From the Director: One From the Way Back File

After all these years, USN still has a volunteer-driven culture to accomplish even great tasks. We could use your help this week with book donations and playground repairs.
by Vince Durnan, director
 
Seeing "Got Books" signs at morning hook up and Playground Work Day reminders taped to every available wall space has me thinking. The fact is that we come very directly from a can do, homespun, barn-raising culture of getting things done at USN. And just to pull the veil back a little, at the risk of verging into geezerhood, my growing worry is that we may be getting too busy to keep honoring that worthy pattern.
 
It may have escaped your knowledge when climbing aboard the good ship USN that our beloved playground was entirely built by highly coordinated but still volunteer labor. Scores and scores of family members, spanning generations, joined in common purpose to build that iconic structure 28 years ago. Yes, that’s right—a kindergartener who rode down that slide when the ribbon was cut would likely be a college grad today.
 
Following that example a decade later—and this part I even got to see (and do) up close—we built the River Campus boardwalks, spanning the wetlands there, over a string of autumn weekends, power tools in hand, water up to our hips. And my recollection is that it seemed an entirely reasonable, natural thing to do. Maybe not the wisest choice, given the thriving snapping turtle population we've since seen established on that site but excitement with the whole facility, only a few years after its purchase, carried the day.
 
The intent here is not to burden you with "walking uphill both ways in the snow" stories, though clearly, that's the risk, instead to invoke a wider message. We're living in the heyday of maker spaces, lifestyle hacks, and hipster tinkering, and maybe we've forgotten that USN has been rocking that playlist for quite a while, and maybe in a more organic, practical way. You could go back to the Peabody Cinema Club’s late 1920s motion pictures, some of the first ever made in Nashville, and see Dewey-influenced teachers handing saws and mallets to small children in short pants and pinafores. These roots run deep.
 
And so it has gone through the years. Look at the theatre and prom sets made by Chris Tibbott’s students in the 1940s—precursors to the glorious work of Technical Theatre Director Jim Manning in our current day musicals in the same hardworking Auditorium. There’s something inherently educational in doing for yourself, but there’s a stronger headwind to be faced.
 
Weekend mornings are now far more likely to be occupied by youth sports leagues and language classes and all manner of "enrichments" that can leave families feeling like it would be malpractice not to schedule up. And then, of course, there is the message to unplug and kick back and restore, leading in the other direction. Aren’t we all simply too occupied and needing self-care time? Lastly, dare I type it, is also the ever more visible tendency to see life as a transactional event, with less social connective tissue. Why volunteer when you’ve already paid for whatever it is to be done already? You know why.
 
One endearing quality of USN is the degree to which those connections persist—look around month by month at the scores of USNA volunteers—like the ones who put in the Little Free Library just this week. Let’s never take that for granted, and if you’ve read this far, especially if you’re not habituated to doing so, how about coming out to Playground Work Day between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. Saturday, April 27 to carry the torch? In full disclosure, I doubt there will be torches of any kind, but there will be the spirit of the playground, of the good people who cared enough to make it so perfect, available in abundance. Think just for a minute of the message that being there would convey to your children. Bring tools if you got ‘em.
 
Sign on for an hour or two, in gratitude for all the recesses of yesterday, or in hope for all the recesses ahead. And know that good will come from your efforts.
 
 
I actually like raking the pea gravel—before it travels home in our first graders’ shoes,
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University School of Nashville models the best educational practices. In an environment that represents the cultural and ethnic composition of Metropolitan Nashville, USN fosters each student’s intellectual, artistic, and athletic potential, valuing and inspiring integrity, creative expression, a love of learning, and the pursuit of excellence.