I have this fixation on my kitchen garbage can filling up too quickly: when it does, I'm disturbed. I try to figure out why I'm throwing so much shit away so quickly. Where's all that packaging coming from? What am I buying? It's usually a signal to me to lay off the processed foods for a while. So today as I experienced the dreaded empty-to-full-in-60-seconds garbage can it occured to me where this fixation may have its roots: from attending Boston University's Sargent Center for Outdoor Education when I was in 7th grade (is that right, Eric?). We called it Sargent Camp at the time, and during each meal there was a slop bucket that you had to scrape your leftovers into at the end of the meal. Each bucket was weighed, and whichever table had the lightest bucket was the "winner." This was to teach the valuable lesson of only taking what you can eat, and in this age of childhood obesity perhaps the "slop bucket contest" ought to be implemented in homes and schools.

Anyway, thinking back to Sargent Camp I feel really lucky to have been given that opportunity, the perk of having a class of less than 100 kids in a fairly wealthy town. We did all sorts of cool outdoors adverture-y learning stuff, like ropes courses and nature hikes. We sang songs too, like Dirt Made My Lunch (Little Steven?!?), and All God's Critters. Some good shots of Sargent Camp can be found here. Boy, this is really sending me down memory lane!