After a three-month application process, and with the assistance of an outstanding expert evaluation panel, Grow Food Northampton has selected a western Massachusetts farming couple, Nate Frigard and Jen Smith, to be our anchor CSA farmers for the Northampton Community Farm.

Nate and Jen have a combined 15 years of farming experience, were trained at the Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems at the University of California Santa Cruz, and have been growing, managing and teaching farming in Massachusetts including Waltham Fields Community Farm, Waltham, MA, and the Farm School in Orange, MA. Nate currently manages the CSA farm at the Farm School while Jen works as a Land Conservation Associate with Mt. Grace Land Conservation Trust.

If fundraising allows, GFN looks forward to offering Jen and Nate a 99-year ground lease to the 37-acre Bean Farm land as the site for their organic vegetable CSA. Jen and Nate will have at least two farmer apprentices, will host community celebrations on the land, will work with Grow Food Northampton to bring educational programs on site, and will regularly donate fresh food to our local food banks. If GFN is successful in purchasing more than the Bean Farm, we may circulate a call for complementary proposals (e.g. fruit, bean and grain CSAs; animals, farm business incubator sites, etc.) and incorporate land for community gardens, in the additional acreage. Jen and Nate will assist in the short-term management of that land until additional lessees are selected.

A Letter from Jen & Nate

We currently live in Wendell, Massachusetts and are very excited to move down to Northampton this fall to begin the work of starting a community-based farm on the Bean Farm farmland.

We are thrilled and humbled at the opportunity to join and to serve the Northampton community with fresh, healthy produce, farm based educational opportunities, and community celebrations over the coming years.

Our Experience

For the last 4 seasons Nate has worked for The Farm School as the Head Grower in its year round farmer training program. He manages 12 acres of vegetables and small fruits and trains student farmers in the skills of raising organic mixed vegetables.

Jen currently works for Mount Grace Land Conservation Trust where she heads up their Farm Conservation Program. She helps landowners explore their conservation options and works most specifically with farmers and farmland owners to preserve their farms for future generations.

Together, we have 15 years combined farming experience. We have farmed in Northern Virginia, in Coastal California, and for the last 5 seasons in Massachusetts. We have come to farming out of a love of hard work and out of an excitement that comes from community based farming.

Our Vision for the Land

We plan to start a community-centered organic farm growing mixed vegetables, fruits and cut flowers. We will market our produce primarily through an on-farm Community Supported Agriculture program. In the future, we also hope to bring laying hens, pigs and bees to the farm, plant a small fruit orchard, and plant raspberries and blueberries for our CSA members.

While the core business of our farm will be growing mixed vegetables, our goal is to create a beautiful, productive and diverse family farm, with both annual and perennial crops, field crops along smaller hand tilled perennial garden spaces, trees, shrubs, flowers, vegetables and animals.

We envision the farm being not only a successful and sustainable business but also a place of learning and community engagement. We are excited to partner with Grow Food Northampton over the long-term to bring youth education and increased access to the farm for folks of all income levels.

We plan to develop a apprentice-training program to continue teaching future farmers how to run a successful farm. We will host community workshops and skill shares, open to all, and will offer real volunteer opportunities for interested folks to join in the work of the farm. We are excited to help make this farm a welcoming space open to the public, and a community resource not just for our CSA members and customers but for the whole community.

~Jen & Nate

Do you want fresh, locally grown food, but don’t want to give up the convenience of a regular grocery store? There’s no need to wait for your closest mega-chain supermarket to carry the good stuff.

