Issue Nine
Everyday Artisans by Vincent McConeghy
Nearly a decade ago, I began the commercial enterprise of baking bread.
Nearly a decade ago, I began the commercial enterprise of baking bread. Response to our bakery’s products was overwhelmingly positive except that in describing our endeavor (somewhat unique to the market at the time) it was suggested that we label our breads as Artisan. I can remember my visceral reaction to this idea, which was much the same for me as listening to a Beatles song for the first time–I didn’t like it, at all.
I thought back to the ending of Jay McInerney’s late 80’s novel Bright Lights, Big City. McInerney’s coked-out protagonist stumbles upon a bread bakery in the night and finds redemption in the purity of a freshly baked loaf. Contrived as the ending seemed to me when I read it, the unsavoriness of McInerney’s device–and the whole food-as-metaphor genre–returned to me when confronted by the suggestion that our breads were Artisan.
A funny thing happened in the pursuit of profit from all that wild yeast. I came to recognize people for whom I believed the term Artisan truly applied. These were people singularly focused on their craft, possessing an extraordinary knowledge base of some specialized area, yet reticent in marketing their skills in the hyperbolic protocol of the modern age. If biology is Fate, then what place is there for the Artisan whose motivation strays far from the confines of self-preservation?
I’ve yet to feel comfortable with a precise definition of Artisan but I know one when I see one.
Mary and Dan Szeglowski/Educators
Early on a Friday June evening, the children and parents of Discovery Schoolhouse have assembled on the school’s premise to participate in a much beloved tradition of gazing into the stars. This telescope party has been carefully orchestrated to coincide with an ongoing lesson plan of the cosmos that tonight will focus on Saturn and Jupiter. First, however, the forty-plus three and four year-olds of Discovery have erupted into a spontaneous game of tag while their parents sit on lounge chairs and chattily reconnoiter, waiting for dusk when the viewing of the universe can begin. Suddenly there is a report.
“Children,” the unmistakable voice of Mary Szeglowski commands. “One, Two….LISTEN.”
It would be significant enough to document that on cue the frenetic movement of children dissolves into stillness, but what’s even more impressive is that the adults uniformly cease their world-weary chatter and sit in rapt attention of Mary’s next announcement.
The extraordinary story of Discovery Schoolhouse began nearly three decades ago when the Szeglowskis came upon an abandoned schoolhouse set amongst a lush thicket of woods on a secluded country road in Lakeview, NY. The structure (or what remained of the structure) matched Dan’s restless vision of the type of school they would like to construct–somewhere children could interact with nature and through direct experience lessons in language, critical thinking, intuition and social development would flow naturally. The year was 1975. It wasn’t until 1978 that the Szeglowskis purchased the building, and still another five years of painstaking renovation before they could officially open their doors to their first class in 1983.
A complete volume of the hardships endured by the Szeglowskis during this period has the makings of great cinema–Little House on the Prairie meets Sixties Idealism meets Bootstrap Family Financing meets Scholarly Negative Nabobs meets Ultimate Triumph. The Szeglowskis speak of this time in their lives with the immediacy of immigrants who left the shores of conventional society and landed in a world of their own creation. It was not all idealism, either, for their first shrewd calculation was to make Discovery Schoolhouse their home as well as a place to transact their life’s work.
The reward for such a journey has been an unending stream of children through the red doors of the once abandoned and forgotten schoolhouse. In observing their methods, one quickly realizes that they have been so successful because they fulfill the most basic tenant of education at this inexhaustible stage of a child‘s development–security.
Mary imposes her formidable will through a series of meticulously crafted learning units, rooted in the twin disciplines of listening and following instructions. Dan stokes the creative imagination through participatory learning, often carried out in nature, which reinforces a child’s innate curiosity as to how things really work. The breadth and scope of curriculum that a child is exposed to at Discovery can often leave a parent with the unsettling prospect of wondering when, if ever, their child will experience as intense and socially rounded learning environment.
One may speculate that had Discovery Schoolhouse evolved near a major metropolitan area that certainly their story would be well chronicled. The Szeglowskis have given some thought to their legacy but have eschewed the most obvious trappings of success–publishing, consulting and politicking.
What ultimately renders their story so compelling is that everyday the Szeglowskis are there to greet the children. They are there should a child prick a finger upon a black raspberry bush during a nature hike, or when they stride across the homemade ice rink in Discovery’s backyard. They are there before a child is labeled gifted and talented, troubled or average. They are there to steady and hold them as they peer into a telescope while glimpsing a universe real and possible.
–photos by dellas