Ahh, the joys of sociology....
On Tuesday, we were finally able to meet with Tom to discuss the agenda for our first meeting. After Monday’s class, Sarah, Sam and I were feeling a little concerned that we had not yet met officially with our residents. Adding to that concern was the fact that we hadn’t met with Tom for over a week, and had no idea what would be happening at the meeting. I typed up a rough draft of an agenda for the meeting before we met Tom and it turned out that Tom had made his own agenda. We spent a long time compromising between the two and figuring out in what order we would discuss each topic we wanted to cover. Tom was keen on Sarah, Sam, and I running the majority of the meeting, so in the end Tom only talked about his job as a supervisor and then explained an outcome based model to organizing a project.
We arrived at the ENA with great anxiety the evening of our meeting. Before we had arrived, Greg had stopped by and explained to Tom that although he would not be able to attend the meeting this week, he was still interested in participating. Someone in his family (we haven’t figured out who, yet) died recently, so Tom gave him the forms we were handing out at the meeting and explained what would be going on. Many people had informed us that they would attend the meeting, but we really didn’t know what to expect. My heart jumped when I saw Amy and John approaching the door. I wasn’t sure if they would end up coming because Amy works so much. I know they had to sacrifice a lot to make the meeting. Soon more families began to arrive, many with their kids, (Sarah saved the day by convincing her friend to baby-sit) and it still wasn’t seven yet. Talking with the families who came, most of them had canceled prior engagements to come to the meeting. It was encouraging that they were already so interested in the program. At 7pm, we had 16 families and the room was packed. We started the meeting by playing a variation of a game we heard about in class on Monday. Before the meeting, we laid masking tape on the floor of the ENA, creating a smaller version of Bellaire Street. We then had all the families line up in the order their homes appeared on the street and introduce themselves, the house they lived in, and one defining characteristic of their home. Finally, Sarah, Sam, Tom, and I reintroduced ourselves, jumping into corners of the room to represent the different corners of the country we come from. It seemed to work, neighbors had to talk to each other a lot to figure out in what order to line up, especially because their were some gaps from households that did not attend the meeting. After everyone sat down again, we passed around cookies and donuts and served drinks. As soon as the food appeared, the room became much louder. Food has amazing powers!
I was in the middle of laying the ground-rules for the meeting (keeping to the agenda, not complaining about neighborhood problems yet, etc) and discussing the purpose of building blocks when Sue’s family and José showed up. I was so excited to see José (who does not speak a lot of English) because I had translated our forms into Spanish for him and the other Hispanic families in the hopes that they would come. He was having trouble understanding everything that was going on in the meeting, so I sat with him and translated things he didn’t understand throughout the rest of the meeting. It was a very interesting experience because I felt removed from the rest of the room, as if José and I were having our own conversation apart from the rest of the meeting. A couple of times when I returned to the front of the room to talk about another topic on the agenda, I had to work really hard to speak in English. I wanted to slip into Spanish. After the meeting, José and I were talking and he asked me if building blocks could help him fix his . I couldn’t understand what he wanted to know if we could fix, so I kept asking him to explain it. It turns out, he was talking about his heater but he was saying ‘heater’ in English and because I was in Spanish mode, I could not figure out what he was trying to say. It took him translating ‘heater’ back into Spanish before I understood what was going on. I told him that we only work on exterior home improvements, and he asked if there were any organizations in town that could help him find the money to buy a new heater. Apparently, his heater doesn’t work at all and he had to survive the entire winter without any heat. It sounds like he needs the whole heating system replaced because his heater, from what I understood, pumps hot water in pipes around the house to raise the temperature. I told him I would look into places that might be able to help him, but I am not really sure where to begin. I am going to go back and visit him and help him fill out the homework we handed out at the meeting.
Although our meeting ended fairly promptly at 8:10, more people than José lingered far longer into the evening. Jane and Sue and Margaret and their families all stayed for over an hour chatting with Tom, Sam, Sarah, and I. Several of them would like help filling out their project estimate forms, and Sarah, Sam and I were more than willing to help them, but Tom suggested that we not so that they won’t rely on us as much. I understand what he is saying, but I think that many of them feel overwhelmed by the ‘homework’ they have to complete, and not all of it is very clear. I think they also are convinced that the stakes are very high: that if they fill out something incorrectly they will be considered ineligible for the program. When Sam visited Miriam on Saturday, she helped her fill out her forms and when I went to talk with Miriam on Sunday, she was immensely appreciative of Sam’s effort because she didn’t know where to begin. She said that it didn’t feel like Sam was doing the work for her, but rather that she was helping her make sense of it all and feel more confident in what she was putting down. I have this gut feeling that many of the other residents are feeling the same way and that we will lose them if we don’t give them any support. So Sarah and I are going to return to the neighborhood Tuesday morning and afternoon to see how things are going.
Sarah and I were planning on visiting with the residents on Sunday afternoon, bringing them cookies and asking how things were going since the meeting. Unfortunately, Sarah had an emergency where she had to go to Chicago and could no longer visit Bellaire Street with me. I was a little hesitant about going by myself for a while. Sarah and I work really well together and I thought that maybe her not being able to come was a sign that I should use the time to study for my cell biology exam on Monday and finish my vertebrate biology homework. I had almost convinced myself not to go when I remembered how wonderful it felt to have so many people come to our meeting. I think a large part of why they all came had to do with our efforts door-knocking and I didn’t want to leave them without any support until Tuesday. So, I stuffed cookies in my bike bag and headed toward Edison. I had four hours until my SI session so I figured I would be able to check in with most of the residents. I especially wanted to talk with the few families that weren’t able to come to the meeting to see what happened.
