Umina, Robeks, Wisconsin Avenue

        When I asked if any of the smoothie-makers wanted to do an interview, Umina quickly volunteered. Seated at one of the small tables at Robeks, she drummed on the table and gestured with her hands. Her speech, punctuated with many "like"s and "yunno"s, was easy to listen to and hard to transcribe. Unlike most of the older people I had interviewed, our talk was a more equilateral conversation.

         

          “My name is Umina Bentrera and I am a shift leader at Robeks. I also work at Dominoes. I prefer working at Robeks. I’ve been working here almost two years.

      
         I ask her if there are regulars she knows. Yes. All the time. That’s why I love Robeks! When you see them, like, by the window, or the doors or whatever, you already know what they want and make it. But there’s always that one time where one customer might change it, which is really fun.

            I recently went to Los Angeles to take a class for special effects and I loved it so much I was like ‘I gotta get out of here!’ She laughs. I mean I love DC and I’m pretty sure if I move I’ll miss it, but I mean I’ve been here all my life and it gets kind of repetitive.

            I got out of school and I was like ‘what am I going to do?” I realized I really liked makeup. But in order to do special effects, I gotta get down the makeup part and I’m kind of like, I don’t know, in between right now. I took a class- there’s a makeup school here in DC. They’re really cool, but I feel like I would learn a lot more and be within my own comfort zone… Los Angeles is for people who wanna, like, do things like be behind the scenes or be, like, yunno actors or musicians or whatever. I feel like DC is definitely not the place to be unless I want to do like the governor’s makeup or whatever.

            I went to Wilson, I also went to Janney, I went to Deal, I went to Stoddert. I used to want to do something in the artistic field. I wanted to be a dancer, a belly dancer. I was supposed to do CityYear for a year and I didn’t end up moving to Philly. I ended up going to Mongomery College for a semester and I really didn’t like it because my parents were like ‘go to school! Go to school! Go to school!’ and I was like ‘eugh.’ But yeah.

            I basically stayed within the artistic field. I’m saving my money right now to go to Los Angeles. I’m here, working. On the weekends, I open the store here, take a two-hour break, and then go to Dominoes, work three or four hours, and go back to sleep. I’m supposed to be a makeup artist, and I do stuff on the side. But I really want to work for MAC. But MAC is very strict. I talked to one of the regional directors, and she was really straightforward, and I was just like ‘noooo!’

            I feel like it’s kind of weird working at a smoothie shop. Like I understand customer service all the way, which is what every retail job is. But I’m like… so done with Tenleytown. Tenleytown is cool but I’m just so done with it!

            I figure that with the makeup job I’ll be travelling a lot anywhere. Hopefully I’ll be so famous that celebrities will fly me across the country to do their makeup… that would be so cool. My goal is to win an Oscar.

            Just follow your instinct. Like, obviously listen to everybody else’s insight. Like if your parents want you to do something, listen to them, but do what you want to do. I wasted a semester at Montgomery College. Definitely.”

"Just follow your instinct."

Joseph, Z Burger, Wisconsin Avenue

Joseph and I talked across the counter at Z Burger. He seemed sort of confused as to what he was supposed to be doing, and at first insisted he had nothing to say and tried to convince one of the cooks to do the interview instead. But she, smiling broadly, told him he would do great and pushed him back to counter. With a constantly furrowed brown and Eastern European sounding accent, Joseph ended every sentence with a tentative look, as though waiting for approval that he had said the right thing.

“Thank you for come to the Z Burger. My name is Joseph. I work here almost four and a half years. Business is going very well. We also have lots of activities including the biggest event for us was the President Obama birthday. Our store give all day donation included free meal: burger, shake, fries. One very big cake, the size of 11x11. Probably $10,000 only the cake. Z Burger have a traditional every Fourth of July we make a burger competition and it’s very exciting. People come from every part of US including winner from Canada. 

             And now we have extend from one location on Wisconsin we have here before to have this in Tenleytown, also one in Glover Park, Georgetown, another one in White Marsh Baltimore, and we open a couple more in Southwest. Very soon, just a couple of days, we open one in Columbia Heights 14^th and Park. That location very good. And this business normally is fast food, but we pay more attention for fresh ingredients, fresh products, fresh meats. Also we have 75 types old fashioned shakes.

In our belief for the teenager to have to graduate from the high school include you. Future and more important is looking ahead forward for the good education for the best university for the kid’s future and the better for the country. ‘Cause education brings the future.

Z Burger's Legendary Shake List

Since I mentioned before in the interview, our store have 75 old-fashioned shakes. Very rich, very high quality ice cream. Most of the sale here is the chocolate category: chocolate, chocolate peanut butter, mud pie, which is the chocolate with coffee and oreo, rocky road, heath bar. And with the vanilla we have more s’mores, strawberry, strawberry cheesecake, strawberry banana, fruity, which is more healthy, especially for the teenagers or the kids.

I ask him what flavor is his favorite. Before he can answer, his coworker, a young lady stacking burgers who has been listening curiously to our interview, says with a smile “S’mores. His favorite is s’mores.”

“S’mores. As Melina just mentioned. He smiles. Also peach mango. President Clinton, when he was here a couple years before, he chose apple pie. Because it’s very old-fashioned, and it’s very tasty. We have a chance here to, our store to serve President Clinton, Attorney General Eric Holder, and others.

"Education brings the future."

Emily, Christian Science Reading Room, Wisconsin Avenue

            I had no idea what to expect when I walked into the Christain Science Reading Room, but I was pleasantly surprised by what I found. Emily was sitting placidly behind a desk and, after we introduced ourselves, told me to pull up one of the comfortable airchairs in the front room. The small room, with an office in front and a tiny library complete with carrols, was cool, quiet, and inviting. Checking her BlackBerry occasionally and absentmindedly, Emily talked happily with me, listening attentively whenever I spoke.

