You got to love a school that paints a colorful map of the United States on its playground–give the little explorers New Places to dream about!   I would have loved that when I was a kid.

Tilden Elementary School, where I did not go to school, but some of my friends did, is just up the road from me, though I never visited before today.  It’s bigger now than it was when my friends would have gone there, with a garden and two stories of windows to gaze out of, to glimpse the first snowflake of winter from.

I got there just in time, on a quiet rainy day, two days before it will be overrun with kids on the first day of school.