Take heart ~ The future's in good hands

I’ve been out of touch for a while, but Fern Forest Treehouse has been hopping with activity. One guy hiked his girlfriend up Mt. Abe with a ring in his pocket. At the summit, he popped the question. She said yes and later showed off the ring her fiancé had designed and had made for her. Another weekend, a family of four stayed a few nights with three- and five-year-old daughters, and we had a grand time playing games and roasting marshmallows over a campfire for s’mores. A mom brought her five-year-old son for a weekend, and he taught me to play Monkey Quest on the computer. Doug and Bettina paid us a second visit, this time with their new doggie Winnie. While they were here, these faithful friends made their reservation for next year.
         This weekend four young people came to the Treehouse. H told Anny that the Treehouse sleeps only three, and she replied, “That’s okay. We’re all good friends.”
          They drove up from Boston after work and arrived at 10:00 p.m. Almost immediately they hopped into the hot tub, and H and I listened to them chat until 3:00 a.m. I’d have dehydrated and run out of things to talk about, but these twenty-somethings needed to let off some steam. They work hard, and the next day we discovered just how hard.
          Ray teaches fifth grade math at a charter school in Roxbury, a neighborhood 45 percent African-American and 32 percent Hispanic. Ray is intelligent and enthusiastic about working with young people, even though it’s often a struggle to keep children in school and help them develop positive self-images. Gabriel works with veterans at Bunker Hill Community College, coordinating with the VA to be sure veteran students are on task with the Administration’s required paperwork. A veteran himself, Gabe even edits their papers for them when requested. Barbara and Anny are on the staff of the Hyde Square Task Force, an agency established to help reverse the trend of youth violence in the neighborhood between Jamaica Plain and Roxbury, once known as the “cocaine capital of Boston.”
          Anny fits in well with the Hyde Square Task Force because the program saved her when she was an adolescent hanging out with gang members and getting into fights. A quarter of the adult population in the Hyde Square community never completed high school and a third of households are run by single parents. In the ’80s, dealers sold drugs on the streets where gang violence was an everyday occurrence. Residents finally organized to discuss ways to keep their community safe and agreed that the focus needed to be on developing the skills of young people and their families.
        Since its inception in 1991, the Hyde Square Task Force has grown into a professionally run nonprofit with a reputation as one of the most dynamic community-based organizations in Boston. The program serves a thousand youths ages six to twenty-one, focusing on arts and culture, leadership and college prep. Over the years HSTF has pushed for sex education in Boston public schools, written and performed music to create social change, and painted beautiful urban murals advocating peace and safety in their communities.
          Barbara, originally from Schenectady, manages school-based and cultural programs and gets kids into dance and music activities. Anny got involved with the after school tutoring program when she was just 13, and the next year she became a youth literacy tutor. Now she’s an administrator and helps coordinate programs.
          I suggest that if you ever worry about the future of urban youth in America, you take a visit to the Hyde Square Task Force. Or, better yet, invite these young folks to come visit you. They’ll pick up after themselves. They’ll help clear the breakfast dishes. And they’ll tell you how much they love what they do. I have no doubt that the children they serve love them right back.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sex and the Treehouse

Image
When Hana asked to book Fern Forest Treehouse for herself and three friends, H said there wasn’t room, the treehouse is only ninety square feet, he didn’t know how they’d sleep. “Oh, we’ll bring sleeping bags,” she wrote. “Don’t worry—we’ll fit in.” H is a pushover, especially for such youthful enthusiasm. And he thought it sounded like a good time. When the four gals pulled in from Boston around eleven Friday night, H was waiting up for them, the path to the treehouse lit by solar lamps, the treehouse itself all aglitter with colored lights. From upstairs, I heard excited giggles as he showed them around, more giggles as they climbed into the spa under a sky studded with a million stars. As happens in water at 102 degrees, the giggles calmed to whispers, and eventually all was quiet. The sun rose clear Saturday morning, warming the treehouse so that the girls were up a little after 7:00 a.m. We were still in bed when I heard water running in the downstairs bathroom, and H and ...
Read more

Octopus Fishing in Portugal

Image
Ann was studying in Spain for a semester, living with a Spanish family. When the university had a break, Portugal called. It’s an old country, remains of the first settlements dating back to the Neolithic period, five thousand years before Christ. The Visigoths invaded in the sixth century. In 1986, the hills were covered in wildflowers, and horses grazed in fields crimsoned with red geraniums. On the southern coast of Portugal, the area of Algarve is dotted with small fishing villages. Santa Luzia, Tavira, Lisboa, Faro, Cape Sagres, Salema. From the gold dust beaches, one can look across the sea to the shores of Morocco. Bathers swim topless—young women, old women, bathing tops cast aside, breasts bared to the sun. Ann felt strange covering herself. She was just nineteen and modest, but she wanted to fit in, to be accepted, even among these strangers on the beach. She’d worn a one-piece tank suit but slipped the straps off her shoulders, rolled down the suit’s upper half, lay...
Read more

A Treehouse guest discovers his roots in an old millstone

Image
In spring 1794, a group of men set their shoulders to clearing land in what is now Lincoln, Vermont. The footpath they blazed into the forest eventually became a road named for the Quakers who came to settle with ox carts holding all their belongings. They were young, strong, and healthy. Once they pried rocks from the fields, they found the soil rich enough to support their crops. A year later, nearly one hundred residents, mostly from New York and Connecticut, scattered over 24,000 acres of wilderness, most living in tiny one-room cabins made from logs they hewed by hand from trees they had cut on their property. They cooked meals in stick-and-mud fireplaces, spun wool from their sheep, wove fabrics to make their own clothing, and cobbled shoes for their families. They hunted game in the forests and guarded their livestock from wolves that prowled the land. When the crops failed and game was sparse, they went hungry. Quaker services were held in homes until they built a m...
Read more