With all that's goin' on I got the world in my palm

The change of seasons really is a great thing. As soon as you can't take one more sticky, humid summer day, fall comes around with its cool, its colors and its food. Fall didn't bring all that much cool though, and it was a whole different ball game when the air started to have that crispness to it that nips at your nose and your fingertips and even your eyelashes, and makes warmth your Holy Grail. It is finally winter.

Because I lived my life almost entirely outside in the summer, the change of seasons practically means a change in lifestyle. I now take the subway to school instead of biking five miles across the river, farm work has slowed down immensely, and I don't spend hours in the evening sitting on the porch, pondering, watching, chatting and listening. I have been driven inside, to the library, coffee shops, my room--where I finally conceded to getting curtains, heavy curtains that keep out the cold. And with the winter for some reasons comes that nearly annual desire for companionship; if for nothing else, I want someone to warm up my bed. I digress...the winter has simply been change of pace, certainly lazier in some ways but busier in others. A few great tidbits that show the change of seasons...

A week's summer harvest

Jean-Claude on weighing duty

Bryant messing with the chicken at Ursinus College...

Ibrahim, Me, Keith and Mumin hot and tired after a long day of work in the summer

Halloween harvest party, the whole family in costume: Donyia, Melissa, Tuwanna

Me and Mumin, one of the coolest kids I know

Digging up sweet potatoes in the fall

I didn't say they were small potatoes

Things at the farm are looking to be so much bigger and better next year, it's incredible. We will ostensibly serving 50 families with CSA shares (weekly eight-pound bags of vegetables) and have a weekly farmstand. We are planning it so intensely, and although things never go exactly according to plan, I can assure the ratio of potatoes to hot peppers will be much more appropriate this year. We will also be trying a lot of new things, like growing potatoes in cages, building a variety of trellises, and interplanting different crops like crazy. It's unbelievable how much autonomy I and two other young people have over the project, and how successful it has been. Landing right in the middle of this has been one of the greatest blessings in my life, and I can't wait to see where it takes us in the next year. It's a good place I'm in right now, and I am very much looking forward to the next change of seasons. And when spring comes, my windows will squeak open, my bike will get back on the road, the plants will go in the ground and my kids will run outside to help, yelling "Miss Annie! Where are the other garden people? What are you doing? Can I help? I missed you guys in the winter!" and in their own way they recognize the seasons changing.

The Days are Just Packed

In recent weeks, the days have been flying by. Just yesterday I was out on the farm teaching my favorite high schoolers how to prune tomatoes, watching the early morning fog lift off of the city and the July dragonflies appear to take its place. Wait- that was two months ago by now. Since then, the kids went back to school and so did I. Back to the land of beer pong and forced flirtation, trying to impress others when the only ones we should really be trying to impress are ourselves. Can you tell I miss summer?

The speed at which my life is moving seems to be increasing exponentially and it makes me wonder: is it going to continue in this direction? Will I be sixty years old and one minute later, seventy? They say that time flies when you're having fun, but why is it not the other way around? Why can't those times of boredom, sadness, awkwardness blow over instead of hanging above us like a rain cloud waiting to burst? It really must be because you can't have too much of a good thing. Would the great times in our lives be nearly as great if they lasted forever?

No amount of philosophizing will change the true fact that it is finally fall. And the universe really is designed perfectly, for when I thought I just wouldn't be able to finish one more bike ride in the miserable, muggy Philly heat, fall rolled around. And with it, new characters have entered my life. The old ones never truly leave.

I like to say that I now attend the church of George. I have begun to spend two mornings a week with a neighborhood man, George, working in the garden. He attended a cooking demonstration the nonprofit I work for held at a nearby church, and inquired about ways to get involved. Two days later, he met me at the garden gate at 9 AM, dressed in coveralls and ready to get dirty. This man is an amazing person- at 40-odd years old, he walks everywhere (there are not short distances, mind you) and knows everything about his city. And tells it to me, in what feels like an impassioned, meaningful sermon, while we are there on our hands and knees in the dirt.

He's also trying to get me to spice up my vocabulary, and stop using the words "cool" and "wow" so liberally. "Wow" seems to be the hardest, given that his stories have recently been of deep personal pain. And all I can say in response is wow.

I have no way of contacting George, we just meet at the garden in person. Today I'm being lazy and staying home because of the rain, and I'm almost positive he's out there anyway waiting for me. And for him, standing out there alone in the rain, the time is probably not flying by at all.

Children

What is it that makes children so universally loved? And lovable?

Today we had the first day of after school programs building a garden at Penrose Recreation Center, and I cannot wait to go back again. The kids ranged in age from 3 to 15, but all of them shared a similar energy that embodies what I love about working with kids. They exhibit so little apathy in comparison to the enthusiasm they exude. I think we could all use to take a page from their book of life.

