• Celebrating by running and eating •
[1½ MIN READ]
Last Juneteenth 2023, I spent the morning writing and publishing my thoughts and experiences on learning about Black community. There was not a lot of that growing up in the Southern Tier of New York state. There was a little more going to college in the south side of Chicago. There was considerably more at the university where I was the Sciences Librarian for 17 years. But the majority of my learning has come through running.
I coined the term “communitizing” to help articulate a process of building community. I’ve experienced it informally through running. And I’ve experienced it running with Black Men Run Philadelphia. This past 05’29’W, GGR ran with the group for the 4th time since 2020. Jason and Jim joined me as members of the traveling team. It made me very happy to say hi when 2 of the chapter’s 3 anchors greeted us with 2 other members, all of whom have welcomed us before. The names are starting to sit more firmly in my memory, so I expect to be able to greet them when we attend BMR’s 5th annual Juneteenth Freedom Run this year. While it will be the traveling team’s first time attending that event, we’ll all be that much more comfortable because of the runs we did with BMR. The extremely cool reality is that we would never have known about the Freedom Run if we hadn’t run with the club in the weeks beforehand: It’s just not being publicized in ways we would otherwise have seen.
A wise friend told me that you can’t force relationships and expect much success. His best experiential advice was to do things together and let that togetherness build comfort. I expect to see communitization build comfort through this opportunity to run together and eat together. We’re fortunate in the Philadelphia area to have such a natural opportunity.
-CtCloser (Calvinthe), “Negative split or positive splat” #dothedue
FINE PRINT ¶Text and photos (unless otherwise stated): Calvin Wang (Wäng), CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. ¶Cross-posted: (1) Facebook JRC Growlers Group Run (2024’06’12’W Run Message), (2) GGR email list, (3) Cerebruns by CtCloser. ¶This website posting: Cerebrun with added caption.
iCandybyWangC 