Throughout this trip, friends of friends or long-distance friends had stepped up for me time and again. In Baltimore, I had been set up with friends of my dear Spokane friend, and bad-ass activist in her own right, Celia. Rosemary picked me up at the station when I arrived from another un-satisfyingly short, yet efficient train ride down from Philadelphia and took me to her Charles Heights home. I immediately liked Baltimore for its architecture and general feel, and that would only become stronger as I stayed longer. She had great plans for me as a host and my first night in town, we went to a standing room only talk put on by BASE (Baltimore Activating Solidarity Economies) at the worker-owned bookstore and coffee shop, Red Emma’s.
Natasha Bowen talked there about her book, “The Color of Food: Stories of Race, Resilience and Farming” and invited some of the young farmers of color working within Baltimore to share their stories. The local food movement has accelerated from an already strong place following the Baltimore Uprising to a full-blown network that appears, from the crowd at this event alone, to be growing in both interest and participation. We heard from Five Seeds Farm & Apiary, Black Dirt Farm Collective, and the Black Church Food Security Network. After Natasha’s talk and I sought out the young farmers for interviews, but in the heat of summer harvesting it turns out that farming takes up a great deal of one’s time! I did get to check out the fruits of their labors at the impressive Waverly Farmer’s Market later in the week, though. You can read about the event and see a full video of the presentation here.
Earlier that day, we drove to the Compound, a huge shared space in East Baltimore that has transformed over the past five years from a forklift factory to a communal living and creating space that includes: a sizable garden including beehives, chicken coops, and a rabbit hutch, a wood shop that supports both arts projects and a framing business, multiple studio spaces for artists of all stripes, a large shared dining and living space, private dwelling spaces, an in-progress recording studio, offices for multiple fledgling organizations, and a massive library that doubles as a classroom space. Talking with both Nicks (two co-founders of the space who share a name) briefly during that first visit, I learned the unsurprising facts that running a space like this is both a mountain of work and expense and incredibly rich and rewarding. I am still dreaming about how to catalyze spaces like this (and support those that already exist) in the many post-industrial wastelands that Spokane boasts. Contact me if you want to talk about this!
I never fully adjusted to the east coast summer humidity and spent a great deal of the rest of my trip in a daze of sleepiness, feeling like I had an x-ray blanket or damp wool poncho on at all moments. This effect was intensified by the general exhaustion of having traveled for a month and a half by this point, so I was grateful to have some serious downtime while in Baltimore. I spent a lot of it on the porch at Rosemary’s house, writing and meeting neighbors and listening to the cicadas, which I’m glad to have more heard than seen as they sound alarmingly large. More than any other place on the trip, I was captivated by Baltimore and wanted to see more when the time came to leave. The porches, the street life, the people, and the slow pace conspired to steal me away from Spokane, but as I reflected I realized that part of my affection for it grew from its similarities to my own home city.
Perhaps it was that humidity and perhaps it was that comforting home feeling, but I allowed myself more relaxation here than I had in other places this summer, particularly as I approached the end of a jam-packed summer of high social intensity. On the third or fourth day, I met street photographer Noah and went for a long walk through Baltimore, where he told me it would only be a matter of time before something magical happened. We turned a corner and there was Magic Barbershop. He swore he hadn’t planned that and it was proof of the nature of the city. It’s hard to look at his photos and not see his point; the sidewalks and streets are teeming with stories and people more than willing to dive in to telling you their own. Later, walking by myself after missing a chance to interview worker-owners at previously mentioned Red Emma’s (closed for a staff vacation day), I remembered to think about the magic and as I rounded the corner a trio of street musicians were playing “Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen”. The singer and violinist looked so much like Louis C.K. and ended up letting me play a little bit. Magic!
If you read about Philadelphia, you remember that I connected with more people than I had time to interview. I spent some time here wrangling schedules to make phone interviews happen. I came out of that happy and reassured that these people I admire would make time to talk with me, but primarily I was frustrated by the limitations of technology. Despite our smartphones and audio engineering software, it is incredibly difficult to record a high quality phone call outside of a studio, and the NSA won’t send me their copies. So I resolved to figure this out to the best and cheapest of my ability, though it’s a shared problem among everyone I’ve spoken to who has tried, and until then I’ll be recording interviews on the spot, in the studio, or not at all!
One of the residents at the Compound, Tanya Garcia, had just finished curating a huge art show with Creative Alliance and I happened, luckily, to be in town for the Saturday night opening. Called “Despues de la Frontera (After the Border)“, the show brought eight artists of different disciplines together to explore the stories of youth entering the U.S. through the Mexican border from Central America. The mix of storytelling–most powerfully in a video featuring unaccompanied youth who had survived the dangerous journey to the U.S.– facts displayed graphically in a massive-scale infographic both on the wall and in a small form to take home, and artistic interpretations of the emotional content of forced migration, family, injustice, and home created a moving and compelling show that inspired me as I move forward into creating my own first visual art show this autumn. I was able to catch up with Tanya afterward for an extended interview that you can find here soon and in part on Praxis 146.
On that same return trip to the Compound, I interviewed Nick Petr, one of the previously mentioned co-founders of the space, about alternative education and his vision and work so far with the Oak Hill Center for Education and Culture. That interview is also partially featured in Praxis 146 and will be posted in full here soon. Talking with Nick and Tanya as part of my final full day in Baltimore solidified my fond memories of the place and the inspiration that I’ll be taking back home from here. Over the last year, I’ve felt drawn back into the world of alternative education and work with youth (where my organizing background really lies) and the idea of seeding a school like this in Spokane is on my mind continuously. I think the resources and people are swirling closer together back at home and I’m excited to help catalyze that and nudge progress along when I return.
The day I left, Monday, I made a second attempt to connect with the organizers of Baltimore Free Farm, a collective that transforms vacant lots into edible gardens alongside other grassroots projects, and succeeded. I interviewed Isabel about both the Free Farm and Horizontal Housing, their cooperative attempt to thwart the cycle of gentrification in their city. That interview is heard in part on Praxis 146 and will be available here in full soon. The wild aesthetic of the in-progress housing, the library of zines across the street at the office, and the generally chaotic, though well-planned froth of actual garden space reminded me of Peaceful Valley and the Spokane-Baltimore parallel crystallized in my mind.
All in all, this has been one of my favorite stops along the journey so far. I feel that I’ll be back at some point and am glad to have a reference point here for that future work. Now, I’m heading (against my original plan) to Washington D.C. for the briefest of stops before I plunge into the unknown of Appalachia and back to the Midwest for the final lap of the summer road show. I wanted to avoid D.C. for reasons that are probably obvious given the grassroots approaches I’ve highlighted so far. It’s the center of traditional political power in our country, which I find illegitimate, and a hotbed of corruption, career-minded climbers, and other trends I find distasteful. But nonetheless, I found a Couchsurfing host there who seems great, and I have a little project in mind for a 20 hour long stop. Stay tuned, and thanks for listening.
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