Hobbit houses for Olney?

Have I mentioned I love Olney Friends School?

Emma Churchman put a link on Facebook to this charming house a man built in Wales for about $4,700 (3,000 British pounds): http://gaia-health.com/gaia-blog/2011-12-21/man-builds-fairy-tale-home-for-his-family-for-only-3000/.

Isn't it lovely? And apparently green too. For some reason, it made me think of Olney.

I'm remembering all the land Olney has, its expertise in green building ... and perhaps a need for staff housing. Of course, too, there's always the question of where to put the student lounge. Wouldn't this be a wonderful, whimsical way to live? Or a good place to go to hang out with friends?

And it could offer Olney some extra publicity. Who wouldn't want to go to the Hobbit school? Now we just need to get the film class students to film the building going up ... Maybe we could even invite over the man who built the original ... What do you think?

Dear Rosa

Rosa Shull died two days ago. She was in her early twenties

Death is almost always as surprising as it is inevitable. Despite images of the River Styx, with their tease of boats and crossings, the chasm between life and death is so total, so irrevocable, that it stuns us with its non-negotiable finality, its inflexible refusal to enter into dialogue. It goes in one direction only and won’t hear our pleas. Our needs are not its needs.

To be dead is to be parted from this earth as embodied, moving flesh, no matter what paradise, heaven or new life lies on the other side. I trust in an afterlife; I grieve the loss of this life.

Rosa, your death—so sudden, so unexpected, so young—is like the proverbial blow to the solar plexus, leaving me gasping, airless, groping for direction. How could it be? How could someone so vitally alive, so personable, bright, kind, artistic, with such an abundance of gifts to pour out on humanity, have died? How could someone so infused with the life force be gone? The mind reels.

I have a memory of you and Sophie walking across the Olney campus in front of the Main Building, a sunny day early in the Fall of your senior year. You both have short haircuts, that come to some sort of V at the back of your necks. You are both tall, blond, light eyed. You walk side by side with a confidence that is infectious, startling, healthy, alive, sharply radiant.

In another memory, we are at lunch and you are talking about a dessert—a pastry—that your grandmother used to make for you in Russia (or was it the Ukraine?), where you presented a seamless merging of a life far away and the present moment.

Annie Dillard writes, “I was …ringing. I had been my whole life a bell.” That is you, with your clear voice, the ringing, rounded cadences of a Midwestern accent, yet beneath the surface, music rising up and down, laughter.

I want to believe that when we die, we are transported to another "place," where we don’t know we’ve died, where we wake up and are healed and everything bad that went before is revealed to be a nightmare, an illusion. We go home and our relationships are whole and holy, infused with light. People we thought are dead are alive and present. We overflow with joy because everything has been set aright. We praise, we sing, we laugh.

Rosa, I can’t believe you are gone—it simply defies my soul’s comprehension—yet I can imagine you in heaven and also feel your spirit suffusing the earth. In the future, I will see you in things that move and remind me of your voice. All is still outside my window, but in a shadow of the window, cast on the carpet as a square of light, shadows move rapidly, dancing, waving at me.

Olney Gym Ex and the Quaker testimonies

Every year at this time, Olney Friends School holds Gym Ex, a gymnastic exhibit. I love Gym Ex, because it so completely expresses the Quaker testimonies:

Simplicity: A 70-year-old gym, floor mats, a hand-made pole vault, jump ropes, and a trampoline are all the students need to put on an hour-and-a-half show of athletic ability and coordination. It's an impressive and unvarnished display of physical ability using the simplest of equipment.

Community: Gym Ex is the point in the year where the students show they have coalesced as a community. Community emerges as they work together to dance, jumprope in groups, do gymnastics together and build human pyramids. It's expressed as they applaud and urge each other on. It reaches a high point when the girls file in at the end of the evening holding candles and serenade the boys with a song they have a chosen. This year it was "I want to Hold your Hand." Community is expressed too in the continuity of Gym Ex from year to year. It's a tradition handed down person to person going back at least a century.

Equality: Everyone is equal, Everyone works with each other. Girls are as athletic as boys. I'm impressed at GymEx, as I always am at Olney, at the girls' ability to be the strong humans--in body and character-- that they are. I never hear the word "feminism" or the term "woman's rights" spoken at GymEx, yet, harkening back to the earliest Quakers, girls are treated as fully human. Maybe when that acceptance is part of a culture, terms like feminism can fade away. I wish there were a way to spread this respect out more widely into a culture that sexualizes women so totally. I could say the same for race, ethnicity and nationality: they are celebrated and yet don't matter because there's absolutely no shred of hierarchy. This is a Quaker model at its best, and I wish it could be shouted out to the world.

