Days 37 to 39

Day 37 – Tuesday March 16, 2010

We completed our first day of first round!

Today was a full day of learning the Parks & People ropes and beginning actual work! So exciting. We headed out of the house (ridiculous mansion) at ten to 8 this morning because our drive to work was only 13 minutes according to our directions and we didn’t need to be there until 9 but we did need to get gas and Melissa wanted us to arrive early for our first day.

It’s a good thing that we left early because we managed once again to get lost in the streets of Baltimore. This time was a bit more understandable, at least, because it seemed like the road we were on ended but we were actually supposed to continue on it into a park. On the good side, our route to the P&P office is super-easy now that we know the way. The last five turns are all within the park, where there’s really only one possible direction to go many times.

We spent the morning getting a sense of Parks & People as an organization from a woman named Mary Washington. Mary described the two main focuses of the organization to us: motivating youth (primarily through summer camps and ‘non-traditional urban sports’ programs (e.g. soccer and lacrosse)) and greening the city by converting demolished vacant-apartment lots into green spaces, increasing the number of tree-lined streets, and the like. We’ll be doing lots of canvassing while here to ask people if they’d be willing to have a tree planted in front of their houses and whether they would agree to care for that tree by watering it as it grows. Mary was very nice and incredibly informative.

Next, we met with Abby, our sponsor for this project. The sponsor for any given round is our point of contact within the organization who tells us what we’re doing, gives safety briefings, and generally works with us to make sure we can effectively get things done for them (and America!). Abby asked about all of us, told us a bit about herself, and talked more about the work P&P does. She explained that we’ll be helping on a range of projects based on what the organization and her fellow staffers need done at any given moment. For today, that was community garden work.

Abby took us for a walk after the briefing, which was awesome. Brandon had asked whether there are any waterfalls in the area and she decided to show us one that was down a path maybe ten minutes away. When we got there, we all had ten minutes to chill and listen to the rushing water. I loved seeing the juxtaposition of urban and natural life in the graffiti covering the human-made surfaces overlooking the dam-created waterfall. I also loved listening to moving water again. Good times.

We returned to the parking lot and loaded a bunch of shovels and rakes into our van from a P&P tool trailer. We then drove to our first project site! Our work for the afternoon was at the Duncan Street Miracle Garden. It’s a community garden about half a city block in size which is surrounded on all four sides by apartment buildings, which were fairly evenly split between inhabited and boarded up (though the latter does not necessarily imply vacant, since there could of course be squatters). We got a tour of the garden from a woman who’s had a plot there for three years; it was amazing how she knew who owned every plot and even what many of them grew (the first plot on the right was the Peanut Man because all he ever grows is peanuts). We spent the rest of the afternoon outside the garden, clearing out trash and weeds along the fence and picking dead vines off the fence itself. (I spent multiple happy hours engaged in this latter task.) Once we’d cleared the fence, we rolled rectangular logs into place along its base to support it and help prevent erosion of the raised garden beds on the other side. We ended up with a ridiculous number – somewhere over 15 – of trash bags full of rubbish and weeds which we’d collected from outside the fence. It was a good day’s work.

The community support for our work was impressive. As we walked down the alley to the garden from our van, one guy stopped to ask if we were working on the garden and thanked us for the work we were about to do. The man who directed us at the site, who had been planting in the garden for 20 years now, brought us snacks and water mid-afternoon. As we finished the last section of fence, one man came out of his apartment across the alley from us to ask if we needed anything; he offered us water about three times. It was amazing how supportive these people were of our efforts and how even the simplest of tasks for us, having 9 people collectively clean on and around a fence, was a big deal for them in that we were taking the time to help make their neighborhood a more beautiful place. It’s a real reminder that this is the NTrip: we get things done.


Day 38 – Wednesday March 17, 2010

Day two of round one was about as great as day one. I’m liking our work with Parks & People and I am so glad to be in Baltimore getting a chance to observe, even through photograph glimpses, life growing up in a neighborhood and in a world so completely different from that of my childhood. It’s a huge part of why NCCC is a good fit for me and I’m so glad to have this opportunity in first round.

We worked with nine UMBC (University of Maryland Baltimore County) volunteers today who are working with Parks & People through an alternative spring break program. The 18 of us (Lindsay and Chris will return this weekend from Wildland Firefighting training the day after Brandon heads down to the Gulf for a composite team in New Orleans) spent the morning in a one-city-block park. The park is bounded on one side by an elementary school and on three sides by apartment buildings. There are no spaces between apartment buildings; each one has direct contact with both neighbors.

Our task for the morning was to spread mulch around the trees in the park. We had two big piles of mulch, four wheelbarrows, and lots of pitchforks for transferring the former into the latter. We ended up mulching all the trees – perhaps around forty in total – in a couple of hours with mulch to spare. Our sponsor Abby and Jeff, another P&P staffer who had directed us in this project, hadn’t been sure we would even have enough mulch and decided to have us use up the extra. We thus spent the next couple of hours adding more mulch to all the trees until each one had a quite generous helping. Jeff had taught us to leave space right around the trunk for rain water to nurture the tree rather than mounding up the mulch directly against the trunk where it would choke out the water. ‘Donuts, not volcanoes,’ he taught us and we ended up with fortyish lovely donut-rings of mulch.

