A COMMUNITY SCHOOLS SCHOOL

Leslie Greenberg shared Cook Street Park Community Garden's post.

1 hr · 

In spite of the Lynn School Dept. making HICO leave the School garden. Cook street park has wonderful gardens and open areas. We appreciate that so many volunteers from churches, school and just people want to help.This is a neighborhood.

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Cook Street Park Community Garden added 18 new photos.

The Highlands Coalition is so thankful for the amazing KNOW MERCY team. They came out to cook st park and helped us clean it up. The park is sooooo clean now! Let's continue to bring and enhance the greatness in the Highlands of Lynn Ma.

MY MEMORIAL DAY ISN'T OVER YET

As I visited FORD SCHOOL today with a friend for support I passed by the adjacent graveyard that was once an AWARD WINNING garden. The images of childhood dreams of never before accomplishments and achievements are ghosts left behind, victims of personal persecution. Echoes of children's laughter silenced relegated to the memories of community involvement.

All that remain are corpses of structures that once helped bring forth blossoming vegetation that grows and actively participates in the circle of life. Sadly the HIGHLANDS COALITION INTERNATIONAL garden has a new,probably permanent stage in that circle. It's called DEATH.

What was once an extended family has been distended into yesterday's future that will soon look nothing like tomorrow's past. To move successfully into the modern world we need to be able to learn how to grow a relationship with our neighbors, the ones we are supposed to love.

NOW THIS IS HOW YOU DO PR

Lynn students experience a growth spurt

Well I mean you gotta keep you're clients happy. While I am happy for the students of DREWICZ. you can learn a lot from a garden. "Life cycle" heh, what about the water, oxygen, and carbon cycle. I understand though if there is not a need to go into too many details. I mean it is not like the ITEM is a real newspaper with journalistic standards and ethics.

Not only did this expose fail to mention the GROUNDBREAKING (pun intended) work of the HIGHLANDS COALITION at FORD SCHOOL when it comes to gardens at schools or the fact that the relativity had previous been expressed by HICO leader DAVID GASS but also failed to mention this schools effort to broaden the learning experience by tending livestock. I mean LSC member CHUCK was there and he is a LAME DUCK after all.

I better WATCH the last time I used that term I had my e mail blocked.

FIELD OF YIELDS

MAY

16

Clean-up and Planting

JoinMaybeDecline

• Saturday at 10:00am 2 days from now · 70°F / 60°F Chance of Rain

• Show Map Cook Street Playground Boston, Massachusetts 02129

• Join · Maybe · Decline Invited by David Gass

Highlands Neighborhood
Clean-up

Saturday, May 16
10:00am to 1:00pm
Cook St. Park (upper level)
Bring a broom, rake or shovel.

Would you like to garden? Help us at the garden and receive free plants and seeds.



The Highlands Coalition
David: 781-595-8701 Yonerky: 781-513-1627

www.hclynn.co

A THORN AMONGST PANSIES

Flowers to DREWICZ
While FORD told to SCREW IT.

A conspiracy of hypocrisy
devised to tarnish a legacy.

Showing a lack of maturity,
an expression of infancy

That shows who blew it
Even when they knew it.

SCHOOL OF DARWINISM

Flowers at DREWCIZ

But at FORD they blew it.

Two sets of rules

Playing for fools.

Leaders at the ready

To act most petty.

Some pansies may bloom

While FORD'S veggies doom.

FLOWERS PLANTED BUT HYPOCRISY HARVESTED

Nice PHOTO-OP but does anyone else find it funny that RICK and CHUCK didn't fight so hard for planting at the now barren AWARD-WINNING garden that the HIGHLANDS COALITION had at the FORD SCHOOL. I don't know why because HICO has cameras too.

Even more ironic, the garden there produced blue-ribbon vegetables that could be eaten as part of the food-chain. A lot more lessons can be learned maybe it's not as pretty though.

Lynn Public Schools added 6 new photos.

22 mins · 

This morning, our second-grade students at Drewicz Elementary enjoyed getting their hands dirty in an outdoor lesson about plants, presented by Salvy Rocco Migliaccio of Salvy The Florist. Over the past three years, Mr. Migliaccio has brought his spring planting program to several of our elementary schools in Lynn. During each of these visits, our students learn how to prepare young plants for repotting in larger containers, so that they have room to grow and thrive. (Tip to our readers: Make sure to break up the roots to encourage new growth!) Mr. Migliaccio led our students step by step through the process of repotting the colorful pansies that they are now taking home to their families.

Thank you to Salvy the Florist for giving so many of our students their own personal connections to nature, in their classrooms and homes. Our thanks also go out to Superintendent Latham and School Committee members Charlie Gallo for Lynn School Committee and Rick Starbard, Lynn School Committee for digging in the dirt alongside our students!

Stanley Wotring

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HOW ARE YA GONNA KEEP THEM.........?

MAY

16

Lynn City Farm Fest and Plant Sale

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Public · Festival · Hosted by The Food Project

• Saturday, May 16 at 11:00am - 2:00pm Next Week

• Show Map The Food Project 555 Dudley St, Boston, Massachusetts 02125

Join us at the Munroe Street Farm for our annual seedling and garden supply sale!

Buy vegetable, herb, flower seedlings to start your garden, as well as compost, fertilizer, garden supplies, and more to keep it healthy.

Bring along children to explore the garden, participate in odd jobs around the farm, and to enjoy the music of local band Tigerman Whoa.

