Okay, I have a confession to make: I didn’t volunteer at any point within the last two weeks. I certainly had every intention to, but chose to stay home and sleep the first weekend and ended up sick in bed the next. Now that my pitiful excuse has been given, I’ll proceed forward on the grounds of a negligent truth rather than write this post pretending I spent the same sunny Saturday at the farm with my classmates.
But while I didn’t volunteer at the William Byrd Community House over the past two weekends, I did last spring. To echo the previous posts about the farm the WBCH keeps running out back, it’s incredible that there’s an acre of organic produce and good will tucked away between the peeling-paint facades and cracked concrete sidewalks of inner-city Richmond. The organization was founded in 1900 by a group of nurses aiming to address the social and health needs of the surrounding low-income area. Today, the goals of the organization are largely the same, and the farm–officially called the William Byrd Farmlet–is a central element to their success because the produce that my classmates and I helped grow at the farm is harvested and then sold at discounted prices at the William Byrd Market, the farmer’s market project of the WBCH. What’s more, the WBCH holds weekly educational sessions teaching the market’s customers about good nutrition, cooking with fresh produce, and doing it all on a budget.
The WBCH and its mission is just one of the many examples of why Richmond is such a fantastic and surprising city. In the midst of train tracks, glass, stone, and the remnants of an industrial past there’s a vibrant and compassionate community engaged in keeping the local welfare and culture thriving. There’s Ellwood Thompson’s, the independent grocer and cafe devoted to utilizing products created within a 100-mile radius or Rostov’s, the coffee and tea shop that’s been roasting their own coffee beans on-site daily with their antique behemoth of a roaster since 1979. And then you’ve got RVA Magazine, the quarterly publication offering a forum for the promotion and discussion of the purely Richmondian creative elite (that’s right: hipsters) and Need Supply Co., the Richmond-based boutique that dresses them.
So no matter which obscure corner of the River City you wander to, be it West Cary, East Main, or South Cherry, you’re sure to find proud and committed citizens, businesses, and organizations passionate about supporting this city and making it the best it can be. As far as combining unique cultural values and aesthetics, historical awareness, local identity, and progressive community outreach goes, my city’s pretty tough to beat.
And, of course, here’s a song from one of the best bands to come out of Richmond in the past few years, Carbon Leaf.
I didn’t really connect this post back to the environment, but it leaves me a lot of room to work with this entry for the synthesis. I hope that this post, at the very lesat, might be a good segue into the more specific topic of environmentalism in Richmond.
I think you can definitely use this as a segue into areas that are relevant to our class/the environment. This post pays homage to the multi-faceted nature of our city. Richmond is a wonderful place, not just because of treasures like the James River and the farmlet, but because of so many of these non-environmental elements. I like the way you provide such varied support for your love for Richmond. Looking back on my own posts, I don’t feel that I’ve been connecting them back particularly well, so your comment helps me to think about areas of improvement for my posts as well!
Shannon,
This is something that has been on my heart too. Richmond is made so unique by a wide assortment of caring individuals who really, really love their city. It is everything from WBCH, to Ellwood Thompson’s, to people like Don Coleman and Kim Bridges, who both work with the Richmond Public Schools. They came and spoke to my Justice and Civil Society class recently, and I came away with this convicting feeling of the need to get and stay involved in what’s going on around the city of Richmond. Richmond is unique in the fact that it is dynamic and open to change, and that it is a place where one person can still make a tangible impact.