Play hopscotch in the park.

Smell the flowers.

Look at the sky. A lot.

Find treasures among the hellebores.

And among the growing lilies.

Go barefoot.

©2010 angie newsome. All Rights Reserved.

When I was in high school, my dad, sister and I spent a lot of time volunteering. We worked at a camp for the developmentally disabled, taking groups of teenagers and adults on summertime field trips like horseback riding and swimming. (I even got a black eye in the pool one day when another volunteer tossed a kid onto my head. Ouch!) One of the reasons I chose to go to Warren Wilson College was because of its emphasis on community service, and as a junior and senior, I worked in the college’s Service Learning Office designing and editing a national journal about why and how colleges and students should incorporate community service into their academic programs.

After a hiatus of sorts — family and work responsibilities can overwhelm at times — I find myself compelled, again, to be more involved. President Obama’s call to service was and is such a moving message to me that it’s inspiring me, again, to find more ways to contribute to my own community.

One of the best places I’ve volunteered with so far has been at the Asheville-based MANNA Food Bank. While I’m a deep believer in organizing for real, systematic change in the community, I also believe in meeting people’s needs now, particularly for basic needs such as housing and food. Consider this:

• There are more than 35 million people who are hungry in the United States. Nearly 40 percent of these people are children, and 10 percent are elderly.
• The numbers of people living in poverty in the 18 western counties range from nearly 10 percent to 20 percent of the population.
• The numbers of hungry people in Western North Carolina are twice the national rate, which is one in 12. That means one in every six people living in Western North Carolinian is hungry. I know there are people in my neighborhood who use local organizations to get help. There are probably some in your neighborhood, too.

Last week, Pat and I volunteered at MANNA to sort apples and make packages of food for elementary school kids to take home over the weekends. These tiny, back-pack sized packages of canned vegetables and spaghetti and meatballs go home with children who receive free or low-cost lunches at school — nationally, 30.5 million children received these lunches every day in 2007.

While we volunteered, we learned, as has been reported locally, that even though food donations have remained steady at the food bank, demand has really spiked across the region, leaving MANNA’s food resources stretched. It’s worth noting here that Charity Navigator, an organization that serves as a consumer watchdog on charities, gives MANNA only two of four possible stars (four being the best), mainly — from what I can tell — because growth in both revenues and expenses have decreased and their working capital ratio is also very, very small.

There are many root causes for hunger — low wages, unemployment, poverty. These need long-term — and sometimes political — solutions. In the meantime, I want to help make sure my neighbors have enough food to eat and that kids have enough food to eat over the weekends, when they aren’t at school and can’t get lunch there. If you want to help, too, there are lots of volunteer opportunities directly through MANNA, or you can sign on with Hands On Asheville-Buncombe, which offers volunteer opportunities in a wide variety of areas — from working on hunger to the environment. Statewide, the North Carolina Hunger Forum is working to cut hunger in half by 2015. There’s also a Raleigh-based group, Stop Hunger Now, dedicated to stopping hunger internationally, and Feeding America can give you some places to start helping other locations.

There are hundreds of hunger-fighting organizations across the country, so if you’re thinking of donating donate money to these or any other organization, take a little time to do your homework first. Look at nonprofit researchers GuideStar or Charity Navigator and check with a consumer protection agency (like the Better Business Bureau’s Wise Giving Alliance) to make sure you’re informed about what your money will do. Ask around and see what works for you, what your neighbors or colleagues recommend. 

Either way, now is the time to help. Part of my goals for the year include volunteering at least 40 hours. I’ll let you know where and how that works out. But, I’d like to know about you, too. Did Obama’s call to service move you to action? What are you doing and/or planning to do to make your community a better place for everyone?

©2010 angie newsome. All Rights Reserved.

If you are in Asheville tomorrow morning and would like to go to a bakery and drink lots of coffee and maybe (if you can resist, you are a better person than me) eat some cinnamon rolls then walk around town looking like a tourist while snapping photographs with a group of other camera-wielding wanderers, then come on over! I’ve sent out a call to the Internets and planned my first photog meetup, for which there are Twitterers and Flickrers in attendance. Some famous!

So, here are the details:

Photog meetup from 9-11 a.m., Saturday, meeting first at West End Bakery in West Asheville. Share your goodies on Flickr, tag with AVLmeetup. Woot! Contact me with questions and Lemon Drops, please. See you tomorrow!

©2010 angie newsome. All Rights Reserved.

It was a quick walk. I slid over the ice to head up the road, but had to resort to my lack-of-snow-legs by walking in the ditch. Not fun. But we made it to the church, one of my favorite places in my neighborhood. I’ve never been in, but I want to.

We turned around and slip-slide back to the house. No one was around and everyone had their doors shut, window curtains drawn. There was just the wind. It pushed and prodded us back to the house. We climbed up the hill and up the stairs.

Snow clung to my shoes and jeans and I thought about making some tea or a pot of coffee. And the work ahead was easy this morning — fact-checking stories, scrounging around for some ideas, running errands. But Sammy! Always there’s Sammy, the dog on the hunt for a bone. Here, he’s using his doggy mind powers to get me to open the door and go to the treat box. It always works.

