A place to grow means, to me, a place to try things, to make mistakes, to be forgiven.

An organization such as the Community School is a many body system. If it is to be emergent, capable of self-organization, adaptive, and to be “alive”, it needs to operate in its’ own state of complexity; and that means on the edge between order and chaos. For that, then, we need to find the set of connections that give it this life, for then it will sustain liveliness as new individuals move into and out of the organization.

We like to think that when we put ourselves into an organization, our spirits continue to infiltrate the system once we’ve left.  We like to think so.

But it was the Board governing Aspen Community School, the Aspen Education Research Foundation [AERF], that eventually informed George it was time for him to go. He didn’t want to go. He had more work to do, about a year or two years worth, with the ambitious goal of gaining national support for the creation of a genuine village from which to school (raise) children.

The inspiration for this village, and for much of George’s philosophy on education reform and group decision-making, stems from Highlander, a research center developed by Myles Horton 75 years ago:

The Highlander Research and Education Center, Highlander Center for short, primarily offers workshops in popular education in order to train groups throughout the Southeast in the skills to go back to their communities and win struggles for social justice. It is, as you know, a favorite of mine and a model for I had hoped COMPASS [the umbrella organization for the Aspen and Carbondale Community Schools, and the Early Childhood Center on the Aspen Community Foundation campus] could provide for the Southwest.

The Highlander Center is essentially a meeting space, an eating space, some dormitory rooms, a library and an outdoor “Cultural Pavilion.” They have a highly developed and successful program after seventy years of operation and they have developed a (fairly) stable funding base over this period of time.

Contrary to his disappointments in the Community School and COMPASS, George reveres Highlander and implemented what he dubbed “Mini-Highlanders” for his own staff while he was Principal.

In 1932, Myles Horton (southern son of two school teachers) founded the Highlander Folk School. His resolve: to solve problems of social injustice in the South, his bent: much aligned with Frederick Douglas. If people are to struggle against their oppression, what skills and tools do they need? For Horton the answer was the educated power of their own voices and the courage to come together and to stand together. Horton converted a little Tennessee farm into a residential meeting place and devised his workshop format, as what is now called popular education and participatory education. The Highlander format is twenty to twenty five people of similar oppression, sitting in a circle at the farm, usually for as little as three days at a time. The process includes:

1.    Sharing of experiences—in the setting of the culture of those experiences.
2.    Finding the commonalties of those experiences.
3.    Examining, through critical dialogue, the workings of what is wrong.
4.    Determining actions to be taken back in their communities.

Myles Horton [writes in his autobiography “The Long Haul”]: “What we do involves trusting people and believing in their ability to think for themselves. Our desire is to empower people collectively, not individually…Workshops are based on mining the experience that the students bring with them, their awareness that they have a problem to deal with, and the relationship of that problem to conflict…Nothing will change until we change—until we throw off our dependence and act for ourselves.”

Beginning in the 30’s, the Highlander Center was the focus of the labor movement ⎯ the CIO was formed there. Workers, farmers, and organizers went from Highlander workshops back to their communities and began a struggle that may never be finished, but which at least is now fought on a level field. After World War II, the Highlander Center moved into the Civil Rights issue. Septima Clark, Rosa Parks, and hundreds of others went from Highlander workshops back into their communities and sat at lunch counters, sat in the front of the bus, marched together, had dogs set upon them—you know the story, and you know it’s not over yet.

Currently the Highlander Center is focusing on environmental issues, the tendency for pollutants to be dumped in poor communities, and job issues, the tendency for today’s jobs to pay less than a living wage. I sometimes say that the Highlander Center has done more to correct social injustices in this country than any President. I wouldn’t know how to go about measuring that, but few people argue.

There is no way I can say how George was when he was younger, or even during his days at the Community School. But, today, there is a hurriedness about him, a rush to the finish line, at the sacrifice of specifics.

I never met Myles, but I know his successors at Highlander - Mike Clark, John Gaventa, and Jim Sessions. We have talked about whether education isn’t universal, whether it be about a child learning fractions or adults figuring out racism. Isn’t all education fundamentally about empowerment and taking responsibility? Shouldn’t every curriculum be built on a foundation of fairness and social justice?