Food cooperatives are worker or customer owned businesses that provide grocery items of the highest quality and best value to their members. Coops can take the shape of retail stores or buying clubs. All food coops are committed to consumer education, product quality, and member control, and usually support their local communities by selling produce grown locally by family farms

Seven Rochdale Principles:
1. Voluntary and open membership
2. Democratic member control
3. Member economic participation
4. Autonomy and independence
5. Education, training, and information
6. Cooperation among cooperatives
7. Concern for community

Sustain; v. (used with object); to support, hold,
or bear the weight of

Sustainability is an important concept which weaves its way throughout the Pioneer Valley. The idea behind sustainability involves reimbursing or using less of the resources from which we take from the environment. One of the ways the people in the Pioneer Valley encourage sustainability is by prompting their fellow citizens to shop locally and “Be a Local Hero”. This means supporting local grocers, local farmers, and local businesses. In addition, entitles one the right of purchasing one of the many “I am a Local Hero” bumper stickers sold in many establishments across The Valley.

The reason being a local hero is so important to the Pioneer Valley is because we not only sustain each other as a community, but also contribute to the local farmers who use more environmentally friendly methods than big corporations. Therefore sustaining the environment as well.

The Pioneer Valley community is always interested in new innovations supporting sustainability, and Co-op Power plays a big role in satisfying this interest. Co-op Power is a consumer-owned company that is dedicated to developing community-owned sustainable energy and resources in New England and New York. In fact, Co-op Power is a majority owner of the Northeast Biodiesel Company LLC. This $7 million biodiesel plant will take root in Greenfield, Massachusetts, and will use recycled vegetable oils, and animal fats to produce five million gallons of biodiesel per year. This is a project that has been in the works for years, and construction will finally start this year [2009].

It all started a week or so ago. Emily’s friend Renée went into our upstairs bathroom. Em and I were downstairs. Suddenly Renée comes walking very briskly down the stairs, and her words precede her: “There’s a very scary bug in your bathroom!!!” A moment later I see her outstretched hand holding out a loosely bunched tissue, a tight-lipped – and dare I say desperate? – look on her face. Em and I exchanged glances, and I took the tissue from

Zen Beetle

Renée. Not knowing what to expect – and hoping against hope it was not one of those big furry spiders – I held my breath and slowly pulled back one edge of the tissue to reveal… Zen Beetle!!!! (Those of you who don’t know about Zen Beetle can ready the back story in my earlier blog:  Spiderweb ”Oh,” I said to Renée with a smile, “It’s just Zen Beetle!” “Terrifying,” Renée replied. Emily nodded with a frown. I stepped outside and put Zen Beetle in the bushes in front of our porch.

Mountain Zen and Healing Center

His Online Catalog displays a choice selection of antiques for sale, usually American in origin. Special emphasis is placed on the Arts & Crafts period, in particular Stickley furniture and Limberts and other quality makers of oak mission style furniture. He also has Victorian, Art Nouveau and Art Deco periods featuring FURNITURE, LIGHTING and ACCESSORIES. He carries a sizeable inventory of arts and crafts furniture by reknown makers Gustav Stickley, L&JG Stickley, Charles Limbert, Lifetime, Harden, J.M. Young, Old Hickory Adirondack and Roycroft amongst others. He also carries lamps by Tiffany Studios, Handel, Jefferson, Bigelow and Kennard, Bradley and Hubbard, Duffner and Kimberly, Pittsburgh, amongst other makers. He also offers early electric, gas, and kerosene lighting including chandeliers, wall sconces, floor lamps, and table lamps; and numerous decorative art metal and pottery pieces. In general, he features antiques that bespeak a strong design influence. Every item he offers he guarantees as to authenticity and you may have full confidence in his catalog descriptions.

He are always interested in purchasing like items, especially mission style furniture by Gustav Stickley, L&JG Stickley, Charles Limbert and lamps by Handel, Tiffany Studios, Bigelow and Kennard and like makers; and we guarantee a fair and just price for your antiques. If your interest is in selling your antiques, please click “Appraisals” on the left side bar at his site. He also has a page on Stickley marks, decals and identification that may help you in identifying and dating your Stickley piece.

