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.