From this perspective it is easy to begin thinking of classrooms as organizing projects and teachers as organizers; to think of education as developing leadership amongst the students. It becomes a necessary curriculum to analyze the state of fairness and social justice in the classroom, the school, and the community at large.

Our “Old Warriors” program is designed to be Highlander-like workshops, only solely about education in its many facets. Those teachers already out there struggling for the sake of their students—we call them “Outlaws for Excellence”—will sit in a circle, share their experiences, find commonalties, and design actions. We will include our pre-service students in this circle so that as young bucks they may find the fire in their bellies lit.

And also a giddiness. A prominent gallery owner, with headquarters on Geary Street in San Francisco, who collects vintage black and white, silver-plated photographs, has included George in his portfolio. This proprietor has been visiting Aspen for years now – for pleasure, but also to sell photographs to a publishing heiress (George has also purchased photographs from him, about one per year, at approximately $2,000 a pop– although Patti has made it clear to George that he has to curtail this habit - and anyway, there’s hardly any wall space left for hanging more frames). It is through this connection – the heiress’ children attended the Community School - that he came to George. It’s fair to say that the prospect of having his work displayed to private buyers around the country would count as a major life goal achieved.

I’m not good at dates. Events come and pass, there is indeed a sequence, and I can often remember time of year but not the year.

Time; well, time exists, it goes only one way from past towards future by passing through the present, and Einstein showed that because the speed of light is the speed limit for the universe, space and time are not independent but inter-related.

I have also been contemplating my own purpose and, as my husband’s business and financial situation improves, my urge to establish a voice in the public dialogue.

I know that in 1989 [the year I was graduated from Horace Mann High School in Riverdale, New York] I was back involved with the school because I recall doing a statistical analysis of three years of Iowa test data. I had recently had neck surgery; sleep with pain and a cervical collar was not easy. I recall punching data into some computer other than this in the dark pre-dawns of a June. Marriage dates, graduation dates, major job shifts, and major surgical dates stick in my mind. 1949, 1953, 1954, 1961, 1965, 1972, 1989, 1992. I try to tie every thing to these when it comes to question of “In which year, exactly, did the following happen?”

Moving forward from then, and backward from now, it looks like:

1988-90    Beginning on the [Aspen Education Research Foundation] Board.         ECC [Executive Service Corps] started?
1989-90     Ed Bastian’s beginning, Barry fired.
1990-1         Kathy’s first year. Bertha fired.
1991-2         Last Kathy year. Ed, Karen leave
1992-3         Co-Director with Mardell. Anne Fitten hired as Development Director             July 1993
1993-4         Head of school, Debra arrives, Mardell and Sue leave.
1994-5         Head of school. Charter school approved.
1995-6     Executive Director of the AERF [Aspen Education Research Foundation], Debra moves to Principal of Community School

Thus, it was August of 1990 that I thought about businessmen having their weekly roundtable luncheons in order to organize and have power. Why didn’t educators do the same? Bruce Thomas supported the idea. We took Tom Farrell to lunch (at the new Lauretta’s) and he liked the idea; this may have been our first formal contact. I wanted to involve [the Aspen] Country Day School also; and I wanted to get closer to Russell Scott and his wife’s pocketbook; he was a key board member of Country day, having taken custody of his own grandson and placed him there. I cold called him and he agreed to a meeting.

Scott’s house is visible from the bottom of Starwood, just past the guardhouse. At that time of the day, early afternoon, it glittered like the Portola. Guards let me in, informed me that “Dr. Scott was a little late and would I like food or drink?” I took some water and was escorted to the living room. During the 30 minute wait I studied the architecture and decorating fancies of this particular wealth. Cold, I thought. No room for fun. Scott came and told me how his Korean field doctor experience – quite like MASH, according to him – had “made him a teacher.” He loved having interns follow him around, picking up pearls. I liked the guy, he looked tired. The memories seemed to give him more spirit than his today’s work. Scott liked the idea of an educator’s roundtable: I wasn’t there to make him like it, I just wanted to avoid his disapproval.

