Front Porches

            Like a lot of you, I’m sure, my wife and I did some traveling over the break.  While we often stay in town, we spent a long weekend at Rosemary Beach—a community like many along 30A where a lot of our families vacation.  Claire, our three-year-old, naturally loves the beach and would rather be there than just about any other place in the world.  One of the draws of Rosemary or Seaside for us is that it reminds us of our first home in Franklin—Westhaven.  As our travels have confirmed, Westhaven is certainly not unique.  It follows a growing trend of community planning that some architectural critics have dubbed “New Urbanism” or “Neo-Traditional Communities.”  Those are big words to describe a simple concept—the return to front porch communities. 

A lot of folks would trace the founding of that movement to Seaside, though there are many examples across the South today--Water Color, Alys Beach, Celebration, Daniel’s Island, and I’On—to name a few. In the 1980’s a husband and wife architectural team designed Seaside with the conscious aim of reproducing small towns all across America, with squares and parks, back alleys so that houses were not separated by long drives, and, especially, front porches.  These features are what drew Dana and me to Westhaven and why we love Seaside and Rosemary. Virtually every house in these communities focuses on porches and patios.  Of course, architects created these designs for environmental reasons—the sea breezes and ceiling fans cut down on energy bills.  Soon they learned, though, that they had created or recreated the front porch effect.  By getting more people out into the streets and onto their porches, they believed they could create and sustain a sense of community. . . that casual interactions would nurture stronger bonds.  What the architects reacted against were the ranch houses and communities that sprung up in America after World War II.   During that time, as a recent segment on National Public Radio put it, “The front porch took a back seat to the back yard.” 

            What does any of this have to do with BGA?  We need routinely to ask ourselves: How do we work to create the kind of community that we want to have?  As I have said before, of all the schools I have been associated with, I think BGA stands the best chance of being a front porch school.”  For BGA to become what it could be, a truly warm community where everyone feels welcomed, we must think carefully about putting structures in place to encourage the kind of community we want to be.  We must work to create the expectations and design the culture we want.  The summers in the South last a lot longer than they do in New Hampshire, where I grew up—even into October.  I hope that we can still find a little time for the front porch and for discussions of the community we want to create.

Coming Home

The weekend before BGA’s homecoming festivities, we played host to a community event—the Wounded Warriors Soldier Ride.  Many of you have probably heard or read about this bicycle ride that raises money for the Wounded Warrior project and gives veterans and their friends and family the opportunity to ride through beautiful parts of Williamson County.  The nature of their war injuries requires many of these veterans to use modified bikes.  Throughout the ride, the veterans are greeted with demonstrations of patriotism and support.  The event itself was touching—in part because there have been so many BGA alumni over the years who have served in our armed forces, including Trey Ponder '87, who lost his life in Afghanistan.  The patriotism was made more poignant by the tenth anniversary of 9/11.  As Dana, Claire, my in-laws and I witnessed this moving scene of the race’s start, I reflected on some of the war books that I have read and taught over the years: Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, and Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls.  Homer also comes to mind. . . but not The Iliad, the obvious epic poem about war.  Rather, the book I prefer about war is The Odyssey, and I have been thinking about the poem during the Soldier Ride and the past week.

        
       The theme of the challenges of the return of brave warriors to a culture that is ill-prepared to understand their experiences is a humbling one for any of us who have not served in the military.  I was fascinated to hear recently that a clinical psychiatrist and a winner of a MacArthur genius grant, Dr. Jonathan Shay, has written on his use of The Odyssey as a point of conversation and therapy for returning veterans. As one interview noted:

"One of the things they (veterans) appreciate," Shay says, "is the sense that they're part of a long historical context — that they are not personally deficient for having become injured in war."

Shay doesn't like the clinical term "post traumatic stress disorder." He thinks there's a stigma to it. So he speaks instead of "psychological injury" — to make it equal to any physical injury caused by a bullet or a bomb.

"There is a cultural river that says, 'Oh, war will only make you better, if you got the right stuff.' Well, that may be true of some people, but it's certainly not true of many who are badly hurt by it," says Shay.

       In the character of Odysseus, a family man who faced a post-war journey of twenty years back to his home in Ithaca, Shay sees an analogy to many veterans.  Odysseus, admittedly, suffers not only from bad luck and the vengeance of the gods but also from his own failures of character.  Yet, the tale of such an arduous homecoming and the misunderstanding of civilians resonates with veterans, Shay says.  In fact, Shay has written two books dealing with connections to these Greek epics, Achilles in Vietnam and Odysseus in America.

       As we hosted the ride we were, of course, simultaneously preparing the campus for a very different type of homecoming—the return of our alumni this past weekend.  Dana and I hosted a dinner for a large group of alumni who are part of the Blue and Gold society—alumni who graduated from BGA more than fifty years ago, when it was an all male boarding and day school.  Two of the alumni at my table graduated in 1945 and were in basic training when World War II ended.  In hearing the stories of those men--twin brothers--about their experiences, I was reminded about the other facet of military experience, the close bonds that Shakespeare recognized in the famous “band of brothers” speech.  These alumni went through strong shaping experiences during their time at BGA, and it was touching to hear them recount their memories.  I love the humor and candor with which they and other alumni described these experiences.  The tone of nostalgia was often wistful and sometimes accompanied by tears.

       To these alumni, and especially to the veterans who visited our campus for the ride, I wish support and welcome, understanding and appreciation.  Unlike Odysseus, I hope that they encounter smooth seas and safe harbor in their coming home.  I hope they find a sympathetic audience that listens and tries to understand their tales.  We are proud of both groups and feel privileged in our contact with them.