Jeanne Garbarino
Observer
Science Haven
I mean, I have a very small, quick vignette. I think being in that space reminded me a lot of my own childhood. So I did feel like an amazing amount of nostalgia when I was there. I grew up in the Bronx in a pretty under served, under resourced neighborhood, and I really could appreciate and my neighborhood was also the kind of neighborhood where all of the people knew each other. My mom would look out the window and see who was outside and then determined whether or not we were allowed to go outside because everybody who was there would have parented your children for you. I saw a lot of that in the Dwight community, and it kind of made me nostalgic and it made me miss home, miss my friends, miss my neighbors. So I don't know, I found that really moving, and I'm also saying this as someone who was completely an outsider to the Dwight community, I was like one of the only white women, just like walking around trying to be as small and unintrusive as possible. But it was clear I did not belong. So it was balancing this amazing the nostalgia especially when the woman broke out with a baton, and I was just thinking about how we used to have choreographed dance routines with batons in our courtyard of our buildings. I also sort of said, I was waiting for them to break out the double Dutch rope because I would have been right there doing that. So I don't know, I loved it. I thought it was a wonderful experience for me in terms of just making me remember being a little kid again.