I was reading tonight about a study presented in San Diego at the American Society for Microbiology. It seems that there is a curious little critter lurking in your flower bed that just might make you smarter. You can read all about it here. Its name is Mycobacterium vaccae and early indications reveal that a steady dose of this stuff can not only reduce anxiety, but make you smarter too. Well, at least in mice.
If you've spent much time with me then you know my affinity for that deviant poet Walt Whitman. It seems that there is a truth in poetry after all, as if any shoddy materialists out there still dare to question:
Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees!
Earth of departed sunset! Earth of the mountains misty-top!
Earth of vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with blue!
Earth of shine and dark mottling the tide of the river!
Earth of the limpid gray of clouds brighter and clearer for my sake!
Far-swooping elbowed earth! Rich apple-blossomed earth!
Smile, for your lover comes!
—Leaves of Grass, 1855
If this study is even partly correct, then the case should again be made with earnest: our kids need to be outside. Locking them up in a sterile classroom may be doing them more harm than we realize. Teachers, get them outside! Let them poke in the mud or dip the tips of their fingers in – from the garden expulsion to the best of poets, artists, and musicians – and now even from our scientists we see that dirt indeed has a power we shouldn't ignore.
So if you're the wet-wipe type (and I can be sometimes too), then think again as you applying liberally to soiled areas. Because you might be looking all spic 'n span, but shaving off an IQ point or two in the process. Not to mention making yourself an even bigger worry wart.
If there's ever been a better case for having a dirty mind, I can't imagine what it is!
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