Universal approval and acceptance were once my leading motivators, now it is to escape professional isolation and loneliness. My family can only endow me with so much nurture and stimulation: surely, a foundation from which to jump, but it is I who must find the staircase, and climb it. George hopes for something else these days – immortality. His push to self-publicize reminds me of his atheism, and an authentic urge to make sense of his life, and cloak it in purpose. If he did believe in a god figure, would the determination to make a permanent mark on Earth still subsist?

I recall an AERF meeting at Windstar (early fall of ‘89?) where I pledged $400,000 per year for 5 years to bring things into order. Tom Overton wanted to bank the money for endowment. I, and we finally agreed on this, wanted to put the money into physical assets, educational facilities that had opportunity for income. My financial analysis of the school’s operating budget indicated a pretty dismal future. Either rich folks brought their kids in and made big donations or else the school could, and should, go broke. No way to run a railroad I thought; depending on whatever rich folk believed in what we were doing. The thing has to stand by itself, and it didn’t. It stood upon a few rich folks. Not even fair to those whose kids rode on the coat tails of these few privileged.

That fall we had the first meeting, in the Pond Cabin. Tom Farrell, Jim Bader, Don Reed, Bart Pepitone from Country Day, Bruce Thomas, and myself. I don’t think Kathy was there, and perhaps this first meeting was the one where Farrell brought his new Middle School Principal, the militarist. This meeting, besides finding commonalties, probably led to the idea that educational resources throughout the valley were in short supply and we should look towards sharing.

We decided to move the meetings to one campus after another. I don’t recall the order. We visited the Aspen High School and CRMS [Colorado Rocky Mountain School], but not Country Day and not Glenwood. Meetings were monthly “with exceptions due to scheduling.” At one point Farrell said “this is the first time in 20 years that I have talked about ‘education’.” Bruce took some notes, wrote up some interesting little papers, looked like a leprechaun, and kept the pot stirred.

Kathy and Bruce had moved from Chicago into what is now Jesse’s house, the homestead house of the ranch. Jesse and his 4 kids were crammed into the cabin. Early in the fall of her arrival Kathy first demanded a repainting of the big house and then traded spaces with the Steindlers. The little ones were plagued with bug bites; whether or not it was the housing or the crowded situation doesn’t matter. What matters is that it was Kathy’s initiative.

This was Ed Bastian’s second year as Executive Director of the AERF. During the first year he had done brochure work and implemented the director search that led to Kathy Irwin. My own role was a lot “let Ed do it” and let’s change the administration and spend some money on the physical plant. Sod, pond, trees, even a plan developed by Julia Marshall and Glenn Rappaport. These things did indeed happen, the campus began to look like more than a log building in an alfalfa field.  It was becoming a log building in a setting.

When I confront George about his own financial circumstances, he is loath to offer any substantive information. “Like sex, money is one of those things I’m uncomfortable talking about.” I wanted to know how much he inherited, how much he still has, and how much he personally takes as income. I wanted to know because I thought it would illustrate his magnanimity, and sensibility. There are illustrations that may do a fine enough job, however: like, he buys one pair of shoes each year, wears them every single day until they eventually fall apart; he gets two new shirts each year: on his birthday and Christmas. His major costs include indulgences on equipment for his photography, and maintaining his property which, at its current rate, will run him dry by the year 2010.

I guess the year before this we decided to have a 20th anniversary meeting of “old timers.” We met in the new ECC [Early Childhood Center], it must be 1990, here I cannot remember the time of year, early summer, I think, not winter for certain. Through Laura Donnelly I had called Floyd Mann and he had agreed to look at our board as a psychological entity subject to (his) analysis and therapy.

