Rethinking Life: From The Atom Up
Rethinking Life: From The Atom Up
At the last Executive Board Meeting for Mezzacello, my board asked me to define the educational direction of my applied STEM programming and how I see sustainability, food, livestock and life. I responded glibly with, “Mezzacello is committed to rethinking life: from the atom up.” The board liked that, and I did too; It’s an apt description.
In all of my programming, I encourage learners to tke reality apart. What is the pattern, structure, and process that allows you and nature to come up with a new, or newly discovered process with the structures of the Earth, and the patterns of sustainability.
Rethink, Reframe, Recycle
My passion is teaching our communities how we can build systems that nature needs, wants, and can run with. By doing this, we become the solution, and the source. I don’t think we as a culture care much — or teach enough — how to be the solution.
I found this quote on Facebook. It struck me as being the perfect description of how I start thinking about teaching renewables, sustainability, and biology at Mezzacello Urban Farm. Here it is.
“You are comprised of: 84 minerals, 23 elements, and 8 gallons of water spread across 38 trillion cells.You have been built up from nothing by the spare parts of the Earth you have consumed, according to a set of instructions hidden in a double helix molecule and small enough to be carried by (an egg) and a sperm.You are recycled butterflies, plants, rocks, streams, firewood, wolf fur, and shark teeth, broken down to their smallest parts and rebuilt into our planet’s most complex living thing.You are not living on Earth. You are Earth.”
Start with Soil and Move Up and Out
From day one, we have embraced grow, maintain, sustain, and explain. This meme really resonated with me. In fact, one of my most popular summer camps is “Atomic Farming”.
From minerals and dirt, to biology and chemistry, and leveraging physics, math, and curiosity to start creating life. This meme inspired me to reflect on my mission and curriculum and I created the artwork for this post as well. Like the soil, all of my STEMs start in the soil, right?
If you are interested in how I go about creatively following my dream, search for atomic or mission in my blogs. I document every idea, experiment, and experience I have here. It is a labor of love. So if you’d like to see or learn more, or just be a part of this journey, consider making a donation to Mezzacello today!