The Juggler

Can we ever really learn to juggle?

It seems to me like we spend all our lives trying to learn how to keep all the balls in the air as more and more get thrown at us. Family, friends, work, play, studies, bills, health. Sometimes a ball falls, sometimes a ball is replaced by another.

I used to be able to juggle. Really juggle. I was 10. I'm juggling a lot more things in my life right now. But I'm a much worse juggler when it comes to the clown sport.

You dig?

Organizing Well

How does one lead with confidence without solely pursuing one's own agenda? And how can one allow for the input of others while still maintaining a sense of direction and moving at a reasonable pace?

I have become increasingly involved in student organizing this year and it has led me to a lot of pondering about how to best organize a group of people in the most democratic, enthusiastic, organized and effective way possible. My involvement in several Temple organizations has given me the opportunity to witness a variety of approaches to leadership, and while I applaud all of the groups' leaders for their hard work and dedication, I almost always leave meetings thinking more would get done if things were done differently.

One major difficulty is maintaining focus. Without being a dictatorship, a leader or group of leaders must keep the larger group on topic. And in addition to staying within the reasonable realm of discussion, it is equally important not to focus too much on the small details. Having votes on trivial things, asking for everyone's opinion on tiny decisions, etc takes too much of everyone's time and really amounts to nothing more productive in the end.

That being said, great things are happening these days.

Student Peace Alliance is moving in a great direction, with increased new involvement and more active involvement from the older membership. Members are choosing which community organization they want to be involved with regularly. Some are organizing yoga and capoeira classes at the Penrose Recreation Center while others are planning a hip hop program for the kids at Treehouse Books. Another group member is planning a conference on nonviolent conflict resolution for next fall. Per usual, these projects are all led and almost solely carried out by executive board members, so my hope is that we can rouse up some enthusiasm from the regular membership to take their own initiative to help. Convincing people to take their own initiative: is that a contradiction? Oxymoron?

Temple Community Garden is also developing wonderful programs these days: vegetable gardens at Penrose Rec Center and Dunbar Elementary School. The Dunbar program is in conjunction with Students for Environmental Action and Project EDU's Philly Eco Kids, a group of student educators who present a science-oriented, environmental curriculum to students after school. The garden is on the roof of the school, which is visible from the top floors of many Temple campus buildings. I can't wait to see it in bloom in the spring! At Penrose, an awesome community center with extremely dedicated staff, there is less of a pre-existing structure for the garden. This is the one I am working with. So without further ado, time to do some research!

Et une autre parole de chanson

On me dit que nos vies valent pas grand chose,

Elles passent en un instant comme fanent les roses.

On me dit que le temps qui glisse est un salaud que nos chagrins il s'en fait

des manteaux pourtant quelqu'un m'a dit...

Que tu m'aimais encore.

C'est quelqu'un qui m'a dit que tu maimais encore.

Serait possible alors?

On me dit que le destin se moque bien de nous

Qu'il donne rien et qu'il nous promet tous

Parais qu'le bonheur est a portee de main,

Alors on tend la main et on se retrouve fou

By Carla Bruni, the first lady of France. Excuse the lack of accents, I'm not much of one for html or computer formatting. Would this be as beautiful if it wasn't in French?

There is a light that never goes out

Take me out tonight

Where there's music and there's people

Who are young and alive

Driving in your car

I never never want to go home

Because I haven't got one anymore

The Smiths hit the nail on the head with this one. Adolescence, isolation, longing for meaning. Aren't we lucky to be young and alive? But are the Smiths right and do we have a home anymore?

Four years and so many miles ago...

Today I happened upon the blog I wrote on throughout middle school and early high school. It was called a xanga, and everyone who was anyone had one. Before the advent of facebook, texting, and twitter, we used the internet to express ourselves (in what some may even argue was a meaningful way). We used complete sentences and paragraphs to get our point across- and these blogs were actually fairly well-written! Reading my posts old posts bemoaning the life of an apathetic high schooler made me wonder if I was a better writer back then than I am now, and if I am still close to as funny as I was then. Not to toot my own horn, but some of my posts were outright hilarious! I outed myself for submitting a fake post-secret to Silver Chips (it got printed too!). The notecard said "I hate my friends. I have voodoo dolls of all of them in my sock drawer". I never did practice voodoo, but I wasn't actually that fond of everyone I spent time with because they were friends through friends or peripheral acquaintances, and by joking about it and telling everyone it was fully a lie, I was able to say how I felt outright to the whole school. I probably channeled most of my sarcasm and anger onto the internet, because I was not one to talk much back in 10th grade. Boy, have things changed.