{"id":1232,"date":"2012-02-08T23:40:19","date_gmt":"2012-02-09T03:40:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/james\/?p=1232"},"modified":"2012-02-17T06:47:32","modified_gmt":"2012-02-17T10:47:32","slug":"my-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/james\/2012\/02\/08\/my-city\/","title":{"rendered":"My City"},"content":{"rendered":"

Okay, I have a\u00a0confession to make: I didn’t volunteer at any point within the last two weeks.\u00a0 I certainly had every intention to, but chose to stay home and sleep the first weekend and ended up sick in bed the next.\u00a0 Now that my pitiful excuse has been given, I’ll proceed forward on the grounds of a negligent truth rather than write this post\u00a0pretending I spent the same sunny Saturday at the\u00a0farm with my classmates.<\/p>\n

But while I didn’t\u00a0volunteer at the William Byrd Community House over the past two weekends, I did last spring.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Today, the goals of the organization are largely the same, and the farm–officially called the William Byrd Farmlet–is\u00a0a 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

The WBCH and its mission is just one of the many examples of why Richmond is such a fantastic and surprising city.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 There’s Ellwood Thompson’s<\/a>, the independent grocer and cafe devoted to utilizing products created within a 100-mile radius or Rostov’s<\/a>, 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.\u00a0 And then you’ve got RVA Magazine<\/a>, 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.<\/a>, the Richmond-based boutique that dresses them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u00a0passionate about supporting this city and making it the best it can be.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

And,\u00a0of course, here’s a song from one of the best bands to come out of Richmond in the past few years, Carbon Leaf<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Okay, I have a\u00a0confession to make: I didn’t volunteer at any point within the last two weeks.\u00a0 I certainly had every intention to, but chose to stay home and sleep the first weekend and ended up sick in bed the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1641,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6247],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cbl"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/james\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/james\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/james\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/james\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1641"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/james\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/james\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1232\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/james\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/james\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/james\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}