“Hi, my name is Emily Kendrick and this is the Christian Science Reading Room on Wisconsin Avenue. I volunteer here a couple times a month. It is a place that people can come and ask about our religion, Christian Science, and can talk about their religion, can talk about world issues, how we see them and how we can help. It’s an interesting place to be, lots of people your age come in, working people come in during their lunch times and just chat.      

       
         So for lots of people, they see a Reading Room and they think only Christian Scientists can walk in here. We also do work in prisons, and I didn’t feel quite ready to go there, so I serve in here.  It’s an open space for anybody to come to, but people don’t come to do emails or do homework or stuff like that. It’s a place to talk about religion and world issues and how I as a Christian Scientist view it and how somebody maybe from another religion views it. So it’s supposed to be an inspirational place to come. Also a place to come for peace and quiet.

We’re not really well understood. We’re a Christian religion. So it gives us a good opportunity to reach out without proselytizing, without going out onto the street, without coming and tapping people on the shoulder. We’re just here if they wanna know about it.

      
            I was born a Christian Scientist, but you have to make it your own.  You have to really decide, as in all religions, ‘this is what I believe, this is what works for me, I get it.’ And to work here in the Reading Room or in the prison you have to understand it well enough to explain it to others and not be offended if they don’t like it.

     
          [When I was in high school,] I was very athletic. I was a member of both soccer and hockey varsity teams. I was just into my sports and I had some good friends. So we all sort of buddied up and went to football games and stuff. College I probably came out more as being an artist. All my life I kind of vacillated between art and being an educator. So maybe I should have been an art teacher.

         So anyway I got married and had a couple kids. And then I got to trail around after them while they did their sports and went on their varsity teams. It’ll probably be a few years till I turn the corner. I might go back and do a combination of educating and art stuff. I threw pottery for a while, then I switched to hand building for a while, I did photography for  a while.  I worked as a photographer for a park, went out to California and met Ansel Adams, the famous black-and-white photographer, took a summer course there.

I went to college, I was an artist and an educator. I got a degree to teach elementary children. I taught for years and volunteered in schools. So my skill is children and people and talking and teaching- I consider myself an educator. So I kind of fit here.

       
         It’s always been really clear to me that I’m a good educator. So I think kids and educating and art and then just being naturally athletic, it was just who I was. It gets lost for a little bit when you parent because it’s about them, and you have to step aside. And sometimes you step aside so much that for a while you forget who you are and you have to rediscover it. At least that’s what happened to me. But my passions have remained the same. They just were there.

            Having faith really has guided my life. Having kids, having a marriage. For me I’ve needed it. It’s taught me reliance on God, reliance on something bigger than me as a self-person to solve it. Humility, to step aside, to compromise, to bend. Without it, I think I would be a mess. I need a bigger picture. For me, I need to know, ‘ok God, what do I do here?’

         I don’t think of God as a person, I think of God as a principle. God is love, God is life. So for me to just step aside and listen and think about the Bible, think about people that got thrown into lion’s dens and got mistreated. And they just listened to God’s will. So I’ve been glad to be a Christian Scientist, I’ve been glad to be a Christian. That doesn’t mean that I’m any better than anybody else, though. The multitude of different religions, races, kinds of people, colors, variety of who people are- I can accept it all. It’s just what works for me.

     
        I think you must pursue your inside most passion. Cause now I’ve read articles about- and there’s a quote and I can’t quote it perfectly and I don’t know the author- ‘Where your glad heart meets is where the world needs you most.’ You must give, you must go, you must travel the world, you must try new things, you must see things, but you must compromise. You must meet, you must be ready to help the world because things are broken all over the place. The world needs freshness, it needs new views, it needs what youth has to offer. It needs you guys going to college, or not going to college, and pursuing your passions. Because the world needs what’s inside you. It doesn’t need you looking and analyzing, ‘oh, in the future, we’re gonna need this many of this and this many of that.’ What it needs is that innermost love that you have, because that’s your gift. That’s your gift, what you have to give to the world. "

"You must give, you must go, you must travel the world, you must try new things, you must see things, but you must compromise"

Missy, Cafeteria, Sidwell Friends School

           I talked to Missy while she chopped red and yellow peppers  for the next day's lunch. She was happy to talk and seemed intrigued by my project. She told me after our interview that she had known I was "kind of off-beat" because of my changing hair color, which she liked. She said she was just the same, always talking to people and listening to their stories.

          
           “Hi, my name is Melissa Dillard and I’m a prep cook. And I do your veggies, your bread, and your garlic bread, and all your good stuff that looks like it has roots on it. I do the veggies and I do the prep, all the little chopping and stuff. I love ‘em all, I love broccoli, bok choy, I love eggplant, a little bit of everything. I’m mainly a veggie eater, so I eat all- zucchini, yellow squash- all the vegetables we serve here. I’ve been doing this for like 27 years. I’ve been with this company for six years. I came from Virginia, from my home corporate office, and I was transferred up here, and I’m liking it. Working here at Sidwell with you guys.

            I’m originally from Virginia but I came here when I was maybe like seven or eight, I started school up here. Then I got married and went back to Virginia and raised my kids there so I was in Virginia like 25 years. So I guess that’s why you hear that funny accent. People ask me where I’m from when they hear my accent. I got that southern drawl and that DC slang. People don’t really know where it come from, people say ‘where you from?’ I say ‘Virginia,’ they say ‘you sound like you’re from the city!’ But if I say ‘the city,’ they say ‘you sound like you’re from the south!’

