2013 RHHP Thanksgiving dinner

Lots of work went into the preparation of the event including the roasting of two turkeys

Pastor Dave Greiser let the devotion

Sharing and giving thanks

there was an abundance of food...

and abundance of conversation and fellowship

One again RHHP hosted its annual Thanksgiving potluck. About forty residents and friends shared in the festivities. Pastor Dave Greiser led the devotions and read from the Abraham Lincoln's 1863 Proclamation of Thanksgiving.

RHHP residents win three prizes at the neighborhood greens cook off!

CJ working serving her collard green salad for votes

CJ making his smoothie of fruits and greens.

Newly arrived RHHP resident Tracie serving up Remi's cabbage with peanut soup to a voter.

all that was left of Remi's entry to the contest

CJ accepting 2nd prize for the vegetarian category

RHHP residents Remi and CJ participated in the Whitelock Farm Harvest Festival Greens Cook Off this past Saturday. Remi, defending champion from a couple of years ago in the non-vegetarian category, entered a dish of cabbage with peanut sauce (vegetarian) while CJ entered a dinosaur kale salad and a smoothie of strawberries, ginger, kale and other fruits. For a small fee, members of the public were allowed to sample all the entries and cast their votes.

When the popular votes were tallied, CJ's kale salad won second prize while Remi's entry won third prize in the vegetarian category. However, a panel of three judges selected Remi's entry as the overall best entry. For his effort, Remi was rewarded with a dinner for five at the Woodberry Kitchen. He will treat his wife and children when they join him in Baltimore. Well done CJ and Remi!

More plumbing challenges

George, the plumber from Saffer to the rescue

feeding the snake into the clean-out

Not the kind of snake you buy from Home Depot

The culprits- roots and 

Ellen examining the main culprit - paper towel!

We had sewer water backing up into the basement yesterday afternoon. After deciding that professional help was necessary, we called Saffer Plumbing. George, a very nice plumber came to our rescue and snaked out the sewer line. The culprit turned out to be a small amount of roots but it appeared that the main cause of the backup was a paper towel. Looks like we need to mount a education campaign on the proper use of the plumbing system! The weekend emergency visit set us back a bit over $400 but we were able to resume our normal routines again. In addition to saving us from having to find relief elsewhere, George the plumber also regaled us with adventures in his professional life as a plumber. You can't imagine stuff he finds in clogged sewer lines!

Unexpected dinner guests

Impromptu banquet!

Guests visiting in the living room

We invited three neighbors for dinner last night and ended up with almost twenty guests. A bunch of our Rwandan and Congolese friends stopped by. Fortunately Remi had earlier cooked up three batches of Cameroonian delicacies for me and so we had plenty of food to share. The visitors also whipped up a bunch of fufu which made everyone fed and happy.

Nifty trick for removing fufu from the pot. Just set the pan upside down on a plate and let the steam from the fufu push the pot up. At some point, you just lift the pot off the fufu and serve!

RHHP bypass surgery

The plumbers from Brubaker Plumbing in Lancaster came down a few weeks ago to replace some pipes that were on the verge of rupturing. No more rust particles coming out of our kitchen sink! Despite all the plumbing work that have been done over the past few years, I am sad to say that there will be more work to be done.

It was a sad day.....

Isacc, my favorite MTA driver

Yesterday was a sad day in my commuting life. Isaac, who had been driving the #5 bus route for the past few months, will be reassigned to another route next week. In a city claiming the title of Charm City but not known for its customer service, he is a beacon of cheerfulness and courtesy. He drives carefully without the lurching starts that many drivers make. He always makes sure that the elderly are seated before pulling away from the curb. He greets his passengers with a kind word. It is great way to start the commute.

Each morning, he greets all his passengers with a cheerful smile. He often waits an extra 30 seconds when he sees a passenger hurrying to the bus stop. When I am slow to get out the door, he will linger at the stop across from our house for an extra few seconds to see if I will come charging out the back door! Since I was out of town until Thursday, yesterday was my first day this week to take the bus. He actually was happy to see me and told me he was glad that we had a chance to say goodbye! He said that he had been honking his horn to make sure that I was not missing my ride. (Another regular on the bus attested to that.) When I arrived at my regular stop, we shook hands,wished each other the best and parted ways.

I will miss him. but knowing that he is around spreading his good cheer makes me feel a little better about this city. I hope we get another driver like him.

One way to be the salt of the earth...

The following is an interesting piece in last Sunday's (June 16) NY Times. The author concludes that our behavior is malleable and susceptible to environmental influence to the extent that we can behave differently as we move from one neighborhood to another. He sounded ambivalent about that. Perhaps it further shows how easily we can be manipulated. He should already know that since he teaches marketing!

