Some of you have been reading messages from me for decades, and other readers (Hi! Welcome to the real school of magic.) may just be getting a first inkling about the Folk School.
It has been an honor and a challenge to lead this merry band for the past 25 years. When I started, it seemed to me that the world really needed it, but I could never have imagined in 1992 how essential and important the Folk School would become. Even more, we are in need of a place that comforts, energizes and unites us, a support system that lifts us up, and time well spent in finding the best we have in us.
About place. We have to continue to protect the air and water from greed and ignorance, and our relationship to the land is best thought of as stewardship of a sacred trust.
About time. If you’re trying to get back to a simpler time, forget it. Times are complex. Don’t come here to find the past, unless it is your own. If we are nostalgia, we’re toast. Our looking back is to learn lessons for the here and now, and gird ourselves for the future.
When Olive Dame Campbell retired after 25 years as Director, she promised to come back to walk the paths and see the rhododendrons in bloom. Sounds like a plan. I see her along the trails and in the woods—sometimes she’s a little kid, sometimes an old guy, but always with a smile, as if living out the watchwords that have always kept us going:
Sing behind the plow. Love life. Hate no one.
Jan Davidson,
Director
