Joists Multifarious

“Only connect” seemed the theme of our first Assembly of the spring trimester, when Bo Manson’s TOADTalk, exploring the nature and rewards of “building things,” prompted Director of the Horse Program Cam Schryver, in his announcement, to broaden the concept to include “bringing horses along to where they’ll be gentle and useful” (a preamble to his applauding two new Top Horsemen, seniors Cayce Cover and Miles Fossett), on the heels of which came a brief talk by a small cadre of students who’d just returned from working at an orphanage in Haiti, having laid the foundation for a playground. And then, the news that a premier architect and Thacher alum--Ross Anderson CdeP 1969--would be among us as an Anacapa Visiting Scholar for the whole spring term, teaching a course called Place-making, Architecture, and Reading the Landscape.

How much more tongue-in-groove could a half-hour Assembly get without some prior collaborative blueprint? It all sent many of us to thinking about "things" we created during our own vacation time. A quick sampling, rustled up from many possibilities:

The tire-swing project actually transpired just before spring break--an effective antidote to prepping for exams (or a model of creative procrastination). It was dreamed up by a quintet of sophomore girls (Sage Whipple, Lexie Kirkwood, Auden Ehringer, Joanna Knutsen, and Elle Gannon), hung from a perfect spot on The Hill,  and brought to happy fruition with much willing help from Buildings and Grounds expert Pat LaVelle. It's a keeper. Just ask any of the girls, or the faculty kids who share that part of campus!

For woodcraftsmen John Bueti (Fine Arts Department) and Dennis Shives (a friend in and of the Ojai Valley), the past couple of weeks was all-hands-on-desk, as the two collaborators finished one of the most imaginative pieces of furniture most of us have ever laid eyes on. (They unveiled it--Ooooohh!! Aaaaaah!!!--at Assembly). The project--Desk of the Mountain Dreamer-- was conceived by Dennis, who’d been inspired by his up-close-and-personal experiences with lenticular clouds in the Alaskan wilderness. (“Canadian honkers” and tundra swans are also involved.) Executed by both artisans, the desk represents a highly original use of curly maple and reclaimed redwood--and is, in Dennis’ words, “for someone who is brave enough to aim for the highest of dreams.” Says John, “I’ve seen a lot of interesting furniture over the years--and this piece ranks right up there.”

In addition to the volunteers in Haiti, several students did service work, among them freshmen Ben Chadwick and Andrew St. George. Ben traveled, pro bono, all over Los Angeles county, visiting large, free, safety-net clinic systems, there “to survey patients as part of a clinical trial aimed at preventing drug addiction by intervening on ‘casual-use’ patients.” This research is a step in establishing permanent intervention systems in clinics. “It will help many now and in the future,” says Ben--and “[The experience] also helped me build my life a little through the knowledge I gained and the work I did.”

Andrew headed to New Orleans for most of his break, where he “helped rebuild houses devastated during [Hurricane] Katrina, spent a day working with kids at a public middle school, most of [whom] had lost their parents during the hurricane, and time at a homeless shelter helping the guests and making bunk-beds for them. This was important [work] because the homeless rate tripled [as a result of the devastation]: 1 in 25 residents are homeless--over 13,000 people in the city of New Orleans alone. On the last day, we went to a war veteran’s home in the Ninth Ward, which we helped rebuild and paint. Hurricane Katrina [may have been] seven years ago, but there is still a lot more to do, and by going there, I learned the importance of helping out.

Farther east, the Hoopers--Kara and Jeff, with sons Hayden and Hiram--got involved with taps and buckets as they pitched in on Geoff Marchant’s Lakeville, Connecticut, maple syruping operation, three generations old. H and H did what Kara--Geoff’s daughter-- used to as a child: helped lug buckets, tend the fire, and soak up the aromatic steam amid the boiling and boiling down in the sugarhouse. Their product: 7.5 gallons of liquid gold, of 42 produced during the 5-week sap run--and memories at least twice as sweet.

Also east--Tennessee, actually--was Annie Beckham ‘14, building on her equine knowledge by attending The Road To the Horse International Competition in Lexington, where some of the best horsemen from Australia, Canada, and the United States compete in colt-starting. Thacher's own Artist-in-Residence Richard Winters, who won the competition in 2009, served as commentator this year. “It was incredible,” says Annie, “to see these well-known and well-respected horsemen work with the [totally green] three-year-old horses over three consecutive days, [culminating in] an obstacle course challenge. Attending this event was very personal, as I am starting a colt of my own--Willow--here at Thacher. Mr. Duykaerts [gave] me the opportunity, and Mr. Winters is my mentor. It is such a learning experience to work with so young a horse alongside a professional. It was also very cool that Mr. Winters introduced The Thacher School during the event in front of thousands of people, which sparked the interest of the people there to look further into our amazing place.” Want more details? We think you can guess where to find Annie every afternoon.

Jason Carney (History, Middle School Dorm Head) spoke for History Department teachers (Sarah DelVecchio, Bob St. George, Dana Vancisin) and spouses (Greg DelVecchio, Lucia St. George, Megan Carney), as well as supreme trip-planner Peter Robinson (Art History), with this enthusiastic report: “We built collegiality in St. Petersburg! A huge and underrated perk of Thacher's generous professional development: Spending quality time with colleagues in a wonderful historic, cultural, and educational setting.” This sojourn, as many another “department trip” of the past two decades, was made possible by the generosity of Marvin Shagam (History), who donates his United Airlines frequent flier miles so that his fellow teachers can visit such places as Brazil, Thailand, Mexico, and various European countries.

