elsewhere events’ Neighborhood

MIT TechTV has a great piece about our neighboring garden over at the Beloved Community Center.

From the site:

"At the Beloved Community Center in Greensboro, NC, homeless neighbors and community members alike contribute to tending a large and growing garden. They share the food the grow with neighbors and the homeless hospitality house next door, and will begin selling produce to local businesses as well starting next year."

Final Fruits of the Season

With Fall comes a certain period of reckoning and reflection. As the the final fruits of the season come to bear, the lessons learned are made all the more prescient. Working in our back alley garden and giving rise to agricultural plants has been an exercise in creative patience and adaptive adjustments. Our little microclimate is very out of the ordinary compared to most gardens, but we like to think that this challenge is bettering our ability to observe and intuit.

At many points, this year felt like a proof-of-concept project. By no means are we optimized for sure successes or studied in our approach to urban horticulture, but we are learning a lot along the way and the mind bristles with ideas for next year. But much of that can be put to rest as we reap the rewards of a season spent toiling to turn this grey patch to green.

Just as the Summer's first tomato reminds us of why we do what we do, the Fall's final tomato will tell the tale of how far we've come.

Hmm, this seems to explain all the mosquitoes we've been seeing this season.

From theawl.com:

This was the worst mosquito season ever, and it is all our fault. Not so long ago, those of us on the east coast weren't bitten during the day; that has changed. That is because the asian tiger mosquito began to happily take over a swath of the U.S., because we basically asked it to, explains Awl pal Tom Scocca: "Humanity has not subdued nature so much as been infiltrated by it, co-opted to generate food and water and shelter to an entire roving ecosystem…. For the Asian tiger mosquito, the benefits of human settlement include a near-limitless supply of cavities and containers of every shape and material, all of them possible breeding reservoirs: styrofoam cups, plastic bottles, metal roof gutters, ceramic saucers. In cemeteries, people not only put out vases, they are thoughtful enough to put water in them."

Let that be a lesson to you. Stagnant water outdoors = more mosquitoes. If you have any dishes, pans or buckets outside, be sure to turn them over so that water doesn't collect in them.

The season is winding down. It's been a solid set of months of learning and exploring for me and what SEA is and what it makes. The last month of our season will be filled with different types of programming than our usual Artist Conversations every Friday night -- we have planned an opening reception for the beginning of a mural project downtown; a living room lectures night (an open platform for anyone to give a lecture about something they know lots or little about); a final game of CITY; an "elsewhere drive-in" to screen all the videos made this season; and a closing event, the dead writer's convention.

SO! I'm working towards making the last CITY the best. This includes making those much-talked-about passports, and personally inviting all the people I and the other elsewherians have made connections with over the season -- Ed, Danny, John, Queena, Chef Graham, Charlie and Ruth, Butch, Wesley and the people at the BCC-- once you get going the list really does seem pretty exciting!!

One thing Stephanie and George and Danna and I talked about at a SEA refocusing meeting the other day was the idea of making this CITY one where people who we see and interact with in our daily walking-around-the-neighborhoods would come into elsewhere and do an "everyday life performance" -- do what they normally do, but within elsewhere! A performance by context! In true elsewhere spirit -- do what you already do but within the context of what's already here, already functioning within the world and city of elsewhere.

That's what's on tap for the next few weeks...

I've been attending the weekly Beloved Community Center open table community meetings for the last 4-5 weeks and I've really been learning so much about creating open opportunities to build relatedness within a community. One key part of this meeting for me was a discussion about creating spaces for authentic dialogue and communication. That means creating spaces where all parts of the story have the opportunity to be expressed and listened for. As one retired minister said (i'm paraphrasing a bit), "Everyone has a position and experience to share -- some part of the story that I don't have or know from my personal experience. It takes everyone's participation to see the whole picture and not be overrided by our human desires for personal money and power."

Also, this week, I spoke up about really wanting to create ways that Elsewhere could connect and collaborate with projects the BCC are working on. The 30th Anniversary Celebration of the Greensboro Massacre is coming up November 4-7th and so I think that Elsewhere will participate in a piece of that event.

I started sending email updates to the rest of the Elsewhere Community that can't make it to these open-table meetings on Wednesday and Danna responded that she was interested in screening Greensboro: Closer to the Truth the movie at Elsewhere -- or at least learning about it and watching it ourselves to become more educated about the event an implications. This feels perfect and exciting. Me going to these meetings has been making Elsewhere a part of the BCC consciousness more, and informing the Elsewhere community about what we've discussed at the BCC meetings is making Elsewhere more aware of our community concerns and events.

!!!

Photo

We concluded CITYweek on September's First Friday. It was really exciting to have lots of people come through and experience CITY and Elsewhere...

Here is a piece of our lego-version-of-Greensboro! All week visitors were invited to put their special locations and landmarks on the map, and stake their spot with a flag describing what they were building. Queena's Hair Salon was on there, as well as Anthony's addition of his mom's house in Winston-Salem (it was a bit off the map).

On Friday September 4th we had a habdashery, a pre-teen pop group from Europe, the Press Office Agents interviewing people about their South Elm experiences -- and just so many people! It was the CITY experience sped up -- I had to hire a new assistant, Lloyd, also known as Greg Shelnutt, current visiting artist. He was really key in keeping the entrance to the CITY poppin and also injected some great new energy into the whole enterprise of welcoming people.

Greg b4

(this was greg before I hired him -- before he started his upwards-moving career in the tourism bureau.)

The week was a fun experience to see our community pull off a whole slew of events one after another, and was a learning experience about how to make that many events successful. I realized a big part of organizing with communities outside of Elsewhere is the need to start talking plenty a head of time so that we can fit into their timeline of organizing events. At Elsewhere we're really good at making things happen even at the last minute -- coming together and mobilizing the environment, volunteers, and programming needed for an event this Friday. But when it comes to working with other organizations I really need to make sure to plan more time so as to make sure they can participate without being too rushed.