 As a Christian living in Reservoir Hill, the author's conclusion elevates, albeit by a few notches, my optimism about being able to improve our block if not the neighborhood. At times, picking up litter and sweeping up broken glass on the sidewalk outside our house feels like a futile attempt to push back the tide but I think that there have been improvement. The idea that changing the environment can bring about change in human behavior suggests a practical (and servant-like) way we can live out the Gospel command to be the salt that flavors the earth - being change agents by changing the environmental cues!

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/16/opinion/sunday/a-self-defined-by-place.html?_r=0

 Where We Are Shapes Who We Are

By ADAM ALTER

IN the early 1970s, a team of researchers dropped hundreds of stamped, addressed letters near college dorms along the East Coast and recorded how many lost letters found their way to a mailbox. The researchers counted each posted letter as a small act of charity and discovered that students in some of the dorms were more generous than others.

Nearly all of the letters dropped near uncrowded dorms — residences where comparatively few students lived on each floor — reached their intended recipients. In contrast, only about 6 in 10 of the letters dropped near crowded dorms completed the journey.

Apparently, the students in high-density housing, where everyone was packed close together, felt less connected to their college mates and this apparently dampened their generosity.

Later, when the researchers asked a different collection of students to imagine how they might have responded had they come across a lost letter, 95 percent of them said they would have posted it regardless of where they were living.

Most people, in fact, think of themselves as generous. In self-assessment studies, people generally see themselves as kind, friendly and honest, too. We imagine that these traits are a set of enduring attributes that sum up who we really are. But in truth, we’re more like chameleons who instinctively and unintentionally change how we behave based on our surroundings.

Consider another experiment, conducted in 2000. A team of contractors in Glasgow, Scotland, installed a series of blue lights in prominent locations citywide. The lights were designed to make unsightly districts of the city more attractive, but after a few months the city’s crime statisticians noticed a striking trend: crime rates declined in the locations that were bathed in blue.

The lights, which mimicked those atop police cars, seemed to imply that the police were watching. In 2005, police in Nara Prefecture, Japan, installed blue lights at crime hot spots and got a similar result: the overall crime rate fell. When others tried the approach, they found that littering and suicide attempts also declined beneath the blue glow.

Theories abound on why the blue lights might deter crime: perhaps because their bright and attention-grabbing incandescence makes shadowy niches feel more open and exposed — or, quite the opposite, that they have a mysterious calming effect. But even subtler interventions seem to have similar consequences.

For example, people behave more honestly in locations that give them the sense they’re being watched. A group of psychologists at Newcastle University in northeast England found that university workers were far more likely to pay for tea and coffee in a small kitchen when the honor-system collection box sat directly below a price list featuring an image of a pair of eyes, versus one with flowers. The researchers alternated the pictures of eyes and flowers each week during their 10-week experiment, using eyes from both men and women, to make sure that no single image affected the outcome. In every week featuring the eyes, the “honesty box” ended up with more money.

That study inspired police in West Midlands, England, to place large posters featuring a pair of eyes around town — which, at least according to anecdotal reports, led to a reduction in crime.

Mirrors have the same effect and are arguably even more powerful, because they compel us to peer, metaphorically, into our own souls.

Other environmental cues shape our actions because they subtly license us to behave badly. According to the heavily debated broken windows theory, people who are otherwise well behaved are more likely to commit crimes in neighborhoods with broken windows, which suggests that the area’s residents don’t care enough to maintain their property.

The theory’s authors, James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling, hypothesized in a 1982 article for The Atlantic Monthly that if the broken windows in a building were not repaired, people were more likely to break additional windows in the structure. And that, in turn, would only encourage more vandalism.

The same goes for a sidewalk with litter. The more litter there is, the more accumulates. Eventually, people start discarding bags of trash from takeout restaurants there, and this soon leads to more crime in the neglected area.

SINCE 1982, when Professors Wilson and Kelling proposed their theory, the littering example has received plenty of experimental support. In one study, social psychologists placed paper fliers on 139 cars in a large hospital parking lot and watched to see what the car owners would do with them.

Again, the environment appeared to shape the response. When drivers emerged from the hospital to find a parking lot littered with scattered fliers, candy wrappers and coffee cups (arranged by the researchers, of course), nearly half of them removed the fliers from their cars and left them on the ground. In contrast, when the researchers swept the parking lot clean before the drivers returned, only 1 in 10 dropped the flier.

Unwittingly, the drivers adopted the behavior that seemed most appropriate given their understanding of the area’s prevailing norms.