            I was what you’d call a late bloomer in school… I was wild. You know, fun girl. I kind of marched to my own beat when I was younger, so that’s really bad, you know, ‘cause you’re young. Kind of like a rebel. And I slowly matured and grew into myself, you know, like we most do. I feel like you are who you are. You get a little more mature, you learn some of life’s lessons, but you’re still the same person. Take mother Hazel, you just finished interviewing? If you closed your eyes, you’d think she’s 16. Right, ‘cause you are who you are. Who you are right now is who you’re gonna be. You get more mature and learn more things and add that to your life’s lessons, and it just grow. You never stop.

          I was trying to see age in a different light, cause I’m getting older, I’m 45, but when I met mother Hazel and Ms. Bobby, they made me think totally different about growing old, you know, ‘cause there’s no such thing. You just add to it and you mature but you’re basically the same person. If you was evil when you was younger you’re gonna be evil when you get old. She laughs. Basically.

       I mean think about it in this sense. When you’re a little girl you see your mother, you don’t quite figure out but you know she’s somebody and you kinda see who she is. And when you get older, like you are now, you think about ‘hey, you the same darn person.’ It’s like she never- you grew more to see who she was, but she’s basically the remained the same, you just got to see her a little  better as you got older. And so that’s what it’s like. Your little young nieces or whatever you have, your little sister or whoever, they see you but they don’t really see you. But as they get older, they start seeing you for who you really are. You’re the same person you’re gonna be the rest of your life. That’s the way I look at it.

          I came from a good family so I had no- sometimes kid have an impact that makes them grow up fast- I had a chance to-. I said I was a late bloomer. When I was supposed to be studying I was out partying or something, ‘cause I had a kinda laid-back family. I didn’t have to push it. You know, some families, ‘you gotta get a job and help out around here!’ I didn’t have that. So I continued to party late-until 25 or something- so I advise kids to just stay in school and get their education. And don’t stray from it. If you’re gonna go be something, just go ahead on through with it. Don’t take breaks. Like let’s say you wanna be a doctor. Say, ‘oh, I’ll go back to school next year, I wanna take a year’s break.’ Don’t do it. Keep going. Just keep going until you finish, ‘cause if you stop, life again, something around that time is gonna change your mind. It could be a husband or anything, a fiancé, anything.

             So my advice to kids is whenver they try to go after something just keep going for it. Visualize it and claim it and it’s going to be yours. You know, just set the motion. If you wanna be a doctor, apply to medical school. It’ll never happen if you don’t apply. So just set everything in motion, and visualize it, and claim it."

"You’re the same person you’re gonna be the rest of your life."

Hazel, Cafeteria, Sidwell Friends School

          I talked with Hazel in the school kitchen while she rinsed couscous in a collander in a giant sink. Short and smiling, she chatted happily with me, gesturing with her gloved hand.

            “I’m Hazel Mines and I’m salad person. I’ve been working here three years this May. I like [this job] ‘cause I’ve been working in food service so long. They accept me here, and I like being around kids, so this is a great job. The first job I ever had was babysitting, live-in with a family. Then from there I left and worked in a hotel for, I don’t know how long. But I’ve been in food service for 35 years. ‘Cause before I came here I worked at Episcopal High School for 31 years, that’s a private high school out in Virginia. And you know, I just love being around kids, they make you stay young. I like getting up in the morning and coming to work. Most people don’t like coming to work, but I like being around young people. Young people make you stay on your toes. They make you feel like you’re their age.

            Before, I was so quiet you wouldn’t even believe it. I’m the oldest of seven kids, so I was just laid-back quiet. But then I got hooked up in food service, starting working with two service men, and they taught me that if you gonna survive, you have to stand up for yourself. So I’ve been standing up for myself. I used to be so quiet and people used to walk all over me, just like an old shoe, you know, you push it aside and it will just stay there. But after I started working with them and they told me ‘you have to, if you plan on staying in this business.’  So when they left the high school, I moved up to head chef.

            I’m originally from North Carolina. I got married, and that didn’t work out, and I had an uncle living up here, and he said I could stay with him, so I came up here, and I’ve been here ever since. I love it, but I live out in Maryland, out by Andrew’s Airforce Base. But I love it. I’ve been here-let’s see… my daughter is 50… I’ve been here maybe about 55 years. I’ve seen a lot change since I’ve been in this town. Martin Luther King, March on Washington, I was living here. I’ve been here a long time. I’ve seen this city change a lot.

            I get along with everybody. And I love kids. Y’all make me feel young. I may look it, but I’m not young. She laughs. I’ll tell you this: whatever your mom and dad taught you, you go by your mom and dad’s rules. You go by your mom and dad’s rules, you won’t go wrong. ‘Cause that’s what I did. I did. My dad always taught me, you gotta learn how to work and do it on your own. You can’t sit around and beg people fro everything, so that’s all I’m telling you. Whatever your mom and dad taught you, you live by their rules. I don’t care how old you get, you live by their rules.”

"if you're gonna survive, you have to stand up for yourself."

How Do I Call You...

           I'm feeling weird referring to all these adults in my life by their first names only. Josh was fine, because of the age thing I guess, and because I've never called him anything else. Tyrone was a stretch, but the casualness of our meeting and the way he treated me like an adult made it feel ok. Rosa I can work with because we've had a smile-at-each-other relationship for most of the year, so at least I feel like I have some kind of license. But Steve? Ronald?? These are adult people. These are grownups.

          The part of me that is still a 13-year-old new to Sidwell is kicking me under the table and frantically whispering "What are you doing??? Don't you know you need to call them Mr. and Mrs.?? Come on, Celeste! You have to be formal around here!"

         There's the instinct to use Mr. and Mrs. that comes from my Texan mother, who taught me it's good to assume formality until the grownup is inevitably charmed by you and says, "please, call me Louise."

        There's the Quaker idea that since none of us is more valuable or important than another, we should all just call each other by our first names. Seems logical. Also, since I went to a very Quaker elementary school, I spent the first twelve years of my life in Lisa's class, turning in my homework to Susie, and visiting the principal, Tom. That's a reflex it's been hard to break.

