I’ve been thinking more directly about the connections between this project and a card that my adviser wrote to me last year. He said that I had a deep caring that was tied to the people and things of this world–I’m probably paraphrasing badly, but that was the gist. At the time, I thought that I’m happy that this is the way I presented myself to him, but I didn’t feel that way about myself. But after thinking a little more about it (for like a year), I think he may be right. I’ve been thinking about where this caring for the people and things of this world comes from, and I think it is tied to being connected. Being connected is just another way to talk about love. In this case, the love connects a person to a place. But how to teach this connection to place? It doesn’t seem possible.

But then I was looking at the Tufts Nutrition Program magazine and there was a piece about gardens in public schools. My friend Gwen is getting her teaching degree in Scotland right now, and she wants to come backand plant a garden in our elementary school eventually. Having a garden in a school fosters awareness of where your food is coming from (potentially mitigating the environmental costs of transporting food all over the world), encourages a sense of community within the school, and also instills this connection to place that I think is so important.