bake. walk. build. repeat.

Cookies Are Our Love Language

“Grow in the cracks between existing things.”
That’s one of the quiet rules Rangers live by—work the edges, join what’s already humming, add a layer of care without taking center stage.

Our annual Cookie Drive is a good example. RCIL has already perfected the Thanksgiving Basket Drive (their beloved 20-year-old neighborhood tradition). We simply sweeten it. While others pitch in on the turkeys, veggies, and gravy, we handle a homemade touch: a dozen fresh cookies tucked into every basket.

This year’s goal: 1,500 cookies. That’s 125 dozen bites of neighborly joy—soft, crisp, chewy, imperfect, delicious.

Get your oven hot and your butter to room temp. Bake what you love—drop, bar, oatmeal, ginger, chocolate, family secret. Don’t sweat any dietary restrictions; the baskets are sorted by hand and it takes all kinds.

Commit: Can you make 3 or 6 dozen? Sweet! Let us know how many to look for (just reply to this email). 

Drop-off: Thursday or Friday, Nov. 20th or 21st. Porch at 971 Kirkwood (white townhouse, blue door). By 5pm on Friday if you can swing it.

Label: Write the cookie type and your initials. Leave the cute packaging to us.

Optional: Tuck in a short note—“baked with love on Manigault,” or a doodle from a kid helper (for each dozen). Tiny gestures go far.

If you want company, come to the Big Bag Boom (a packaging party). Friday, November 21, at 5pm, until we finish/drop, at the house with the porch mentioned above—971 Kirkwood. And if you’ve never joined before—start small. 36 cookies are enough to be part of the story. So: preheat to 350 °F, chop your nuts, and remember— every cookie says: neighbors are sweet.

Litter Is Our Liturgy

Trash Church. Sundays, 8:30–10 a.m. 

Starting in December.

Looking for a different way to live what you believe? Tried bike church, dance church, brunch church—and none quite fit? Join us for Trash Church.

No sermon, no RSVP, just slow walking and close looking. We’ll start soon: a weekly loop through Reynoldstown, picking up what doesn’t belong, noticing what does. Each scrap we lift is a quiet amen; over time we’ll cover every block.

We got gloves (because, ‘ick’) and grabbers to share, or bring your own. We’ll end with coffee and a few stories from the walk: weird finds, small wonders, who waved this week. A shared map will trace our route until every street’s been touched—then we’ll start again.

Our cleanup goes deep; it’s a form of devotion. Walking and working is our worship. Go slow enough to see what grows in the cracks. Reply to this email, or text ‘trash’ (or ‘church’) to 1 (833) 674-6747 to get on the list. We step off in December.

Making Is Our Jam

Do you decoupage? Can you can? Will you weld? Got a skill saw or a skill set? 

Perfect. You’re already one of us.

The Reynoldstown Makers Guild is now forming, a loose union of builders, bakers, menders, and willing wanna-bes—a workshop that makes what our neighbors don’t yet know they need: quilts, cookies, benches, banners, insect hotels, pop-up gifts. Each project begins with showing up, ends when the work is done, and leaves behind a trace—a skill, a recipe, a pattern someone else can use. Rangers started out as a quilt circle, so this move feels coming home.

Less Take / More Make

Makers Guild rises from a hunch—that neighbors who mend and make together will help us all thrive. Every handmade thing rebuilds civic muscle. Skills travel, stories multiply, materials find second lives, neighbors learn by doing until the rhythm hums. The one who bakes a cookie is the one who quilts a blanket or builds a bench. Patchwork and porch work are the same sort of stitch.

Sometimes we don’t know where to even begin. So we ask our hands. 

If this sounds like you (or someone you know), drop us a line.

RANGERS. GOT. VERBS.

Join: The next Water Cooler Club. Wednesday, November 12 at 11a. Text ‘water’ to 1 (833) 674-6747

Lead: Judy Yi and Emi Wheelock are heading up Trash Church. They want one more leg of leadership, to complete their trash troika. Wanna help them make it happen? Reply to this email.

Thank: RCIL, for lending us gear and guidance for Trash Church. We’ll join forces four times a year. 

Built: Four new bus benches, with Eli Dickerson, and our friends down at Atlanta Wood Foundation (right here in Reynoldstown).

Look: For the next round of Porch Portraits, appearing soon at Museum of Reynoldstown. 36 beautiful new neighbor faces.

Under the Hood

Meeting Minutes: Round Table with Makers, about the Guild (10.27.25)

not service, not spectacle—something in between. make small things that change the atmosphere of a place. not to fix everything, but to tend the connective tissue.

a good project isn’t “important.” it just shifts how people meet. each object is a form of civic repair: useful enough to matter, poetic enough to linger. teaches how to belong, not how to behave.

simple rules:
small scale—two to six people, one sitting.
visible—someone should see or feel the trace.
teachable—leave a way to repeat it.
reciprocal—make with, not for.
charged—say something about how we want to live together.

hold both joy and use. build rhythm, not monuments. let each act seed the next until care becomes ecosystem.

could we organize it as 5 hubs?

home hub: a domestic workshop. mending, textiles, cooking, baking, canning, care. teaches reuse and attention.

build hub: a structural shop. wood, metal, brick, joinery. teaches proportion and repair.
green hub: a living lab. gardens, ecology, compost, native plantings, water. teaches interdependence.

gear hub:  a tinker’s bench. electronics, bikes, gadgets, solar, lighting. teaches curiosity and iteration.
marks hub: a signal studio. print, paint, stencil, wheatpaste, zine, signage. teaches public voice and pattern.

yes. this feels like the right thing.