Latest news with #GordonCollege
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Gordon College grad makes history at 18
Evangeline Gillard is wrapping up her college education at a time when most are just starting. At 18, she is now one of the youngest graduates in the history of Gordon College in Wenham. 'It didn't affect me too much to be younger than everybody else,' Gillard told Boston 25 News in an interview from her parent's home in Minnesota. 'I could keep up in classes. I made friends normally and easily. I think it was all quite straight forward.' Gillard said she chose Gordon because of the school's linguistics program and Christian education, both of which were important to her. She graduated May 17th with a bachelor's degree in linguistics. Gillard was homeschooled as a child, and in her early teens began taking online college courses to supplement her primary education. At 16, she simultaneously graduated high school with an associate's degree earned online from University of the Northwestern. She then transferred into Gordon College as a junior. It was her first time in a traditional classroom setting, but there were no surprises, she said. 'To be frank, it was pretty much what I expected,' Gillard said. 'The whole college experience, the whole school experience, wasn't too surprising. I think I pictured what it was like pretty well.' She admits her classmates were surprised when they first learned her age, but they also welcomed her. 'The greatest struggles were probably having to mail things to my parents to sign for me because I was still a minor,' Gillard said. As for what's next, Gillard is weighing her options. She said she might like to pursue a career in Bible translation, editing, or dialect coaching, but she hasn't ruled out the possibility of grad school. 'I have no concrete plans for the future,' Gillard said. 'I'm going to take at least a year or so to figure things out… and being so young, I have so much flexibility and time to explore those options.' Download the FREE Boston 25 News app for breaking news alerts. Follow Boston 25 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch Boston 25 News NOW
Boston Globe
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Get ready for the no-longer-PG-13 Pete Holmes tour
Advertisement It didn't take him long to realize some of his best material didn't fit. After one show in Austin, he scrapped the idea and renamed the tour. 'I was like, I don't want to do stand-up with one hand tied behind my back,' he said. 'I want to hit as hard as I can. I want to be as honest as I can. And I really want to make people laugh so hard, and sometimes you want to talk about pushing Hitler's dad off of Hitler's mom, and that was my favorite joke. It is still my favorite joke.' The show he's touring now is all new material, and he's got a filmed special he's currently shopping around to streamers. Holmes's comedy springs from a number of frictions. He has acknowledged that he looks like he should be a youth pastor playing guitar for a rec hall full of teenagers (and in fact, was headed toward becoming one after being raised in an evangelical Christian family and attending Gordon College, a Christian school). And yet he will tell jokes about sex and bodily functions with somewhat explicit language. On top of that, some of his material reflects deep spiritual and intellectual questions about the nature of religious beliefs, or why, if everything is made of molecules, does his hand not just pass through a stool when he pats it (a topic he explored with Neil deGrasse Tyson on the 'You Made It Weird' podcast). Advertisement The origin of the molecules bit came from one of Holmes's teachers at Lexington High School, who explained that a hand and a table are both made of molecules, and science doesn't have a reason why the hand doesn't just become part of the table when they touch. 'I was like, that's amazing,' Holmes remembered. 'I can't believe he's saying this. So I picked it up from LHS, and then I said it two decades later onstage, and then Neil deGrasse Tyson was checking my work, and thank goodness that that teacher and my memory were correct.' According to Holmes, these disparate elements came together in him organically. He did not set out to be a wholesome-looking comic shocking people with scatological references. 'There was no scheme of going like, 'I look like I have resting Latter Day Saint face,' right?' he said. 'I look like more of a missionary. Well, wouldn't it be devilish if I went up and talked about whatever – adult topics?' Advertisement In the beginning of his career, if the material was slanted a bit more toward pure silliness, that was still germane to Holmes's thoughts at the time. Now, Holmes and his wife have moved out of the city to a place where life moves a little more slowly, and that space is reflected in the new hour. 'I'm authentically reporting on what it's like to be a 46-year-old man alive today and feeling what it feels like,' he said. 'If I'm gonna write down a joke, I'm stealing time from, like, family dinner. It better be good.' Holmes had always wanted to talk about religion in a deeper way onstage, but it wasn't until he was 33 that he was able to shed his inhibitions enough to address it head on. He remembers a specific show with fellow Mass. native Eugene Mirman at Union Hall in Brooklyn where he debuted a joke about how he loves Jesus, but it's just his followers he's not crazy about, making the comparison that you could love football and still think the people in the stands are insane. It was a baby step, but an important one. 'It was my first little foray into that,' Holmes said. 'But to tell that joke, I had to say, 'I love Jesus.' And even in a hipster bar in Park Slope, saying, 'I love Jesus,' my heart rate, like, shot. I got sweaty. I fumbled it.' Part of his hesitancy was that he is always questioning his beliefs, and had no interest in trying to make a sweeping pronouncement for his audience to agree or disagree with. He just wanted to become, as he describes it, 'unembarrassed' to make a statement. 'I didn't even know if that was true,' he said. 'Did I love Jesus? It would have been more honest to say I was raised with Jesus, and I have a warmth and a fondness for that, but I didn't even know who I was, and it took a really, really long time.' Advertisement There are practical concerns to the way Holmes constructs his act. Sometimes the silly stuff is a necessary break after a heavier question. And Holmes doesn't see a philosophical conflict with presenting the two things together. 'I think there's something powerful in sort of a warts-and-all approach to what I'm trying to create,' he said, 'because I take issue with the fact that God – or the creator of the universe, or whatever you want to say, the essence of the universe – prefers it if you and I only talk about gumdrops and lollipops. I really think that's actually aggressively offensive and an echo of our weird, puritanical past.' Holmes thinks the taboos about profanity and sex are perhaps focused on the wrong things. Those aren't the dangerous concepts. 'It's the banal, stodgy, tick, 'Isn't winning great? Isn't eating great? Isn't being right great?'' he said. 'There's nothing of value being transmitted. There's nothing interesting being challenged. Everyone went in thinking that bacon is the best, and everyone's leaving thinking bacon is the best.' He promises his audiences won't catch him ginning up a self-righteous joke where he came up with exactly the right thing to say to put some mythical jerk in their place. Not when there's an opportunity to tell people about something joyful, something that eased his stress or anxiety. 'In the second half of my career, you won't find me telling a story where I'm the smartest and the best and I won, and everyone else is an idiot,' he said. 'And I actually think that's the metric. Is it ugly? Not, 'is it clean or dirty.' Is it ugly? Is it helpful?' Advertisement But then he laughs at himself, noting some people would think he was a joke for talking so high-mindedly in contrast to the amount of thought he's actually provoking. He smiles modestly, maybe hopefully, that there's something meaningful to take away from his work. 'You know, a little bit.' PETE HOLMES: PETE HERE NOW At The Wilbur, 246 Tremont St., Boston, Aug. 23, 7 p.m. and 9:45 p.m. Tickets: $35-$55.
