested in fantasy and magical realism, he describes these books as “taking some reality and basically breaking one of therules, and saying we’re going to let this be true.” The novel 100 Years of Solitude(1967) by Gabriel García Márquez, gives him just this. It focuses on human isolation across generations of one family.
Ernie Chen finds the novel, Yellowface(2023) by R. F. Kuan, really interesting because the readers don’t like and are rooting against the narrator. The reader follows the perspective of a young writer as she plagiarizes a now dead friend’s work. Chen also recommends Facing the Mountain(2021) by Daniel James Brown which is a harrowing true account of Japanese Americans, many with families in internment camps, fighting in WWII.
Devin Harvey stayed on brand with a book about mathematical theorems, Journey Through Genius(1990) by William Dunham. “If you like math, it does a great job of showing how people came up with some great theorems,” Harvey said. Dunham loves theorems as much as Harvey, treating them like art through the novel.
For fantasy that is accessible and simple, yet complex enough to keep the reader’s attention, world building, Sing Yip recommends the series The Stormlight Archive(2010-present) by Brandon Sanderson. This series consists of ten novels that focus around an ancient legendary order of knights.
To all the staff of LWHS that participated, thank you so much for giving thoughtful and caring responses!! And to the LWHS community, take these recommendations into account and follow up with staff on your thoughts!