It was a happy beginning to a cold, snowy day. I hope yours is a good one, too.

©2010 angie newsome. All Rights Reserved.

“If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.” ~Milton Berle

Last night, Pat and I went to the Doors of Asheville fundraising event for Mountain Housing Opportunities. Pat works for the organization and a program that helps families build their own affordable housing. He’s working with five families now, and I thought about them at the auction, as people milled about, looking at all the donated artwork, much of it literally paintings on doors. We grabbed a plateful of barbecue and sat down to wait for the auction to begin.

Milton Berle’s quote was on a poster propped up on the edge of the stage, which sat on the same stage where David Earle and the Plowshares ended their performance with a version of “When the Saints Go Marching In” (On another note, I never get tired of watching the Muppet trombone player). It’s the same stage where the auctioneer encouraged and needled and cajoled bidders to up the ante to help fund the organization’s work to make sure people have a safe, affordable place to live in our community.

Some of the doors were amazing, and I wish now that I’d written down the artists’ names for you to go check out. I remember work by Joanna Gollberg Stirling and Jonas Gerard (huh, I wish I could write like he paints) and Ben Betsalel. These people were so generous of their talents to help, I think.

But, of course, they could use more. The fundraiser was a success, but it left me feeling that problems in the economy have dipped into area donors’ pockets pretty hard. To me, that makes affordable housing even more important. If you want to find good organizations supporting housing issues in your own communities, there are lots of places to go. The Directory of National Housing and Homeless Organizations and the National Low Income Housing Coalition can help. When the bidding was over and left the crowded room to go home, I left in love with this quote, the idea of making your own opportunity. It’s an entrepreneurial sprit, of course, one that takes courage and support and belief that it can happen.

©2010 angie newsome. All Rights Reserved.

We woke up this morning to big, cottony flakes of snow falling on trees that are still shades of red, orange and yellow. So we went to the WNC Farmers Market and bought more apples. Our favorites are Pink Ladies and Cameos (these are Utterlies, I think — as in it’s Utterly ridiculous it’s snowing before Halloween! Speaking of apple names…), which this really nice man and his wife sell in the open sheds behind the fancy stalls with walls and doors and refrigerated cases filled with goats cheese and Amish butter. Oh, Cameo. I know you are not like the old varieties my granddad grafted to the apple trees in their back yard, ones like Early Girl that slip over the tongue like apple syrup. But I love your slightly nubby skin, your crisp bite, your uncertain parentage. I think I would like most anything with those qualities, really.

The gentleman who runs the stall will whip out his pocketknife and cut you off a piece of apple or orange to taste, if you like. He buys them by the box from farmers in Hendersonville, he says. And he’ll keep on slicing the fruit and passing you the little slivers until you taste them all once, twice, three times, even. Then you’ll fill inevitably up your bag, hand him $5 and walk to your car, when he’ll call out, “God bless you.” And even I can’t help but to call back a happy, “You, too!” 

©2010 angie newsome. All Rights Reserved.

There was a time in my early 20s where I really thought hard about starting a collective, an intentional community. I had graduated from Warren Wilson College (enough said, right?), had moved to Atlanta for my first “job,” had moved back to Asheville to struggle at a minimum-wage job, and stressed out when I spent more than $30 at the grocery store. It was the typical post-liberal arts college depression, the one where I suddenly found that the thing I really grew to detest in undergrad — the constant, constant flow of people everywhere and the utter lack of privacy — had a real flipside. Community. Whether you like it or not.

So it’s probably not a stretch to think that I spent a lot of heavy time with books about creating intentional communities. I’d move to a collective! Where we’d cook together! And talk about progressive politics! I knew what Robert Putnam was talking about in Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. So I tried. I planned and went to art meet-ups, group cooking experiments. I hung out with the anarchists. They were terrible.

But this weekend, after I wrote about what makes a good neighbor, I thought about the idea again. At the very least, I could find out how to be a good neighbor, right? I know what I like, but I wondered what others had to say. Eleven million hits on a Google search later, I found some real yawners, ones that made me feel like I was in a Victorian time warp, like you should “welcome new neighbors with an introductory note or a friendly chat,” “visit with someone lonely,” or “when you’re outside make sure to smile and wave at your other neighbors.”

Not to take Seth and Amy’s line, but: Really?!?

So I decided to do my own handy guide to being a good neighbor, based on actual neighbors I have had (though not in my current neighborhood, that’s for sure). It’s not for the faint of heart. Here goes:

Don’t:

1. Don’t look your neighbors in the eye when they see you taking your hand gun from your car into your house.
2. Don’t leave piled-up deer carcasses in your carport for weeks on end after your grandkids go deer hunting.
3. Don’t drive 5 miles per hour up your one-lane road, even if you have a vintage white Corvette and don’t want to get it dusty.
4. Don’t scowl at your neighbors after they call the cops on you and take you to court.
5. Don’t ignore the man leaning up against your apartment building who is passed out drunk. Make sure he’s breathing, OK?