For those of you who enjoy travel beyond cyberspace, Stuart F. Solomon Antiques Gallery features a complete inventory. He are located in downtown Northampton, Massachusetts, recently noted as a number one small town travel destination for outstanding arts and entertainment in America.

First Aron gave his take on the Tofu Curtain:

In the northern half of the Pioneer Valley, there is an abundance of relative affluence and worldly idealism. But in the southern part of the Valley, we find grinding social problems, right in our own backyard. The coexistence of these two realities, separated by the Holyoke Range (or “Tofu Curtain”), is an egregious disparity that amounts to a social justice issue for many. This group formed, as I understand it, to figure out how to mobilize the formidable resources in the northern part of the Valley (financial and otherwise) to deal with these local issues, and help reconcile these glaring differences. We hope to match up socially and environmentally responsible investment expertise with entrepreneurs and innovators with a similar objectives. We also recognize that the Tofu Curtain is a little simplistic. There are disturbing disparities in the northern, more rural parts of the Valley as well.

So what’s going on with your scene in Western Mass? It sounds like a real freak show. There are fat kids, bearded ladies, & cows with holes in ‘em. There’s this psychological “Tofu Curtain” that surrounds a central psuedo-liberal, pseudo-utopia of three college towns in one stupid valley. To the west there’s hills – dotted with tiny hippy holdouts, summer homes for the rich (BILL COSBY!!), a couple rustspots, & some genuine newengland hillbillies. To the east is a giant valley that was flooded for a waterworks project (Quabbin Reservior) by the fat cats in Beantown, punishing the ancestors of Shay’s Rebellion. (You could start inserting footnotes here, mr. editor.) [Naaah. -- ed.]

I loved living in the coops – what a stimulating environment. We had wonderful house parties, using my borrowed tiny Bose shelf speakers (and yes, they really worked – the sound filled up the room!). I worked in the kitchen – switched to the ‘carney’ kitchen after my first recipe in the veggie kitchen was a souffle calling for separating 65 eggs! The houses were divided into veggie/carney sides, and the corner where the switch from carney to veggie occurred was called the ‘Tofu Curtain’

Inevitably, the crime that occurs around a college depends on the town or city around it. With Springfield’s long, quiet blocks and sporadic street lighting, who would argue safety isn’t a concern sometimes? Locally, though, federal data offers an interesting look at crime as it relates to the “tofu curtain,” the term sometimes used to describe the class divide between the wealthier, academic Hampshire County and the low-income Hampden County.

The Holyoke Range, a relatively small mountain range in western Massachusetts, USA, which separates the Pioneer Valley from the Springfield metropolitan area.

This name reflects the juxtaposition of the areas to the north and south of the range. The relative wealth, educational level, smugness and quality of life of Northampton and Amherst, Massachusetts to the north – and the urban decay, teen pregnancy, street violence, drug use, and poverty of Holyoke, Chicopee, and Springfield Massachusetts, a mere ten miles to the south.

A Tofu Curtain may exist in other areas, such as Princeton, New Jersey and New Haven, Connecticut (home to Princeton and Yale Universities, respectively). However, this is the most dramatic example of a physical barrier which approximates the socioeconomic divide.

Northampton is a happy liberal utopia. If you want a teen hooker and an 8 ball, you should cross the Tofu Curtain and go to Holyoke.

I knew her only as Bonnie. I was told that I would meet her when I moved to Market St. When you are forewarned about a person before you meet them your antenna sticks up. Well I forgot about it until after a few weeks on Market St when I went to the dumpster behind my house. Bonnie was on me like white on rice. She was wondering what I was doing in Stuart’s dumpster (she also shared it) Well I explained in a long winded manner that I was a new tenant in the building. And I was going for my first dump run. She asked me my name and what I did for a living. She said she doesn’t remeber names but only what they do in relation to other people or their location. So from then on I was called Genius. She loved to talk to me about my schooling. So I took the time to tell her. She always looked me directly in the eye.

