with six you can rent a whole house, eat pie for dinner

a workbook for artists, a poem, and an album for shaking it out

Nov 15, 2024

a good week for holding your people tight

Greetings, earthlings.

Here are three things I loved this week:

1. Making Art During Fascism

A workbook for these times!

“Dear artist, I don’t know you but I need you. Art is a disproportionate part of my life and a substantial reason I am alive. Maybe you relate? I am not an artist but I work with a lot of you and after the disastrous hate crime known as the 2016 election, so many of my beloved artist clients said to me things like maybe I should quit making art and it’s kind of selfish for me to focus on my art now and I should help people in a more effective way. These are totally reasonable and expected grief responses to the shock and horror of our times but I beseech you: DO NOT STOP MAKING ART. I need it profoundly. We all do.”

Thank you to Everett Ó Cillín for sharing this!

2. The Low Road, by Marge Piercy

What can they do

to you? Whatever they want.

They can set you up, they can

bust you, they can break

your fingers, they can

burn your brain with electricity,

blur you with drugs till you

can't walk, can't remember, they can

take your child, wall up

your lover. They can do anything

you can't stop them

from doing. How can you stop

them? Alone, you can fight,

you can refuse, you can

take what revenge you can

but they roll over you.

But two people fighting

back to back can cut through

a mob, a snake-dancing file

can break a cordon, an army

can meet an army.

Two people can keep each other

sane, can give support, conviction,

love, massage, hope, sex.

Three people are a delegation,

a committee, a wedge. With four

you can play bridge and start

an organization. With six

you can rent a whole house,

eat pie for dinner with no

seconds, and hold a fund raising party.

A dozen make a demonstration.

A hundred fill a hall.

A thousand have solidarity and your own newsletter;

ten thousand, power and your own paper;

a hundred thousand, your own media;

ten million, your own country.

It goes on one at a time,

it starts when you care

to act, it starts when you do

it again and they said no,

it starts when you say We

and know who you mean,

and each day you mean one more.

—

Thank you to my friend Grace Oedel for sharing!

3. Car Seat Headrest’s Teens of Denial

This album has been on repeat all week and it’s hitting.

I humbly suggest putting this one on blast and shaking it out for a few minutes:

Foraged wild foods are part of our local food system, but many people feel intimidated by the task of identifying them, harvesting them, and preparing them.

Meanwhile, foraging for food is an incredibly effective way for people see and feel how their livelihood and health are bound up with that of their ecosystem. The forests and land around us can (and do) sustain us! Few things illustrate that truth better than leaving the forest with a basketful of dinner ingredients.

A few months ago I completed some branding work for Vermont Wild Kitchen–a collaboration between Vermont Fish & Wildlife and Rural Vermont–to promote foraged and wild foods to Vermonters.

Vermont Wild Kitchen inspires, connects, and educates Vermonters about wild and cultivated foods through cooking demos, workshops, info sharing, and more.

It was such a fun project to work on because it sits right at the intersection of two of my favorite subjects: food systems and conservation.

Thank you to the Vermont Wild Kitchen team for trusting me with this work!

My favorite part of this project was making this educational zine. The Vermont Wild Kitchen team wanted a printed piece about their mission to hand out at community events. I suggested we go one step further: let’s make it a one-page zine that people can fold themselves!

One of the trickiest things about tabling events is getting people to stick around long enough to give them your spiel. Inviting people to fold up a zine engage people’s hands while you try to engage their minds. Plus, people remember and value people (and orgs) who offer them something valuable. Making a zine may seem like a small thing, but it’s novel and magical to a lot of people and gets them talking and thinking.