I thought it would be no different being in the neighborhood by myself, but the truth is that when I got there, I was really nervous. I walked up and down Reed Court, a street perpendicular to Bellaire Street, before I got the courage to knock on the first door. I talked with Tomin and Joe first. They are a Caucasian middle-aged couple who live in the house closest to the creek. Sam talked with them previously, but I had never met them. They explained that they had every intention of coming to the meeting, but that they lost track of time and at 7:30 realized they were supposed to be at the meeting. They promised they would come to the one this week and I made arrangements to drop off the forms they would need early Tuesday morning. I was feeling a little more confident after talking with them. Next, I knocked on Miriam’s door. Miriam also has a good relationship with Sam already, so I had to remind her who I was. She immediately invited me in to her home to chat, exclaiming what a wonderful visit she had with Sam the day before. I walked in, expecting to be there for no more than a few minutes, when she asked me if I would like a cup of tea. I said sure and we sat at her kitchen table with Raggedy Ann mugs of white tea and my cookies and began to talk. The first thing she told me about was her cat, Freckles, because I noticed the cat food in her kitchen. Freckles is eleven years old and hates it when Miriam reads the newspaper because she has to take a break from petting him. He is orange and white with black spots on his nose, but didn’t appear until right before I had to leave. Miriam was very impressed because usually he never comes out to meet visitors. Apparently, Miriam started keeping cats because her daughter liked them as a child, but Miriam is much more partial to dogs. Nevertheless, she sustains a small pack of neighborhood cats by leaving food out for them on the back porch. We had a lengthy discussion about the travesty of stray cats and dogs and whether it is better to feed them or let them starve. I asked her a little more about her daughter. She is 50 and lives in Lansing. She has been married twice, something that Miriam seems conflicted about: although because of her religious background, she thinks that people should stay together, she is impressed that her daughter had enough courage to survive on her own. Her daughter is an artist who draws beautiful pictures, mainly of science fiction characters (she showed me lots of photos of the artwork). She also has a son, who had two children. Her granddaughter is a freshman at a college in Wisconsin and wanted to be a marine biologist until she failed freshman biology. Her grandson goes to college part time and is engaged to a pre-veterinary student at MSU. Miriam’s son’s family comes to visit her each Christmas, which is one of her favorite times of year. Miriam didn’t have a very good relationship with her husband. They had very different interests and priorities, but they “stuck together because they didn’t have any other choice”. She almost seemed jealous of her daughter’s ability to leave her husbands. Miriam’s husband was an architectural draftsman who worked a consulting firm in Kalamazoo. Their favorite thing to do was take road trips around the country. Miriam told me of one trip when they were stuck at a national park in the Appalacian mountains and had to take everything out of their station wagon and sleep in the car, which Miriam described as “a coffin that smelled like burlap”. (They had to keep burlap in the windows so their cat wouldn’t escape).
Miriam has lived in her home on Bellaire Street since she was 19 years old (that was 60 years ago). And although she never thought she would stay in one place for so long, she couldn’t dream of leaving her home now, even though her son and daughter are pressuring her to buy an apartment. Her home was recently the victim of an attempted break-in, which concerned her a lot. Freckles helps her to be brave, though. She spends a lot of time with her sister, who lives in Kalamazoo and is also a widow, and in her spare time she really likes to read mysteries. Not scary mysteries, though. She likes Agatha Christy because she remains separated from the story line. When she was explaining how scared she gets, she exclaimed, “I’m 79 years old and I still can’t watch Bambi, for God’s sake!”
When Miriam was pointing out another drawing by her daughter, I happened to see the clock on her wall. I had been talking with her for over three hours and had completely missed the SI session I was supposed to run that evening. I eventually found a way to excuse myself, telling her that I had to run to a meeting. I still don’t know where the time went. I got back to my room just as the sun was setting. I hadn’t accomplished anything that I had originally set out to do, but I felt like my visit to Edison was fruitful nonetheless. I had to quickly send out an e-mail to my chemistry class with the SI worksheet and an apology for missing the session. Fortunately, they were very understanding today in class. Upon reflecting on my visit with Miriam, I became concerned that Sam would be worried that I was competing for her unique relationship with Miriam. So, I sent her an e-mail as well, explaining what I accomplished (and what I didn’t) in the neighborhood and I hope when I talk with her tonight she will be okay with that.
Monday, April 18, 2005
breaking up is hard to do...
On Saturday night, I broke up with my 'boyfriend' of a few months. I had been being very unfair to him because I am so busy I never had any time to hang out with him. And school was definitely my top priority, then work, then supporting some of my closest friends and then if I had free time I would hang out with him. It must have been pretty frustrating for him. He would stop by and I couldn't even stop typing my essay that would be due the next day because I literally get up at 5am and start studying and preparing for the day, then finally stop studying around 11pm and read for an hour before I go to sleep. I wasn't in love with him, either. He was very romantic, but it got quite annoying after a while. I guess my mom has ruined me for all that stuff :) I hate it when guys hold the door open for me and make me go in before me. And in a strange twist, I have discovered that I don't really like being told that I am beautiful because that is not who I want to be. I want to be seen as an intelligent, passionate person who is concerned about other people, not her looks. Anyway, despite all this, it is still difficult to break up with someone. On the upside, we had one of the most fruitful discussions ever afterwards.
Thursday, April 14, 2005
building blocks, second week
sorry for the delay, here is what has been going on with building blocks. We have our first formal meeting with the residents tonight, so wish me luck :). I will write about it soon.
Since we decided to wait a week to hold our first meeting, early this week Sarah, Sam and I were back to door-knocking. We headed to Bellaire Street around 10 am on Tuesday, hoping to get in contact with several people we still had not met. Unfortunately, we did not meet anyone we hadn’t already talked with. As we were heading back to the car, Sam and I decided to try knocking on Mary’s door again. Mary, a middle-aged Hispanic, was in the middle of dinner when we knocked on her door last week and was not happy to be interrupted. We thought that since she has a young son, Javier, she would be up at 10 am. This assumption was further carried by the muted cries of a toddler emerging from the house. Although I was hesitant to interrupt Mary when she was trying to calm Javier, Sam thought that his would be one of our only times to talk with her so we knocked on the door. There was no answer. I knocked again, louder. Still no answer. As we were walking away from Mary’s home, Sam noticed a side door and knocked on it. No one answered. Confused and frustrated, we continued toward Sarah’s car, but a couple of seconds later, the side door to Mary’s home opened. Our assumptions were wrong. We had awoken Mary and again tried to talk with her at a very inopportune time. She asked us to come back another time.
As we walked up the second block on Bellaire Street, we noticed a woman sitting on her front porch. Sarah had already talked with her husband and he had sounded somewhat interested. We decided this would not only be a good opportunity to remind her about the meeting, but also for her to meet Sam and I (one of the downsides to the way we approached door-knocking is that half of Bellaire Street is very familiar with Sam and me and the other half is very familiar with Sarah). The woman, a Caucasian in her mid-50’s, introduced herself as Suzanne and to our surprise had seen the flier on the kitchen counter and was very excited about coming to our first meeting. She was watching her grandchildren for Spring Break but ushered us into her backyard to show us her ornamental grasses. The first thing that I noticed about Suzanne was how willing she was to share things with people. Not only did she immediately show complete strangers the garden she took so much pride in, but she soon started asking us if we would like some of her hostas or ebony mambo grass. If not, she suggested that she could donate some to the other neighbors participating in Building Blocks. Her garden was beautiful; the entire back yard had been transformed into a haven overflowing with last summer’s remnants of grasses, tomatoes, and flowers. Overhead, wind chimes and bird feeders crisscrossed on twine strung between her house and the trees. Stone paths wound throughout and there was a prominent strawberry patch that Suzanne was quite proud of. We continued to chat with her while her grandchildren chased each other with super-soakers and soon delved into deeper conversation.
Suzanne, like many Bellaire Street residents, works third shift and has been working at the same factory for around 25 years. She works in manufacturing and is very keen that she is working in a ‘man’s world’. She has apparently been in training for shift manager for a very long time but never actually gets promoted, to her frustration. Her husband injured his back in his previous manufacturing job and so is now unable to work. I think that Suzanne is very proud of the fact that she is now supporting her and her husband on her income. A couple of years ago, Suzanne decided to get her GED. She recounted for us how wonderful it was when she realized she “was the smart one”, not her husband and the he really couldn’t push her around anymore. It seems like Suzanne’s relationship with her husband has changed a lot over the years, from him basically supporting her and she in turn fulfilling a traditional role of housewife, to Suzanne entirely supporting him with an amazingly strong sense of self.
