Let Freedom Ring!

This photo was taken at one of my favorite places in the City of Richmond; the Greenway -- the meandering park created by the community to follow the route of the railroad tracks that form one of the boundaries of the Iron Triangle -- a neighborhood under renewal led by a coalition of community groups which includes Urban Tilth, the Richmond Community Foundation and the National Park Service.  The railroad tracks were removed long ago, leaving an elongated space suitable for development into public gardens and orchards open to anyone wanting to participate.   By agreement with businesses and industrial properties that lie along this several-miles-long "park", the fences, backs of buildings, now bear dynamic, colorful, imaginative murals that feed the soul and nourish those who plant, cultivate, and reap the harvest of gardens planted and maintained by the community throughout the year. 

Among the youth contingent, led by NPS Ranger, Matt Holmes, are local high school students working alongside and sharing life with the elders of the community while working the soil, designing and painting the murals, adorning the trashcans, irrigating the gardens, and planting the trees.

... another sign of the renewal of the life process through the spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose dedication to the concept of love has been remembered well enough to have carried us through these early decades of the 21st Century.

Richmond is well into its renaissance!

This photo was taken during this year's Day of Service, observed in memory of Dr. King.