This past school year I was an RA in a sophomore dorm, so I used “building community” as a justification for my stress baking habit. I have found that people are more willing to offer a sentence or two when I trade cookies for words. Although I made some meaningful and some shallow connections this year when there was food involved, I have had repeatedly meaningful eating experiences at the farmers’ market that we frequent on Saturdays in Louisville. Rowan is always introducing us to  […]

As college students, I think that we often forget that although we live up in our community on the hill, we still belong to the larger Middlebury township when we are there and also to Addison County. We tend to only engage outside of our campus when we seek something that the College does not provide. Although some people believe that “good fences make good neighbors,” that perhaps neighbors should not be involved in one another’s business, I grew up in a neighborhood that operated  […]

One of the feelings I struggled with during our discussion last Sunday was an overwhelming sense that I had no idea where to begin solving the problems that Berry outlines in his book. In “Conservationist and Agrarian” Berry discusses the incredible power that “land-exploiting corporations” hold over American culture and life (public schools, politics, etc.), articulating the inextricable links between everything. So…I found that the more I thought about it, the more tangled the predicament became. When I returned to the text, though, Berry’s essays quelled some  […]