As we turned the conversation back to building blocks, Suzanne began to tell her who, from her perspective, would participate. She first talked about some of the homeowners. Especially those who like her had lived in the neighborhood for a long time. She stressed how they wanted to take care of their homes, although sometimes there was not enough money to do it properly. When we told her of some of the other people who had shown interest in the program, she seemed surprised. “But they’re renters”, she claimed. “They don’t care about their homes.” We gently suggested that just because they are renters doesn’t necessarily mean that they don’t want to upkeep their homes and Suzanne agreed that she liked Sophie Perez, a renter across the street. Sophie is a single mom and often uses Suzanne for support and advice. I think Suzanne enjoys helping Sophie because she wants Sophie to survive as a strong, self-sufficient woman. Suzanne, however, was initially not interested in meeting the renters next door to her. “They don’t care about their home,” she said, “and they keep me up playing loud music all the time.” We told her that in fact they were interested in the program, too and that maybe this would be a good opportunity for Suzanne to talk with them, get to know them better and let them know that their music bothers her. “Yeah, I will show them the wrath of Suzanne,” Suzanne responded. Yikes! That was not quite what I had in mind. I think we will have to carefully watch how Suzanne interacts with some of the renters. She is very clear and upfront and I think could upset some of her neighbors with her preconceptions of them.
Thursday afternoon, Sam and I returned to Bellaire Street to try and catch up with some people we were unable to meet on Tuesday. To our surprise, our visit was very successful. We thought that since we got there around 6 pm everyone would be eating dinner and that we would be interrupting them. However, we met Greg’s wife, Sue’s daughter, Amy’s husband, and Chris Briggs. We had never met Greg or his wife because they were apparently on vacation in Cancun. Sally, his wife, had received our flier as well as talked with May Willie and was quite excited about the first meeting. Both Sally and Greg are African American, pTomably in their mid-40’s, and have two teenage children. When Sam first spoke with Sue (a young African American single mom), she barely opened the door; she seemed very frightened. We spoke with her teenage daughter on Thursday, who was babysitting her brothers and sisters. She seemed like a very responsible person for being so young. She often takes care of her siblings and is very involved in running her home. She and her mom had been whether or not to participate in Building Blocks over dinner. She promised us she would try and convince her mom to come to our meeting. Amy (Caucasian, mid-30’s) was initially very tentative about participating because she works 3rd shift and was concerned about the time commitment but her husband, John (Caucasian, mid-30’s), had seen the flier on the table and was very excited about coming to the meeting. Chris Briggs, an middle aged African American with two teenage children and married to a Caucasian woman, was very excited about the first meeting. He mentioned several times how he and the neighbors across the street were planning on coming together. It was exciting to see neighbors pressuring each other to get involved. He also initially said that he knew all his neighbors really well because of his kids. Chris lives on the side of Bellaire Street closest to the stream and when we mentioned Andrew and some other kids who lived on the other block, asking if his kids played with them, Chris quickly retorted, “no. We don’t really associate with the people up there. We stick to our own street and they stick to theirs.” I hadn’t really noticed before, but there did seem to be a distinct separation between the two blocks. The kids who knew each other so well and constantly played outside on one block never ventured to the next block. I hadn’t ever seen kids on Chris’s block (except Elizabeth’s). I think that one of our big tasks will be joining these two blocks together more, especially when it comes to working on houses. I think there might be a tendency for people to work only on homes on their own block; both due to this separation and that those houses will be physically closer.
Despite our successful attempts at door-knocking this week, some frustrating things happened, too. I am the coordinator of donations, so I asked several bakeries if they would be willing to donate day-old baked goods to our first meeting. I was unilaterally disappointed. The first store I went to was Kleins, since I know they donate their bagels to Kalamazoo College and have donated to Building Blocks in the past. The manager there that day said that in fact they now donate only to children’s charities and Loaves and Fishes. I think I should go back and talk with a different manager, but it was nevertheless disappointing. I felt like he wasn’t being completely honest with me. I also tried to solicit donations from Panera Bread, since I heard they were also very generous to Building Blocks in the past. There, the manager was very helpful, but said that I would need to contact their corporate headquarters and that the requests could take up to eight weeks. I was talking to my roommate, Jess Walsh, about my frustrations and she suggested that I draft a letter on Edison Neighborhood Association letterhead and get Tom and Pat and maybe ever Terry to sign it. I think that was a really good suggestion, because by myself I really have no credibility so I can see why companies would be wary of agreeing to donations without any proof that I am representing a non-profit organization.
The last rather frustration part of the week was Tom canceling our meeting where we were going to form an agenda for our first meeting. He told us he would e-mail us if he couldn’t make the meeting, but no one had received anything from him yet. About an hour before we were supposed to meet, I tried to call Sam to remind her about the meeting and set up another time to go door-knocking. I accidentally dialed Tom’s number instead and after I realized I was not in fact talking to Sam, he told me that he would have to cancel the meeting. He was very apologetic and I completely understand that he has a really busy schedule, too. I just wish he had let us know a little earlier. I don’t know when he would have told us if I hadn’t misdialed Sam’s phone number and reached him, instead.
Since we decided to wait a week to hold our first meeting, early this week Sarah, Sam and I were back to door-knocking. We headed to Bellaire Street around 10 am on Tuesday, hoping to get in contact with several people we still had not met. Unfortunately, we did not meet anyone we hadn’t already talked with. As we were heading back to the car, Sam and I decided to try knocking on Mary’s door again. Mary, a middle-aged Hispanic, was in the middle of dinner when we knocked on her door last week and was not happy to be interrupted. We thought that since she has a young son, Javier, she would be up at 10 am. This assumption was further carried by the muted cries of a toddler emerging from the house. Although I was hesitant to interrupt Mary when she was trying to calm Javier, Sam thought that his would be one of our only times to talk with her so we knocked on the door. There was no answer. I knocked again, louder. Still no answer. As we were walking away from Mary’s home, Sam noticed a side door and knocked on it. No one answered. Confused and frustrated, we continued toward Sarah’s car, but a couple of seconds later, the side door to Mary’s home opened. Our assumptions were wrong. We had awoken Mary and again tried to talk with her at a very inopportune time. She asked us to come back another time.
