This year, I had the pleasure of launching the DC State Fair Kids’ Poetry Contest. With help from the organization Kid Power DC, submissions rolled in from pint-sized poets living all over the District. I just posted the poem “Everybody Knows About Carrots,” the first in a series of spotlights, on the DC State Fair website. It took second place in the 4th and 5th grade category. Check it out and I think you’ll see why it’s a winner.
Photo by Flickr user Steven Depolo
Two stories on two rather different topics appeared in two divergent publications this week. One thing they have in common is that I wrote them. They both, I realized, also carry the theme of making something from thin air. See any other similarities?
Growing something out of nothing: The story of D.C.’s Wangari Gardens, on Grist.org, December 4
The Mad Lib legacy, on DeafEcho.com, December 6
Filed under DC
Food Day activities overlap with lunchtime at the Marketplace cafeteria at Gallaudet. Photo by Rhea.
The nine students in my class “D.C. Farmers Markets: Apples and Access” took part in a packed Food Day celebration on the Gallaudet University campus in late October. I neglected to post about Food Day, unfortunately, thanks to the election hullabaloo. Quick recap: Barack Obama won with a final count of 332 electoral votes. (Mitt Romney won, too). The House and Senate retained their majorities.
Though I am not sure of the number of Hope Springs Farm cheese cubes or tiny cups of Kauffman’s cider we distributed on October 24, I do know that the fundraiser we launched that day will bring in $674 through online giving, checks, and a doubling pledge by Gallaudet President T. Alan Hurwitz. The funds will support the Holiday Helpings program at Bread for the City, a service center serving D.C. residents. It is an organization that I might have a tiny professional crush on. Continue reading
Pies waiting to be judged at the DC State Fair. By Rhea.
This past Saturday, I went to the DC State Fair. As one of the organizers. I have never had a hand in such a big, frenetic event. I now have greater respect for:
First-year students? Yes. I had been baffled by their confusion as I taught classes this semester, but now I understand that combination of prismed attention and heart-pounding possibility in which they swim. That feeling like a bakery rack so full of goodies it threatens to tip over.
It was a day to run in all directions at once, to socialize with more friends in six hours than I’ve been able to meet up with in months, and to feel thrilling things abuzz. In short, it was a day at the fair. From inside the fair.
Filed under DC
One of my current projects is organizing the DC State Fair. Work toward the September 22 event sometimes feels like a mad dash to network with as many local businesses and organizations as possible, including Kid Power DC.
This week, in the midst of preparations, I had a chance to sit, listen, and warm my heart, thanks to an invitation to the Kid Power Harvest Dinner. In a recent post on the DC State Fair website, I write about the creative and tasty event. Check out “Kid Power brings delights big and small.”
Filed under DC
A woman with an automatic rifle was one of the images in a Videofreex screening held in Washington, D.C. in January 2011. Photo by Rhea.
The package came a couple of months ago. It contained a free copy of Nancy Cain’s Video Days: And what we saw though the viewfinder. The author had signed the title page, “To Rhea with love. (Videofreex: the next generation)”
I tucked into the book eager to learn more about my father’s life before I existed, hoping to understand more now that he’s gone. I found something unexpected.
Video Days chronicles Nancy’s adventures beginning in the era of 30-pound cameras that democratized the art. It continues until 1996, a few years short of the one-handed Flip Cam era. During the social revolution that straddled the late ’60s and early ’70s, the young Nancy runs off to join the New York video-making collective known as the Videofreex. There, she works alongside my dad, Chuck Kennedy. They all live in a rambling former boarding house in Lanesville, N.Y.
Somewhere in this Freex section, I hit a passage that struck me as familiar:
Chuck was born in the Bronx and spent a large part of his youth in a Catholic orphanage. At a certain point, he was given the choice between reform school or the Army, so he joined up. In the Army, Chuck learned electronics and saw the world. Continue reading
Filed under Community of writers, DC, Other arts
It’s Friday, and 16 ounces of Mr. John’s Fish (Tea) Soup costs just $5.50. Shabbat shalom, with a touch of spice.
Photo taken by Rhea outside of the Spicy Delight restaurant in Takoma, D.C.
Filed under DC, Image for the day
Spending some quality time with Mother Earth. She’s still no competition for Ma, though.
Blair Road Community Garden, Blair and Oglethorpe NW, Washington, DC. Photo by Harry Chauss.
Filed under DC, Image for the day
Last year, I helped to plan a Shavuot event in this ravishing church. Shavuot, the Jewish holiday commemorating receiving the Torah, is coming up again at the end of May.
I decided to use this shot of the church stairwell today not because I am obsessed with stairwells, but because I love how the serene spiral is interrupted by a cacophony of life and color.
Ain’t that how it always goes?
If the stairway feels like my ideal conditions for writing or thinking or healing–calm, solid, continuous–then the glaring orange traffic cones and the person running up the steps with a Giant grocery bag depict how reality crashes in.
Image: The National Swedenborgian Church of the Holy City, 16th St. NW, Washington, D.C. Photo by Rhea.
Filed under DC, Image for the day, Jewish community, Uncategorized
“We’re out here pretty much every day, weather permitting,” he tells me.
So why not invest in some chairs? Or, you know, a table? I am clearly an outsider.
14th and V Streets NW in Washington, D.C., any afternoon. Photo by Rhea.
Filed under DC, Image for the day
Rhea Kennedy Morgenstern, writer 