These studies tell us something profound, and perhaps a bit disturbing, about what makes us who we are: there isn’t a single version of “you” and “me.” Though we’re all anchored to our own distinct personalities, contextual cues sometimes drag us so far from those anchors that it’s difficult to know who we really are — or at least what we’re likely to do in a given circumstance.

It’s comforting to believe that there’s an essential version of each of us — that good people behave well, bad people behave badly, and those tendencies reside within us.

But the growing evidence suggests that, on some level, who we are — litterbug or good citizen, for example — changes from moment to moment, depending on where we happen to be.

These environmental cues can shape and reshape us as quickly as we walk from one part of the city to another.

Adam Alter, an assistant professor of marketing at New York University’s Stern School of Business, is the author of “Drunk Tank Pink: And Other Unexpected Forces That Shape How We Think, Feel, and Behave.”

Article about the Whitelock Community Farm in Monday's Baltimore Sun

Opening day at Whitelock Farm. Elisa is in the background

Deron, Elisa's husband, tends to vegetable starts in greenhouse

Customers converged on the farm anticipating the first produce of the year.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-reimer-baltimore-extension-20130520,0,1356754.column

Not only is the Whitelock Community Farm providing fresh produce to this neighborhood, it is also transforming the intersection of Brookfield and Whitelock from a depressing corner of weeds and trash into an interesting and vibrant corner showcasing what can be accomplished when someone persists at investing in a neighborhood. It stands unmolested without any barriers around it. Whitelock Community Farm has become the crown jewel of Reservoir Hill. Elisa is my heroine.

Here is Susan Reimer's column this Monday.

Elisa Lane is not much bigger than the pigtails she wears when she gardens at the Whitelock Community Farm in Reservoir Hill. But she has a big impact. She sells the fresh vegetables from the empty corner lot that she just kind of took over at below-market prices to residents of the neighborhood.

When her farm stand isn't open, residents can buy from the corner market that she supplies. And she has enough to sell to restaurants like Woodberry Kitchen and at the Waverly Farmers Market to help subsidize her cut-rate prices for the garden's neighbors.

When those neighbors regularly interrupted her weeding to ask how to begin their own vegetable gardens, she began teaching classes. Ms. Lane is the product of the Master Gardener program, which is run by the University of Maryland Extension Service in Baltimore City. And her "Grow It, Eat It" lessons for rookie gardeners are an Extension Service program, too.

The Extension Service in the city, which launched this dynamo, would disappear under Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake's budget for fiscal year 2014. If the city withdraws its $171,000 share, as the budget proposes, the matching funds from the university and the U.S. Department of Agriculture will disappear, too. That's just how it works. The Extension Service in the city runs a number of other programs, too. Nutrition education, financial literacy, lots of programs for young people. And its small army of master gardeners are in evidence all over the city — at urban gardens, in schools and at public gardens like Mount Vernon and Cylburn Arboretum. They put in more than 7,000 hours last year. But Ms. Lane is the perfect example of why this program should never be cut — and this is the third time in a decade that its elimination has been proposed.

What you have to understand is that Ms. Lane is a volunteer, like the other master gardeners.
And she is (almost) single-handedly supplying fresh food to the families and children who need it most — those who live in what we call food deserts in the city. Places without access to fresh food.
And she is sharing what she knows with anyone who asks.

"I am outside all day, and people come by and tell me they wish they knew how to grow things," she said during a break in her weeding. She is doubling the size of her quarter-acre plot — there is another abandoned lot across Whitelock Street. She and her husband, an attorney for the Social Security Administration, recently purchased land in Hampstead to multiply the amount of food she can bring into the city to sell for next to nothing.

"A lot of young people here don't get to go out and visit farms in the county. And when they see things growing out of the ground, like carrots or tomatoes, it is an eye-opening experience for them. They can't believe it," said Ms. Lane. Her city farm has no gates and no fences. She has added a hoop house on a corner of the lot, and she grows vegetables in the winter, too. "It is so powerful for people to come to the farm and see us grow food and think, 'Hey, I can do this.'" Her voice catches when she talks about it.

This is an ambitious young woman with big dreams. She needs the room in Hampstead, she says, to grow watermelons and squash, which take up so much more ground than she has in Reservoir Hill. Times are tough. Budgets at every government level are being cut — deeply cut. I get it. But Whitelock Community Farm doesn't get any money from the city. Ms. Lane scrounges for grants and donations and volunteers. What the city did pay for is the program that planted the seed that became Elisa Lane.

Seems like a hell of an investment to me.

Susan Reimer's column appears on Mondays and Thursdays. She can be reached at susan.reimer@baltsun.com and @SusanReimer on Twitter.com.