As we walked up the second block on Bellaire Street, we noticed a woman sitting on her front porch. Sarah had already talked with her husband and he had sounded somewhat interested. We decided this would not only be a good opportunity to remind her about the meeting, but also for her to meet Sam and I (one of the downsides to the way we approached door-knocking is that half of Bellaire Street is very familiar with Sam and me and the other half is very familiar with Sarah). The woman, a Caucasian in her mid-50’s, introduced herself as Suzanne and to our surprise had seen the flier on the kitchen counter and was very excited about coming to our first meeting. She was watching her grandchildren for Spring Break but ushered us into her backyard to show us her ornamental grasses. The first thing that I noticed about Suzanne was how willing she was to share things with people. Not only did she immediately show complete strangers the garden she took so much pride in, but she soon started asking us if we would like some of her hostas or ebony mambo grass. If not, she suggested that she could donate some to the other neighbors participating in Building Blocks. Her garden was beautiful; the entire back yard had been transformed into a haven overflowing with last summer’s remnants of grasses, tomatoes, and flowers. Overhead, wind chimes and bird feeders crisscrossed on twine strung between her house and the trees. Stone paths wound throughout and there was a prominent strawberry patch that Suzanne was quite proud of. We continued to chat with her while her grandchildren chased each other with super-soakers and soon delved into deeper conversation.
Suzanne, like many Bellaire Street residents, works third shift and has been working at the same factory for around 25 years. She works in manufacturing and is very keen that she is working in a ‘man’s world’. She has apparently been in training for shift manager for a very long time but never actually gets promoted, to her frustration. Her husband injured his back in his previous manufacturing job and so is now unable to work. I think that Suzanne is very proud of the fact that she is now supporting her and her husband on her income. A couple of years ago, Suzanne decided to get her GED. She recounted for us how wonderful it was when she realized she “was the smart one”, not her husband and the he really couldn’t push her around anymore. It seems like Suzanne’s relationship with her husband has changed a lot over the years, from him basically supporting her and she in turn fulfilling a traditional role of housewife, to Suzanne entirely supporting him with an amazingly strong sense of self.
As we turned the conversation back to building blocks, Suzanne began to tell her who, from her perspective, would participate. She first talked about some of the homeowners. Especially those who like her had lived in the neighborhood for a long time. She stressed how they wanted to take care of their homes, although sometimes there was not enough money to do it properly. When we told her of some of the other people who had shown interest in the program, she seemed surprised. “But they’re renters”, she claimed. “They don’t care about their homes.” We gently suggested that just because they are renters doesn’t necessarily mean that they don’t want to upkeep their homes and Suzanne agreed that she liked Sophie Perez, a renter across the street. Sophie is a single mom and often uses Suzanne for support and advice. I think Suzanne enjoys helping Sophie because she wants Sophie to survive as a strong, self-sufficient woman. Suzanne, however, was initially not interested in meeting the renters next door to her. “They don’t care about their home,” she said, “and they keep me up playing loud music all the time.” We told her that in fact they were interested in the program, too and that maybe this would be a good opportunity for Suzanne to talk with them, get to know them better and let them know that their music bothers her. “Yeah, I will show them the wrath of Suzanne,” Suzanne responded. Yikes! That was not quite what I had in mind. I think we will have to carefully watch how Suzanne interacts with some of the renters. She is very clear and upfront and I think could upset some of her neighbors with her preconceptions of them.
Thursday afternoon, Sam and I returned to Bellaire Street to try and catch up with some people we were unable to meet on Tuesday. To our surprise, our visit was very successful. We thought that since we got there around 6 pm everyone would be eating dinner and that we would be interrupting them. However, we met Greg’s wife, Sue’s daughter, Amy’s husband, and Chris Briggs. We had never met Greg or his wife because they were apparently on vacation in Cancun. Sally, his wife, had received our flier as well as talked with May Willie and was quite excited about the first meeting. Both Sally and Greg are African American, pTomably in their mid-40’s, and have two teenage children. When Sam first spoke with Sue (a young African American single mom), she barely opened the door; she seemed very frightened. We spoke with her teenage daughter on Thursday, who was babysitting her brothers and sisters. She seemed like a very responsible person for being so young. She often takes care of her siblings and is very involved in running her home. She and her mom had been whether or not to participate in Building Blocks over dinner. She promised us she would try and convince her mom to come to our meeting. Amy (Caucasian, mid-30’s) was initially very tentative about participating because she works 3rd shift and was concerned about the time commitment but her husband, John (Caucasian, mid-30’s), had seen the flier on the table and was very excited about coming to the meeting. Chris Briggs, an middle aged African American with two teenage children and married to a Caucasian woman, was very excited about the first meeting. He mentioned several times how he and the neighbors across the street were planning on coming together. It was exciting to see neighbors pressuring each other to get involved. He also initially said that he knew all his neighbors really well because of his kids. Chris lives on the side of Bellaire Street closest to the stream and when we mentioned Andrew and some other kids who lived on the other block, asking if his kids played with them, Chris quickly retorted, “no. We don’t really associate with the people up there. We stick to our own street and they stick to theirs.” I hadn’t really noticed before, but there did seem to be a distinct separation between the two blocks. The kids who knew each other so well and constantly played outside on one block never ventured to the next block. I hadn’t ever seen kids on Chris’s block (except Elizabeth’s). I think that one of our big tasks will be joining these two blocks together more, especially when it comes to working on houses. I think there might be a tendency for people to work only on homes on their own block; both due to this separation and that those houses will be physically closer.
Despite our successful attempts at door-knocking this week, some frustrating things happened, too. I am the coordinator of donations, so I asked several bakeries if they would be willing to donate day-old baked goods to our first meeting. I was unilaterally disappointed. The first store I went to was Kleins, since I know they donate their bagels to Kalamazoo College and have donated to Building Blocks in the past. The manager there that day said that in fact they now donate only to children’s charities and Loaves and Fishes. I think I should go back and talk with a different manager, but it was nevertheless disappointing. I felt like he wasn’t being completely honest with me. I also tried to solicit donations from Panera Bread, since I heard they were also very generous to Building Blocks in the past. There, the manager was very helpful, but said that I would need to contact their corporate headquarters and that the requests could take up to eight weeks. I was talking to my roommate, Jess Walsh, about my frustrations and she suggested that I draft a letter on Edison Neighborhood Association letterhead and get Tom and Pat and maybe ever Terry to sign it. I think that was a really good suggestion, because by myself I really have no credibility so I can see why companies would be wary of agreeing to donations without any proof that I am representing a non-profit organization.
The last rather frustration part of the week was Tom canceling our meeting where we were going to form an agenda for our first meeting. He told us he would e-mail us if he couldn’t make the meeting, but no one had received anything from him yet. About an hour before we were supposed to meet, I tried to call Sam to remind her about the meeting and set up another time to go door-knocking. I accidentally dialed Tom’s number instead and after I realized I was not in fact talking to Sam, he told me that he would have to cancel the meeting. He was very apologetic and I completely understand that he has a really busy schedule, too. I just wish he had let us know a little earlier. I don’t know when he would have told us if I hadn’t misdialed Sam’s phone number and reached him, instead.
