Dec 29, 2010

Untitled - Isabel Hamilton

we stood looking for shooting stars
and i saw them and wished but you didn't have the patience and
black crows rolled off our tongues and flew to the moon
telling us of our prefect imperfections
and what lies to tell
when all we wanted was sex
but then it all changed and
i couldn't tolerate your balloon heart that floated over me
and laughed at my feet on the ground
so we made out mothers tell us the truth and they said happiness is fleeting
and we believed them with our whole hearts
so we ate the bullets for permanence
but then i threw mine back up because my stomach was weak
i was too weak to commit to anything
just yet
but my indecisiveness left us with nagging doubts that followed us like tails
and we were embarrassed so we pretended they weren't ours.

Dec 14, 2010

Local Foods Feast an VUHS

Students enjoy fruits of their neighbors: VUHS hosts annual Local Foods Feast


VERGENNES—Students at the Vergennes Union Middle and High School enjoyed healthy and local fare for lunch last Friday thanks to a joint effort by the Walden Project, an alternative high school program with a focus on the environment, and Café Services, which runs the high school cafeteria.


Marcy Langlais, student co-organizer of the feast, said she hopes people will become more connected to what they eat by appreciating “the food in your own backyard as opposed to food from another country.”

“I wanted to work on this project because it raises awareness towards local foods,” Langlais added.


The fifth-annual Local Foods Feast featured products from ten Addison County farms, including the student-run Walden Community Garden. For the first time this year, the feast was a joint effort between the Walden Project and the cafeteria, meaning that anyone who bought hot lunch at the school on Friday was eating local.


Evan Myers, an eighth grader, said he liked the turkey vegetable soup, which featured local squash and Misty Knolls turkey. He buys lunch most days, he said, but if lunch featured more local ingredients, “I would be more eager to eat it.” Another group of middle school lunchers echoed his opinion: “For some reason local food tastes a lot better.”


Marcy Langlais and fellow Walden student Sophie Daubner headed up the feast as part of a larger Farm to School project. They recently attended the School Nutrition Association of Vermont Conference, where they were inspired by an “Art in the Cafeteria” workshop to create the large paintings of vegetables that covered the walls during the feast. They are charter student members of the new VUHS School Nutrition Committee, led by ANWSU Nutrition Liaison Lynne Rapoport.


Langlais, an 11th-grader, has been working on sustainability issues for two years; her next project is to set up a composting exchange between the VUHS cafeteria and the Walden garden.


A new aspect of the Local Foods Feast this year was the performance of original music by students. Walden Project students played a short set that included a punk piece about eating local. At a celebration of local resources, “it’s important to include culture in the equation,” said Matt Schlein, Walden Project teacher and founder of the non-profit Willowell Foundation that supports it.


Schlein explained that the Local Foods Feast started as a partnership between the Walden Project and Mark Power’s Cooking with Science class. Past years’ menus have included similar seasonal items—including quiche, squash soup, and apple crisp—but the feast was held on a smaller scale outside the cafeteria as an alternate lunch. Schlein said he was “particularly excited to partner with the cafeteria and Café Services” this year and reach more people in the school.


As a joint effort of the cafeteria, the Walden Project, and the School Nutrition Committee, the Local Foods Feast represents the growing partnerships around Farm to School efforts at VUHS.