Wanda Gray came, which was really sweet: she should come again. Her experience here, and with the Philadelphia Advancement School were seminal in those first years, 1970-1972. Wanda and Farnum Gray: Wanda came as the chief educator, Farnum came as her writer-husband and during the next year became the administrator, replacing volunteer Bruce Thomas who returned to Illinois to do work on the penal system there. Bruce had spent the summer of 1970 as some kind of intern with the Aspen Institute; as fall came, and his destiny was to return to Illinois and its penal system, suddenly this school appeared and asked him to administer it. He said yes and ended up living, for that year, in Trudi Peet’s house on my ranch. I was, at that point, towards the end of my career as a Professor of Physics at Michigan State University, close to the end of my first marriage, close to the end of thinking public education had much relevance, and close to the beginning of thinking that kids had important things to say about what was going on in their lives. My Brother Michael had appeared as a teacher candidate; having had extensive experience at the reasonably well-known Maumee Valley Country Day School, he was a good hire. Michael Burns knew Simon and Garfunkel; Ed Bastian showed up with video equipment and a penchant for music. John Katzenburger, I don’t know his story, nor do I know Tom Crum’s story, nor Marilyn Crouch. Volunteers were Sally Mencimer and Sandy Thompson. I heard the story of the day Sandy pounded on the door of some minuscule Physics Center office cum Community School classroom, demanding entrance for some good reason and being denied entrance for some equally good reason. That’s all I know about that story, but there’s a mystery in it that attracted me.

I talked to Wanda and Farnum; Hell, I was a parent, newcomer and sometime substitute teacher; also the landlord. Farnum talked about his recuperative powers, how long after coming he could he come again. Wanda told me things like why teachers are teachers in spite of the handicaps; “It’s because of the relationships,” she said. Brie and Holly Gray didn’t return one day from a field trip to the Hanging Lake. Wanda kept chatting me up until a phone call came in from the Catholic Church in Glenwood saying they had two six year olds in their basement.

My God what we did to raise money in those days! Wayne Faulkner, father of three kids in the school, calling the Bingo game in the rec room of the Chateau something or other condo, half filled, crying soisante neufe as he pulled out the number 69 ball. Some nights we made thirty five dollars. The summer of ‘72, my first year, I recall a pet show in Paepcke park, no entrants except our own people, no prizes beyond a student-made certificate, overhearing Tom Benton and Billy Noonan talking about my presence in the school; they hated me at that moment: I had put together an electric drill spin painting device that I was rather proud of and felt terribly hurt by their comments. Noonan shortly thereafter ran for county coroner on the Hunter Thompson ticket, lost, moved to San Francisco with Benton’s wife who divorced the guy. Betty, Tom, Brian, Michelle, Billy, so it is with the Community School.

“I was wondering if you invest in the stock market, and why or why not?” I emailed George not long ago. He wrote back, “Since I don’t have a job there’s no paycheck, the ranch costs money rather than making money, neither beer nor whiskey have reached the maturity to distribute surpluses, so yes, I make my money in the financial world, primarily the stock market.  On average it works fine, there are bumps in the road – like now – Good practice is to lose as little as possible in down markets, and do as good as the averages in up markets, keep cool and a steady hand.”

Candy Coe was the secretary, do-all, at the time. David, the artist in residence; he had been a male model in his earlier life. Oh, how he treasured the student’s work! And showed off to Candy. The Physics Center is a bad location for a school; every room is too small, although the outside space, the greens between the buildings, the edges beyond the campus, are quite perfect and suitable for education.

Candy called the kids “pups” and could substitute at any grade level. She had short blonde hair, and I, being newly single, was in love with her, and with Ashley’s mom Dana all at the same time.

(The conscious quest for beauty is a common motivation in both art and science. In my words: in the search for understanding, both scientists and artists hope and experiment with the idea that beauty is part of the answer.)

Of course Dana was living with Jimmy Goldman, former star of Wall Street, yet one night I passed out in front of the fireplace with my arm across her breast; discovered by my son Patrick. Ah, So. Later, when I was “going” with Meryn, mother of Arleigh who was in the school, who was living in Hunter’s guest house, we were propositioned by Jimmy and Dana about “doing a foursome with some cocaine” in their attic loft. Dana Jones was rich and beautiful, her hair long and blonde, she was Pittsburgh steel kind of money, Jones and Laughlin. So it was in 1972.