     There's the screw-the-hierarchy/patriarchy mindset that tells me that all of these people are just people, and it's ridiculous to qualify them based on their age, gender, and marital situation.

       But mostly, I don't want to disrespect anyone. Mr. Ford, if you read this, I don't really think of you as Ronald. I will never think of you as anyone but Mr. Ford. But how I am I supposed to put you, Mr. Ford, right next to Josh, who I think would probably object to being Mr. Shwartz?

       Is it more equalizing and de-personalizing to call everybody by their first names? Or does it just fail to acknowledge that I have vastly different relationships with different people in this community?

Rosa, Cafeteria, Sidwell Friends School

         I met Rosa in the cafeteria. She took a break from clearing leftovers out of the salad bar to sit at a lunch table and talk. She seemed hesitant to talk, but loosened up. After we finished, she went immediately over to another of the cafeteria staff, who had been casting us glances while she cleared food, and began telling her in Spanish about the interview.
        
        "My name is Rosa Lopez. I’m working at Sidwell Friends like seventeen years. I’m doing catering and food service and other food service for anything that has to be done.
          
             This is the first job I had since I come from my country. I come from El Salvador. I come here in 1993. I love it [in Washington]. I have two kids, they’re not little kids anymore, they’re big kids, 19 and 23.

           I ask her what she was like as a teenager. She laughs. Many things! I was many things. But the life in [El Salvador] is so different. The life in there is very complicated. There is things going on in there with the gang things and it’s bad for youngers, the life in there. But that’s why we come to this country, because our country is so poor and we cannot find no jobs in there. That’s the reason why we come to this country. I come with visa. My mom was here already so she was-how do you say?- she was like a sponsorship for me, she bring me here. And she has been here for 40 years. She bring me here when I was 21 years old.
         
         If I could go anywhere in the world, I think I would go back to my country. She laughs. I have been back ten years ago, to see my family. I bring my father and my oldest daughter here. My grandmother passed away, I don’t have other strong reason to go there except my uncles, my father’s family. But I want to go back. Soon the situation will get there better ‘cause now too much things going on in there with the gangs and things like that. And that’s the reason I don’t do a trip with my kids, is cause the life in there is very difficult right now. The plan they have, they’re saying it’s going to start getting better soon. It’s starting to get better now but… I’m still scared to go back. I like my neighborhood. It’s very quiet. Nice, and clean.

            The best advice I can give to you is to continue doing something in the school. Make sure you finish your career for whatever you plan to do for the life and the future. That’s my best advice I can give to you. Done.”

"Make sure you finish your career for whatever you plan to do."

Ronald, Security, Sidwell Friends School

When I met Mr. Ford in his office, he was delighted to find out about my project and eager to share with me a short story he had recently written. This is a transcript of him reading me his story, a retrospective on his time at Sidwell. His love for the school and his general cheerfulness was radiant throughout our interview.

Ronald in the Security Office

“My name is Officer Ronald M. Ford, 22 year member of the Security Staff at Sidwell Friends School. This is a short story that I wrote concerning my tenure here at Sidwell, and it’s called The Learning Tree: My Experience at Sidwell Friends School.  Written November 20, 2009.

“It was thirty five years ago, 1974 to be exact. I can go that far back. That’s when I first experienced Sidwell Friends School. I had decided to cut school one day, and I was with an older friend named John who owned a car. He was familiar with the schools in the area because he graduated from Western High School, which would later become Duke Ellington. We passed the school on our way to Roy Rogers which was located across the street where the McDonald’s is presently located. I proceeded to ask him all kinds of questions about the place. I was really interested. I watched the kids play tennis and the girls play field hockey in their preppy plaid skirts. I had never seen this type of game up close. They sure didn’t play it where I grew up. I surmised that this was no ordinary school. My friend schooled me on the fact that this was a school for kids from well-to-do backgrounds whose parents had high-end jobs and were well educated, and it included some black kids. I was really impressed now.

It was a little over 15 years later that I responded to an ad in the Washington Post for a position in security at the very school that I marveled at years earlier. I had twelve years of law enforcement experience prior to being hired by Sidwell Friends School.  It didn’t take me long to realize, as far as security goes, the duties in the department were a step back that that this was a different work environment different than any I’d ever been in, job wise. Security officers were not trained in the details of law enforcement, wore lousy uniforms, and the department head appeared to lack any background in law enforcement. Security seemed to be another extension of the Buildings and Grounds Department and functioned like handy men: whenever we were handy, we were the men.

Then there were the kids. They were bright, but some of them came off as cocky, rude, and had an air of entitlement about them. I was also amazed at how liberal the place was, but my coworker, Southeast Harry Young, got me acclimated quickly. In no time, I was used to the kids, their parents, and the staff. It was only a small percentage of the students and parents that seem to stain the fabric of the school. But nothing is perfect where people are involved, and in fact, I had my share of baggage, and had a reputation for being too off the cuff and opinionated.

I’ve grown as a person working here, and my department has also. In 1993, they finally hired someone with law enforcement background who also was a professional to lead our department. He had everyone in the department trained and schooled in our duties of a special police, an upgrade from security guard. And he had furnished with better uniforms and allowed us to be part of the school community. I sat on the Faculty-Staff Council several times. I sat on the short-lived Faculty Staff Relations Committee with board members Alvin Nichols, Mrs. Gittens, and Mr. McBride. I also was appointed to the Diversity Committee by the outgoing Head of School. I went to a couple meetings of the group, which was headed by Carol Swanson. I never felt the group, I called it the Tippy Toe Committee, it danced around real life issues to me. And besides that, being too honest and open with people can be hurtful, and this school’s principles won’t allow for that.

I also used to write a column in the school newspaper called Security Corner. This was fun, and allowed me to express my views and the views of my department. One member of our department won the Goldberg Family Award in 2003. So this indicated to me we were being embraced by the school community, and I no longer felt disdain or like a handkerchief-head.