Do:

1. Warn your neighbors when a very, very large bear starts chasing the neighborhood dogs and pulling bee hives out into the woods.
2. Have lots of cheap beer, lawn chairs and buckets of fireworks available for impromptu July 4 celebrations.
3. When the cows break through the fence, call and wake up your neighbors then offer to repair the fence, even though it’s the middle of the night.
4. When you reach your 90s, wear green jeans every day and give passers-by the double thumbs up and a tip of the hat.
5. When your architect breaks up your marriage, laminate posters decked out with slogans like, “Home designer? Home breaker!” Put the posters all along the road in your neighborhood.
6. Remember: Keep an open mind. Neighbors can be kooky, but that, of course, is a lot of fun, too. Because, really, who knows what stories they’re all telling about you? 

©2010 angie newsome. All Rights Reserved.

When Pat started building this house, we didn’t think we would really move here. We loved our house in Swannanoa and we had dreams of selling this one and going around the world: Thailand and Vietnam, maybe a stop in Spain. But things changed. The housing market slowed down and as the months ticked by, we started counting our pennies. One weekend, we called up our friend Jack to ask if he wanted to buy our Swannanoa house. (What’s the saying I want to put here? A bird in the hand is better than two in the bush?) After the phone call, we started packing.

A year later — even though there are boxes I still haven’t unpacked cluttering the basement and I sometime wake up and think we’re in our other house — I realize that I love this neighborhood. It didn’t take long, this growing love, to settle on me. I even admitted as much in my contributor’s bio for the latest issue of WNC Magazine, wherein I am quoted saying that I live on the best street in West Asheville. And NO ONE called me out on it, so it must be true!

But what I’ve also been reminded of over these last 12 months is what it is to be a Good Neighbor. That’s where Ginger comes in. She’s a little shy.

Not really. Ginger has got to be one of the least shy people you’ll ever meet, which is why I find this photo hilarious.

Let me introduce you to her, because she was one of the first neighbors to introduce herself to us. That was just the beginning. She has helped friends buy and move into houses along our street. She organizes a monthly poker game and always sends me an invitation. She planted rows of tomatoes, peppers and squash, which becomes a community garden because she lets anyone come and pick them if they want. Her fenced-in backyard is frequently populated with groups of dogs, both her own and ones she’s taking care of. When someone moved away this year and left a starving, sick cat behind, she adopted it and named it Sweetie. She worries over some neighborhood kids and takes care of others when their parents need to take a sudden trip to the ER. She cuddles the babies. She also always stops to talk when she sees you outside and always, always has nice compliments to offer and helps out in crises and celebrations.

(Wow, I was impressed before, but just writing this makes me feel like a self centered, undependable shut-in.)

She is unfailingly, absolutely unique. I’m so thankful for her! She has, whether she knows it or not, helped make my feelings of homesickness — both for my old house and that old romantic idea of home and community — dissipate, even as dust still collects on those moving boxes I’ve yet to unpack.

©2010 angie newsome. All Rights Reserved.

The neighbors next to her haven’t said anything to either Pat or me. We haven’t talked to them, either, but we see them every once in a while. They have about eight cars — Jeeps and Broncos and the sort — in their driveway most of the time. On the weekends, they’ll throw open their front door and if you look, sometimes you can see out the back of their house to the woods and the ravine behind them. They keep their yard immaculate. The grass is cut every weekend. The porch is swept. They wave and smile when they pass me and Sammy on the road as we take our walks, up past the neighbors who throw all kinds of trash out in their yard, things like old shoes and broken mirrors and, today, two TVs, facing each other on the grass. These neighbors speak Spanish; Pat and I don’t. Sometimes a wave and a smile are the best things to say, anyway.

In the ravine, up the way some, there’s a guy who drives a tractor trailer for a living who lives in his van in the woods. He’s got piles of wood stacked up on his land, which he keeps clean as a well-kept city park, except for all the broken-down vans and a shed or two. Every once in a while, the rig is parked down there — minus the trailer, of course. I’ve never seen him, but I’ve heard about him from our neighbor, Ginger, who is like the Neighborhood Ambassador.

I work with Ginger, who hosts semi-regular women-only poker games at her house. She has two dogs. One is as old as the hills and can’t see or hear anymore. She has a patch of herbs next to her house and knows everyone. She asks me all the time if anyone is giving us any trouble or if we heard some fight across the street, in the duplex where some guy who just got out of prison comes in the middle of the night and yells at the woman who lives there with a couple of kids. Pat and I don’t hear them. Ginger’s bedroom faces their house, so she does.

Down the street lives a couple we went to Warren Wilson with. They have two kids. Baby Sam loves Pat’s truck, always wants to crawl around in it and push the buttons as he grins. His sister sometimes runs around like crazy and shouts and laughs. Sometimes she won’t say anything.

©2010 angie newsome. All Rights Reserved.

©2010 angie newsome. All Rights Reserved.