Well I only knew her for a year but will never forget her. We on earth will miss you Bonnie. I have captured some parting thoughts people have said from another site HERE

October 29, 2009

As a downtown resident, Bonnie was someone I could count on seeing each and every day. Somedays it was just a hello, other days she asked after other folks. I for one will certainly miss running into her. My thoughts are with you.

~ Michael, Northampton, Massachusetts

October 29, 2009

I am sorry for your loss.

I knew Bonnie for years because she would come into my workplace frequently. When I was pregnant with my twins, Bonnie gave me a fantastic book, “Super Baby Food” about making your own baby & toddler food – I used that book constantly and then gave it to another friend with a baby.

She will be missed by many.

~ Rachel, Easthampton, Massachusetts

October 28, 2009

Beckie,I’m very sorry for the loss of your mother.My thoughts and prayers are with you.Your friend,Michelle

October 28, 2009

Jeanette and family:

I was very sorry to learn of Bonnie’s death. My thoughts and prayers are with you. Best wishes to you.

David Robinson

North Haven, CT (formerly of Longmeadow and Springfield)

~ David Robinson, North Haven, Connecticut

October 28, 2009

To the Ascher Family, Iam sorry about the loss of your daughter, Bonnie.

You will be greatly missed Bonnie! Our thoughts and prayers go out to you and your family.

From everyone at Spoleto

Josef Albers

This week we got our first look at the Obamas’ White House art, and it contained a few surprises. The 45 works the First Family chose to display, borrowed from various government institutions, range from simmering meditations on geometry and color by the great and under­appreciated Josef Albers to depictions of Native Americans by the ever-mysterious George Catlin to a glowing abstract Zen TV screen by Mark Rothko to otherworldly still lifes by the minor modern master Giorgio Morandi. They topped off the collection with three geeky U.S. Patent models (a paddle wheel, a telegraph and a prototype for a gear cutter), a realist portrait of Harry S. Truman, works by Native American artists (including a fantastic ceramic by Maria Poveka Martinez), Jasper Johns‘ super-strange low-relief 0 Through 9, and paintings by Sam Francis, Winslow Homer, Richard Diebenkorn, Alma Thomas and Susan Rothenberg, among others.

Critics were quick to put a gloss on the collection’s meaning. On the right wing, the more aggressive contemporary work in the collection came in for a predictable beating. The focus was on Ed Ruscha‘s apparently banal, almost-monochrome conceptualist work made in 1983. “I Think I’ll. . . ” is an infinitely optical, obtusely cerebral fire-red/Popsicle-orange minimal field, streaked with floating phrases like, “Maybe. . . yes,” “Maybe. . . no,” and “On second thought.” Predictably, a clueless anti-Obama website groused that the painting was “celebrating indecision.”

And just as inevitably, art insiders were disappointed in the choices. The esteemed if reliably irascible Artnet critic Charlie Finch, author of Most Art Sucks, pointed out to me that there were all of six works by women artists, and wrapped it up by calling the Obamas “as right wing as Bush in the art department.” Washington Post critic Blake Gopnik sneered that some of the taste on view was “mild” and mentioned that the ballet dancers rendered in bronze by Edgar Degas were once “considered one step up from prostitutes.” (Those two points would seem to contradict one another, but never mind.) Gopnik went on to slag the Morandis (“painted by a once-proud Fascist who’d sucked up to Benito Mussolini”) and wondered if Catlin’s uncanny 1860s renditions of the American West were “all about a white colonialist gawking at exotic conquered peoples.” Are these people kidding? Do they really think the Obamas should have hung (let’s say) a Kara Walker paper silhouette of a slave girl performing fellatio on a slaver who excretes a pickaninny? Do they remember that only a year ago George W. Bush was decorating his office with generic cowboy paintings — plus Saddam Hussein’s pistol? In nine months we’ve gone from generic Western landscapes and photo-­realist images of cacti to a painting by one of the most prickly contemporary artists around.

