The Greater Fulton Hill Civic Association will conduct its June General Meeting June 10 at 7:00 PM at the Neighborhood Resource Center 1519 Williamsburg Road.  There will be speakers, fellowship, door prizes, and refreshments.  Come out and meet your neighbors and let folks know what’s on your mind about your neighborhood.  

In the contest for the 7th district council seat, it will be Clarence Kenney vs incumbent Delores L. McQuinn. Five candidates will vie for the school board seat: Ronald L. Bond, Harry H. Bradley Jr., Donald L. Coleman, Torey J. Edmonds, and Carletta Wilson. [via]

Richmond’s Department of Parks, Recreation and Community Facilities will open its eight outdoor public swimming pools for the summer at 1PM tomorrow, including the Powhatan Pool at 5051 Northampton Street. The pools are free for the public to use and open Mondays through Fridays from 1 p.m. to 8 p.m., Saturdays from noon to 5 p.m., and Sundays from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. In addition, each pool offers family or adult only swim times.

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Are you interested in starting a community garden in your neighborhood? Tricycle Gardens is hosting several workshops on how to jump start a community garden (Wed. June 25th, July 9th, July 30th, and Aug.13th). All workshops are free, and are from 6:30-9PM at the Tricycle Gardens office @ 211 W. 7th Street in old Manchester. More information is available at lisa@tricyclegardens.org or (804)231-7767. [via]

Richmond’s Department of Parks, Recreation and Community Facilities serves free meals to children between the age of 1 and 18 at more than 120 locations throughout the city from June 16 to Aug. 29 through its participation in the U. S. Department of Agriculture’s Summer Meals for Kids Program. Last summer, the department served more than 306,000 free meals to children in the Richmond area.

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1519 Williamsburg Road
Friday, June 27th, 5:30pm-7pm

Support Greater Fulton youth as they celebrate the completion of their first homespun CD (recorded in the Neighborhood Resource Center’s own studio).
With grants from the Memorial Foundation for Children and the Richmond Police Department, Neighborhood Resource Center volunteers transformed a locker room into a recording studio, which is capturing the stories and rhymes of inner city youth. The kids’ songs cover a range of human experience from fantasy to tragic reality. Jamilla writes about someone she knows who was shot in the head; Kenya writes about the joy of eating the perfect burger; Zakiya pronounces her dream of going to college, not being on the streets.  “Studio Time at the NRC” is available for $10. With the first 100 copies sold, you will also receive a free copy of Style Weekly’s Sounds of Richmond CD. Light refreshments provided by Ellwood Thompson’s Local Market. For more information, call 864-5797 or check www.nrccafe.org.

Mary Lou Decossaux or Annette Cousins
804 864-5797 nrc1@comcast.net

The RTD is reporting that a man was shot in the abdomen at around 11PM in the 5200 block of Salem Street.

Tricycle Gardens has an update on the gardens at the NRC:

After lots of planning, building gardens, seed starting, planting and enthusiastic support, the Neighborhood Resource Center garden has started to produce vegetables, herbs, and flowers for all to enjoy! Children came to the NRC after school and were involved throughout the process of getting the gardening season underway. Some of the children in the after school program were able to attend a field trip to Victory Farms in Hanover to see how vegetables are grown on a larger scale. Now that summer has officially begun and school is out, we are continuing what was started during the spring season.

Last night I was driving down Laburnum Ave and noticed that now there is a Best Buy going up beside the Ukrops! I am excited about all of the new stores being built that will soon make a trip to the West End a thing of the past. Here is the website to the Shops at White Oak Villages.We will be getting great stores such as Target, Petsmart, Sam’s Club and even a Red Lobster (which apparently was the number 1 most requested restaurant when they built Short Pump, and we are getting it!) It is nice to see all the growth in our area. Article in RTD

Monday night, June 23^rd around 11pm, I felt what it must be like to live in Iraq. Automatic weapon fire was going off, round after round, after round….I called 911 to report the sounds coming from Nelson and Salem Streets. No one answered 911 and no one ever called back. If I had a sick baby or was an elder experiencing a heart attack-there was no way to get help from our city public safety system.

