Posts Tagged ‘children’

As reported on nearly every newscast I listened to in the DC metro area, Michelle Obama planted her kitchen garden for the second straight year, with the help of local school children.  This year, the garden will feature even more varieties of vegetables, such as “bok choy, artichokes, and mustard greens.” Most of the news coverage trumpeted the “growing approval ratings of the first lady” (pun intended), which is well deserved given her platform of childhood obesity.  She’s getting kids excited about gardening, which time and time again is mentioned as a factor in encouraging children to try vegetables and create healthy lifetime habits.  She’s also enouraging exercise.  On top of that, she’s encouraging healthy food access through the establishment of the White House Farmer’s Market (my colleague Kim Hodgson and I went to the opening celebration in September, 2009.  You can read Kim’s coverage here.) While I applaud the

Since leaving for college, I haven’t been home to visit my parents as much as I’d like.  They still live in the same house on Staten Island that they’ve lived in for 28 years – an old Victorian with the biggest back yard on the block. On a visit home this weekend, I was struck by how connected I was – and still am – to that back yard.  It’s not just land to me, but it holds memories and lessons, and in many ways fundamentally shaped the person I’ve become. I was flipping through some old photo albums and found one particular page that brought the memories flooding back.  In her elementary school handwriting, with pink and green colored pencils, my sister wrote on a small sliver of paper,  “Johnnie’s GREEN thumb does it again!”  Next to the caption was a picture of me and my siblings cradling a