Tuesday, April 12, 2005
my brother is amazing
check out this front page article in the Living section of the Oregonian on the underground newspaper my brother started after being fired as editor of his high-school newspaper :)
http://www.oregonlive.com/living/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/living/1113300166252820.xml
http://www.oregonlive.com/living/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/living/1113300166252820.xml
Wednesday, April 06, 2005
sky dance
Last night, after I got off of work, I rode my bicycle out to the arboretum to see a a woodcock dance. I was really worried that I would get there after he had finished and miss the spectacular display, but as I walked up to the meadow where I thought he would be, I could here his chirping. I sat there for about half an hour before he started to dance and then watched his dance for at least an hour and a half. It was very dark (10:30) when I finished the trip home, but it was totally worth it. Because I cannot explain (without a very embarassing demonstration) what happens during this dance, here is an exerpt from Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac (a much more eloquent description then I would be capable of):
I owned my farm for two years before learning that the sky dance is to be seen over my woods every evening in April and May. Since we discovered it, my family and I have been reluctant to miss even a single performance.
The show begins on the first warm evening in April at exactly 6:50 pm. The curtain goes up one minute later each day until 1 June when the time is 7:50. This sliding scale is dictated by vanity, the dancer demanding a romantic light intensity of exactly 0.05 foot candles. Do not be late, and sit quietly, lest he fly away in a huff.
The stage props, like the opening hours, reflect the temperamental demands of the performer. The stage must be an open amphitheater in woods or brush, and in its center there must be a mossy spot, a streak of sterile sand, a bare outcrop of rock, or a bare roadway. Why the male woodcock should be such a stickler for a bare dance floor puzzled me at first, but I now think it is a matter of legs. The woodcock's legs are short and his struttings cannot be executed to advantage in dense grass or weeds, nor could his lady see them there. I have more woodcocks than most farmers because I have more mossy sand, too poor to support grass.
Knowing the place and the hour, you can seat yourself under a bush to the east of the dance floor and wait, watching against the sunset for the woodcock's arrival. He flies in low from some neighboring thicket, alights on the bare moss, and at once begins the overture: a series of queer throaty peents spaced about two seconds apart, and sounding much like the summer call of the nighthawk.
Suddenly the peenting ceases and the bird flutters skyward in a series of wide spirals, emitting a musical twitter. Up and up he goes, the spirals steeper and smaller, the twittering louder and louder, until the performer is only a speck in the sky. Then, without warning, he tumbles like a crippled plane, giving voice in a soft liquid warble that a March bluebird might envy. At a few feet from the ground he levels off and returns to his peenting ground, usually to the exact spot where the performance began, and there resumes his peenting.
It is soon too dark to see the bird on the ground, but you can see his fight against the sky for an hour, which is the usual duration of the show. On moonlight nights, however, it may continue, at intervals, as long as the moon continues to shine.
At daybreak the whole show is repeated. In early April the final curtain falls at 5:15 am; the time advances two minutes a day until June, when the performance closes for the year at 3:15. Why the disparity in sliding scale? Alas, I fear that even romance tires, for it takes only a fifth as much light to stop the sky dance at dawn as suffices to start it at sunset.
It is fortunate, perhaps, that no matter how intently one studies the hundred little dramas of the woods and meadows, one can never learn all of the salient facts about any one of them. What I do not yet know about the sky dance is: where is the lady, and just what part, if any, does she play? I often see two woodcocks on a peenting ground, and the two sometimes fly together, but they never peent together. Is the second bird the hen or rival male?
Another unknown: is the twitter vocal, or is it mechanical? My friend, Bill Fenney, once clapped a net over a peenting bird and removed is outer primary wing feathers; thereafter it peented and warbled, but twittered no more. But one such experiment is hardly conclusive.
Another unknown: up to what stage of nesting does the male continue the sky dance? My daughter once saw a bird peenting within twenty yards of a nest containing hatched eggshells, but was this his lady's nest? Or is this secretive fellow possibly bigamous without our ever having found it out? These, and many other questions, remain mysteries of the deepening dusk.
The drama of the sky dance is enacted nightly on hundreds of farms, the owners of which sigh for entertainment, but harbor the illusion that it is to be sought in theaters. They life on the land, but not by the land.
The woodcock is a living refutation of the theory that the utility of a game bird is to serve as a target, or to pose gracefully on a slice of toast. No one would rather hunt woodcock in October than I, but since learning of the sky dance I find myself calling one or two bird enough. I must be sure that come April, there be no dearth of dancers in the sunset sky.
My friend Reid and I are riding back to the arboretum tomorrow night because his dance is rather addicting. We are going to try and hide in the bushes next to where he peens so we can be very close to him.
Did I mention yet that for my vertebrate biology class our first assignment is to memorize 50 bird calls and about 12 frog calls and that we go to the arboretum at dawn on saturdays to go bird watching? It's pretty much the coolist thing in the world. Now when I walk around campus or through the woods I have a completely different experience because I pay so much more attention to the sounds that are present. It still baffles my mind that sometimes I can identify them. I love biology!
I owned my farm for two years before learning that the sky dance is to be seen over my woods every evening in April and May. Since we discovered it, my family and I have been reluctant to miss even a single performance.
The show begins on the first warm evening in April at exactly 6:50 pm. The curtain goes up one minute later each day until 1 June when the time is 7:50. This sliding scale is dictated by vanity, the dancer demanding a romantic light intensity of exactly 0.05 foot candles. Do not be late, and sit quietly, lest he fly away in a huff.
The stage props, like the opening hours, reflect the temperamental demands of the performer. The stage must be an open amphitheater in woods or brush, and in its center there must be a mossy spot, a streak of sterile sand, a bare outcrop of rock, or a bare roadway. Why the male woodcock should be such a stickler for a bare dance floor puzzled me at first, but I now think it is a matter of legs. The woodcock's legs are short and his struttings cannot be executed to advantage in dense grass or weeds, nor could his lady see them there. I have more woodcocks than most farmers because I have more mossy sand, too poor to support grass.
Knowing the place and the hour, you can seat yourself under a bush to the east of the dance floor and wait, watching against the sunset for the woodcock's arrival. He flies in low from some neighboring thicket, alights on the bare moss, and at once begins the overture: a series of queer throaty peents spaced about two seconds apart, and sounding much like the summer call of the nighthawk.
Suddenly the peenting ceases and the bird flutters skyward in a series of wide spirals, emitting a musical twitter. Up and up he goes, the spirals steeper and smaller, the twittering louder and louder, until the performer is only a speck in the sky. Then, without warning, he tumbles like a crippled plane, giving voice in a soft liquid warble that a March bluebird might envy. At a few feet from the ground he levels off and returns to his peenting ground, usually to the exact spot where the performance began, and there resumes his peenting.
It is soon too dark to see the bird on the ground, but you can see his fight against the sky for an hour, which is the usual duration of the show. On moonlight nights, however, it may continue, at intervals, as long as the moon continues to shine.
At daybreak the whole show is repeated. In early April the final curtain falls at 5:15 am; the time advances two minutes a day until June, when the performance closes for the year at 3:15. Why the disparity in sliding scale? Alas, I fear that even romance tires, for it takes only a fifth as much light to stop the sky dance at dawn as suffices to start it at sunset.
