The more I learn about the Lee H. Kellogg School, the more it sounds like a progressive private academy in Vermont. (That's meant as a compliment.) It's a cooperative community of learning that is intense, intimate, eclectic and humanistic: a school with a soul in a town with a heart.
Every year for the 8th grade graduation, the school reaches out to the community and asks residents to cut flowers from their own gardens to adorn the stage. No one seems to remember when or how this tradition began, but everyone honors it.
Donations can be left in the multi-purpose room at Kellogg anytime on Thursday, June 14. Bring flowers in containers with water, labeled with your name and phone number, and the containers will be returned to you. If you have questions or want to help with the flower arranging, call Maria MacNeil at 824-7958 or Joan Wingard at 824-5238.
Then come back at 7 PM for graduation in the gym. Betsy Howie (whose peonies will no doubt make it to the stage) tells me that of all the heartfelt events that take place annually in Falls Village, nothing compares to 8th grade graduation. Her advice: Bring Kleenex.
Monday, June 11, 2007
Flower Children
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For over 50? years the Falls Village Congregational Church has hosted an evening with the LHK 8th graders and their parents along with the LHK staff. It is an evening of remembering and encouragement for the future. The staff read poems or books and there is always a song or two personalized for the class. It is just another example of what make Falls Village and Lee H Kellogg school such wonderful places.
This tradition may date from the building of the school or even before it. I was in the first First Grade class at Kellogg in the spring of 1951. We had started the school year in the classrooms at the D.M. Hunt Library. When the new school was ready, we each picked up our books and pencils and walked together to our new building.
The donated flowers were a feature of the first graduation I attended, some time around 1955.
I never smell a peony, that I don't think of my 8th grade graduation in 1965. I'm so glad to read that the tradition has lived on.
Correction - 1961
The experience of entering Staples in Great Barrington is both convenient and alarming. The concern of a Starbucks may be realized next to the new Stop and Shop.I do hope not. With Rite Aid coming to town it truly does seem times they are changing. The Northwest corner with all this still remains a beautiful oasis.
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