Our asylee housemates find jobs!

One of the challenges confronting our asylees is finding employment  that pay them enough to support themselves and to save up enough money to bring their families to the US. Despite having successful careers in their home countries, their first paying jobs after receiving their work permits are often entry level jobs with no benefits and that offer little prospects for advancement. However, living at RHHP enables them to sustain themselves and even save some money while they find better paying jobs. They are able to reorient their expectations and accept the stark reality that their professional accomplishments in their home countries do not translate immediately into employment commensurate to their abilities.

In the past couple of weeks, Remi found a full-time house keeping job at a local hospital. He will also receive medical benefits, paid vacation, tuition assistance etc. (An entrepreneur at heart, he is also starting a clothing store.) After a couple of part-time jobs that bordered on the sweat shop variety, Adolphus landed a job at a local university that is within walking distance.

Unlike their previous jobs, they are absolutely pleased by the professionalism of their work environment. They are very pleased and feel optimistic that they will be able to reunite with their families, and together, move on with their lives.

Enock is granted asylum!

Ellen's banner spreading the good news

Today is a happy day at our house. Enock, our housemate, was granted asylum. It has been an arduous journey for him. On top of worrying about his case, he had to worry about his family in his home country. A few weeks ago, he was injured in an auto accident and suffered a fractured vertebrae. Since then he has been walking around in a body brace.

Our community pulled together to support him through this difficult time. Various RHHP residents helped him with meals because of his limited mobility. Joel and Tim drove him to medical appointments in DC and Joel drove him to Arlington for his asylum hearing a couple of weeks ago and then again today to pick up his decision. Members of NBMC and his home congregation brought him meals. He received a stream of visitors from his congregation who came bearing groceries and prepared meals. Sarah organized an online fund raiser to gather money to help his children return to school.

Thanks also to the ASHN folks for raising the funds to cover the rent. NBC Universal also chipped in some funds for the stipend. (not sure how they got connected but it probably has to do with Human Rights First)

Vanessa Allyn, Managing attorney of the Refugee Protection Program at Human Rights First; Isabel Toolan, his case worker also from Human Rights First; and Malika Levarlet and Reid Whitten, Enock's fabulous pro bono attorneys from Sheppard Mullin Richter and Hampton are reasons for Enock's success today. It has truly has been a community effort with a fitting outcome for a wonderful housemate.

Party, MCC Relief Sale, Visitors

German Park Playground

MCC Relief Sale in Harrisburg

Jennifer, RHHP's 1st MVSer ever!

Nissley family visits

Jungle Speed

Tim's birthday celebration

Easter Party

Lunch at Vietnamese Pho Restaurant

Hmmm...what to order?

Dessert!

Bean sprouts, basil, lime, and jalapeno pepper toppings

A group of us celebrated Easter today by having a delicious Vietnamese lunch and shopping for fresh fruits and veggies at a Korean market (H-Mart). Afterwards we enjoyed a time of fellowship with Joseph's homemade flan, Ellen's gourmet bread, warm cinnamon rolls, and hot Seattle tea.

Visiting the sick

Our house mate Enock was recently injured in a car accident. As with African asylum seekers in the past, he received a great number of visitors who came bearing meals. A group of women held a boisterous prayer service in his room that reminded me of revival services.

RHHP Easter egg coloring party

Easter egg toast!

Elvis egg? No, it's Gabby's profile of Tim...

We had an excellent turnout last night for our annual egg coloring party.

Another successful asylum application.

Cadeau, a former RHHP resident and ASHN client from Burundi, was granted asylum yesterday. He called to share the good news and came by for lunch. He works as a patient transporter in a hospital in Virginia and will be studying to be a registered nurse.

Our Congolese neighbors give a cooking lesson

Whipping up a batch of fufu.

He is very pleased with his fufu. They ate all of it.  

A meat dish with a tomato base. Somewhat like a stew.  Goes
very well with fufu.

Helping himself....

Recently, four Congolese guys from a couple of blocks away came over to our house to teach our new resident from Rwanda how to cook some food from that part of Africa. They pretty much took over the kitchen and whipped up a couple of delicious dishes including an enormous plate of fufu.  The kitchen was filled with the aroma of spicy tomato sauce and chatter in Kinyarwanda, one of the languages they have in common. They also did a very good job cleaning up.

Like most of our male asylum seekers, he was initially at a loss in the kitchen. He subsisted primarily on milk and cereal during his first week at RHHP except for food that other residents shared with him. Thanks to our Congolese neighbors, he is now preparing more substantial meals and is able to replicate the dishes his friends showed him. And like most of the asylum seekers before him, he will soon be cooking his favorite meals.