Dear Friends- I have been looking at photographs of our Community Clean Up a few weeks ago, and have been struck by how much meaning is hidden behind the images. There are several photos of children and their adults weeding our brick pathway that had become gridded with deep green moss and grass. What isn’t expressed in the photos is the gratitude one father expressed at being able to spend time engaged and alone with his son in this project. It became a sort of meditation fo

Dear Friends- My kids and I were goofing around together the other night and I fell into a role I love to play with them, that of “Incompetent Dad” in which I pretend to be completely clueless as they correct me about the names of animals, or the amount that two numbers add up to, or how to spell a word they know. At one point, Beatrice laughed, looked at me lovingly, and said “Daddy you are such an incompoop!!“ I cackled with glee, said I absolutely loved the sound of that w

Dear Friends- “What if I have a Beta fish?” Our young student had patiently waited with her hand raised to ask this very important question. She and her friends were circled around Firefighter Justin of our local Hughsonville “Fighting 45” Fire Department, who had come to the school to talk about fire safety. Justin was getting a crash course in how a group of 3-7 year olds can turn a simple line of conversation into a fireworks display of semi-tangentially related observatio

Dear Friends- I was at a dinner the other night with a group of families. The children swung around us at the table, interrupting at times, eagerly listening in on snippets of conversation at other moments. They formed a pack of nine that would appear suddenly in the dining room, and then disappear outdoors or downstairs depending on their engagement in the activity they had created together. Despite the fact that the kids spanned an age range of nearly ten years, they seemed

Dear Friends- I grew up in Vermont, wrapped in nature, with a childhood of stream-hopping, puddle-jumping, tree-climbing, and digging deep into mud and dirt. Even though I loved burying myself in a book or sitting next to my record player with giant headphones on, there was no denying the power and draw of the grassy fields, dense woods, mucky ponds, and crisp streams that were the background of life in the Green Mountains. E.O. Wilson has described this attraction to nature