all in a day's work

so, today i went with a group of students to the neighboring town, ypsilanti, to do some manual labor. (we can't, afterall, leave all the community-based work in gardens to MSU-extension services).

amanda greeted us upon our arrival and laid out the plan: move bricks, deconstruct a fence + posts, salvage plantings from the gardens, empty the tool-shed and on.

so, we did all that in the morning drizzle until the afternoon sun crept through the clouds and tricked us into taking off our coats and caps.

i frequently urge students to write with their five senses. but, even i neglect smell in my investigations. i just submitted an entire 270+ page dissertation to my committee that never once refers to the scents of langston or modern housing. (this very day, i submitted the whole dang beast to the entire committee and for the first time ever in life, i seriously imagined strangers calling me "dr. quinn" without laughing about medicine woman.)

today, as we dug in the dirt, the students smelled gorgeous dark soil and savory sage and parsley and strawberries and spiders and rusty railroad ties and wood and compost. seriously, it was beautiful. one person, michael, one of my favorites, exclaimed, "it smells like thanksgiving dinner over here." students brought friends and roommates along with them to work the urban parcel. (they reasoned, we have studied urban agriculture, but never seen it. so, they seized upon the chance to get their hands dirty). and, i realize as i type now, if they never saw it, they surely never sniffed it.

a group of men, mostly straight and gay black, white, chinese, and latino-american, cajoled a deep fencepost out of the ground in the most spectacular demonstration of stubborn testosterone ever. women and men hauled lattice and carted buckets and toted tools. students who have been the exact same double majors for four years and enrolled in my very class who have never spoken to each other chatted at length about their studies and lives and schemes and girlfriends.

and then they picked up the greenhouse and moved it three long blocks, over railroad tracks uphill. both ways.

i really really love my undergrads.