Caught in the Net: Notes from the Director’s Chair
By Vonda K. Givens, Executive Director
“The community spirit puts in ones soul the doing of what is right because fairness, reason and justice say it should be so.”
“A Visit to Craftsman Farms,” by Raymond Riordan.
The Craftsman, Nov. 1912.
I’ve been thinking about community lately, particularly the power of community, and what can be achieved when a community exerts a unified, focused effort.
It’s a little on the nose, but I can easily point to an important example of community effort. It happens to be all around me: The 1989 rescue of Craftsman Farms from private development, its ongoing restoration, and the 36-year effort to share it as a museum with people around the world. Now that is an impressive community achievement!
Being part of a community is embedded in my job. I often need to steer the team, while playing on the team. I’ll be the first to admit that working within a community can be a challenge. I grew up in a rural, small town, and that experience showed me community at its best and worst. Plus, it can be so much easier to work alone. It’s tempting to think, if I just did this myself, it would get it done so much faster. Sometimes that thinking is right, but task completion is often a fraction of of the job. Completing a task is checking a box. Community takes time. Working in cooperation, forming meaningful connections, creating a culture, building consensus: all of these take time, often years, but it is time is well spent. Established communities can change the world.
I have certainly experienced the power of established communities. Besides looking around my workplace, I can also look at my puppy Scout (that’s her below). Her short life epitomizes what a unified community can achieve.
My husband and I adopted Scout last March when she was 10 weeks old. She is our 4th dog. Years ago, we adopted 2-year-old Bingo, a lovable mixed-breed goofball. After Bingo, we welcomed sweet Otto, a lab mix and survivor of a puppy mill, and a couple of years later, Minnie Pearl, a hilarious 7-pound dynamo, who was found as a stray in Newark, NJ.
Scout was fostered by the family of illustrator Anna Szalc, who collaborated with me on Adventures at Craftsman Farms with Teddy: A Craftsman Puppy. As newborns, Scout and her five siblings were found in a laundry basket outside the animal league in Anna’s town (that’s a photo of newborn Scout below).
Scout is by far the “doggiest” of all the dogs we’ve welcomed into our home. She plays with abandon. Bingo, Otto, and Minnie have all been loving and fun, but not especially playful. By contrast, Scout adores her toys, the noisier the better, and she loves to fetch, eagerly tumbling after the ball in our backyard. And when visitors arrive at our home, she greets them with her whole body, happily barreling into them and offering up a thousand licks (yep, not ideal! We’ll be working on that!).
The other day I was thinking about how playful Scout is compared to our other dogs, and it dawned on me that she is the only one who came into our lives without significant prior trauma. She hasn’t known her mother, which is sad and complicates her development, but except for that brief laundry-basket abandonment, she has only known heartfelt human care, love, and attention. Happily, Scout, from the beginning of her short life, was caught in the “net” of community. She went from the shelter, where a volunteer bottle-fed her, into a foster home, and then to her forever home. After she was found, a community of care formed around her, and she is thriving from that community’s work.
I have also been the lucky beneficiary of community effort. In my job, before my first day seventeen years ago, the museum’s community was firmly in place to support, guide, and work alongside me. And now that I am transitioning away from this role, with a planned departure in the fall (click here to read Barbara Weiskittel’s announcement), I’ve been reflecting on my years at the museum. Similar to Scout, I feel that, upon arrival, I was happily caught in the net of a thriving, focused community. At that time, I was just beginning to make my way in a museum career. The strength of this community was inspiring, and I confess, overwhelming at times, but more than anything, it has been uplifting and reassuring.
When I became Education Director in 2008, many of the museum’s supporters, like Nancy Willans and Ray Stubblebine (who took the picture above soon after Craftsman Farms was purchased by the Twp of Parsippany-Troy Hills), had been part of efforts to save Craftsman Farms, and nearly twenty years later, this group remained as committed as ever. I have always known my job exists because of the determination of those who volunteered their time, energy, skills, and resources to provide a foundation for the museum’s current strength.
When I became Acting Executive Director in 2013, the Trustees consistently demonstrated their faith in me, which built my confidence and my ultimate pursuit of the full job. The Board was then, and continues to be, passionate and resolute in their efforts, guided by Board President Barbara Weiskittel, who leads with tireless enthusiasm, integrity, and immense generosity of time and spirit. And you may not know that our leadership includes three Emeritus Trustees, David Lowden, Barbara Fuldner, and Cindy McGinn, who together have contributed decades of service to this organization.
On top of all of this, the museum has a team of volunteers and numerous supporters who have been Members for many years. And from the beginning, especially after attending the National Arts and Crafts Conference during my third week on the job, I have felt the support of the wider Arts and Crafts community, all around the United States and abroad. Often from afar, this community of volunteers, members, collectors, and enthusiasts has cheered our growth, sent encouragement during our challenges, showed caring attention to our daily work, and shared our determination to protect Craftsman Farms far into the future. This community trusts that in saving this important property, Craftsman Farms will, as Gustav Stickley envisioned, endure to inspire people and call to them, as we have all been called. It is an abundant heritage that we pass along.
Although Scout’s situation was life or death and mine is certainly not, the stakes have often felt high. But through every challenge—from a pandemic to a damaging tropical storm, and all manner of conflicts, crises, and endless construction projects—I have perpetually felt heard, supported, helped, trusted, and cheered by the museum’s community.
Now as I am preparing to leave, I am writing to ask you to hear me once more.
With this column, I am starting the Executive Director’s Challenge, a campaign to raise funds for the museum’s future. I want to leave the museum and the next director in the best position possible. I want the next director to know, from the beginning, the power of this community and to feel its welcome.
Over the next few weeks, I am hoping to inspire 100 people to give $100 in support of the museum. I have put in the first $100, and I invite 99 (or more!) of you to join me.
In case you feel limited by this $100 amount, I want to assure you. Giving more is just fine! You can give $100 one hundred times, if you’d like! I’m also hoping to inspire people who haven’t made a donation in a while or only in lower amounts. Would you consider scaling up, from $25 or $50, to help reach this goal?
An exciting future lies ahead for the Stickley Museum at Craftsman Farms. I’m sure of it. This community is strong. I might be leaving my position, but my heart will remain with Craftsman Farms and with the community who cares for it.
When I think about the rescue and preservation of Craftsman Farms and the rescue and raising of my puppy Scout, I see the triumph of community at work. It is heartwarming and heart lifting. Whether we met seventeen years ago when I first arrived, or we met last week on a tour, thank you for being a part of the museum’s community. I have been honored to be caught in this net.
P.S. Before I go, I still have many months and a programs on the horizon. I hope you’ll travel with me on two upcoming Farms Afield trips to Sagamore Resort and Bryn Athyn, PA. We have online member programs, including a virtual trip to the Hollyhock House, coming up, a new fall class with Jonathan Clancy, and two big fundraising events on Saturday, October 4. Please watch for more news to come on all of it!