Glenn Ligon

In my lifetime, I’d never have expected to see something like a Glenn Ligon 1992 text painting, based on a line in the 1961 book Black Like Me, hanging in the living quarters of the White House. Ligon’s hauntingly beautiful, difficult-to-parse painting looks like a self-replicating printout or a hard-to-read gravestone or poster. A repeating representation of the sentence “All traces of the Griffin I had been were wiped from existence,” whatever else it is, the painting evinces a willingness to look race directly in the face and not settle for easy answers.

But back to the Ruscha and its purported embrace of indecision. In fact, what it conveys perfectly is not waffling, but thinking. Like so much of the work the Obamas have chosen, it highlights a central difference between two states of mind, the progressive and conservative. “I Think I’ll. . .” effortlessly and efficiently transmits a psychic inclination that accepts paradox and allows that the world is not only good or evil. The hallmark, so far, of Obama’s administration has not actually been indecision, or Clintonian triangulation. It’s been a hanging back, waiting till all the facts come in, and for all the ideas to be floated, and then making a (decisive) move. This painting embodies that inclination, and it’s not the only one in the collection that does so.

JERRY SALTZ is art critic for New York magazine, where this essay first appeared. He can be reached at jerry_saltz@nymag.com.

By Bob Flaherty

Created 10/06/2009 – 04:00

column local news northampton

NORTHAMPTON – The airplane, one made of paper, soared ever higher into the Northampton night. As if programmed to a flight plan, the craft caught improbable currents and kept rising, rising, rising over a deserted Main Street at 3 a.m., while a city slept.

But Elliot Tarry, who had just moved to Northampton, was watching with his girlfriend from the open window of their third-floor apartment. They saw the plane climb higher still, to where they could almost reach out and grab it, and then they saw it descend and swoosh in for a long, graceful landing on the sidewalk below.

“We stuck out our heads, and there’s this little elf of a man down there, just grinning up at us,” said Tarry.

The elfish man was Tim Young, the eternal night owl, who, despite being deaf, loved music and the people who listened to it almost as much as he loved life.

So began what Tarry calls “a silent acquaintanceship” with the Zelig of Northampton, a man seemingly capable of being everywhere at once, a man with whom he had shared an indelible memory.

“To be able to achieve that level of greatness in something so simple as a paper airplane, you knew he was special,” said Tarry, a licensed massage therapist. “We made a connection that night that carried with me for 20 years.”

It’s been nearly two weeks since Young died alone in his condo at the age of 59.

He was not an office-holder, business owner or street cop, but we all knew him. He was the guy who walked around all day telling everyone who was playing in town that night and ran around all night trying to make their shows.

Lonesome Brothers singer and guitarist Jim Armenti speaks of Young’s sacred sheet: “He’d pull out this wrinkled handwritten page and describe all of the events he would see, all with a look of total amazement on his face, like each one was from another dimension, each show held the possibility of some kind of magic transformation,” said Armenti.

The handwritten sheet, known as “Tim’s Entertainment Report,” evolved into a neater, typewritten one he downloaded every morning at Forbes Library. But the approach never varied. From shop to cafe to people passing in crosswalks, he’d share the list and tout everyone on it – in a voice all his own. Some could make out every word, to others it was: “Tonight****Pearl Street****you gotta go*****very good!”

He’d get right in your face and make you feel guilty if you failed to commit. “I went to this show – where were ya?” he’d admonish.

“He sounded like the Martians in (the movie) ‘Mars Attacks,’” said Bill Dwight. “He was as much a fixture downtown as the cuckoo crosswalk sound and the crenellations on City Hall.”

But Tim Young’s patented fist bump was communication of the highest order. As Armenti describes it: “Whenever he appeared he came with a fist bump followed by the fist opening into a floral hand accompanied by ‘psssshhh,’ the sound of fireworks. For a guy who could barely hear, even with aids, he got a lot of sound into his head.”

