Melissa's birthday

Melissa, one of the new VSers, had her birthday recently.

New house members

We welcome Daniel Miller, Sarah Jadrich, Melissa Gingerich and Kendra Allison to RHHP. Ellen has been very busy preparing for their arrivals and providing the usual house orientations.

Today is the annual Reservoir Hill Community Resource Fair organized by the St. Francis Center with Sarah Tarigi, the director of St Francis spearheading the planning. We blocked off a block of Linden Avenue. Ellen and I helped with the set up which involved setting up tents and moving chairs. Sarah, Melissa and Kendra served hot dogs and drinks while Daniel patiently supervised the moon bounce. It was a great day with many local agencies represented ranging from Morgan State University to Catholic Charities. Those who wanted to could get their blood pressure checked. Many school children also received back packs to start the new school year with.

The beginnings of gentrification?

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/bs-md-reservoir-hill-20100817,0,6735402.story

The above story is on the front page of Wednesday's Baltimore Sun. Madison Park North is a 70's style collection of brick and mortar buildings located on North Avenue which makes up the southern boundary of the Reservoir Hill neighborhood. (It is about a ten minute walk from RHHP)There are probably building complexes such as this in every city - well intentioned housing ventures to help the poor but that go off track over time. Madison Park North has been the topic of heated debate at many community meetings but the problems seem intractable. I hope the city's recent threat to pull the owner's license is a strategy to force the Tricap Corporation to make the necessary improvements in the complex and that the current residents will not have twill sell their building at prices to relocate. But a comment by Mr. Herring, long time Reservoir Hill resident, caught my eye. He asserted that the newer residents of Reservoir Hill are trying to "push residents who are poor or black out of the neighborhood." I sense that his remarks foreshadow the unavoidable and acrimonious debate about the gentrification of Reservoir Hill. This is a debate that will take place along the fault lines of class and race but more so on class. (There are also professional African Americans moving into the neighborhood.) The makings of this debate is becoming obvious as we see young white couples move in the area and fix up previously run down houses. These new comers (including ourselves) of the neighborhood are the ones who see the potential in the neighborhood and are eager to invest in it. They are out there with sleeves rolled up and pitching in to improve the neighborhood - mowing the empty lots, picking up trash and planting a community garden. They are over-represented at the community meetings and communicate with each other in the local list serve. They have become the driving force for change. I have not sensed any overt resentment and in fact, some old timers have expressed their appreciation for the changes in the neighborhood. I hope that the newcomers will conduct themselves gracefully and be considerate to the sensitivities of the old timers.

I can easily imagine how in a few years Reservoir Hill will turn the corner and become well known as a desirable place to live in. This will be followed an influx into the neighborhood and cause an increase in property values that some long time home owners will find difficult to resist. The displacement of renters will become a problem. Some call this "gentrification". The status quo is untenable but what are the other acceptable alternatives to "gentrification"?

Poison amidst beauty

Here is another attempt at beautifying our neighborhood - a hollyhock in a hollowed out tree stump the other side of Whitelock. While on litter patrol yesterday, I came across five glass vials in the stump. They contained suspicious white crystalline substance. They were probably hastily dumped there by one of our local crack dealers upon sighting the cops. (It seems that we are seeing cops busting dealers and harassing customers weekly.) Until yesterday, I had never seen crack cocaine. I have often found glass vials and the plastic tabs on the streets and sidewalks but I had mistakenly thought the tabs were from from syringes. I flushed them down the toilet where they belong. Thus continues my education about the harsh realities of life in Baltimore. I have since learned that crack is the poor man's drug with each vial probably going for $10-$20. Inexpensive as it is to buy, crack nevertheless exacts a heavy price on the addict's life.

Signs of hope in Reservoir Hill

Here are some signs around the block exhorting residents to get involved and help improve the neighborhood. I don't know who put them up but they brighten up the area. The sign about recycling was erected by some new residents on Brookfield who are passionate about recycling which has yet to catch on in a big way in Reservoir Hill. But then recycling was introduced in Baltimore only a few years ago. So there is hope..

Sarah gets ready for school

Here is RHHP Sarah preparing for her first day of school at a South Baltimore County elementary school where she will teach music. After surviving last year in a Baltimore County high school teaching mostly uninterested and unruly students, she is excited to be doing what she had been trained to do - teaching music to elementary school children. She was offered two positions - one in a wealthy area in north Baltimore County (near the Maryland-Pennsylvania state line) and the other in a diverse and lower income neighborhood south of Baltimore. She ignored the advice of many and took the more challenging and most likely, interesting, job in the south county position where more than half of her students will be Latino and refugees. We are glad for Sarah and proud of her sense of adventure and faithfulness to her calling to serve the poor and needy. Her mom came out from Ohio and helped her clean out her classroom and organize her materials. Here is a shot of her tuning an auto harp....

Updates

The van that one of the Menonnite volunteers had planned to haul her belongings to Indiana with was stolen out of our parking area a couple of nights ago. That culminated a series of thefts in which someone stole a number of my potted plants in broad daylight. Someone had also rummaged in our garbage cans tearing open a garbage bag full of paper. One wonders if these incidents are all linked.

On a positive note, our neighborhood continues to improve and look better and the force for change appears to pick up momentum. As far as I can tell, there are two others neighbors who have adopted empty lots near their homes - Brian, on Linden Avenue and Mrs. Brown on Brookfield. (I am fixated on litter because I believe the cleanliness of a neighborhood streets and sidewalks is an indicator of its health.) Mrs Brown also does her litter patrol along the stretch of Whitelock near her house and Brian does his block of Linden . Sometimes Mrs Brown picks up bigger items and hauls them to the dump in her station wagon. I think they were doing this before we adopted our own vacant lot.

Jose, the handyman for the building across from us on Whitelock was whacking weeds this afternoon and has been picking up litter. The vacant lot on the corner of Whitelock and Brookfield, which was once a weed patch, has been converted into a vegetable garden and now bills itself the Whitelock Community Farm, complete with a sign. Corn grows on one corner (although they don't seem to be doing too well), sunflowers, squash and lot's of other stuff that seem to be flourishing. The area continues to look better and I wish there is a way to capture this progress the way you can see a seed germinate in time-lapse photography.