Like most of his compadres in the senior class, James Bissett worked on his Senior Exhibition, “a huge project that still needs lots more work. However, I am continuing to build on it (mine is on natural gas from a geological, economical, political, and environmental point of view), more and more each day, until I grow it into a product I am satisfied with.” Incidentally, seniors submit their annotated bibliographies and presentation outlines this weekend; interviews with faculty take place next week, and then it’s on to creating and refining the presentations themselves, which will take place April 19-21.

The artistic bloomed in Jane McCarthy (Assistant to the Head of School and Director of External Relations), who worked on an oil painting of a scene in Carpinteria, and Ann Merlini (Dorm Faculty, Horse Department), who, inpired by Captain Charlie Moore’s trash talk two years back, “decided to use up some of the non-recyclable plastic pieces I accumulate. I made four garden stepping stones using the plastic pieces as the medium for decoration.”

Putting his deep knowledge of chemistry to use during vacation, Doc V (Chris Vyhnal, Chair of the Science Department) checked in with this: “I ‘built’ a new beer--an American style IPA (India Pale Ale)--and modified what is now our third fridge to finish its fermentation process.”

Geology was more up the Pidduck family’s alley: “We did a lot of sandcastle building at the beach in Santa Barbara and points slightly south,” reports Dean of Faculty and English teacher Blossom Beatty Pidduck CdeP 1992. “We also played for hours with princesses and had several tickling marathons. We made pancakes and waffles and stayed in our pajamas until noon. Every day began with the question: ‘Mama, where do you have to go today?’ and my most favorite answer, ‘Nowhere. You're stuck with me all day.’”

“Stuck” with Cam Schryver in an equally positive way were some newly acquired horses. According to Cam, “They needed a little help fitting into things around here. They’re horses we’ll need to use right away--so I [spent some of the break] doing a bit of riding.”

Cam’s colleague in the Horse Department (and Mathematics teacher) William Okin continued building the thachergymkhana.net website over break to add scoring for cowboy races. “I was moved by Bo's TOADTalk because writing computer programs has a very similar draw as building things out of wood.” Ultimately, you’re creating something that serves a purpose, and when it works, it works. Totally satisfying. And yet, there's always the desire to make it work better, more simple, easier to use, etc. It's more like building a machine than a building, but is equally consuming, if not so dangerous.”

Senior Cassie Disner continued a tradition begun when she left for Thacher: “I love to bake--and I use my breaks to try as many new recipes as I can. I 'build' my baking repertoire."

The Buildings and Grounds Department is, of course, perpetually in the act of creation or recreation. José Parra, whose stone artistry enhances many parts of the campus, has been busy lately on designing and erecting yet another firepit, this one between Upper School and the Anacapa Visiting Scholar’s House.

Director of Development Brandon Doyle spent the break "’building’ a pig [already under construction], making sure she had fresh water and food every day. One morning, with lots of help from B & G's Assistant Director Robert Torres, I repaired the water spigot she had cracked. Meanwhile, Dana continued to build our flower and vegetable gardens.”

Several faculty members--English teachers Bo Manson, Sil and Joel Sohn, Liz Witmer, and Joy Sawyer-Mulligan, History-Spanish teacher Mike McGowan, and Science Teacher Peter Sawyer--created blogs for spring courses, with the inspiration and guidance of S.I.S. Implementation Manager Susannah McGowan. “Building blogs is part of the teaching and learning process,” she says. “Building flexible but strong scaffolds for the learning process, building the tools to facilitate conversation and interaction with the content. They’re virtual Harkness tables!”

And those Changing Tides Orphanage and Academy helpers? They represented three of the four classes at Thacher and the staff: freshman Georgie Becker, sophomores Elle Gannon, Paul Ammons, and Drew Combs, junior Hutton Becker, and College Counseling Office Manager Tony Franco, linking arms and tools with Tony’s grandmother, Donna Kirkmire--one of the organization’s board members and a long-time elementary school teacher--and cousin Madeleine Mazzola (9th-grade daughter of Chris and Rich, who headed east last June to Virginia’s St. Anne’s-Belfield School after concluding a many-year stay on Thacher’s faculty). The crew worked long hours in hot sun, building a retaining wall and concrete pad as the beginnings of a playground, mixing and laying concrete by hand, making meals for nearby elderly, playing with the fifteen resident children and the other ten enrolled in the school. (The whole operation, supported entirely by volunteers, is the brainchild--and labor of love--of Vance and Cheryl Simms of Ojai.) Paul said, "It really was something else, something undefinable by words. People who are just like you, yet living completely different lives, and you want to do all you can to change their lives for the better, but there is so little you actually can do." Tony called the experience “truly grounding. It made me realize that it's purely by geographic luck I was born in America (and, at that, born white). Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the world. Our group did some amazing work down there but not nearly enough; I felt so fulfilled at the end of the week, yet now that I'm back here, I feel like we barely did anything. Still, we gave these orphans more than they've ever had before, and quite frankly, more than most in Haiti. It's a remarkably odd juxtaposition of emotions I'm going through right now.”

And that’s exactly what Bo meant when he concluded his talk with this: The building of something, anything really, is, according to [Michael] Pollan [author of A Place of My Own, the Education of an Amateur Builder], an act of “simplification—of reducing [the] many daunting complexities” of our hectic and challenging lives into “something as stripped-down and uncomplicated as a hut” perched on a hillside. After all, “work is how we situate ourselves in the world, and like the work of many people nowadays, mine [seems to] put me in a relationship to the world that [is increasingly] abstract, glancing, virtual." Building, it turns out, is my way of adding something, as Pollan says, “to the stock of reality”: a table to sit at, a door to open, a cupboard to hold a belonging, or a little house with a window to frame my view of the world.