Boston Globe
06-05-2025
- Health
- Boston Globe
‘That rhetoric is deadly': Autistic individuals, family members express mixed feelings about RFK Jr.'s comments on autism
Their opposing perspectives reflect a rift within the community as the nation's top health official, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Some said his remarks were dangerous and offensive, while others felt heard. 'It's wonderful that he's doing this, and [Kennedy] was right: the future is very bleak for people with autism,' said Hitsos, an alumna of Gordon College in Wenham who now attends graduate school in Texas. Advertisement But Trainor sees a future bright with promise despite his diagnosis. At 15, he works in the kitchen at his school, produces music on the side, and hopes to have a career working with animals. 'So many on the spectrum end up getting jobs,' said Trainor, who has a moderate form of autism that requires substantial support on communication issues. The condition has no cure and doesn't require one, he believes. His 16-year-old brother, John, also has autism, but a milder form that requires less support. He said Kennedy fails to acknowledge that many people with the syndrome are on the lower end of the spectrum and can have full lives. 'I have seen a lot of people treat ASD [Autism Spectrum Disorder] as some sort of disease that needs to be 'cured,' which is very offensive towards people like me,' John Trainor, a student at Bristol Plymouth Technical High School, said in a statement. 'We are normal people who have a much harder time socially.' Advertisement Autism is a developmental disorder that research has linked with genetics and certain conditions before and during birth, such as prenatal exposure to pollution or pesticides and Kennedy has long promoted controversial theories that external factors, such as vaccines, are to blame, and pledged his new research effort would determine the cause of the 'autism epidemic' by September. 'These are kids that, this is a preventable disease. We know it's an environmental exposure,' Kennedy Those remarks came after a report from the US Advocates and experts say the higher prevalence is explained by better detection methods and awareness of the disorder. Indeed, the CDC Several of the nation's leading autism organizations condemned Kennedy's words and actions, describing them as hurtful and untrue. Advertisement 'His comments were incorrect, but more to the point, they were eugenic,' said Colin Killick, executive director of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, which advocates for disability rights. 'Talking about autistic people as themselves being destroyed but also having destroyed their families is a horrific argument.' While disagreeing with Kennedy, Killick said the autism community would welcome additional research, such as why people with autism have a higher incidence He added that most new cases involve higher functioning people who need less support and disputed the notion they needed to be cured. 'Autism is a way of thinking, it is fundamentally ingrained into how a person interacts with the world,' Killick said. 'The idea that you would give someone a pill and magically make them non-autistic — you would essentially be making them an entirely different person.' Julie DeFilippo, a social worker who works with autistic individuals and their families and has an autistic son, said some families were already wary of receiving an official diagnosis. She worries Kennedy's rhetoric will create additional stigma that will discourage some from seeking out support. 'I could say as a parent of an autistic kid, I get hundreds of moments of joy every day. That's the easy part — being at home and supporting him,' she said. 'The hard part is the world outside and putting him out there and the experiences of him being misunderstood.' Hitsos, on the other hand, said that while she understands many people on the spectrum are 'happy' with being autistic, she is not. Advertisement 'Every day is a struggle with the littlest of things,' she said. 'I don't want other people to go through it, especially those with profound autism.' Now studying to become a music teacher, Hitsos said she has tried to get a job for years, but suspects her efforts failed because of her openness online about having the disorder. She also expressed concern the autism community has given up on finding a cause and cure and settled for 'acceptance and inclusion.' 'Acceptance is good, I've been a self-advocate for years, but this is an epidemic, and until they find a cause for it, this is only gonna get worse,' she said. But Killick wants Kennedy to be more aware of the effects of his words on the autism community. Every year, his organization participates in a 'That rhetoric is deadly,' he said, 'and hearing our nation's highest health official telling the world that autistic people destroy their families and implying that autistic people's lives aren't worth living is frightening, and it's going to have consequences.' Emily Spatz can be reached at
