Day 43 – Monday March 22, 2010
We had an ISP today. We went to the Loading Dock for my second time (the rest of my team’s first), which was wonderful. I’d wanted to go again because I didn’t feel like I asked enough questions the first time to understand the organization so I was glad to have the opportunity. It ended up being much more enjoyable than the first time and I was super-glad that we had gone.
I woke up at 7:30 AM so I’d be ready to head out for ISP by nine. Unfortunately, our planned ISP actually didn’t work out so Sabrina ended up calling the Loading Dock at 10:30 – I had given her the information and recommended it as a back-up option – after her contact at the planned site continued neither to be at work nor to call more than an hour after we were supposed to start.
Most of my day at the Loading Dock was spent sorting phones with Amanda, Chris, and Sabrina. They had recently received a donation of about 100 phones removed from dorm rooms from Johns Hopkins and all the cords were tangled together. We sorted out the mess, reattached cords to handsets and bases when necessary, and taped the cords neatly alongside the phone base with packing tape. Once we’d finished that, we went to the tile section and taped stacks of ten tiles together for resale purposes (ten tiles for $1, double price for decorated tiles). By twenty to four, our entire group of eight (almost our whole team had gone) was in the tile section stacking and taping. We all headed out together at four after a group picture for Katie, the wonderful former-NCCCer volunteer coordinator.
We returned home, after stopping by the post office to send the weekly team paperwork package to the Point, and went straight into team meeting mode. Since we begin the work week on Tuesdays, our weekly team meetings will always be Monday nights. They’ll always be followed by our weekly team grocery runs. This is a good system because it optimizes our chances of having good food options during the busy work week. The team meeting was fairly brief and quite smooth; the subsequent grocery-list-making was longer but markedly improved from previous weeks. We’re definitely improving in awareness of each other’s food needs and requests.
The rest of the evening was very quiet. I sat and read my book, talked to Jordanna on the phone for twenty minutes (my AmeriCorps little sister down in NOLA), and helped unload groceries. All in all, a nice way to prepare for our second week of the round.
Day 44 – Tuesday March 23, 2010
We made bread today. Bread-making was not, however, related (in any way whatsoever) to our spike project for the day.
Our day began at the Parks & People office, where we met Abby shortly after 8:15 AM. She drove us out to the Cylburn Arboretum (she drove her car; we followed in the Vanimal), our project site for the day. My morning was spent, as so many recent mornings have been, shoveling things. Specifically soil. (Melissa told me today that it’s only dirt if it’s not where you want it. Once it’s intentional, e.g. placed in a garden bed, it becomes soil. Melissa majored in agricultural studies so she’d know. I still enjoy calling it dirt because that brings up childhood associations of playing with dirt for fun. Yes, we did have toys. Dirt was often more fun.) Anyway, we shoveled soil into wheelbarrows from a big pile alongside the Cylburn Mansion then wheeled it around to the front of the mansion, where we dumped it into the two garden beds lining the front porch. One of us (not me, as I was having shovel fun time) proceeded to rake the soil neatly across the bed to provide it with an additional four inches of depth.
Five of us took a break mid-morning to return to the Parks & People office to help Abby with a project. She ended up needing help unloading a delivery of paper bags for lawn trash from the delivery truck into a trailer near the P&P office. The bags were on a pallet; they were supposed to be delivered tomorrow and Abby had a forklift lined up to unload the pallet when they came. Since they were delivered today, we unloaded the pallet by hand instead. The work would have taken quite a while for only Abby and the delivery man to complete, but with five of us helping we finished in under 15 minutes. Assembly lines are pretty awesome sometimes. We returned to Cylburn Arboretum for more dirt shoveling before our lunch break at noon.
I gardened in the afternoon. Sabrina and Melissa had been on weed removal all morning but Sabrina was ready for a change of pace so I agreed to switch with her. Melissa showed me the ropes and we proceeded to spend the next three hours digging tiny weeds, root systems and all, out of the ground with a fun pick tool. I also made two weeds-to-compost-pile runs with the tarp on which we’d placed the weeds, first with our site supervisor Jennifer, who works at the Arboretum in addition to another gardening job, then with Melissa. It was a chill way to spend the afternoon and I enjoyed it immensely.
We returned home for PT in the ballroom of our mansion, after which Melissa and I went for our daily walk/run. Our initial plan was to walk/run on PT off-days, but we’d skipped Sunday due to tiredness and Monday due to busyness (it’s now our official off day since we usually have ISPs, a team meeting, and a grocery run that day) so we were both ready for a bit of cardio. Seeing Melissa work up her running prowess reminds me of just how far my own running has come in the past couple of years. It’s kind of crazy.