HEY LOOK! THE HIGHLANDS COALITION IS HANGING ON.

WHAT GETS TAUGHT?

This past week, Ms. Valdez' first-grade class at Cobbet Elementary helped the City of Lynn celebrate Arbor Day, with the planting of a new lilac tree in front of the school. During the ceremony, student Jordan B. read an Arbor Day poem to his classmates and their special guests, including Superintendent Latham, Judith Flanagan Kennedy, Mayor of Lynn, MA, Cobbet Principal Mrs. Garrity and Program Specialist Mr. Burt, Commissioner of Public Works Andrew Hall, Tree Warden Daniel Small, and John Moberger and Michael Murray from the Department of Community Development. Thank you to the City of Lynn for giving these students a tree that they can care for as their own!

On this beautiful first Sunday of May, let's all say "hurray" for the trees that make our city a healthier place to live!

Stanley Wotring

I do not want to DOWNPLAY the importance of this event. After all I'm just a country guy at heart. I used to camp out in the woods, made haystacks for my pony, and ran through fields barefoot (Not really, I always kept my shoes on, I mean who wants to step in horse%#!& ?) but a couple of things got me to thinking, maybe even bothered if you will.

Sure there is a lot of symbolism in having the TEACHER-IN-CHIEF leading a lesson on sustainable agriculture but who pays their gardener 200+K a year? Sure this made a nice photo-op and a great PR opportunity but given all the other problem that LPS has did we get our money's worth? Think of all the money paid to all those other politicians and high-ranking administration officials. Granted I'm sure a lot of organic fertilizer was spread.

Contrast that seen if you will with what went down at the INTERNATIONAL GARDEN at FORD SCHOOL. Phone calls went unanswered, letters got no response, all the while property was illegally seized. Oh eventually things were returned and vague promises were made regarding future inclusion but only after a campaign of PUBLIC EMBARRASSMENT.

ANOTHER TEACHABLE MOMENT!

HOSTAGES TO BE RELEASED

At 10 AM this morning the parties will meet and the gates will be swung OPEN and no longer will the property of the HIGHLANDS COALITION be subject to mass incarceration. In fact, BUILDING AND GROUNDS SUBCOMMITTEE chairman JOHN FORD said we can take anything we want.

Okay, he didn't say exactly that verbatim but that's the message he sent when he refused to provide fellow LSC member DONNA COPPOLA with a detailed list of the contested items. It wasn't that long ago that receipts were required. That demand probably fell through when some of the higher-ups at LPS realized they couldn't provide receipts for any of the items either.

STAY TUNED!

GARDEN GOBBLEDYGOOK

Tom, 

Because of delays in reviving the Ford School garden, I said to Dr. Latham: It looks like there will be no garden this year. She agreed. It is not too late to plant. In fact, the first garden was completed in July and a crop was harvested in September. 

I asked Dr. Latham if I could retrieve our supplies to start the Cook St. Park garden. She insisted that I show receipts for these items and asked me if Dr. Crane or the School Dept. had paid for them. I said that we either paid for or received as donations everything in the garden. She insisted that I have receipts. Tools, wheelbarrows, shovels, hoses are ours, not yours. I have no receipts.   

I need these items this coming week during our clean-up of Cook St. garden this Saturday.. 

In addition, I question some of the items listed by Mike Donovan: 

1. That compost bins attract rats: The bins were supplied by Mass. DEP. They have never attracted rats because there are no food scraps in them. They are there to show the children how nature has re-cycled organic matter for millions of years. To remove the bins is not a code issue and would be a mistake. 

2. The need of the sink to be connected to the sewer: The sink is there to wash vegetables – agreeing with the new garden rules - and to clean items with soap and water. It's use is the same washing a car in one's driveway. Is a hook-up to sewer required for car washing? 

3. Tripping hazards: After the worst winter in memory, there may be boards in the walkways. In six years, as you mentioned, none of the hundreds of kids, senior citizens or teachers tripped on anything. 

4. Board of Appeals approvals for the greenhouses: Mike had previously indicated that structures need to be 5' from the building, which they are. If the Board of Appeals needs to approve the aquaponics greenhouse, take it to them.  Aquaponics is an excellent way to teach science. The new greenhouse was built to grow plants for sale to families and defer garden costs. It can be removed while you get approval for it at the Board of Appeals. 

5. Boxes hanging on the wrought iron fence: The fence has not and will not be damaged by boxes of soil, flowers and vegetables. If you are concerned about the fence, repair the exerior of the wall that supports it. 

6. Presence of inflamables. What are they? We stored several cans of paint and bottles of hydroponic materials. Is this what Mike means by inflamables? 

We spent six years donating thousands of hours and dollars to create an award-winning garden that inspired hundreds of children, staff and families.. While you recognize what we have done by expanding gardening to other schools, we have been treated as an 'enemy of the State.' 

Is this a humane way to treat a friend of the children of the Ford School? Had you included us in a cooperative discussion of your concerns, we could have worked them out. 

The humane landlord walks a tenant through their apartment saying: "You plugged up the sink," rather than changing the locks and keeping the tenant from their property. 

After retrieving what belongs to and is needed by us, I am willing to work with the school garden committee. Hundreds of plants are germinating in my home. I will donate them to the garden if and when we can work out these problems to a friendly, not a punitive, conclusion. 

Again, I would like to retrieve hoses, tools and wheelbarrows for the Cook St. garden. Is that possible by the end of this week? 

David Gass, Director 

Highlands Coalition