A highlight of the morning was digging up a tree with Traci. We were about to mulch one tree when Jim came over and told us not to bother because it was already dead. He showed us how we could scratch through the bark to expose white trunk (rather than living green) to prove this suspicion. Jim offered that we could go ahead and dig up the tree because they’ll be having a planting day in the park next week so it can be replaced soon. We had a fun time removing the small tree. (The trunk is walking-stick-size, as I would know since I’m saving it to decorate; Sabrina also saved the branch part for a later team art project.) We took it out of the clay-rich soil with a shovel (Traci) and a pick-ax and hoe (me) quite successfully. I’d never removed a tree before and I loved having the new experience.

We drove from mulching to Trailhead 3 of the Gwynns Falls Trail which winds through numerous Baltimore neighborhoods as it stretches miles in length. There, we traded pitchforks for loppers (clippers) and hiked about ten minutes in on the trail to a campsite. We spent the next three hours (still with our UMBC friends) cutting down a thorny invasive plant of which Abby couldn’t remember the name. I worked in a highly overgrown area with Amanda and Kathy and we managed to clear it quite nicely. My work gloves were fabulous in keeping my hands unscathed and we were all worn out by late afternoon but the work was calm and enjoyable. The plant was a very smart one. Along with being covered in thorns over its vine-like surface, it also roots into the ground at both ends of its being. While some tendrils snaked up towards the sky, others travelled five feet then went right back into the ground for another food source. Smart plant.

The evening was very nice. We had a meeting with our house manager Chris to go over the OB housing guidelines and how those apply to us for our time here in the mansion (clean something each afternoon, keep the door code secret, etc.). We then made a grocery list and Brandon and Traci volunteered to go shopping. Sabrina and I split a wonderful dinner of onion, spinach, pepper, tofu, and polenta then I talked on the phone with Kate then Erin. I returned to the house to make lunch for tomorrow and ended up in an hour-long conversation with a great OB guy who had been to Australia for a few weeks in high school and loves to travel. We talked about what you do when faced with something like attempting reparations for the stolen generation in Australia or the native people in Alaska, where he recently lived for awhile. There are steps you can take and some you cannot, but what do you do? It’s a wonderful conversation which I feel is very relevant to AmeriCorps and what I’m doing in the NTrip.


Day 39 – Thursday March 18, 2010

Today was lots of fun.

We spent all day working alongside the Gwynns Falls Trail crew from Parks & People. P&P got stimulus money from the government so was able to hire four five-person work crews to focus on major projects for the next 18 months. This was one of those crews.

Our day with them was very enjoyable. Our job was to rake clear a section of the Gwynns Falls Trail to make it look more inviting to visitors and more accessible to bikes (e.g. not littered with sticks). Most of this involved raking leaves to create a green shoulder about two feet wide and cutting back thorns which threatened that shoulder. I worked primarily on the former and had a wonderful time. I raked for about four or five hours total and got lots accomplished.

During our after-lunch work, I had a great conversation with Marvell, one of the men on the trail crew. Marvell used to work for Comcast and now works with the crew after a short period of unemployment. His face lit up when he talked about how much he enjoys doing outside work rather than being stuck in an office all day. Marvell shared with me some advice his grandmother used to give him as a child which I really like (though don’t necessarily believe entirely). Paraphrased: ‘Mother Nature wouldn’t put anything in the ground which you can’t handle. Get in there and use your hands.’ She also told him to cut everything when removing thorns, not just some things; she generally sounds like a good advice-giver. Marvell and I talked about how much more effective it can be to reach in and get your hands dirty than to try to scoop things up with a shovel or rake. I had already used my hands instead of my rake to transport a big pile of sopping wet leaves off the trail and fully agreed with his hands-on approach.

Towards the end of our work day, the trail crew guys made a bench using a chainsaw and some fallen logs. We got a group picture on the bench, which I quite liked.

We returned from work around 3:15 and had a bit of time to unwind and rehydrate before meeting up again for PT. We had PT outside in the warm sunshine on the central lawn of the OB center; it was glorious. After PT, we had a Target run on which I picked up AmeriMail-sending supplies (we get to send free letters to other CMs via weekly FedEx paperwork envelopes) and dark chocolate Easter M&Ms for oatmeal. In case you missed it, I love oatmeal. I plan to continue this obsession for about nine more months.

I got a surprise visitor this evening! When we got back from Target, I texted Marissa to try to set up a phone date for sometime tonight. Half an hour later, she showed up in our common-room doorway! It turned out that she, Suzanne, and Josh had come to visit; I was so happy. I got a couple of Josh hugs and spent the entirety of their visit catching up with Marissa about spike life and various other happenings as Suzanne and Melissa chatted away about TL life somewhere private (by AmeriCorps standards) and Josh played around on the drum set that apparently exists in our basement. Marissa and I had wonderful back porch catch-up time. It was so good to see her again. She’s also decided to join me in DC for spring break, which will again be super-amazing.