Wow what an exciting weekend I have had. Saturday morning the students from Art-390 and American Studies -422 began our exploration of Baybrook by meeting Jason Reed The director of the Filbert Street Garden. This was my second time visiting the garden but my first time to actually enter and explore.  It was exciting and enlightening to here Jason explain various aspects of the garden.  One of the most valuable this that I learned from Jason is how he has really focused on the fact that this is the community’s garden. He in planning with various people through out the community was able to help choose different plants for different purposes.  I was truly amazed by how realistic and grounded he was this lead him to help choose plants and vegetables that were Perennials that would come back year after year even in left unattended for a year or two.  The Filbert Street Garden has been designed to allow the community to interact with it in various ways examples; outdoor classrooms, afterschool activities, individual garden plots and a community orchard. 

Jason shared the story with us of the struggle the garden has had just to access water for the garden and was excited to show us how perseverance pays off.  This picture is of the water pump that was put in the garden just this winter.

After the tour or the garden we visited the Polish House. This was a beautiful building and is a shame that it is up for sale. This building was the location that previous years classes had been able to use for their event/fundraiser.  The classes loaded into cars to view Wagner’s Point and Fairfield. Not a trace of a community was left t in Wagner’s Point location all that is there in the industry that had overtaken this town. This supports the value or the oral interviews that have been and are continuing to be collected by fellow students like myself. Traces of old homes could be found in the location of Fairfield but hearing the teacher share what has disappeared since the last time they had been there makes this class seem even more imperative.

Before we could stop for lunch we had one last stop the Masonville Cove Environmental Education Center. I was super excited to visit here because this is my topic of research. Masonville was at one time a small community and was known for the swimming area called “Cove” were people would swim.  

 As I began to look into the history of the Masonville Cove I am eager find out more! I am also curious about the present as the cove is now an environmental center. One thing that was apparent was the lack of accessibility or the communities nearby in Curtis Bay and Brooklyn. Masonville cove is cut off from the communities by 895 and train tracks. There are no paths or sidewalks for the communities nearby to access this resource. So that lead me to question who is using this resource? They offer community events for families and children I am going to take my son next weekend to experience the center with a hands-on approach.  I did view this very neat informational board on "How the Port Works" and have posted the pictures below.

After my morning of exploring Baybrook I attended an event at “The Wind Up Space” in Baltimore. They were featuring stories of Sparrows Point. The area of Sparrows Point has very similar stories in the way the people and communities have been affected by not only industrialization but also deindustrialization.  I am also a past of a class Ethnography in America AMST-403 that digs deeper into the stories of Sparrows Point. I want to continue to share those experiences as well to help bridge the stories of two deindustrialized areas of Baltimore and preserving their histories is so important.

This week I have really begun to think of how I fit in this project. I was very excited to meet the art and design students we will be working with.  This will be a unique experience to see what designs will represent not only the Filbert Street garden but our mission or as some would say the vision. I was very excited to learn more about the murals that are going to be collaboration between UMBC art students and Benjamin Franklin High School students.  This collaboration brought me back to an idea I had about T-shirts. If the students could design a t-shirt to sell that represented their connection to the Filbert Street Garden.  Prof. Bradley extended an invitation for the American studies students to be a part of the collaboration with BFHS, and I would love the opportunity to help and be a part of this. This would provide me a way of incorporating my education background into the project.

            I want to share my experiences along the way as I take on this new challenge of collecting oral histories.  This weekend I learned how to dig a little deeper into the history of the Baybrook area.  I for the first time visited the Enoch Pratt free Library. I took my daughter (Magnolia 15) along for the adventure. I was able to get a library card to allow me access to historical papers and Sanborn maps. http://www.prattlibrary.org/index.aspx Although I have lived in Maryland my whole life I have never been real comfortable riving in the city so we chose to take the Light Rail. This was to our benefit because although we got off at the wrong stop we were able to admire some of the murals found throughout the city. This reminded me of the project that the art students are working on this the students at BFHS. I feel as if our class were just to raise money for the garden would not make the garden sustainable but collaboration with the children promote future generations to have ownership of their garden so it can continue to thrive.

            As I was reading Conducting An Oral History Interview by Linda Shopes, I have begun to feel a little bit of anxiety. I have never conducted an oral history and so with anything new it is a bit scary.  I am excited to learn and try new things and learn more about persevering the oral histories of Baybrook. As I read the some of the oral histories it calmed me down a bit.An example I would like to share was in the Jason Reed. During the  interview a child interrupted a few times and that was ok. In a way it added richness and realness to his value as a active part of the community.