Day 67 – Thursday April 15, 2010
Today proceeded as yesterday was intended to service-wise with street-tree planting in the morning and free-tree canvassing in the afternoon. Trees, trees, trees : )
We began our day with PT in the ballroom at the slightly-too-early hour of 8:30 AM. Morning PT tends to be rather tired PT for Team RIO. At 10:30, we headed out for the day, beginning in Druid Hill Park (the P&P office is located at the edge of the park and P&P has some storage areas within the park down the road from a child-sized Safety City) to dip the root systems of bare-root trees in protective gel then load them in a pickup truck bed for transport to their future homes. We had tons of fun with the gel – Traci and I ended up with it all over our forearms – and treated the fifteen trees in enjoyable style.
We headed over to the P&P storage container one lot over in the park (by way of a hole in a fence which project supervisor Charlie pointed out to us) and loaded shovels into the back of the Vanimal for our morning work. Another typical morning in Round 1: Spike of the Shovel.
Our next stop, where we’d spend the next three hours, was in the city. We planted ten street trees around the Hollins Market neighborhood from the fifteen trees we’d gelled an hour earlier. Each tree was going in an extant tree pit, so our job was simply to dig out an appropriate area in the pit, place the tree in the newly-created hole, and refill with the dug-up soil. We found out after-the-fact that we hadn’t dug any of the holes deep enough because saturating the soil with water lowered it slightly on the trunk. Fortunately, the P&P Critical Projects Crew members were able to fix the issue as they watered by adding more soil from elsewhere in the pit. A good learning experience for us.
We enjoyed lunch on the sidewalk outside the Hollins Market, where some teammates got sandwiches and such, in the shade of the big canopy which stretched from the market out to the street. The sidewalk was super-wide so we were able to settle into a nice oval and still not block foot traffic in the least.
Melissa picked us up at the end of lunch, after driving to the health clinic for about the sixth time this week to get teammates from walk-in appointments, and drove us over to the neighborhood where we had canvassed yesterday. I teamed up with Chris and Roy to continue up the same streets Sabrina, Melissa, and I had started on yesterday. We had a fantastic time. We only signed up three more people for trees but we talked to a number who are interested in calling in later (of the not many who actually answered their door between 3:30 and 6:30 on a Thursday). We also talked about living in cities (Roy) vs. college towns (me) vs. rural country (Chris), discussed what we might want to do with our futures (Chris is thinking firefighting, Roy acting), and our individual knocking-on-doors style (ranging from Chris’ three-tap police knock to Roy’s nine gentle taps). Since very few people actually answered their doors, we were able to carry on a two-hour conversation with ease. Good times. Canvassing is much more fun that way.
We returned to the mansion shortly after seven hungry after a long day. Melissa awesomely made all interested parties delicious vegetarian chili for dinner, some leftovers of which I was able to claim for lunch tomorrow. I also enjoyed an amazing card from Jen including the best necklace ever. It only took us seven years. We got our weekly FedEx with last and this weeks’ issues of Get to the Point, both of which mentioned my ISP finish. Kinda crazy.
All is good here in BMore! Looking forward to an intense 12.5-hour day tomorrow.
Day 68 – Friday April 16, 2010
Intense 12.5-hour day officially survived : ) And fun.
We rolled out of Eagle Drive at 8 this morning headed for the Cylburn Arboretum. We spent our morning supervising 100 students from Boys’ Latin – all boys in 5th, 8th, and 11th or 12th grade – as they dug holes for deer-fence posts to be installed. The challenge: 10 of us, 100 of them, around 20 tools total. Digging sticks (long metal rods with a flathead-screwdriver-like end useful for breaking up rocks) and post-hole diggers (giant pliers-like contraptions used for extracting dirt from an 8-inch-wide hole in the ground) were the only tools necessary for our task this morning. When we showed up at Cylburn, our supervisor for the day, Fred, explained, entirely unconcernedly, that we had some of each tool ready to go. We went to check them out and found 9 digging sticks and 13 post-hole diggers. Yes, some.
