In a very basic way, a prominent landmark such as Mt. Holyoke tells you where you are. They let you know that you're not the first person in a place

Things were here before you and will be here after you're gone. The geographic features, especially, give you a sense of your own place in the world and in time

I'm going to a commune in Vermont and will deal with no unit of time shorter than a season.

What interests me is trying to catch the reflection of the human being on the page. I'm interested in how ordinary people live their lives

Most teachers have little control over school policy or curriculum or choice of texts or special placement of students, but most have a great deal of autonomy inside the classroom. To a degree shared by only a few other occupations, such as police work, public education rests precariously on the skill and virtue of the people at the bottom of the institutional pyramid.

The combination of domesticity and wildness - that's a deep expression

Many people find it easy to imagine unseen webs of malevolent conspiracy in the world, and they are not always wrong. But there is also an innocence that conspires to hold humanity together, and it is made of people who can never fully know the good that they have done.