It is fortunate, perhaps, that no matter how intently one studies the hundred little dramas of the woods and meadows, one can never learn all of the salient facts about any one of them. What I do not yet know about the sky dance is: where is the lady, and just what part, if any, does she play? I often see two woodcocks on a peenting ground, and the two sometimes fly together, but they never peent together. Is the second bird the hen or rival male?
Another unknown: is the twitter vocal, or is it mechanical? My friend, Bill Fenney, once clapped a net over a peenting bird and removed is outer primary wing feathers; thereafter it peented and warbled, but twittered no more. But one such experiment is hardly conclusive.
Another unknown: up to what stage of nesting does the male continue the sky dance? My daughter once saw a bird peenting within twenty yards of a nest containing hatched eggshells, but was this his lady's nest? Or is this secretive fellow possibly bigamous without our ever having found it out? These, and many other questions, remain mysteries of the deepening dusk.
The drama of the sky dance is enacted nightly on hundreds of farms, the owners of which sigh for entertainment, but harbor the illusion that it is to be sought in theaters. They life on the land, but not by the land.
The woodcock is a living refutation of the theory that the utility of a game bird is to serve as a target, or to pose gracefully on a slice of toast. No one would rather hunt woodcock in October than I, but since learning of the sky dance I find myself calling one or two bird enough. I must be sure that come April, there be no dearth of dancers in the sunset sky.
My friend Reid and I are riding back to the arboretum tomorrow night because his dance is rather addicting. We are going to try and hide in the bushes next to where he peens so we can be very close to him.
Did I mention yet that for my vertebrate biology class our first assignment is to memorize 50 bird calls and about 12 frog calls and that we go to the arboretum at dawn on saturdays to go bird watching? It's pretty much the coolist thing in the world. Now when I walk around campus or through the woods I have a completely different experience because I pay so much more attention to the sounds that are present. It still baffles my mind that sometimes I can identify them. I love biology!
Sunday, April 03, 2005
building blocks, first week
*all names and places have been changed to protect the identity of the residents*
Building blocks is a grant program set up by the cisty of Kalamazoo and a class I am taking this quarter teaches organizing skills through facilitation of this program. What follows is an account of some of my experiences the first week:
After experiencing my group’s interactions with our supervisor at the training session, I realized I was going to have to speak up a lot more. Sarah and Sam both have really strong personalities and I felt like they really dominated our introductory conversation with Tom. At first I think I felt a little excluded because Sarah and Sam already knew each other quite well and tended to have very personal conversations to which I didn’t feel I could contribute much. On Sunday night, the night before our first actual meeting with Tom, I decided to make a conscious effort to make an equal contribution to our conversation. I planned out how I would respond to different scenarios and felt pretty confident, but the next day as I sat in Rocket Cafe trying to take a more active role in the conversation I remembered that planning is much easier than executing. Sarah and Sam were both sitting on the same side of the table so I changed where I was sitting so Tom didn’t have to look in a different direction to make eye contact with me and then I just started talking, even if occasionally I was interjecting something Sam or Sarah was saying. Although it was very awkward for me at first to have to work so hard to remain a part of the dialogue, by the end of our conversation, I felt like I was making an equal contribution with very little effort. I think that changing my seat at the table really helped.
Most of the dialogue at our meeting focused around the flier we would hand out in our neighborhood. I think we all thought the meeting would be pretty short because we were just going to construct a one-page flier. However, we ended up sitting at Rocket Cafe for a couple of hours and getting to know each other more between composing the flier. After much discussion about specific wording and formatting, we came up with a flier that I think we were all excited about. It allowed people to quickly discern the purpose of building blocks and the steps they would need to take to participate without overly emphasizing the monetary aspect. We learned a lot more about Tom at our meeting as well. He has been a supervisor several times for building blocks and participated in the program several years ago. Right now he is unemployed so he feels like he can spend a lot of time as the supervisor, but he is very concerned that we will agree to complete projects that cannot be completed during the work weekends and that he will ultimately end up finishing them himself after the work weekends. I think that because of his experience Tom will be a wonderful asset for us as challenges present themselves. However, Tom also is very clear about what he wont do. He really does not want to work on any eaves troughs nor does he want to support any projects in the back yards of houses. I think that his experience has caused him to be slightly less receptive to innovative ways of attacking problems.
During our meeting at Rocket Cafe, we came up with two days to go door-knocking in our neighborhood during the next week since we had to get our flier approved on Thursday at the neighborhood association meeting. Only one of the times would be before second week. However, after class on Monday night, we all agreed that we should add another session before our next class. We tentatively agreed that we would wait until after our third attempt at door-knocking together to go out to Bellaire St. individually. I was relieved that we were planning more than two door-knocking attempts because it seemed like we were waiting a long time to start the process and that we could easily fall behind schedule. I was also a little worried about Tom’s willingness to accompany us door-knocking. I wasn’t sure how much he planned on participating in our door-knocking and I didn’t think I would be comfortable with him talking to residents when we first met them because I understood that as my responsibility as a student. Sarah, Sam, and I decided that we would talk to Tom about guidelines when we me to start door-knocking.
On Thursday, we had a joint meeting with the neighborhood association and the other groups working in the Hoover neighborhood. The meeting was really helpful in clarifying some of the confusing aspects of the policies of Hoover’s neighborhood association. We learned an interesting lesson on classifying people, too: two Hoover residents at the neighborhood got in a pretty heated discussion about the ‘kinds of people’ that live in Hoover. In suggesting that we also identify ourselves as Kalamazoo College students, one resident generalized all Hoover residents as ‘poor and proud’ and thus not likely to accept handouts from wealthy donors in the city. She used herself as an example, saying that she initially participated in building blocks because she thought it would help her student organizers earn class credit. However, another person at the meeting corrected her, saying that many residents of Hoover are well-educated and not very poor and choose to live there because the like the homes and the proximity to downtown. It was interesting to listen to their conversation because they didn’t seem to want to acknowledge that both people could coexist in Hoover.
That afternoon, it was a really nice day outside and I was feeling guilty about not having seen Bellaire St. yet so I rode my bike to Hoover and made a couple of loops up and down the two blocks that encompass our site. Although it was a warm sunny day, it was also a weekday and one of the things that struck me the most was the number of people who were outside. The only residents I saw were African American and there were a lot of kids playing in the street. Tom told us on Monday that most of the houses were one-story bungalows so I wasn’t expecting as many two-story homes. A stream flows perpendicular to one end of the court, there was one empty lot near the stream and many of the homes close to the stream were for sale. The top story of one of the homes on that block had burned in a fire and no one appeared to live there. The site was a lot more beautiful than I had expected it to be; the homes possessed a friendly character, I think because they were all close to the street, and the atmosphere on the street seemed more friendly than the atmosphere on Reed, the street I rode in on. I left the neighborhood really excited about door-knocking on Saturday.
