There is a wonderful demonstration garden right in the center of Paris in front of the l’Hotel de Ville, a 15th century municipal building.  The closest space we have like this is Gainesville I think is City Hall, a plain 1960s building surrounded by concrete and former goldfish ponds. Normally, the area in front of the l’Hotel de Ville is a large paved plaza area with benches and a fountain – not so entirely different. But in early June, raised beds were created in wooden boxes and installed throughout the plaza along with information on “bio” (organic) methods of gardening in small places.

They have fine weather for gardening here in the summer – about twenty degrees cooler than our summers and a little more dry. The garden is beautiful and, everytime I pass it, full of people enjoying it – which is the idea. The word for vegetable garden in French is potager, and the word for sharing is partager, so this potager for partager is also a nice play on words.

To read the rest of this post from Kelli in Paris, and see photos, click here.

Tractor clearing trees and underbrush

I was at my parents’ house this past weekend, tucked away in the northwest corner of Georgia—a picturesque area of mountains, forests, lakes and streams. My parents live near the end of a dead end road, on the side of a mountain replete with pines and hardwoods, wild blackberry bushes and flowers of many colors. Their home is situated east to west, so from their back deck and thru the trees you get an extraordinary view of the sunset each evening, gently setting over lush green mountains in the distance.

But apparently, the view is not quite all that it could be. My folks explained to me how all of their neighbors are either cutting down their trees or lopping off the tops in order to get a better view of the sunset. (To my folks’ credit, they’ve refused to go along with this, despite pressure from the immediate neighbors who share the vista with them.)

To read the rest of this post, click here.

Many of you may have seen the story in this morning’s Gainesville Sun about Ollen James Rogers, identified as the homeless man found dead in Newnan’s Lake on Wednesday. Ollen was a former guest of the house, and my interactions with Ollen were always kind and friendly. Ollen stayed with us during either our first or second year in the Blue House. Ollen had a pretty nice set-up out in the woods where he lived comfortably with several others, including family members. He was a bit of a throwback, a real man’s man–strong, independent and no-nonsense. The only reason he stayed with us for a few weeks was because he had been in a bad accident (on his bike I think) and when the hospital released him, they had told him he needed to rest, recuperate and be close enough for any return visits if needed. He came to the house pretty beat up, bruised and hobbling, lots of bandages.

Ollen wasn’t a regular at the house. He came by every once in awhile, usually on Sundays for the cafe during those first couple of years in the Blue House. I had been out to Ollen’s campsite on occasion, including one trip back in September 2004 when the hurricanes were coming our way. Several folks had gone out to some of the sites to see if anyone wanted to come to safer ground during the storm. I remember Ollen thanking us for the concern but noting that he would be just fine where he was, thank you very much.

Ollen James Rogers, age 53, we give thanks for having known you. May you rest in peace.

- John

Vegetables, yes--but sunflowers too

Whether you are into bio-regionalism, the locavore or local food movement, food security, sustainability or whatnot, gardening seems to be at the center. And the prime purpose of a garden, of course, is to be able to grow your own food.

But I have a little confession to make. Behind the utilitarian value of it all, I’ve discovered that I am a bit of an aesthete as well.

Sunday, despite the ungodly high temperature (heat index over 110 degrees!), my son and I spent over two hours beautifying our little plot—picking up trash from around the vacant lot, rearranging the bags of leaves we use in our compost, cutting down the overgrown grass around the garden’s perimeter, and so on. We also managed to pick around 90 incredibly delicious cherry tomatoes, 175 pole beans, and various peppers, some okra and squash too. And even though the food is the main thing (and the little orange tomatoes were especially delicious), the best part of the day was stepping off a little ways away and taking in how beautiful the garden looked after our efforts. (And in the interest of full disclosure, it’s our friend Bob who has been doing the really hard work over the past weeks—weeding.)

To read the rest of this post, click here.

GCW Spring 2009 House Members

Dear friends,

This will be the last email you get from us until we restart things in early August following our “summer sabbath.” But we did have a few loose ends to tie up:

ASKING FOR YOUR FEEDBACK: Part of what we do during our “summer sabbath” is reflect and evaluate the year just past, and start planning for the next year. As we do this reflecting, evaluating and planning, we would love to hear some feedback from all of you who are part of the GCW community. So, we’d like to ask: Why are you part of the GCW community? Why do you come to the house? What is it about the GCW that most resonates or speaks to you and keeps you coming back? If you’d like to weigh in, we’d love to hear from you. Join the discussion thread on our Facebook page or look for the post, FEEDBACK, just below this one on the GCW blog and leave your feedback as a comment. Thanks!