I’m very thankful to be part of the school community, and no matter what happens down the pike, I will always feel blessed to have had the opportunity to have worked at this learning institution. It has truly been a learning tree.”

"Nothing is perfect where people are involved."

Tyrone, Street Sense Vendor, Wisconsin and River

      I approached Tyrone at his usual spot outside the Tenleytown Metro. After buying a paper, I introduced myself to him and the lady selling with him. He introduced both of them, saying "This is Edna. Edna's shy." When I asked if either of them wanted to do an interview, he volunteered immediately. When I asked if Edna wanted to talk too, he said "Nah. Edna don't talk much." Edna nodded. Tyrone talked to me for more than half an hour. The interview I posted here is, believe it or not, just a fraction of the extremely dense and diverse opinons of Tyrone Murray.

Tyrone's Street Sense Badge Photo

         “I’m Tyrone Murray and I sell Street Sense Papers. And not only just the Street Sense, I’m working for God as well. Tryna keep people- keep ‘em inspired, let ‘em know they’ve got a gift today of being alive. Instead of you always want to go out here and work for The Man to get a check, you remember that you gotta work for God as well, and that all He ask you to do is he asks you to work with God’s love and grace and kindness and to help each other and to serve each other. And the thing about it is that we get a check every day, but it’s a check that you don’t see. It’s that you being alive and that everything’s still working. So if you’re getting this good why can’t you give back something? We’re hardheaded people, we just big sinners. But we try to pray for each other. Me and my church we try to pray for people. I am a full member of the Restoration Church from the beginning and I pray to God that I’ll be there until the end.   

I been [in DC] all my life. Everybody knows me. All the busses that run up through here, all the bus drivers know me. They knew me before I started being a Street Sense guy. I’m just the same old way: I love to treat everybody with God’s grace. I tell people, ‘you don’t have money to buy a paper, you know, you can give it to me later or whatever, whatever you decide. But friendship is meanin more to me than the paper does.’

           He turns to a woman passing by “How you doin today ma’am? You have a blessed day.”

            I ask him if he is ever bothered by people who don’t acknowledge him or make eye contact. “Those are the people I pray for the most. It’s sad that a person can walk down the street with a dog who loves to bark at everybody, and the dog will bark to say hello, and I’ll talk back to the dog and say ‘oh yeah, I still hear you sugar, what you fussing about?’ This dog’s speaking to me, and a human being won’t. 

            I considered myself a bad boy [when I was in high school.] I smoked my weed, played hooky from school, went to school, hustled. But I wasn’t the type of hustler everybody else was. I gave away the drugs more than I sold them. People would come out selling clothes belongs to their children or people in their house. I give ‘em some drugs and say ‘take that back in the house.’ The food they come out there to sell, or the toys, I gave ‘em some drugs, I said ‘you better go home. Take that back in there.’ I didn’t really make no money. So that’s me. I’m God’s court jester. I try to keep everybody happy, you know. I was a crazy young man. I loved the women more than anything else.

             I didn’t focus in on God as much as I do now. I found Him a long time ago. I just surrendered. I said ‘you know what? Everything I try to do on my own I mess up. I won’t move until God tells me to move.’ And that’s how I’ve been. I stopped going to church for like twenty-

            A lady walks by and smiles and nods. Tyrone says “Hey baby, you have a blessed one. And thank you for acknowledging me with that lovely smile!”

            A man walks by and looks curiously at us. “I hate that. People walk right by and they look at you like, ‘beautiful young white girl sittin’ there talking to this black guy.’ They just stare and stare and stare instead of just saying ‘how you doing?’ It’s weird! When I was younger, I woulda slapped somebody dead if they was lookin at me like that."  

Tyrone's Spot

           "But other than that, I was a good kid. There were things I just didn’t like doing. I didn’t like a man that treated a woman wrong or talked to a woman any kinda way. And today, the way the women sit around and talk to these boys with their pants down? They should tell these boys to go away.

         Young men who walk around with their pants down and their dreadlocks in their hair, they are not no leaders. They are not no leaders. Because to me they all cowards and they are followers. They following another person’s style. If you’re going to follow someone, follow the rules to make yourself continue to look like a young man with your pants pulled up. With a nice haircut. I mean look at me! Mine’s like this and I put it in a ponytail. But dreadlocks, I think that you are lazy. You are lazy, you don’t want to groom yourself, you don’t want to take the time to comb it, you don’t want to take the time to grease it, you don’t want to sit around and be a full gentleman. What do it really mean to wear dreadlocks? What is the religion? What is their culture? What do those people do?

             This is how I see them, ‘specially for the black generation. Are they really looking at their history? Are they going back of how far we have come? In slavery we walked around with our pants down and we had to find corn stalks and tie that together in order to tie around our pants to pick the cotton and stuff like that. So if we went though all of this already, why you tryna bring this back? At the time that I went to jail, a man come in with his pants down, believe me, he got to be somebody’s- he got to be Big Bubba’s woman.        

            There’s another subject, I dunno if you’re gonna ask me about it. You’re gonna ask me about the President, what he’s saying about the gay marriage and stuff like that? Was you gonna ask me that? Well I’ma give you this. Me and my church, we are not for it, because that’s not what Jesus said. Like I said, it’s not God’s law. The President, I didn’t vote for him in there, and I knew it was gonna be a problem when he ran for President. I knew he wasn’t a real good firm leader. And they said that the American government and our President don’t give into terrorists. I’m sorry to say but the gay people just turned to terrorists and he just gave in. So that’s the way I feel about that.