A few minutes after I called 911 and got no response, I started hearing sirens. I spoke to a neighbor the next day; she told me she called 911 the same night and got no response either and no call back.

I reported this to Lt. Laino from first precinct on June 24^th at 5:30pm. He said he would look into the 911 incidents and get back to me. He had no knowledge about the cause of the shooting other than that someone was shot in the chest.

Backup a bit: June 22-I observed a drug deal involving a maroon, four-door car and three African-American (AA) males, one in the car (heavy set, dark skin, one inch afro-hair style; outside the car was: one light skinned AA-male around 5’11” very short hair, handsome, about 190 lbs-strong-medium build-white T-shirt-black shorts-didn’t see the shoes; next to him stood a dark-skinned AA-male with thick corn-row dreads-three or four prominent ones. He also had a Goat-T on his face. He stands about 5’8” and weighs about 145 or 155lbs-around 30-35 years old. White T-shirt, blue-jean shorts-didn’t see the shoes. The guys not driving the car did a hand-to-hand drug deal near the corner of Campbell Ave. and Vista Street in broad daylight around 5pm. I called it in to the police, but didn’t see any police vehicle touring the area.

I learned yesterday that a neighbor saw the same dark-skinned corn-row/dread guy shooting at her dog later that same night on June 22^nd.

I propose we begin a log of neighborhood observations with precise days, times, details. Maybe keep a logbook by your phone. Every time you see a drug deal or hear gun fire-call 911 and report it and then log it in your book. Please note whether or not the police showed up after you called. If they did, what time did they come. If you post your observations on the Greater Fulton website, consider signing it anonymously- I say this because folks running the narcotics game in Greater Fulton have been doing it for a long time, they probably have their own website!

Don Coleman wants to hear from you! Please join us at Capt Buzzy’s on Friday the 27th from 6:00pm-7:30pm to have your voice heard regarding 7th District Schools, the last year?s school board and what you want from your school board in the future.

Don Coleman will be there to share his own story and listen to your thoughts and concerns.

Free cup of coffee for participants!

Send an e-mail to colemanforschoolboard@gmail.com if you plan on stopping by.

We to hear from you! Have your voice heard regarding RPS, the last school year, and what you want from your school board in the future.

Please join us at 5214 Parker St, cross streets Winchell St and Nelson St (home of Brandon and Brett Jaycox) next Tuesday July 1st the 6:00pm-7:30pm

Don Coleman will be there to share his own story and listen to your thoughts and concerns.

Send an e-mail to colemanforschoolboard@gmail.com if you plan on stopping by.

I saw Wall-E, a Pixar film that premiered this weekend. It was all that you would expect, visually engaging, innovative story telling, and humor that will satisfy child and adult alike. Wall-E (Waste Allocator Load Lifter-Earth Class) doesn’t talk nor does his pet cockroach, the only two survivors on an otherwise lifeless planet Earth. But Wall-E’s robotic coos and pantomime make it clear what he is feeling and the movie is filled with  sentimental scores that add a heighten sense of emotional to an otherwise completely automated environment.

And yes, Wall-E is quite a sentimental robot.  He gets his feelings hurt, worries about treading over his cockroach and… even falls in love with Eve (Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator), who comes to Earth to see what shape it’s in. She is cold and calculating at first but she soon falls for Wall-E’s earnest mechanical heart. All the robots in the movie gush with emotions, which made me wanted to roll my eyes a few times. Then some all too clever, culturally relevant bit of ‘Pixar humor’ would draw me back in.

Don’t expect to walk away from this movie without some not-so-subtle social and political commentary. We are big-box-loving-self-absorbed-dim-witted-earth-killers…And you should know it. I laughed aloud when the ship’s CEO insisted that we ‘Stay the course’. A little self-deprecation is good for the soul.

Make sure to stay for the first part of credits, if you are one of those people like me who likes neat little extras.

Rating: See it