Sabrina and I made dinner afterwards while half the team headed out on a Target run. We didn’t coordinate meals, but she made a thick vegetable-rice soup, I made a vegetable-tofu stirfry, and Amanda, Melissa, and both of us all ended up eating both together out on the porch with our OB house manager Chris. We had enough leftovers that my lunch for tomorrow is set and sandwich-free, which is very exciting.
While we ate, the bread dough I had made (water, yeast, and sugar, then flour – very simple) rose in the warm kitchen. After dinner, I tried making a cinnamon-raisin-dark-chocolate-chip bread roll, which is shaped much like a cinnamon roll, on the stovetop the way my course manager Eric had taught us during Outward Bound. I burned the first one a bit by cooking it on too high a temperature, but it came out super-well anyway so I got to show Traci, Amanda, Sabrina, and Melissa all how to make bread on the stovetop. They each created their own rolls using cinnamon, raisins, honey, sugar, pecans, and the like then cooked their concoctions. I loved having the chance to share my OB knowledge of bread-making with my teammates, all of whom enjoyed their delectable treats. I even had extra dough to make a few rolls for tomorrow to spice up my already awesome lunch. Teaching is fun and I’m so glad I remembered what Eric taught us.
Speaking of Outward Bound, the Congressional Award program is, best I can tell, based on the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award program based out of the UK. That program is a direct spin-off of a program instituted by Kurt Hahn at the boys school at which he was a headmaster. Yes, the same Kurt Hahn who started Outward Bound. Needless to say, I think he’s a phenomenal guy.
Day 45 – Wednesday March 24, 2010
“Education must enable young people to effect what they have recognized to be right, despite hardships, despite dangers, despite inner skepticism, despite boredom, and despite mockery from the world….” – Kurt Hahn
We planted saplings today, young trees between 4 and 6 feet tall. Our planting took place this morning at the Department of Public Works. The city has a program called Tree Baltimore which seeks to increase the canopy cover (amount of ground covered by shade of full trees) of Baltimore and we were working to help with that initiative. Working alongside members of two P&P project crews, we planted about 30 trees on a grassy patch alongside the entry gate through which traffic accesses the DPW complex. I planted with
Sabrina and I had lots of fun planting our two trees: digging a hole for each, settling them in, mulching them, and staking them in place. (Both the mulch and the stakes provide support for growth and serve the additional purpose of deterring lawnmowers from getting too close.) I asked while we worked on the first if we could name it and Sabrina quickly assented. She suggested Tony and I assented to Antony. This led into a prolonged discussion of Classics, mostly focused around mythology and the Roman empire. I got to practice story-telling in recounting Ovid’s version of Narcissus and Echo and I told her a bit about the major players in the formation of the empire after she agreed to the name Cicero for our second tree. We later chose the names Cleopatra, Hermes, and Caligula for other trees that seemed to fit those personalities.
We headed back to the Parks & People office shortly before noon. Melissa gave us a 45-minute lunch so we even had the opportunity for a quick nap in the conference room or on the back couches. (I chose the former, resting my head at the table as I listened to the conversation of the project crew members discussing recent work days nearby.)
We returned to the Cylburn Arboretum, yesterday’s project site, after lunch to continue our work there. I ended up working with Jeff, Traci, Kathy, Roy, and Lindsay on filling the garden beds with soil. We spent close to an hour removing a metal divider sunk most of the way into one bed which was only 3 or 4 inches deep but about fifty feet long. It went nice and fast after we settled into a rhythm of some people levering the strip out of the ground with shovels as others of us pulled up on it from above with our hands. Once we got that out, we spent the next hour transporting more soil from the parking lot soil pile we’d been working with yesterday into the garden bed which was no longer metal-edged.
I finished sweeping and loading up the last of the dirt pile with Melissa and Roy as we neared the end while the rest of the metal-and-soil crew moved on to weeding in the bed Melissa and I had finished on yesterday. The three of us then joined the weeding crew for our final hour in the sun. It was relaxing to sit and chat for awhile, enjoying each other’s company and mixing up the types of task we were doing.
We returned to the mansion almost ten hours after we’d left, ready for a relaxing evening ahead. After dinner and a run, I spent an hour working with Roy to plan our three CAP (Corps Ambassador Program) events for this round. We chose one high school, one college, and one other program to target so we can promote NCCC at a range of locations. Our next step is to call each place and request the opportunity to come speak with students or participants about the amazingness that is AmeriCorps NCCC. It’ll be fun.
I also got to check in briefly with Marissa and Jamie tonight, which was great. Now I get to sleep, which might possibly be even better.
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