Peace: This is more subtle--and there's even friendly competition to see who can jump highest over the pole vault-- but GymEx is a peaceful display of athletic prowess.

Integrity: When the above four interact, integrity is the outcome.

As I have since I arrived at Olney, I wish there were a way to push this model of education out into the wider world. What perplexes me is the difficulty of spreading the simplicity of what the school offers. In a time when we are handwringing over the high cost of public education, this model is inexpensive, were the boarding school portion removed. (Feeding and housing students and offering 24/7 care does add to the tab.) None of what the school offers requires spending huge amounts of money. It does require establishing small educational communities with an emphasis on relationship building and the Quaker testimonies. Yet it seems to me by using simplicity to encourage academic ability and good physical health, trusting students and building respectful relationships, the school is doing what is most important towards nurturing the kind of functioning, whole people who can enter the world and make it a better place.

Why do you think it is so hard to replicate this model? This is what baffles me--its seems as though schools like this should be everywhere, and they're not. I would think parents would cry out for this model of humanity over a bigger chem lab or more language offerings, but for some reason, we don't. I wonder why not?

Olney Graduation

Saturday saw the class of 2010 (19 students, 17 present) celebrate graduation at the Stillwater Meeting House. Friday was the annual almuni meeting at Stillwater, which is part of the graduation ceremony. Every year, the alumni meeting includes a roll call of classes. This year 13 out of the 21 from the 50th anniversary class (class of 1960) showed up and five from the class of 1940. We learned that oldest known living alumna is from the class of 1924, presumably 104, and still living independently.

When I watched commencement, the alumni meeting and, earlier in the year, Gym-Ex, I was reminded of how long it takes to build traditions and how they can't simply be replicated from scratch because they carry with them pieces of other times. I'm always impressed with the loyalty of the former students, and am glad the school has changed little and slowly, opting to keep to Quaker ways rather than embrace every new fashion.

I wish more Olneys could spring up around the country--small schools offering strong ethics, a safe community and excellent academics in a simple environment. In a time when many private (now called "independent) educational institutions (including many Quaker schools), have, like the rest of the country, followed the pattern of becoming the elite few separated from the deteriorating public sector, Olney is a refreshing reminder of an earlier time. The school offers a distinctly Quaker education in a setting that is still middle-class, not impossibly posh and elite. I really love that, and mourn that I don't know of more schools that follow this pattern.

Of course, Olney is still expensive, even with generous financial aid (though I imagine most people from the coasts would find, after aid, the entire cost of tuition and boarding less than the average Quaker day school) and the school has been pondering how to become more affordable. Perplexingly, the real cost of attending Olney has risen over time, even with salaries kept as low as possible (much compensation comes in the form of room and board) and a very careful eye on other expenses. The school will be having a summit in the fall to consider, among other things, ways to lower the cost of an education here. Those who can't participate in the summit can go to the Olney website and fill out a survey, and the school is looking for as much input as possible.

I sometimes worry that parents of potential students might be concerned that the school doesn't offer all the bells and whistles of an elite Quaker boarding school. We're struggling to put up the new activities center (gym) and in the meantime, parents drive past the old, disused tennis courts. I hope we can convey that something better is going on at the school--something more rare, more elusive, more difficult to find--than state-of-the-art buildings (though we hope soon to have a "green" gym).

While I have issues with the Harry Potter books, and know that Hogwarts is an over-used (and often false) comparison, Olney does have several things in common with the fictional boarding school. It's old, with a long tradition, and it builds strong community. Of course, it's Quaker and doesn't indulge in magic and occult. It's most like Hogwarts, to me, in not being visible to the average "muggle" eye: If you are looking for outward packaging or a particular kind of school, all you will see are old buildings and a school that doesn't offer 12 languages. It's as if it is disguised from the shallow and materialistic. But if you have the eyes to see ...

At graduation, we also saw our friend from Patapsco Meeting in Ellicott City, Ramona Buck, class of 1965. Johanna Danos, another Patapsco Meeting friend, whose son Elvin just completed his first year as an Olney student, arrived with her mother Helga, a healthy and glowing 83 year old who was much impressed, as I was, by the commencement address given by a recent humanities teacher.

As with most things in the "upside-down" kingdom, the school's financial struggles in the recent past (it almost closed a decade ago) are what have kept it true to itself. Now, however, with the economy down, the school could use more scholarship money as well as the rest of the funds for the new gym, but there's a trust that both will come as needed.

I hope the school will be more and more accessible...and that more people will be able to see that the school is an attainable goal for their children.