            I’m part Cherokee. I’m a black, European, Chinese, Italian, Indian American. The main thing that you must do is remember where you come from. Remember that you are God’s children and I don’t care if you don’t believe in God, I still love you, I’ll keep you in my prayers as well. If you fell down and needed a drink of water I would still give it to you. And we are all equal, no matter what you might have. When you cut yourself, you got the same color come out your skin that I do. And we are all neighbors. It’s not because of what block you live in or what side of town you live in. We are on the same planet. In China, when he sneeze, that starts working its way over here. We’ve got the same type of love, the same type of heart. If somebody throw knives at you, you just keep throwing love right back at ‘em. Don’t let nobody dictate your life. You can say ‘he made me do it, he made me say it!’ Nobody make you say anything. Nobody got a gun to your head, a knife around your throat. I don’t see how a person can wake up in the morning and be this nasty if God has given them a great day, has given them a life.

            I had to get out and work for my food when I turned six. I’m a cement finisher, a brick mason, drywall hanger, paralegal, process server, criminal investigator, an investigator, and a lawn mower man. And remember this when you graduate, when you start working: take the job that is at hand, because God is preparing you for something better. He just wanna know where’s your discipline and how much faith and how much love do you have in him.

            Keep your parents proud, keep your grades up, keep that room clean. You gotta remember, when you was sick, who stayed up with you? Who was at the hospital? Who made sure you had food in your belly and a roof over your head and clean clothes? Give them back the love. When you finish your homework, just don’t run out the door, always go up to them and say ‘is there anything you want me to do for you?’ I always tell the kids that.

            I like looking out for people. I do the best I can. I’ve had people up here that called me a nigger, that said ‘get your black ass outa here, we don’t want no black people working in no stores, drivin no busses.’ I tell ‘em, I say ‘Shhhh! Don’t go letting everybody know your IQ, and I’ll pray for you.’"

"The main thing that you must do is remember where you come from. Remember that you are God’s children and I don’t care if you don’t believe in God, I still love you."

Josh, Cafe Assistant, Sidwell Friends School

      I interviewed Josh, or "the cute Fox Den guy" as he is more commonly known, on his last day of work at Sidwell. Throughout our interview he smiled and waved at passing students and adults, stopping to chat with many of them.

     

Josh outside the Fox Den

  “My name is Josh and I work at the Fox Den. I’m Mamadou’s assistant.

I grew up in Los Angeles- Hey Sundberg- and I went to high school at Campbell Hall, it’s a private episcopal school. I’m going to American University right now. I found this job on the job board site at American and from there, just came here. Six months. I just kinda wanted to have something to do when I wasn’t in class, and I didn’t expect it to be this easy, to be honest. Mamdou’s the coolest guy in the world, and Shaun’s a great guy. And Donna, who runs the store, is the nicest lady possible. I really expected it to be a lot worse, but everyone’s so nice.

My first job was at a coffee shop back home, like a small local shop, and it was kind of bad just because people were really snobby about their coffee. It was a lot more smug in that area. But I kind of expected that because I lived in Los Angeles.

To be honest I don’t really like that much about [living in DC]. I’m transferring next year to Oregon, just to be a little closer to home, and it’s a lot cheaper, stuff like that. I mean obviously everyone likes being around the historical monuments and stuff, and that’s cool for a while, but I think it’d be more of a tourist city for me than a place to live. I wasn’t used to the weather, so that made it a little bit of a difficult transition.

It’s actually really werid [to work at a high school]. I’m only two years out of high school, I’m a sophomore at AU, and it’s really weird, cause it’s like ‘I was here two years ago!’ And everyone thinks you’re really old. It’s like ‘wow. these kids were born in like ’95 or like ’96.’ It’s weird because I have friends back home who were in tenth grade when I was in twelfth grade, and that’s your year. It’s just weird. I have to walk a very fine line between being an employee here and being like…a kid. I’m still a kid, a little bit… twenties… you’re not officially an adult yet. That’s part of why [this job’s] so easy. It’s just talking to kids you can relatively relate to. 

Everyone has a point where they kind of fall out of [high school]. Like I loved it up until like twelfth grade, and then I was like uhhhh get me out of here.

Some girls come over. One says “Josh! It’s your last day?”

“it’s my last day”

“that’s very upsetting”

He gestures at me. “I’m doing an interview project”

“How… useful.”

“How usef- stop! Stop being so mean! I have one more day here and you’re just so mean all the time”

She turns to me. “We greatly appreciate him.”

I ask them if they want to say nice things about Josh for the interview. They all say yes enthusiastically.

“He makes really great chai lattes. And if there’s extra smoothie, he’ll give it to you if you ask.”

“He’s a good Fox Den worker. He’s always working hard.”

He smiles. “Don’t push it…”

“I mean occasionally he just sits down and takes a few hours off…”

“There’s always good music in the Fox Den.”

“I switch off being DJ with Mamadou. He listens to crazy music… recently he’s been into Elton John Lion King. He did mariachi a couple days ago.”

The girls wave and walk into the Fox Den.

"Honestly I think I’m at that point where I have to start formulating a real idea of what I want to do. I only have two years of undergraduate left, and then I have to decide if I want to go to grad school, go right into a job. But at this point, I think I have a couple things. I’m in business administration, so it’s heading in that direction but you could do a lot of things with business administration. You could go into law, you could go into management… but those all seem a little dry. So at this point, I’m just gonna do the best I can to get through the next two years of school."

"So at this point, I’m just gonna do the best I can to get through the next two years of school."

Steve, Buildings and Grounds, Sidwell Friends School

               I met Steve in his office in the Sidwell Security Office. Steve, or Mr. Sawyer, was seated behind a cluttered desk. He was apprehensive about being interviewed, saying he didn't know how qulified he was to give advice, but once he got going he had quite a lot to say. He smiled often, chuckled at his own jokes, and made use of his office chair to turn himself to different angles as he spoke.

