Lise's Lens: February 26, 2026

2/26/2026

This week I am reading the latest edition of The Georgian Road Review, thinking about the joy of olympic figure skater Alysa Liu, and watching the Oscar-nominated film Train Dreams.

WHAT I'M READING

The Georgian Road Review — Fall 2025: do not go gentle

I just read the latest edition of The Georgian Road Review, CSW’s student-run literary magazine. The magazine has gone through a number of iterations over the years, known affectionately as “Lit Mag,” but was rebranded as The Georgian Road Review last year. This latest issue is the third under this name and contains 26 fantastic entries. I read it all. What an experience! According to the editors, the theme to this edition is inspired by Dylan Thomas’s poem, "Do not go gentle into that good night.” Honestly, I was surprised that this edition would focus on life via the vehicle of dying and the “rage against the shortness of life.” After all, these are teenagers. But let us not be fooled; their writing and artwork reflects an incredible range of experience about life and living, death and dying, sorrow, and remembrance. They ended their note with the following: “Rage, with excitement, for that which we can still do, for we are not dead. Not yet…. Do not go gentle into this good night: rage rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

WHAT I'M THINKING ABOUT

The Radiant Joy of Alysa Liu

After I wrote about the women’s bobsledders last week, Deborah Farmer Kris P ’29 reached out to share how moved she was by another inspiring olympian: figure skater Alysa Liu. If you didn’t catch Alysa’s performance, I encourage you to take a moment to watch it. The joy and freedom in her skating are even more powerful when you learn about her story. Deborah has published an excellent substack that unpacks what makes Alysa’s story so special, and shares what we can do as parents to nurture such confidence and joy in our own kids. She cites psychologist Michele Borba, author of Thrivers: The Surprising Reasons Why Some Kids Struggle and Others Shine, and explains that while parents and guardians can play an important role in exposing kids to potential hobbies and interests, it’s important that we remain “curious observers” and pay attention to who is doing the “pulling” to and from activities. Give it a read. There are some excellent insights for parents of adolescents, in particular.

WHAT I'M WATCHING/LISTENING TO

Train Dreams

Train Dreams, directed by Clint Bentley, tells the story of Robert Grainger, a logger in the early 20th-century American West whose life unfolds alongside the vast social and environmental changes brought by industrialization and the expansion of the railroad. It is a film that shows how quickly a familiar and routine life can be upended by unforeseen change. As I watched, I felt a lot of parallels with the world right now as we grapple with things like the prevalence of AI in our daily lives. It can feel disorienting to navigate change, torn between embracing what’s new and worrying that you might be left behind.

Overall, I thought it was a beautiful film with a love story and plenty of sadness to go around. But in the end, much wisdom is shared: like when old logger Arn says to Robert about the trees and logging: “The tree was my friend. But the second the blade bit in, you had yourself a war, and the tree was a killer.” Much later in the film, a woman, Claire, newly arrived to town as the first employee from the newly formed American Forest Service says to Robert in a conversation: “The little insect doesn’t know that it plays as important a role as the big river. The dead tree is as important as the living one. There must be something for us to learn from that.” I see why it’s an Oscar nominated film. Give it a try.

WHAT CAUGHT MY EYE

You will recall that last week I wrote about the appeal of writing by hand. This week I took out my father's favorite Parker Pen and got ink refills. It was nice to put it to use again.

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