Recess! Media

“Olee, Olee, Ocean Free!” Remember that magic cry when you ran to touch home at the end of a tag, at the end of recess? Well, in a way, that’s what we’re doing today. We’re taking a recess from Recess! after eight years on the air and over 2000 programs. We won’t be gone forever, though. Recess! will be taking different forms on our website, which will still be: recess.ufl.edu. And online in the future, we’ll continue doing Recess-like programs that will provide reviews, commentaries, and information, as well as audio and video documentaries and multi-media exhibitions on subjects related to children’s culture. And we’ll also have room for longer interviews with authors, artists, and others at work, creatively and critically, in this vital field.

For the past eight years, we have brought you programs that have borrowed their vision, in part, from Gaston Bachelard who wrote that “Whatever we love we have learned to love in childhood.” We hope you’ve enjoyed the programs, and we thank you deeply for listening to them. We’re very grateful for your support and that of the University of Florida and its College of Journalism and Communications, with whom we produced these programs, and most especially to the program’s Executive Producer Henri Pensis and the Technical Director, Richard Drake. Recess! never would have made it to the studio without the finely tuned attentions of its Associate Producer, Eve Cech, and its Assistant Producer, Ramona Caponegro.

We also greatly appreciate the support of the University’s Office of Academic Affairs, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and the Office of Research and Graduate Programs. And many thanks go to the Friends of the Alachua County Library District for providing the funding for the national distribution of Recess! and to Dorothy and Terry Smiljanich who, from the beginning, have offered their always timely, always generous support.

To all of our colleagues and friends who added their remarkable energies to the production of these programs, we’re profoundly grateful: to Rita Smith and Barry Stewart Mann, Shelley Fraser Mickle and Susan Raab, Kevin Shortsleeve and Lola Haskins, Laurie Taylor and Lauren Brosnihan, Koren Stembridge and Rosie Russo. And to everyone else who contributed their voices and talents to this program, our most sincere thanks. What a team this has been, and what fun it’s been to have this recess together. Finally, thank you for listening and in doing so, for your helping to keep alive, for a few minutes a day, that spirit of chidhood that is so vital to our children and to our future.