GOOD LUCK PATRICK: Patrick, who has been such an instrumental member of our community for the past one-and-a-half years, will be leaving us later this week to 1) get married to Catherine in late July, and then 2) start a MA program at the University of Dayton in Ohio in August. For anyone who has been at the house over the past year especially, you know all about everything that Patrick brings to the GCW. His friendliness, work ethic, compassion and general goofiness will be sorely missed. Thanks Patrick, and good luck to you and Catherine!

KEEP UP WITH US ON FACEBOOK AND THE WEBSITE: While we won’t be sending emails out to the list over the summer, we will be making some regular posts (and uploading photos, and whatnot) to our Facebook page, Kelli’s blog and the GCW blog. If you haven’t joined our Facebook group, we’d love to have you. On Kelli’s blog, you’ll read about how we’re learning to “live more locally,” with recent posts about Gainesville’s free bike project, recipes using local food, and neighborliness and hospitality. And given the chance to write some this summer, I hope to post some scripture reflections, any house news and so on on the GCW blog as well. Comments and feedback are encouraged!

MAKING ENDS MEET: Finally, we’d like to thank everyone for their generosity in helping us to make ends meet throughout the year. No one at the GCW is paid. We are not a social service agency, nor do we have tax exempt status. We do not receive any monies from the government or foundations. The folks who live in the house contribute to a common purse, from which we pay our bills and secure what we need to help the folks who frequent our home. But we cannot do it alone. So many of you do what you can to help us make ends meet and keep this work going. For that, we are always grateful. For anyone who would like to help us in supporting the work of the GCW–about 4575 breakfasts to day laborers thru Breakfast Brigade; 5130 meals at Dorothy’s Cafe; and overnight hospitality to 30 different guests, a total of 456 days (for an average of about 15 days per each guest)–you can send checks made out to the GCW to 218 NW 2nd Ave, Gainesville, FL 32601. Thanks again for your kindness.

Have a great summer and we’ll see you in August!

In peace,

John

It is the end of another year for us (we operate on the school schedule, you understand) and part of what we do during our “summer sabbath” is reflect and evaluate the year just past, and start planning for the next year. We’ve never done this before, but as we do this reflecting, evaluating and planning, we would love to hear some feedback from all of you who are part of the GCW community.

So, we’d like to ask: Why are you part of the GCW community? Why do you come to the house? What is it about the GCW that most resonates or speaks to you and keeps you coming back?

If you’d like to weigh in, we’d love to hear from you. Join the discussion thread on our Facebook page or click on the “Comments” link below this post and leave your thoughts here. Thanks!

Celebrating at our 3rd/7th Anniversary Party

Our life at the Gainesville Catholic Worker might be best summed up by the word hospitality. Our meals often consist of 8, 12, 15, or even 30 or more people. Our doorbell rings a dozen (sometimes two or three times that) times a day, with friends or visitors looking for a place to sit out of the sun for awhile, a drink of water, asking to use the phone, and so on. And we regularly have people who have no other place to go staying with us overnight—29 different guests stayed with us this past year for a total of about 450 nights.

Hospitality is often defined by the work of mercy dictate “welcome the stranger.” But the phrase doesn’t quite capture what I think we do. For the most part, we “welcome our friends,” or even our “brothers and sisters.” Maybe you could dismiss it as semantics, but I don’t think that would be fair.

To read the rest of this post, click here.

NOTE: Some of you regularly read Kelli’s blog, www.ourlocallife.com, which covers some of what happens here at the GCW but also more broadly treats the question: “How can we live more locally?” When Kelli or I post entries on that blog which touch on the work of the GCW, we’ll post the opening paragraphs and a link to the fuller post here too, in case any of ya’ll are interested and want to read more.

Working on bikes for the homeless at the Kickstand

There seems to be nothing bad that can be said about biking. At every level, no matter what facet you consider, biking seems to be an extraordinarily good thing: it’s a good form of exercise, there’s no gas involved and no pollution created, it’s a fairly inexpensive form of transportation, and it’s fun. What’s the drawback?

For myself, coming from a middle-class background, biking is a choice I make in terms of simple living, health and having a low impact on the environment. But for many of the folks with whom we work closely with at the Catholic Worker, having a bike is less about any of these things and more about opportunities for work, access to healthcare and social services, and finding a secluded and therefore safer place to live.

To read the rest of this post, click here.

Dear friends,

For a full list of this week’s activities, click here.