Saturday afternoon we met Tom in the Hardings parking lot a block away from our site. We were all really embarrassed about arriving late, but Tom was very understanding; apparently he was late, too but had the good fortune to arrive a few minutes before us. To our surprise, before we could talk about the guidelines we wanted to set for door-knocking, Tom made it clear that he was just there to walk down the street and that he would not be talking to the residents. As we were walking to one end or Bellaire St. to start knocking on doors, we were stopped by Greg and Grant in between their two houses. They asked us what we were up to so we decided to talk to them first. I was caught off guard a little so I sort of fumbled my way through an explanation of building blocks but they were both kind enough to listen to me. Between jokes about the huge additions they wanted to add to their already massive houses, they told us they were very interested in the program. Their homes seemed to be the center of much of the activity in the neighborhood and their were several kids playing basketball in front of their homes. It turned out that Greg doesn’t actually live on Bellaire St. but that his two kids, Lashonda and a young boy, do. Grant lives with his mom in the house next door and they seemed to be pretty good friends. They also seemed to be pretty knowledgeable about their neighbors on Bellaire St. and were telling us about the people who lived around them. One of the first things I noticed was their view toward Hispanics. As we were knocking on another door, someone yelled to Sarah and me, “Some Mexicans live there, I don’t think they’re home”. I guess it wasn’t the comment itself but rather the way they emphasized Mexicans that made me take a second look at the block. Everyone who was outside was African American, even though Hoover has a reputation of having a large Hispanic population. As we continued knocking on doors, we met several Hispanic households, some with children, but they all stayed safely inside their houses. Javier and Jose came outside to talk with us but refused to leave their porch as we talked about possible landscaping projects. I noticed the same trend with the few Caucasian families we met. Julie, an elderly Caucasian woman, invited us inside her home to talk before she even knew who we were. Between the squeaks of her rabbit, the squawking of her bird and the soft spinning of her hamster’s wheel; she lamented that her grandchildren used to play outside all the time but that a long time ago the kids moved away and new people moved in and now she doesn’t really go outside anymore. She has two grandchildren who live with her as well and who are close in age to many of the kids we saw playing in the street but when her great-grandson did venture outside on his bike, he didn’t seem to want to interact with any of the kids who were already playing. From our conversation with Margaret, it seems like there may have been a large change in the racial composition of the neighborhood in the last 30 years or so from predominantly Caucasian to predominantly Hispanic and African American.
Sunday afternoon, Sarah, Sam and I headed back to Bellaire St., this time without Tom. There were people we needed to meet for the first time and others we needed to give more information to. As we began to walk down the street, Andrew ran up to us to say hello. We only managed to knock on one door before we were again drawn to Grant and Greg’s homes. This time, we met May Greg, Greg’s mom and the owner of the home where Greg’s kids live. She was very excited about the prospect of getting help to improve her yard as well as getting to know the few neighbors she has not already met. Every car that drove past Bellaire St. while we chatted with May somehow contained passengers who were related to her. She has met almost everyone on the block, although she doesn’t know many of their names. May seems like a very valuable resource because she is so well connected in the neighborhood. She was able to tell us the daily schedules of most of our neighbors and offered to give them fliers and talk about the program when she saw them. Despite the length of time we spent with May, we were unable to divulge any broader issues that she was worried about with her neighborhood because of how distracted she was with visitors. We are going to talk with her more on Tuesday and hopefully we will be able to have a more personal conversation with her. We knocked on the door of the next house on our list an again no one answered. We were about to give up when Sarah noticed some people working in the backyard. After we explained who we were to a teenage boy we met an amazing woman, Janet. It turned out that Janet actually lives on Bank St. and is planning on participating in building blocks in that site. Through our conversation, we discovered that she has epilepsy and MS, and possibly some other serious illnesses. Her husband is currently unemployed because he injured his hands and although they get workers compensation, they have $175 each month to live on after they pay for the rent on their house. They also have 8 children. Because her top priority is caring for her children, Janet has not been able to afford her medication for the past three days and is in a lot of pain. Despite this, she is spending the afternoon with her kids working in her neighbor’s yard. She mentioned her illnesses and the fact that she has no refrigerator, microwave or oven and only two functional burners on her stove casually; as side notes. What she was really worried about was finishing her work on her neighbor’s yard before she was in too much pain to continue. Inspired by Aditi’s visit yesterday, she had started cleaning her yard; an effort that quickly expanded into other yards as well. I was really amazed at how intent Janet was on maintaining her social capital with her neighbors in the face of the extreme financial challenges she is facing.
Building blocks is a grant program set up by the cisty of Kalamazoo and a class I am taking this quarter teaches organizing skills through facilitation of this program. What follows is an account of some of my experiences the first week:
After experiencing my group’s interactions with our supervisor at the training session, I realized I was going to have to speak up a lot more. Sarah and Sam both have really strong personalities and I felt like they really dominated our introductory conversation with Tom. At first I think I felt a little excluded because Sarah and Sam already knew each other quite well and tended to have very personal conversations to which I didn’t feel I could contribute much. On Sunday night, the night before our first actual meeting with Tom, I decided to make a conscious effort to make an equal contribution to our conversation. I planned out how I would respond to different scenarios and felt pretty confident, but the next day as I sat in Rocket Cafe trying to take a more active role in the conversation I remembered that planning is much easier than executing. Sarah and Sam were both sitting on the same side of the table so I changed where I was sitting so Tom didn’t have to look in a different direction to make eye contact with me and then I just started talking, even if occasionally I was interjecting something Sam or Sarah was saying. Although it was very awkward for me at first to have to work so hard to remain a part of the dialogue, by the end of our conversation, I felt like I was making an equal contribution with very little effort. I think that changing my seat at the table really helped.
Most of the dialogue at our meeting focused around the flier we would hand out in our neighborhood. I think we all thought the meeting would be pretty short because we were just going to construct a one-page flier. However, we ended up sitting at Rocket Cafe for a couple of hours and getting to know each other more between composing the flier. After much discussion about specific wording and formatting, we came up with a flier that I think we were all excited about. It allowed people to quickly discern the purpose of building blocks and the steps they would need to take to participate without overly emphasizing the monetary aspect. We learned a lot more about Tom at our meeting as well. He has been a supervisor several times for building blocks and participated in the program several years ago. Right now he is unemployed so he feels like he can spend a lot of time as the supervisor, but he is very concerned that we will agree to complete projects that cannot be completed during the work weekends and that he will ultimately end up finishing them himself after the work weekends. I think that because of his experience Tom will be a wonderful asset for us as challenges present themselves. However, Tom also is very clear about what he wont do. He really does not want to work on any eaves troughs nor does he want to support any projects in the back yards of houses. I think that his experience has caused him to be slightly less receptive to innovative ways of attacking problems.