We decided to flexibly face the challenge by each taking one group of schoolboys, one digging stick, and one post-hole digger. I ended up with 14 in my group – some had as few as 5 due to the way the supervisors distributed them – and two teacher chaperones. We headed down the path and had a good two hours of work. Mostly, my five fifth-graders were incredibly enthusiastic about the project and all stood crowded around the hole at all times while the eighth-graders acted too cool for it and the upper-schoolers talked about lacrosse (apparently the sport of note at Boys’ Latin) and prom, occasionally stepping in to offer strength and force in applying the digging stick to break rocks. My primary roles as supervisor were to ensure that everyone did take a few turns at the action and those working and watching did so safely. Our work site was the beautiful woods of Cylburn and the boys reminded me somewhat of my swimmers so it was an enjoyable morning.
We returned to the post holes without our supervisees after lunch for half an hour of work before we left Cylburn for the day. We were able to work on four holes at once with nobody standing around tool-less, which was a wonderful change in efficiency from the earlier project. It’s great to engage school kids in service projects, especially environmental ones which involve a morning in the woods, but it’s tough to get them out there then not be able to keep everyone occupied with the project. It was nice to get our hands on the tools and see everyone able to work at once after that. I get so used to the AmeriCorps get-things-done way of life that I now more fully appreciate everyone being able to have something to do. Sitting and observing is nice, but action is nicer.
In the afternoon, we headed over to a church about ten minutes from Cylburn. The church was the host site for UrbAgGala, the Urban Agriculture Gala, an event held tonight to raise awareness about community gardening and greening in Baltimore and to serve as a celebratory and gathering space for community gardening and other urban agriculture groups. I got to spend the entire afternoon preparing awesome produce donations for the big free meal (donations strongly suggested) being offered this evening. I helped mix oil and fresh spices into big trays of root vegetables pre-roasting, peeled carrots, and chopped spring onions. In the non-produce sector, I also helped arrange cookies in baskets, set up chairs, and roll golf-ball sized, football-shaped meatballs. My highlight of the afternoon was learning from Sabrina how to mince with a knife then successfully mincing lots of lemon zest. Yay, awesome new skills!
We finished our service day at 7, the time the gala began. We stayed until 8:30 as a service learning opportunity. The idea of service learning is to attend events, go places, watch movies… anything really that connects to our project or round, then reflect on those experiences later in the context of our service and this round. UrbAgGala was a great event for service learning because we got to hear from lots of people passionate about urban agriculture speaking, singing, or even storytelling to encourage and celebrate a greener way of life here in Baltimore. We also got to eat amazingly delicious food which we’d helped prepare off compostable plates with compostable forks. They didn’t even have a trash bin out in the food room of the event, only recycling and compost. It was just that awesome.
We got home late (around 9), tired but happy. We get to sleep in a little bit tomorrow since Abby pushed our start time back to 9:30 from the originally-planned 8:30. Tomorrow is EcoFest, which should be another wonderful event.
Signing off from Baltimore – stay green!
Day 69 – Saturday April 17, 2010
EcoFest! Yay!
I had an awesome time helping out at EcoFest all day. We supervised the event’s compost bins (fun fact: wax paper and paper plates/bowls/cups are all compostable), I spent two hours watching children play with water, logs, cups, and paintbrushes (technically supervising, I suppose, but more hanging out with imaginative 3-year-olds), and we got our first free t-shirts! Oh, we mulched too.
Our first stop of the work day was at a wood salvage yard, where piles upon piles of logs and sticks of all sizes filled the area outside of a squat cement Baltimore Gas & Electric building. Our job was to sort through the logs to find some which would make good additions to a natural play space for children, ones which they might stand on or find some other use for in creative play. Accompanied by Mary from Parks & People and a chainsaw-wielding volunteer named Kenny, we quickly tracked down a number of suitable logs and loaded them into the back of a P&P truck. Among my contributions were two potential magic staffs and one half-log which would make an excellent surfboard in a natural play space.