Damn this money, I say. For even the outlaw is silenced by its power. It is only money. We allow currency to value us by keeping its dissemination and direction secret. Sex is private because there is a holiness to it, even if you prefer to make it dirty, it is an outpouring of extreme emotion – love, hate – integral to our humanity. Where exists the sanctity of cash?

The Community School was democratic, every parent, every teacher, every kid, and every dog had a vote when it came down to that. There was a wonderful night, probably in May of ‘72, the foyer of the Physics Center filled with parents, kids and dogs, when Farnum said he quit, and Wanda said she quit too, and Benton, the President of the Board said “fuck it” and quit too. Oh My God this was the school of the children of my divorce, not possible that it could dissolve in this manner of even dogs voting! I remember the trumpet player, not his name, who wouldn’t give up. Somehow it was agreed to keep the school going to look for a new leader.

I was elected to the board, so was Candy; Howard Sherman ran a sporting goods shop and was President, my first job was as secretary of the board. Next thing I knew the school was over and I couldn’t stand that, too many of my own kids to take care of. I volunteered to act as interim director for one year; they could decide slowly if they wanted to disband or else find a real director. It was a swell time, and another story altogether.

It was 1972, I was one year old and George was forty. Even the pace of his recollection decades later jumps off the page – it was surely an exhilarating time, full of promise. I am two and a half years from forty…

So, 18 years later we had this 20th anniversary retreat and the kids came back for a reunion. The adult part of the retreat was to use the occasion of the 20th anniversary to pursue the thought, “looking backwards, with the best clarity that we can muster, will surely help us to look forward.” In the midst of World War II, Winston Churchill was rebuked for his preoccupation with British history. His response was that “the longer we look back, the further we can look forward.” What came up from the retreat was the importance of the school to those who had participated in any depth. Floyd Mann at one point, searching for words to describe our corporate culture, said, “It’s a tar baby culture.” If you get your fingers into it, you will never get rid of it.

The kids were wonderful too. Rett had written those we could reach and asked them to send snippets or whatevers from their school experience so that the alumni could put on a play during the reunion. They would do it the way we do plays: Rett would lead, but the material would flow from the kids. Kids? The oldest were close to 35! There was little time for rehearsals, a couple of hours, and the play was put on in a club downtown. It was grand; the line that kept coming back, the experience that they were trying to tell us was, “You took me seriously.” And I think that is what it is: we took them seriously; it’s not that we do things right or wrong, it’s that we take them seriously.

A sense came of the retreat, and I remember Polly Whitcomb’s clarity and passion: there was indeed something special about the Community School; something enduring and precious. Taking people seriously, if it’s real, is caring; and for caring to work, it must be an active exchange between parties, and the exchange is legitimate only with emotional honesty. “You show me yours hon, and I’ll show you mine,” as sung by Willie Nelson. The impact on our lives of having lived this, taking, and being taken, seriously, was visible. How could a school that so marked our lives not be remarkable?

I became a pilgrim, looking to find destination for the travel. This “tar baby” must live on, but the economics were against it. The demographics of the school were moving downvalley and there were fewer and fewer wealthy Aspen parents willing to give big chunks. Fund-raisers took more and more effort, burning out the few parents left willing to put on big events, and were producing less and less. With Ed I developed the Fuller Brush approach. We would develop more products than just a graduating class of dozen or so. There would be Centers around the mesa that would produce other educational products, such as research on the learning of science, research on the use of computers in education, and always, ever since the TTT days of the School’s beginning, the idea of training teachers. Students from the school would work, apprentice-like, in these Centers.

The early vision was of a reforested mesa, still flood irrigated, with clearings here and there. Each Center was in a clearing, and there were paths from one Center to another. In my mind’s eye the Centers looked like the cottage that was so much trouble for Hansel and Gretel. The forest would be dense, one would not see from one clearing to the next, the paths would not be straight.

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