Young’s connection

People have tried to explain the deaf man’s love of music, but that’s as hard to do as explaining your love of a particular genre to one who’d block his ears at the mention of it. Was it the beat, the sneeze of a high-hat, the unleashing of Jim Armenti’s fingers on the neck of a guitar, or the idea of someone getting up there and baring her soul? Young thrived on all of it. He heard it in a different way than most, but felt it like no other.

Of course, in crowded clubs nobody can hear anything anyway. It must have amused Young to see everyone strain to hear as they yelled across tables at each other. Some speculate that might have been the great equalizer for Timmy – here we are, all in here together, and none of us can hear.

The all-in-here-together part seemed a piece of the equation. “He was tuned in to that collective energy,” said Tarry. “Exhilarated by what everyone else was exhilarated by.”

“If you saw him in the audience, you knew he was listening and enjoying for the right reason,” said bassist Max Dermer of the band School For the Dead. “It was the perfect volume for him, when you think of it.”

For the record, Young grew up in Northampton. His dad was a professor at Smith College, his mom worked at the school he graduated from in 1970, the Clarke School for the Deaf. Four years later he graduated Northampton High. From there he got a degree from the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York, went to work helping design games at Milton Bradley and later worked as an actuary at Mass Mutual for years before being downsized.

Downsize away, he’d seem to say with his ever-present grin, it’s all good.

He started working for Al Houghton, the jack-of-all-trades guy with the big white beard whom concert-goers always see at Northampton nightclubs and halls. Together, Houghton and Young painted over 100 apartments and concert halls. He’d check in with Houghton every day at the Iron Horse: “Need some help? I’m available.” When Houghton didn’t have work for his pal and just had errands to run in his pickup, Young said, “I’ll keep ya company,” and climbed in.

“How many times had I heard that in 22 years?” Houghton mused. “‘I’ll keep ya company.’”

“He was like a golden retriever,” Houghton said of the pair’s relationship. “You feed him once in a while and all you get back is love. He was hard to understand, but we didn’t talk much anyway. But you didn’t have to communicate, he was so smart.”

A music lover working for nightclubs – how much more smart do you need? He knew all the bands, and all the players’ names. He watched them evolve, mature, get record deals, bomb, break up and get back together.

One day Houghton and Young were doing some carpentry downtown and Timmy was yelling out to half the people on the street. “Who are you yelling at?” asked Houghton, a kind-hearted soul who always appears grouchy.

“That’s the bass player for Fancy Trash!” cried Young. “Don’t you know that?”

“The only time I ever saw him mad was after a show at the Calvin and I’ve got him sweeping up out front,” said Houghton. “He gives me this look. He had a band to see – he had to get going.”

“We could have Bob Dylan playing here and the worst band in town at the worst hole-in-the-wall and it made no difference,” said Houghton. “Two, three songs, and he’s off to the next one.”

Grim discovery

It was Houghton who found him, in his bathtub; he knew something was wrong two nights before. “It was at the Los Lobos show. He said he didn’t feel good, had the sniffles. I sent him home. But he had this eerie look in his eyes, as if the spirit had left him. I never saw him like that before.”

Two days went by. No one had seen Timmy Young on the street, a shock in and of itself.

“I’m gonna find him dead,” thought Houghton, who called police, got the key from management and let himself into Young’s Raymond Place apartment. “I heard the dripping faucet, not another sound in the place, just the dripping faucet. I can’t get it out of my head. I went in, saw what I saw, and mechanically walked out. I’m in shock now, but I knew what I was going to find.”

By last Friday night the word was all over town. Gabe Bon, who handles security at The Elevens, knew instinctively that something had to be done. Bon got on his cell phone, called every band in town and threw a show together, the “Timmy ‘Fist Bumpin’ St. Peter at the gates of the Big Show in the Sky” memorial show, to be exact. For once, Tim Young’s beloved musicians made it easy – everyone played three songs. Which was about all Timmy was good for, before he got itchy for the next venue down the street.

