The Difference Between Personal Experience and Experience Through Another

Going to see the Filbert Street Garden changed the image I had perceived from our class discussion. From class I pictured a large simple garden with flowers and bushes on one side, then on the other two sides different plants all neatly settled along the outer walls. That's just the image I had from seeing other professional gardens on TV and in other forms of media. But I also had no knowledge of gardening and planting in any way. But being able to go see the neighborhood and the garden showed me what a community garden can look like; how it does more than just grow flowers and vegetables, it can teach and bring people together. Jason Reed talk about the effects that the garden has had on the students alone demonstrated in small part the huge growth and impact one acre of land can have.

Then walking around and being able to see the people and places around the garden brought me back to where I grew up until I was in high school. A very small community tight with housing, not much green space and only small commercial places within a few mile radius. The few small differences between Filbert Street and my hometown were having the garden and also the community looking to make something of itself, no matter how large or small, the idea was to make a change. It was something I could appreciate and wish was something that my neighborhood aspired to, not to just sit and be dormant within the greater area of Buffalo.

Now to connect this to Linda Shopes presentation last week about oral history. While walking around her steps to a good oral history began to run through my mind, and the problems she often sees. Without the proper way to record the interview details can be missed and completely change what the person was trying to say. Also, without the correct questions and keeping the interview on the right tract, side conversations and less important information will arise taking up important time.

Bringing this full circle, being able to walk and see with my own eyes the garden and neighborhood brought a new light to my eyes about the difference a personal experience has in comparison to a second hand description. Seeing the space and hearing what Jason Reed had to say did so much more than what I could read about and see through other media. What a space can show beats what a page can tell you. A space has an aura, a feeling about it that a page cannot demonstrate. The space has life and personality, while a page is cold and lacks the individuality an area has.

Everything Starts Somewhere

Bringing in the art and design class to help with our project at the garden I think will be a great success. Having the imagination and creative thinking that art class can bring to the table will open a new array of options and opportunities, to raise money and awareness about the Filbert Street Garden. Looking at their blog and seeing what they have done and are looking at, shows the talent coming to help and how they can think and create in a more artistic way. Combining our class, which seems to be more numbers and the how to thinking, with the art class, a crafty and creative form of thinking, there are endless possibilities to make this experience a success.

The oral histories assigned to read really demonstrated how there is a difference between what a textbook tells the reader about a point in history, and what a person who had that event affect them personally can tell you. The textbook gives a detailed description of an event; an individual who experienced that same event first hand can tell you what the repercussions were and how it effected them and the people around them. The readings bringing the riots in Baltimore after the MLK shooting as an example painted a picture of the city and communities with their residents, how it impacted them personally and financially.

High School For Change

Free Your Voice is a human rights group that has begun in a Curtis Bay school, Benjamin Franklin High School, to prevent an incinerator to be built near their high school. This facility would be the second largest incinerator in the United States, and could emit 240 pounds of mercury each year, causing many health and environmental issues. The high school students have come together to prevent this from happening in their community and bring the community to a better living standard. They have already created a video to raise awareness about their community and what it would be affecting, and have created pages and blogs to spread the word.

I would start this project by contacting the group leader at the school; begging to understand at a deeper level the situation going on and get a perspective from somebody within the community. To start thinking about how such a change in the community will affect the general population within Curtis Bay and the high school in particular.Then from there I would try to talk to the students active in the Free Your Voice group, to get their idea of what they are looking to accomplish, along with what changes have accompanied their homes and neighborhoods since Energy Answers Inc. has come in to build this incinerator.

The mission statements from the established businesses are slightly vague, bringing a general image of what they are doing. There really is nothing about how they plan to do it, or a specific ending result they are trying to accomplish. This seems to differ from our class' mission statements, it looks like we are trying to give the how we are trying to do it, along with a goal to accompany the how. Our statements are more specific and point the reader exactly where we are looking to end up. I understand our project is only a semester long, which is a fraction of time compared to the businesses because they are working for years to complete a goal. However, we can still bring that mystic to our mission so that the audience will have to do some deeper research to better understand exactly what our ending goal is and how we intend to go about reaching that result.

Roger That, The Mission Is A Go

Baybrook, an area rich with history and culture, a thing of the past for the new modernized Baltimore; now filled with restaurants and shops for tourists and locals. Our group determined to raise awareness of the lost culture and raise money for a local garden to preserve some of the Baybrook area.

Our mission to raise $10,000 for the garden is a lofty goal with only $3,000 starting budget, with having to replenish $1,500 of it for UMBC. But this is still an obtainable goal, very optimistic but obtainable. With the right connections, marketing and planning this is something that could turn out to make a major impact. This would change things for the area of Baybrook and the garden; also changing us as students in the process. From what we have gathered about connections and possible abilities this group can bring together we have a wide variety of talents and individuals that can be utilized to accomplish this goal. I personally envision myself helping the project by bringing in fellow UMBC athletes to show support and raise awareness of the project; this word of mouth marketing wouldn't cost us a thing from a budget stand point and these athletes also know other athletes and other people around the area that could come support the project as well.

This past week the readings dabbled in the history that Baybrook has to offer, showing where and how Baltimore became the powerhouse city it is today. The reading I found most interesting however was the Social Entrepreneurship reading. After reading the article I thought about the idea of not all "entrepreneurs" are real entrepreneurs, some are business management and others think they are entrepreneurs because they began their own business, but true entrepreneurs are the individuals who see a problem and use the tools they have at their disposal to innovate something to make society better in one small aspect. This article was the one that struck me as most interesting because it connected and demonstrated how not all entrepreneurs are the millionaires who created Apple or Microsoft, but can be the people who see a problem and without looking to make lots of money find a way to fix it.