CLOSING TIME: This will be our last week of operation until August. We’ll be taking our annual summer sabbatical to rest, rejuvenate and repair the house (and ourselves) from June 20 until the beginning of August. We are so grateful for how so many of you make us a part of your weekly lives: Karen bringing us desserts and various odds and ends regularly, Leah and Vicki faithfully at every cafe, Bob sweating in the garden, Gloria and Dave helming the Breakfast Brigade, and so many more… To all of you, thanks for making our fifth year in the Blue House so wonderful.

2008-09 BY THE NUMBERS: I’m a baseball guy, and therefore statistics are important to me. For the 2008-2009 year, together we shared about 4575 breakfasts during Breakfast Brigade; 5130 lunches/dinners at Dorothy’s Cafe; and we gave overnight hospitality to 29 different guests, a total of 447 days (for an average of about 15 days per each guest). We shared hundreds of more meals (maybe thousands) with friends and visitors outside of Dorothy’s Cafe, received mail for dozens of people, provided a phone or a place to sit and rest to countless to others, and so on. It is a grand undertaking we set out to do each August, and again it is through the generosity of so many friends and volunteers and the kindness of so many guests, visitors and friends that we can keep it all going.

FULL HOUSE: After emptying out for about 10 days, we’re back into the double digits. Three community members are still here, we’ve got two guests, and thru Friday we’re hosting TiAnna and 5 high school students from Holy Faith Catholic Church’s Youth Group, who are doing a week’s retreat with us. If you have a chance to stop by this week and spend a little time working alonside TiAnna and her students, I’m sure they’d love to meet some of our regular volunteers. Keep their group (and us) in your prayers this week.

So if you can, come on by and see us this week. Make your last Dorothy’s Cafe or Breakfast Brigade. And give thanks with us for another wild and interesting year gone by…

In peace,

John

Dear friends,

For information about what is happening this week at the GCW, click here.

This past week, we had a young man staying with us who is considering joining us for the Metanoia semester (a semester-long immersion experience into life at the GCW) in the fall. I often wonder, when coming face-to-face with someone who wants to live and work with us, what their reasons are. Part of my introductory speech to new community members stresses just how seemingly mundane and typical our life is. We cook food and we eat. We clean. We garden. We raise our children. We work. All of us do most of these things. It’s not glamorous work. There is no big “Wow!” to it. It is simply the basics of life.

What we’ve come to believe is that there is something eternal and profoundly meaningful in undertaking these “basics” of life–that there is a great “good” to doing them well, with intention and with gratitude, and maybe most importantly, doing them for others. As a parent, I imagine that this resonates with many of us who are parents–we do all of these things regularly because of our sense of responsbility for, and more deeply, our love for our children.

For people considering living with us, I stress that if the value they assign to their work resides in how big or impressive or “Wow” it is, then they’re not going to like what they find here. For us, as it is for many of you, it is the little thing, the basic thing, done well, with love and in joy, which takes up most of our time and energy. My experience has been that for the vast majority of folks who frequent our home, our doing those little things well for them is seen as a gift, moreso than what one would think maybe. A home well-kept, a meal well-prepared, a clean bathroom, a vase of cut flowers. There is a deep-down goodness to these things, these things that any and all of us can do.

GCW NEEDS LIST: We’re looking for a few things that would help us around the house in our various projects. 1) A DVD player: We’re still looking for a working DVD player, in case anyone has an old one they’re no longer using. We frequently show films at the house and our DVD player broke about a month ago now. 2) Bike locks: This past weekend, we got 6 working bikes (see photo below) from Nam, Lili, Carlos, Jacqueline, Kelly and their crew and the folks at The Kickstand to pass along to some of our guests and visitors who could really use them for work, transportation to appointments, etc. We’ve already given 2 away but we need bike locks for the last 4 so the new owners can make sure they’re secured. The group of students, UF grads and others will be refurbishing more bikes in the weeks to come too. So if anyone can make a gift of a bike lock or several bike locks to the house, we can put them to good use. 3) A lawnmower to borrow: We need to cut back the weeds and grass surrounding our garden on 2nd Street and the use of a lawnmover for an hour or two would be a big help. If you have an easily transportable mower (we’ll come and get it) we could borrow, let us know.

Nam works on a bike

See other photos on our Facebook page by clicking here.

UPCOMING VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITIES: This is our next-to-last week before we take our summer sabbatical. We can use help at Wednesday’s cafe (9:30am-6pm), Friday’s Breakfast Brigade (4:15-7am) and in the garden (call or drop by the house) anytime this week.

In peace,

John