During our meeting at Rocket Cafe, we came up with two days to go door-knocking in our neighborhood during the next week since we had to get our flier approved on Thursday at the neighborhood association meeting. Only one of the times would be before second week. However, after class on Monday night, we all agreed that we should add another session before our next class. We tentatively agreed that we would wait until after our third attempt at door-knocking together to go out to Bellaire St. individually. I was relieved that we were planning more than two door-knocking attempts because it seemed like we were waiting a long time to start the process and that we could easily fall behind schedule. I was also a little worried about Tom’s willingness to accompany us door-knocking. I wasn’t sure how much he planned on participating in our door-knocking and I didn’t think I would be comfortable with him talking to residents when we first met them because I understood that as my responsibility as a student. Sarah, Sam, and I decided that we would talk to Tom about guidelines when we me to start door-knocking.
On Thursday, we had a joint meeting with the neighborhood association and the other groups working in the Hoover neighborhood. The meeting was really helpful in clarifying some of the confusing aspects of the policies of Hoover’s neighborhood association. We learned an interesting lesson on classifying people, too: two Hoover residents at the neighborhood got in a pretty heated discussion about the ‘kinds of people’ that live in Hoover. In suggesting that we also identify ourselves as Kalamazoo College students, one resident generalized all Hoover residents as ‘poor and proud’ and thus not likely to accept handouts from wealthy donors in the city. She used herself as an example, saying that she initially participated in building blocks because she thought it would help her student organizers earn class credit. However, another person at the meeting corrected her, saying that many residents of Hoover are well-educated and not very poor and choose to live there because the like the homes and the proximity to downtown. It was interesting to listen to their conversation because they didn’t seem to want to acknowledge that both people could coexist in Hoover.
That afternoon, it was a really nice day outside and I was feeling guilty about not having seen Bellaire St. yet so I rode my bike to Hoover and made a couple of loops up and down the two blocks that encompass our site. Although it was a warm sunny day, it was also a weekday and one of the things that struck me the most was the number of people who were outside. The only residents I saw were African American and there were a lot of kids playing in the street. Tom told us on Monday that most of the houses were one-story bungalows so I wasn’t expecting as many two-story homes. A stream flows perpendicular to one end of the court, there was one empty lot near the stream and many of the homes close to the stream were for sale. The top story of one of the homes on that block had burned in a fire and no one appeared to live there. The site was a lot more beautiful than I had expected it to be; the homes possessed a friendly character, I think because they were all close to the street, and the atmosphere on the street seemed more friendly than the atmosphere on Reed, the street I rode in on. I left the neighborhood really excited about door-knocking on Saturday.
Saturday afternoon we met Tom in the Hardings parking lot a block away from our site. We were all really embarrassed about arriving late, but Tom was very understanding; apparently he was late, too but had the good fortune to arrive a few minutes before us. To our surprise, before we could talk about the guidelines we wanted to set for door-knocking, Tom made it clear that he was just there to walk down the street and that he would not be talking to the residents. As we were walking to one end or Bellaire St. to start knocking on doors, we were stopped by Greg and Grant in between their two houses. They asked us what we were up to so we decided to talk to them first. I was caught off guard a little so I sort of fumbled my way through an explanation of building blocks but they were both kind enough to listen to me. Between jokes about the huge additions they wanted to add to their already massive houses, they told us they were very interested in the program. Their homes seemed to be the center of much of the activity in the neighborhood and their were several kids playing basketball in front of their homes. It turned out that Greg doesn’t actually live on Bellaire St. but that his two kids, Lashonda and a young boy, do. Grant lives with his mom in the house next door and they seemed to be pretty good friends. They also seemed to be pretty knowledgeable about their neighbors on Bellaire St. and were telling us about the people who lived around them. One of the first things I noticed was their view toward Hispanics. As we were knocking on another door, someone yelled to Sarah and me, “Some Mexicans live there, I don’t think they’re home”. I guess it wasn’t the comment itself but rather the way they emphasized Mexicans that made me take a second look at the block. Everyone who was outside was African American, even though Hoover has a reputation of having a large Hispanic population. As we continued knocking on doors, we met several Hispanic households, some with children, but they all stayed safely inside their houses. Javier and Jose came outside to talk with us but refused to leave their porch as we talked about possible landscaping projects. I noticed the same trend with the few Caucasian families we met. Julie, an elderly Caucasian woman, invited us inside her home to talk before she even knew who we were. Between the squeaks of her rabbit, the squawking of her bird and the soft spinning of her hamster’s wheel; she lamented that her grandchildren used to play outside all the time but that a long time ago the kids moved away and new people moved in and now she doesn’t really go outside anymore. She has two grandchildren who live with her as well and who are close in age to many of the kids we saw playing in the street but when her great-grandson did venture outside on his bike, he didn’t seem to want to interact with any of the kids who were already playing. From our conversation with Margaret, it seems like there may have been a large change in the racial composition of the neighborhood in the last 30 years or so from predominantly Caucasian to predominantly Hispanic and African American.
Sunday afternoon, Sarah, Sam and I headed back to Bellaire St., this time without Tom. There were people we needed to meet for the first time and others we needed to give more information to. As we began to walk down the street, Andrew ran up to us to say hello. We only managed to knock on one door before we were again drawn to Grant and Greg’s homes. This time, we met May Greg, Greg’s mom and the owner of the home where Greg’s kids live. She was very excited about the prospect of getting help to improve her yard as well as getting to know the few neighbors she has not already met. Every car that drove past Bellaire St. while we chatted with May somehow contained passengers who were related to her. She has met almost everyone on the block, although she doesn’t know many of their names. May seems like a very valuable resource because she is so well connected in the neighborhood. She was able to tell us the daily schedules of most of our neighbors and offered to give them fliers and talk about the program when she saw them. Despite the length of time we spent with May, we were unable to divulge any broader issues that she was worried about with her neighborhood because of how distracted she was with visitors. We are going to talk with her more on Tuesday and hopefully we will be able to have a more personal conversation with her. We knocked on the door of the next house on our list an again no one answered. We were about to give up when Sarah noticed some people working in the backyard. After we explained who we were to a teenage boy we met an amazing woman, Janet. It turned out that Janet actually lives on Bank St. and is planning on participating in building blocks in that site. Through our conversation, we discovered that she has epilepsy and MS, and possibly some other serious illnesses. Her husband is currently unemployed because he injured his hands and although they get workers compensation, they have $175 each month to live on after they pay for the rent on their house. They also have 8 children. Because her top priority is caring for her children, Janet has not been able to afford her medication for the past three days and is in a lot of pain. Despite this, she is spending the afternoon with her kids working in her neighbor’s yard. She mentioned her illnesses and the fact that she has no refrigerator, microwave or oven and only two functional burners on her stove casually; as side notes. What she was really worried about was finishing her work on her neighbor’s yard before she was in too much pain to continue. Inspired by Aditi’s visit yesterday, she had started cleaning her yard; an effort that quickly expanded into other yards as well. I was really amazed at how intent Janet was on maintaining her social capital with her neighbors in the face of the extreme financial challenges she is facing.
