Meetings & Skillshares

January's newsletter is  late and we apologize for that. I was working on this on the 6th and got sidetracked by all the nonsense in DC.  I actually do have a day job and some of my clients needed some adjunct herbal support

I think people are caught off guard by how quiet we are.  I tried to keep things as low-key as possible over the holidays because we are not some non-profit who constantly has to fundraise or pester people.  I worry about you all. We are not here to add to anyone's stress. 

And do you know what? 

Enough help came in to cover what we we needed to keep the projects going without us having to bug people.  A small group of us still had our bartering session,and we had a good preliminary garden planning session.  That's really all we need to do. 

Things are pretty chill right now.  The city program that is helping people with funds for covid-relief is still taking applications and a lot of my phonework right now is just helping people who don't have Internet figure out how to apply for that, and telling people if they need anything else to get back to us. 

The lunch project and our meals project are flowing pretty smoothly right now.  We have more cooks than we have ever had.  So much thanks go out to Dolly, Yasmine, Joe, and Brandon D. and Steve. 

As far as inauguration day goes, the medics have talked about it and kinda feel like this isn't our circus. So ICMA's official stance on this is "Please don't put collective bodies  between alt-right fascists and agents of the police state." Stock up, make some popcorn, and sit back and let them work this out amongst themselves. I mean our supplies/gear are always in order if some sort of community support became necessary.  If things do get out of hand, I will whip up a Zoom session for more discussion.

Where I am going with this is that we have the time to relax and focus on community building, and that we should do so rather than sitting around doomscrolling all the time.  People seem really frazzled and I know a lot of people were hoping for a better year and are really worn down by this less than auspicious beginning.

With that in mind  we set up some Zoom sessions that are just for fun.  They are modeled them something my Gaelic music group has on Friday nights. We have Fibbage and bunch of the other Jackbox games if some of you want to play, and some of you want to watch.

I am also going to set up an ongoing  fiber arts group (knitting, crocheting, embroidery, whatever) but will be going to the Facebook page for some input on when to do that? 

If you plan to join our gardening efforts this summer, you might want to jump in to that meeting.  But other than that let's just spend this time kind of rebuilding for whatever comes our way next.