Place Corps Friday Digest: Integrity

Fall Scenes: Walking in wonder with Farmscape Ecology directors Claudia Knab Vispo and Conrad Vispo.

We noticed the trees are changing colors. Reds and oranges are lighting their limbs as if they are burning a warm fire around us. We know soon the fire will go out; leaving us with charcoal branches--stark and bare against a winter sky.

This past week walls were put on our building projects and were added to our classroom and office. We worked to plan the friends and family weekend, workshopped the Place Corps values and our personal qualities of integrity, enjoyed a generous dinner with the Pings, visited Soul Fire Farm, and participated in the Uprooting Racism training where walls were taken down.

Next week we are looking forward to prepping our campus for visitors. Diving into pod work on our PC Emerge design and having the opportunity to continue our learning on racism and anti-semitism at Bard College as participants in the annual Hannah Arendt conference.

Our word for the week is INTEGRITY. How are we mending transgressions by acting with integrity? How do we continue to identify where our wholeness needs repair? How do our actions align with our qualities of integrity to help heal ourselves, our communities, our places, and our earth?

“We want to learn to farm in a culturally respectful and responsive environment that’s going to support us and help us heal from the trauma of land-based oppression.”

― Leah Penniman