A chunk of coral, a deck of cards, a children’s book about dinosaur fossils, and a pair of bird watching binoculars.
Those seemingly random objects were some of the items that local high schoolers chose to preserve for the next 25 years underneath the playground at Cypress Field on Tappan Street.
On Friday, May 9, Brookline High School teacher Roger Grande and seniors in his climate science and social change class hosted a dedication ceremony at the high school for their Climate Change Time Capsule, a project sponsored by the Brookline Rotary Club, the Brookline Education Foundation and the BHS PTO.
The capsule, a small metal box, will be buried later this month. It contains objects that represent experiences students cherish and hope will withstand the next two decades of climate change for future generations.
“When Roger first approached me about the time capsule idea, I was quite excited because the project is a great physical reminder for all of us that climate change is here, it’s real and impacting all of us today” said Alexandra Vecchio, Brookline’s Sustainability and Natural Resources Director, at the ceremony. “But it also reminds us that the actions we take today will influence the future.”
Students in the class wrote a passage about their chosen objects and worked with an art teacher to photograph and create a digital log of each one, which will be publicly available on a website created for the project.
Once the capsule is buried, a sign will be placed nearby with a QR code for passersby to scan that links to the website.
Long fascinated by paleontology, or the study of fossils, senior George Gaudette chose a book about dinosaurs. He said he hoped the book would serve as a reminder of human impact on animals and show how knowledge of animals changes over time.
“Animals have almost always gone extinct to natural causes, but only recently have humans been the ones responsible for mass extinction,” said Gaudette. “The fact that so many awe-inspiring animals lived on our planet so long before us is so interesting to me, and the fact that the only clues we have of them are now turned to stone is even more fascinating … We will be the reason animals and our modern times will go extinct and leave with us only their fossilized remains.”
Senior Anna Denker’s memories are filled with the summer days she spent bird watching with her grandmother, which is why she chose binoculars as her object. It was not only a peaceful activity, she said, but also a “beautiful symbol” of life, hope, and continuity because of birds’ freedom in flight and their resilience through migration.
“Yet, it seems that this hope is waning,” said Denker. “Due to our current climate crisis, bird migration patterns have dramatically shifted, their populations are diminished, and their habitats are increasingly destroyed. Those finches that were so common, a consistent presence in every look through the black lenses are suddenly rare.”
State representative Tommy Vitolo also gave remarks about the importance of policy in managing climate change and Brookline High mom and poet Felina Silver capped the ceremony with a poem titled “Dear Mother Earth.”
As the lead teacher on the project, Grande decided to be the only adult to include an item in the capsule: a report that many locals, including Grande and some of his students at the ceremony, worked on as members of the sustainability committee.
The report suggested different measures for managing climate change in Brookline, but Grande said nothing happened after he and the committee presented it to the town.
“We did a huge amount of work, for a couple of years,” he said. “When we finally presented this a few months ago, we got a few questions and then that was it, nothing since then.”
Grande, a history teacher, says he has not planned the exact date for the capsule to be opened 25 years from now, but unlike traditional historical monuments that lose relevance, he hopes the monument “takes on greater urgency over time” and prompts awareness, discussion, and action.
“As we move further in time away from the burial and confront the passage out of youth of the stories that are contained inside, this monument was designed to make us wonder, ‘Are we keeping pace safeguarding the stories and the people who wrote them?’” said Grande.
Correction: A previous version of the story omitted two sponsors of the capsule project.
