This is Chuck, an avuncular and thoughtful anarchist musician who likes to pad around campus in his imposing bare feet cheerfully greeting his comrades and brandishing huge books about topics such as “everything.” When he’s not here he’s usually off somewhere on his bike; he doesn’t bat a lash at biking from his crashpad in Cottekill to meet someone at a diner in New Paltz. He’s even attempted to bike from Cottekill to school, on train tracks (he ended up walking I think). Occasionally he might instead be off practicing archery, performing puppetry, or diving for sea urchins. Chuck, aka Fella, is indeed a unique character. He’s that towering giant everyone loves to take down, not because they want to hurt him, but because they know they can’t. He’s that super curious dude who likes to talk to anyone and everyone (and who you can never quite tell if he’s homeless). He’s that bright shining coin who makes you feel richer when he walks into the room, or maybe the jolly Newfoundland who barges in and bustles around pointlessly, taking up lots of space. Like I said, we like to give him a hard time – because we like him so much.
This is Chuck’s first year here. He came from Sudbury Valley, in MA, where he spent just a year before the pandemic, but he’s certainly cut from the Sudbury cloth. He says that as soon as he heard about Sudbury, when he was a freshman, he “got excited.” He remembers teaching himself the violin early on in his time there. One day, he slipped into the music room, and said to himself, “Charlie, today you’re going to learn how to play the violin.” He tried and tried “to make it sound good.” He says he felt free “to approach it like a puzzle,” and to work at it for however long he wanted. When he finally stood up, after four hours, he collapsed on the floor because his legs and feet had fallen asleep.
Since arriving at our Sudbury campus, Chuck has made a splash. He’s become a central member of our Music Coop, taught a semester-long class on Anarchy and Youth Liberation, caused the School Store to create a more restrictive Free Lunch Policy (Fella can eat), begun clerking our Judicial Committee, joined the long-standing philosophy class, and added an intellectual zeal to our student body we’ve maybe never had before. He says that what moves him the most is, “making music with other people. I feel a kind of joyful madness whenever I’m constructing something with others.” He adds that Sudbury, “gives me community, which is everything. As a result of being a part of this, I want to structure my life around community…What makes your school unique is the people. And I really like the people. I like how you don’t take yourselves too seriously. I very much appreciate how actually equal the staff are amongst themselves and with the students. That and the fact that you are ethical makes a really big difference in the school and community you create” Thanks, Chuck, we appreciate you too, so much. Thank you for bringing it every day, and being so open, engaged, and curious.