Hi there, it's me, Major Jackson.

As I transition from my role as host of The Slowdown, we're taking a look through our archive of episodes.

With such a deep well of poetry and reflection, it's a pleasure to revisit these moments together.

Here's an episode from my time on the show.

Thank you. Here's an episode from my time on the show. I'm Major Jackson, and this is the slowdown.

In ninth grade, my friend John walked the neighborhood early mornings with his father and two brothers.

They scoured the streets in the dark for empty bottles and aluminum cans that they sold at a scrapyard on Ridge Avenue.

John's father suffered from a work-related injury,

which disqualified him from many jobs.

Yet, it seemed he always found a way to earn a dollar.

The dull clack of a crushed soda can,

or the bright ping of a glass bottle, landing into an old rickety grocery cart often woke me up, as it did other boys in our crew.

The first time we learned it was John and his siblings making the noise in the pre-dawn hours, he denied it. One guy, Artrease, teased them all the time during

lunch break, which made John feel ashamed of his family's lack of resources. Eventually, he stopped

coming to the basketball court where we gathered after school. But the truth was that all of

our parents sought some kind of way to cut corners, to save or make extra money, a side job on the

weekends, food coupons, hammy down clothes, a small plot in the community garden. My mother even called John's family industrious.

Today's poem dignifies the lives of people and low-income neighborhoods

whose early practices of thrift and ingenuity

created intrinsic values of sustainability, personal style, and care for human habitats.

Ecohood by Melania Luisa Marte.

I learned environmentalism from my hood.

...