Stone Soup (Sept 07)

Many of you might remember the story, Stone Soup. It is etched in my memory as a story about communities coming together to make something grander than any one person could have done himself or herself by making incremental improvements to something that seemed, well, impossible to make into anything.

As I remember it, two travelers walked into a village looking for food (in my version of the story, the travelers were soldiers). The inhabitants of the village were both fearful of the travelers and had very little food to share; it had been a long war and they were hoarding what they had left. So, when the villagers said that they had no food, the travelers set about to make “stone soup.” They put some stones in water and put the water on to boil; some time later one of the travelers said that the soup was good but needed an onion; one villager said that maybe he could find an onion…a while later, a carrot was called for, and a carrot was found. Finally, after many villagers had contributed, the soup was ready and enjoyed by all (presumably without the stones).

That has been the story here at The Girls’ School this summer. It started with the removal of the bamboo (there was not, by the way, any plan for how this would actually happen or what we would do once we got rid of it). I unpacked to the sounds of Luke Adam’s chain saw, which I mistook for a weird Austin custom of running chainsaws on the Fourth of July. Shortly thereafter, John Corry and his team of Treekeepers showed up to remove a few tree limbs in the rain (rain became the theme for the summer), and the rest is history.

Excellent schools come from the confluence of people, place and program, and I am committed to making The Girls’ School a truly attractive and welcoming place. I have been joined in this endeavor by my dedicated facilities team: Luke Adams, Gary Poole, Don Vail, Rafael Sandrea, Keith Snodgrass and Cathleen Sutherland (invitation onto the facilities team required proof of blisters). Without their seasonings in the soup, the transformation you have seen this summer would not have been possible. It was, after all, done on a shoestring budget and just a few stones!

Contractors contributed to the transformation, many of whom gave us especially good prices or worked well beyond their previously agreed upon prices. Please consider making use of their services for your own landscaping/home improvement projects.

• Treekeepers, tree trimming, John Corry (JCorry@Prodigy.net, 573-6770)
• JAE Construction, bobcat work, general construction, Manuel Escobar (mejr@austin.rr.com, 447-2413)
• A&B Air Conditioning, Bill Huston (thehughstons@yahoo.com, 292-1334)
• Rene Hernandez Landscaping, courtyard project (585-5015)
• Johnny Rooter Pluming, faucet repairs and upgrades (452-6646)
• Daniels Stone, stone and sod (288-8488)