“This is the show he’d be wishing he could come to,” said Rich Tardy, lead singer of one of the night’s headliners, the Swill Merchants. Tardy calls Fist Bump Timmy a fixture in his life. “I’ve only been here three years and I saw him five times a day,” said Tardy. “Matt (Silberstein) and I were walking downtown today and it hit us that we’re not gonna see Timmy again.”

“The second I moved here I knew he was a presence in Northampton,” said singer and keyboardist Carolyn Zaikowski, who goes by the name of Carolyn Conspiracy.

Aside from all the rockers hauling their gear in and out, there was a large contingent from the Clarke School, signing to each other from every corner of the joint. Young was secretary of the Clarke Alumni Council. Fellow alum Dick Mahaffey, 45, says he keeps looking around, thinking Tim and his smiling, caring face will magically appear. “He was the best supporting actor Community Sign Theater ever had,” said Mahaffey.

Young’s love of performance was not restricted to watching from the audience.

Greg Malynoski, who works in the development office of Clarke School, said that Young’s “connection to the hearing world is the epitome of what we teach.”

Clarke alum Rodney Kunath, class of ’58, roomed with Young for two years before the latter bought his Randolph Place condo in 1998. This New Year’s Eve will be hard to take for Kunath, the first one he won’t spend with his longtime friend watching the ball drop from Hotel Northampton’s roof and jumping around with all Hamp’s characters afterwards. “Tim never had an angry spirit,” said Kunath. “‘Things will get better,’ he’d say. Such a remarkable attitude.”

A story from a child that has moved countless number of times:

My name is Chris, my friends call me CJ and I am 14 years old and in the 8th grade. DSS took me away from my real parents when I was little; I think I was 2 or something like that. They tried to keep me with my brother but the family said they couldn’t handle me. I moved around a lot and I don’t remember how many times or all the homes until I moved into a program.

I was 7 years old the first time I went into a program. I was scared. The staff told me to go into my room and put my stuff away. All my stuff was in trash bags, someone must have thought it was trash and one of the bags that had my toys in it got lost. I was only there for a short time, but it seemed like it was forever. The things that I remember most was that al the windows had locks on them and were covered with hard plastic and there was no privacy.

I used to wet my bed and the first night I was so scared that I was afraid to use the bathroom. The next morning when they woke us up the staff walked in the bedroom I sharing with three other kids and announced to the entire unit that “CJ pissed his bed and he needs to take a shower”. I hated him. Looking back I spent most of my time sitting in a chair facing the wall. I was determined not to let them see me cry.

I left there and went to my next foster home, again in trash bags this time they were the heavy green ones. I was careful this time not to pack all my toys in one bag. The home was okay but DSS moved me again after only a few months. They had already thrown all my stuff into the cheap white kitchen trash bags. The pictures of my real family were just thrown in and some of them were torn or bent. After leaving this home DSS sent me to a hospital because they said I had “anger problems.” I tried to fight it by throwing rocks at the DSS workers car but that just brought the police and an ambulance. I was 8.

While I was at the hospital they put me on meds to “help control my anger” I hated the meds, they made me slow and I gained a lot of weight. After leaving the hospital I was sent to a program. I was there for about a year. They said I was better and they sent me to another foster home in trash bags.

The next two years was spent going from home to home with a few hospitals thrown in. Each time I left in trash bags, I became grateful when the family that was getting rid of me gave me the heavy green trash bags. During those 2 years I think moved 8 times, I was 10 years old.

The next home was a home that was good they were able to put up with me and all the bad behaviors that I had. I was there for 3 years when they gave up. This sucked the most as I was just beginning to trust them. I don’t know how many times I have actually moved but it’s been a lot. I am in a new home now and I really want it to work.

Suitcases4kids