Steve in front of the green Middle School building

             “I’m the plant manager here, which means I’m in charge of all the buildings, all the grounds, anything to do with the facilities of the campus. When I first started I came straight out of college and I was in charge of just the grounds. That was pretty straight forward, you know what you’re getting into. I did that for a number of years.  I also coached boys JV soccer, boys varsity, girls varsity. We won a banner. We’ve done pretty well. I don’t have an engineering background and a lot of what has to happen with the buildings is kind of behind the scenes and making sure the HVAC systems are working and keeping people warm and keeping people cool at different times.

            Starting in I guess 2003, we embarked on this whole green adventure, starting with Zartman House. Few people know we actually started with Zartman House, changing it over into a geothermal system there, and that was quite a ride. The job’s stayed interesting, I’ve learned an awful lot here and so I think that’s why I’ve been able to stay so long and not just (he snores) get bored.

         The school has changed quite a bit. I’d say when I first came we did things small scale. The school’s always been in good shape, always been a great place for students to learn, but I’d say we weren’t taking a grand view of what we’re doing here, and I think that has changed. I think, I’m not trying to be boastful here, but we see ourselves as a leader. And we have a ways to go, but we’re really doing a lot here that’s cutting edge, and I think we’re up front on a lot of these curves, and that was not always the case. We used to be trailing some of those curves, and that’s been a really dramatic change, to be really out front, to kind of push the envelope… and I’d say sometimes the envelope has kind of pushed back.

            I didn’t realize the scope of what we were starting there and how transformative that experience [with the middle school] would be. The building still runs, it still has air pumps, it still has chillers, it has the kind of things that any building has, but the integration of all that stuff though the computers and through the complexity and the number of things that are intertwined to make that building run, that caught me off guard. I thought ‘oh yeah, it’s a couple more things, we can probably handle that.’ No. We need help with that.  And in fact, we’re still sorting some things out with that, six years later. So that was a real eye-opener, for me.

        But I think also, -that was sort of a negative side of it- but I think on the positive side of it, I could see how transforming that building from really quite a horrible building –really poor lighting, really poor ventilation and that kind of thing- and how that building would change us to change all the little things. I think the school as a whole will no longer tolerate things like using paints with bad VOCs. I didn’t anticipate that whole tidal wave of change going through, that caught me off guard. And in a good way. I like being on that wave, I like surfing that wave, but I didn’t know that was coming.

          It’s kind of a yin-yang thing: on a daily basis I’m involved with all the problems like ‘gosh, how come we can’t get this fixed, this temperature, that’s so complicated,’ and on the other side, I get to have people come though, and I get to show them the building, all of our buildings and they say ‘oh! This stuff’s great, you know, what you’re doing here is amazing!’ so I get to see some of the positive sides. I live where the problems are but I get to see the positives and I- that’s a really nice positive. So yes, there’s pride in the building, pride in what the school’s doing.

            And now we have the Upper School building that was renovated back in 1997, and now I’m thinking ‘gosh, what can we do to improve this building?’ We’re never really gonna have a chance to take that building down and renovate it because we have no place to put 480 kids- cause it would take a year, year and a half to renovate it- so we’re gonna be doing small bites of renovation. We have a path now, I think we know what we wanna get done. It is a different approach, but when you start, you still have to know where you’re going to end up. If it’s gonna be a five, six, seven year thing where you’re doing a month, two months of work, it’s easy to forget where you’re going.
 
          I never though that I’d be so sucked up in this whole green thing. I think the lesson probably is: you have no idea where you’re gonna end up and what you’re gonna end up doing and what’s gonna kinda grab ahold of you at some point and just be your motivator and your driver. You can’t anticipate it. All you can do it be willing to let new stuff come at you, and go with it. Because there’s gonna be something out there that’s gonna say ‘that’s what I wanna do.’ And it’s not gonna happen the day you declare your major, it’s not gonna happen the day you graduate, it’s gonna happen some quiet moment you have no idea how- ‘where’d that come from?’ – all of a sudden ‘that’s what I really wanna spend my time doing.’

    
         Today I saw some people who were just coming back for their thirtieth reunion, students like yourselves who had just graduated the year I arrived, and to see what some of them are doing. You know, Anne Applebaum who’s with the Washington Post and Eric Adler who’s doing the SEED school… people are doing great things and you guys are going to be doing great things thirty years from now too.

            When I was in grounds I’d go out, I’d do the work, I’d mulch a bed, I’d trim the bushes, and at the end of the day I’d look behind me and I’d go ‘well that looks much better than it did eight hours ago.’ And I’d get some satisfaction from that. But I wonder to myself ‘How do teachers do this?’ You know, they spend their day trying to import knowledge into students’ heads. Do they get to turn around at the end of the day and say ‘I made a difference here?’ Probably not as evident as what I did. But thirty years later, they’ve done incredible stuff. And so I hope they find their satisfaction that way. For me it’s a little simpler, a little more tangible, but what they’re doing is great. I think people should spend more effort on supporting high school, secondary school education. Everybody says ‘ohh, college,’ but that’s not where you get the love of learning. You get the love of learning in high school. And that’s why we can’t have these people who are just dropping out of high school, that’s just a terrible thing and this whole climate of not supporting education in the country now, that’s a terrible thing. But I’m just rambling now. But I think that’s where we need to keep putting effort in- putting effort into educating people so they’re inspired to do great things.”

"I think the lesson probably is: you never know where you're going to end up or what you're going to end up doing."

Experience Maps

Here's a map of my school and the neighborhood.


Special places are numbered in blue.






















