The Event.

Well I would consider the event a success! Seeing the sense of pride within the attendees from the community and the firmness of their handshakes and hugs expressed such gratitude toward our work. Ms. Gayle hugged me twice and thanked me for all of the work put into the event, which was so rewarding. I loved being positioned at the door because I got to interact with people as they’d walked in and see their faces light up as they’d entered the venue, some because they knew what it looked like before and basked in its renewal or some just happy to see other members of the neighborhood. I heard several compliments throughout the day; some referencing how good the food tasted or smelled (Thank you Mrs. Wesolowski), how great the decorations were or how great the music was. I thought the tributes to Carol were wonderful and considered her speech thoughtful in that she thanked everyone else and recognized that she had not done everything alone. In interacting with her, she appeared quite modest which was refreshing (compared to her successor).

That (interesting) politician came, which I figured he would. I’d encountered him for the first time at the meeting that I, Reece and Joy had attended last Thursday. Poor guy, I suppose he wanted to badly to appeal to the community but talked himself silly in my opinion. He kept saying the wrong things, which made me want to eat more and more. Nonetheless, his presence was good I suppose.

I am very proud of us as a class, in working together to give back to this community. Missy also put so much work into it. Dr. King and your husband, thank you so much for all of your help as well!

Update.

As of this point, I feel as though our event is coming together nicely and our demographic group has a good understanding of the work that lies ahead. We have to document all of the findings from the census data from each decade for both Brooklyn and Curtis Bay. It is worth noting that in past years, Fairfield, Masonville and Hawkins Point show up at some points in the maps over the years and the tracts are broken up between them. Brooklyn was split up into different parts of Baltimore City according to our maps and sometimes appeared to be partly non-existent. Some of the keys that are displayed to help one identify the changes that have taken place in documentation from decade to decade are vague to the point that there is slight confusion but as a group, we are working to figure it out. We have each committed to a decade and will work on the remaining decades together. In terms of identifiable trends, we have seen shifts of racial and ethnic populations as the decades pass but need to collect all the data to note them completely. There is a lot of information within the books so we have realized that photocopying may work to our advantage. For employment, they documented very specific work including managerial positions, labor intensive and educational. Some years even had the ages of individuals broken down by year (i.e. 1 year old, 2 year old). In the 1980’s, there were more Irish people than Polish in Brooklyn. Curtis Bay on the other hand had large numbers of both.  I am interested to know exactly what created this shift in population. The way that the information was broken down began to show minorities but mainly Hispanic populations. They appear to be redundant in the displaying of the information as well. This coming week, we will be gathering the rest of the information together and looking for trends. So far there have been noticeable differences in population density for both cities between decades but we haven’t had the chance to compile complete listings.

In terms of our actual event, I feel as though we have great activities in store. As we piece together each piece, I get a bit more excited. The tickets, the t-shirt, the buttons..everything is coming together wonderfully. I dropped off our in-kind donation letter to the Wal Mart located in Landsdowne and hope to follow up with them this week. When I’d visited the Rita’s in Arbutus said that they do charitable donations but I would have to contact them when the owner is around which really depends on his schedule so I am going to try back on the times that they listed him as being available. 

Our visit to the school was wonderful, and I had the chance to talk to some of the children about their paintings as well as their school and home experiences. There were several sibling sets that I’d met. The environment was so positive and the children were so eager to engage in conversation with us. I hope that they are able to attend the event.