By Lea L.

Ever since I was little, grocery shopping has been one of my favorite activities. Once a week, for just a few hours my dad and I would search the shelves at Boston’s finest supermarkets to find the best deals on pasta and chips, the ripest fruits and vegetables, the easiest junk food to hide from my mom, and of course the best flavors of ice cream. Grocery shopping didn’t just mean spending quality time with my dad, it also meant that I had the power to decide what my family ate that week. Naturally, I only picked out the most nutritious food Stop n’ Shop had to offer including Kraft Mac n’ Cheese, Gushers, Trix Yogurt, Pillsbury Cookie Dough, Sunbelt Granola Bars, Captain Crunch, and a personal favorite Hostess Ring-Dings.

Now as I sat on the floor of the Presentation Room watching Food Inc. I realized where my delicious and somewhat nutritious food was really coming from. Images of filthy chicken coops, cruel slaughterhouses, and giant fields of genetically modified seeds flashed Continue reading →

Justin Wedes – Teacher – The Island School

To see the earth as it truly is, small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves a riders on the earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold. -Archibald MacLeish, ‘The Image of Victory,’

What a unique vantage point we have on the world! Plop a red pin down at random on any old place in the (known) universe, and where are you? By modern estimates, you are likely to find yourself in the cold, dark hinterlands between radiant stars and their companion planets. The thought of finding a familiar substance like water- wet as it slides through our fingertips- in a place like that is absurd, right? To borrow from Gertrude Stein: there is no there there.

Or is there? Astronomers talk excitedly now about water emission spectra, the tell-tale signs of water vapor or ice deep in Continue reading →

“A Last Saturday Together”

October 16^th, 2010

By Caciques Hammy Wallace and Pheobe Fitz

Today was the day we’d all been waiting for: PSATs. We got our blood flowing and our bodies moving with a long morning exercise. As usual, run track went their separate ways to prepare for our last morning exercise all together for three weeks. Swimming against the current in Current Cut was hard work, which was later met with more “buddy runs” as we raced back to campus for our final preparations for PSATs. After breakfast with calculators and plenty of number 2 pencils in hand, we all sat down for our 2-hour assessment. Although they weren’t the real PSATs, they were even better because not only did we get our real scores, we got to go back over all of the questions we missed to focus on our areas of improvement. During the generous amount of exploration time we were given, many people used it as their last Querencia, time spent alone, to reflect on our completed 5-week academic stretch Continue reading →

Moesha Leary – Student – Deep Creek Middle School

I think water is a powerful substance.  It can relax a mind, help a thirst, and it helps things grow.  Living in an archipelago makes it even more important to me because it’s what surrounds me.  I can never escape it.  It makes me want to know what is in it and how I can protect it.  I am very afraid to lose it because if it is lost, my family may not make any money.  Both of my parents work for jobs that must include it.  If I lose the pure drinking water I will die and so will everyone else around me.  It makes me want to save it and find out ways to keep it forever.