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So I am in the process of loading the machine when I find out that I have to drive it over to this house with a friend of my mum as she is donating it. I race out with this person who thinks that I don’t know balamer. Telling me of short cuts and not mentioning street names – I know that I have lost the accent hon but am balamer born so stop treating me like a spazz.

Have to try out those social skills and make small talk while driving
- At the light turn right
- Clark’s (sic) Lane?
– Take a left at the next corner
– Reisterstown Road?
– Turn left here.
– You mean Liberty Heights Ave?
I mean really…
Where am I from
Well.. duh
Mention living across from Mondawmin
Asks if I know…
Know the neighbourhood has changed.
Then the small talk begins, do I like (C)harm City?
Mixed feelings and give an example of the neighbourhood we are driving through used to have friends there used to walk and bike all over the place, had my hamster’s leg set in Garrison Boulevard.

And it gets worse, mentioned that I cannot walk between my two grandmother’s place Sandtown to Upton. But there are these areas that are ultra gentrified. While saying that we are delayed by an accident in Liberty Heights Avenue just north of Northern Parkway after diverting by heading through a car park and circling a subdivision, we see another accident in Northern Parkway involving a cop.

As I am pointing out places where I used to travel through and mention how deserted they are we turn off and stop in a block that is with the exception of one house completely renovated. Mansion had cheaply for those who would stick it out and are now quite beautiful.

We were heading to Aunt Hattie’s Place a home for “at risk children”. My mum had donated some things and I racing out of the house I forgot a camera.

I was impressed, in a place where people only seem to talk here was an organisation that was actually doing something, in a bipolar town that is known for The Wire and Urban Pioneers around the Harbour. Here was a neighbourhood that was being reclaimed but didn’t mind a home for “at risk kids in it.

I wanted my camera due to how the young are treated, mistrusted on the Metra when the guard was scolding them wrongly and would only stop when I told them that they weren’t at fault. Shops that don’t let more than two students in at a time. The ever more xenophobic greater Milwaukee area that won’t allow unaccompanied minor in their malls after 5PM and how WTMJ there plays up the fear of the young every chance they get. I wish those minors would take their money elsewhere.

Wanted to make photographs as proof – yeah even though I fill students with doubt I do believe that while they may not really prove anything they can question assumptions. I wondered if I could come back and how it would look to come back being there with a camera is different than returning. Didn’t want them to be specimens - well – but to treat them the way I treat anyone I run into. Returning isn’t quite the same. Spoke to one who was moving out to a house for older kids in Randallstown - bummer i said moving so far out. While it was all PC the computer to resident ratio was better than that of the WGAS.

Kicked myself all the way back but it shows how out of sync I am now.