While Lindsay, Sabrina, and Jeff went with Mary and Kenny to unload the logs and reload the truck with bamboo for a play space teepee, the rest of us spent half an hour trying to track down Chris’ phone (Chris, Amanda, and Melissa) which he thought had fallen from his belt while he scouted logs, setting off miniature fireworks (Kathy, Traci, and I), or sitting in the van (Roy). Chris later found, upon our return to the mansion this evening, that he had left his phone here today. He had 28 missed calls from Melissa.
We headed over to Druid Hill Park, the park through which we cross almost daily on our way to the P&P office, and settled in for an afternoon of EcoFest by Druid Hill Lake. My first task was helping at the composting station, making sure people knew what could be composted and raising awareness about composting and recycling. Jeff and I had a chill time hanging out there for the first hour of the event, which ran from noon to near six, and I had a great conversation with Peter, one of the co-founders of Waste Neutral, the company which ran the composting station. We enjoyed free Chipotle food for lunch, a major perk of being an EcoFest volunteer.
I took a break, as we had been encouraged to do, to wander through the rest of the 30-ish tents and tables set up on the path. I collected free literature about lots of cool programs and acquired both coloring books and a radon test kit as give-aways. I love environmental festivals. My wandering, however, was interrupted when I was just over halfway through the tables; it was time to mulch. Somehow, even though we’d been told to do our tasks for a few hours and wander some helping where possible, there was mulch. A big pile of mulch arrived and we were asked to spread it around the trees in the field behind the EcoFest tables. I thus got to spend 45 minutes of my festival afternoon with a pitchfork, a wheelbarrow, and lots of mulch. Mulch, you’ll always find us. We understand.
I took a break from mulching to return to the compost truck then soon transitioned to the children’s play space. This was an area stocked with a tire swing, a Traci-assembled bamboo teepee, a rope, and lots of logs and cuts of wood to play on and around as kids saw fit. The idea was to provide parents insight into the possibilities for creating a natural playground for their kids rather than spending lots of money on some fancy metal-and-plastic play structure. This totally resonated with me as I watched the kids play. While the tire swing was an obvious crowd-pleaser, the rope also found its followers. Some used it as a jumprope; one boy dragged it around for about twenty minutes proclaiming himself a cowboy. I stationed myself at the water chutes, where two hollow logs were propped up to drain into metal bins half-filled with water. Small children painted water onto the logs with paintbrushes, poured water in them with plastic cups, made soup in the bins with clovers and grass, cleaned out the inside of the logs with sticks and water, made wood-and-clover pizza using the log as an oven, used water from one cup to knock down three more full cups as it rushed down the log, and much more. I loved watching their creativity and imagination in action.
The difference in approach among age groups was especially striking to me. Older kids, beginning around age six or so, would come up and ask me what they were meant to do with the water chutes then try a couple of things before wandering off again. Their expectation, it seemed, was that they would be told how to play, given a direction for productive action. Younger kids, on the other hand, engaged freely in uninhibited play. They might begin by pouring water down the log, but quickly progressed into a million other activities. We tend to provide kids with play structures that we think would be fun for them; they are, but so too are logs and water and simple mud pies. Their imaginations will make the rest. It’s fantastic to watch a small child create a universe out of a log and a paintbrush.
We began breaking down the play space when the day cooled after five (we had planned to leave at 5 but they were in desperate need of volunteers for event break-down) and managed to wrangle ten free volunteer t-shirts before we headed out at six. They had been concerned there wouldn’t be enough, but fortunately there were. Free t-shirts from ISPs and volunteer days are a huge part of the NTrip experience and we were psyched to begin our collection.
The evening was your typical excellent Saturday night. The Vanimal is grounded (i.e. unable to be taken out for social purposes) due to a recent incident involving its rear bumper and a guardrail, but friends from Wolf Five obligingly picked up Traci, Roy, and I for yet another wonderful dessert social at the Paper Moon Diner. Once again, I laughed so hard I teared up. There’s just something about that place.
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