Here's a key to what those numbers mean:

1. School. You know what it's like to go to school, probably. The familiarity of every door, every desk, every creaky hinge and broken waterfountain. The particular way the air is different from the outside world, the way the windows change the light. I know where the building is shy, and I know what's hidden in the recessed parts. I know how to work the windowshades and how to lock the classrooms. I know the fonts of the posters on the walls. I know the feeling of the locker against my back and the way the floors feel against bare feet.
2. Cafeteria and Student Center. Having both people and food, it's a safe bet of somewhere to find your friends. Common sights include: Conor lying on a couch playing games on his computer, people throwing stuff in the Senior Center, people eating lunch, middle schoolers buying stuff from the vending machines, people napping, girls shreiking.
3. Bleachers behind Zartman. Good hill to roll down, a grassy spot with sun. Make sure you speak loudly to give fair warning to any couple that might be on Hookup Hill.
4. Franklin's. Soda, candy, ice cream, yogurt, weird hemp tea and kombucha, and greasy, greasy diner food. Also a nice gazebo area outside to peoplewatch.
5. The Woods behind McLean Gardens. Creek to wade in, woods to walk in, foresty places where no one can see you.
6. Playground. Countless games of ninja, going on the swings in the middle of the night, etc.
7. Armand’s Pizza. Lots of awkward check-splitting.
8. Chipotle. A standby. I almost always see people I know there, often teachers.
9. Z-Burger. How many kinds of milkshake have you tried?
10. Whole Foods. Free samples!
11. The Living Room.
12. Sullivan’s. Buy spray paint, temporary tattoos, etc. Lust after Lego and Playmobile sets from our childhoods.
13. Foxden and Robotics Lab. Coffee, tea, candy, and bagels. A TV where everyone watched the balloon boy fly. Robotics Lab underneath to hang out with nice boys who will grow up to be engineers. Scaffolding to climb on out back.
14. Sunny place to nap or eat lunch. Full of crazy carpenter bees in the spring who will fly into your face.

Of course it's a little silly to try and explain the personal significance of a place to someone who doesn't know it. Six years on this campus has layered so many experiences onto each building, each room, each tree. A few sentences about a 2D map just barely wades into the ocean of my connection to my school.

Here's another map, with people marked. These aren't people I necessarily think about very much. If my life were a movie, these wouldn't be the characters that celebrities got cast in. They're the recurring extras. Think about Ranjit from How I Met Your Mother, that little squirrel from Ice Age (props to James for thinking of that), or Mr. Yunioshi from Breakfast at Tiffany's.

As Louis CK says:

            "Have you ever met someone you don't know, again? Like, you don't actually know them, but they keep popping up, like God is running out of extras for the movie of your life."

Here's a map with some of those people

1. Lunch ladies. Sharon, Ms. Rebecca, Mr. Lester. They smile at you if you smile at them.
2. Janitors. Raphel, Ana, the nice young guy who washes windows.
3. Foxden guys. Mamadou, Ms. Osborn, the cute young guy everyone hits on.
4. Buildings and Grounds. Steve and Carlos.
5. Secret Service who follow Sasha and Malia around.
6. The man at Franklin’s. He'll knock off the tax if you don't have six pennies.
7. The lady at Danny Tindahan’s.
8. Homeless guy outside Popeye’s. He'll tell you Godbless if you smile and nod. I buy him sandwiches sometimes.
9. Metro humanitarians. Save the Children, Planned Parenthood, UNHCR.
10. Street Sense vendor.
11. Mika’s parents.

And of course, the hundreds of kids in my school who I know but not really, who I could pick out of a lineup but couldn't tell you their names. In high school, you're surrounded by people you don't know but with whom you share an enormous amount of common text- which teachers are hard, books you've all read in English, gossip, places, people. I don't know if the rest of life is like that.

Logistics

Every day I will…

-Interview at least one person

-Work on transcription and editing of past interviews

-Bulk up my list of people to interview

Resources I Need

-Dictaphone. Malinda loaned me a neat plugger-inner thing that turns my ipod into a recorder. In the three interviews I conducted on Wednesday it recorded one well, mangled the second, and absolutely ignored the third, but it seems to be working fine now. We’ll see.

-People to interview. Abundant.

-Blog. Evidently, that’s happened already.

-Some kind of printing system by which I can convert this into a booklet to give to my classmates. I’m currently investigating what’s available at the school library, archives, and senior project committee and it looks like there’s some potential. Updates to follow.

-Guidance and wisdom from Danny. Check.

I'll Start with an Introduction

Hi. I'm Celeste.

Since that's how I usually introduce myself to people I've just met, it seems like an apt way to
introduce this myself to this blog. I usually smile, too, so imagine that I'm smiling at you.

I'm starting Ambient Voices as my Senior Project. It is going to be a collection of stories from Sidwell Friends and the Wisconsin Avenue community.

I know how we, the Sidwell class of 2012, perceive Wisconsin Avenue, and now I’m discovering the other side: how Wisconsin Avenue perceives a graduating class and the act of graduation. I want to give this blog as a kind of report to my class about the neighborhood we’re leaving.

I also want to make sure that before we leave Tenley, we get to hear from the people who have been the extras in the movies of our lives. The janitors, store clerks, bus drivers, lunch ladies, street sweepers, parents of friends, administrators, security guards, and cops that populate my school and it’s neighborhood have voices and stories and families and regrets and preferences, and I think it would be an injustice to leave Wisco without ever having done them the basic courtesy of stopping, looking them in the eye, and saying “Hi. I’m Celeste. What’s your name?” Personally, I love living in a city because I love knowing that I am surrounded by endless human potential even when I don’t think about it or take advantage of that fact. I’m going to use to my blog to try and illuminate the scope of that potential for myself and my classmates.

So every day for the next month, I will interview one person who is, for me, a point of connection to the neighborhood. I’m going to direct the conversations towards the theme of graduation and the variety of things that can mean. I might use questions like “What were you like in high school? How did you change?” and “When you started working here, did you know what you were getting into? Have you ever felt totally unprepared for a job?” I want to gather stories and experiences about moving on and facing new things.

I'm interning with/being mentored by Danny, creator of The People's District , a blog I am crazy about.