Pesach

We had the first night of Passover in Chicago with Navah and Freddie's sister, Coco. We made a spontaneously beautiful dinner, said a few blessings and hung out around the table together. It was precious and meant a lot to me to share this tradition with everyone. Earlier in the day we had a hilarious experience at Russian tea time...basically we realized we could just order a few items "a la carte" rather than overpaying at $30/person for the "tea service". Totally fair for us to do, right? Well, our old school Russian waiter man didn't seem to like it (or maybe he just didn't like us) so he provided us not just with bad service, but with overtly rude comments and literally mocking us. We were having a blast and didn't want to let him get in the way of that...so we got our tea and snack tower and took it in stride :-)

 From Chicago, we continued west on 90 to Minneapolis. As we were arriving we decided to track down my sister, Sadie, who was visiting there to search for housing with her partner Leo because they just "placed" there for his medical residency! It was a treat to get to see them again on this trip and in a new place. So much sister time! Yayyy! So yeah, we surprised them walking around the lake, had a nice dinner and then had an interlude so we could watch the premiere of Lemonade, Beyonce's new video album...not sure I can even get into that amazing piece of art right now...I'll just say, I love Beyonce, and I love what she is doing for art, music and political spheres. She is queen! Anyyywayyyz, we got to hang out with them the next morning and then headed back to the house we were staying at for a queer radical passover seder. It was one of the best seders I have ever been to. It was such a powerful intersection of community, ritual, and political engagement. And it was so sweet to be invited into Jo's home and seder even though we had only conversed over email through shared community. So much generosity and warmth. I truly loved Minneapolis and am excited to visit Sadie and Leo and new friends there!

Lake Calhoun with Sadie

Seder at Jo's

From Minneapolis, we began the first of a three day haul from Minnesota to Washington. We knew it would be a long drive, but the torrential downpour didn't help. After about 8 hours, we made it to the Badlands in South Dakota where we wandered around and relaxed in the sunshine.

The following morning, we got an early start and headed toward Montana. We listened to Beyonce as we drove through the Badlands and it felt like we were on a different planet. Clouds of mist suspended over crumbling canyons, all with the soundtrack of Lemonade. It was a little rainy, but that was fine...until the rain got cold and became hail, and then snow. Ah, the snow. The one thing I knew I did not want to do on this trip was drive through the snow, but there we were, on a day that was already going to be our longest drive of our entire trip...so we persevered. Freddie drove for several hours while I was stress eating Matzah (unleavened bread for passover that tastes like cardboard). Finally the snow dissipated, so we pulled over and I got myself pumped up to drive. We were both exhausted, and I knew it was my turn to come through. So I drank my organic sparkling water energy drink (lol) and beasted it across the country. I drove for over 5 hours with only one stop to pee on the side of the road. I just let some other part of myself kick in and there was only me, the car, the road, and our destination. By the time we made it to Missoula, a 10 hour drive made 14 hours, I was spinning. We got to our motel and I was chatting with the owner while they checked us in, she asked where I had come from that day...I paused, started to laugh and said, I actually cannot remember right now...moments passed...and I still had no idea where I had been that morning...as I was about to walk out I turned to her and said, "the Badlands! that's where I drove from today". We grabbed some food, got in bed and passed out hard. Just to wake up the next day and drive another 8 hours which is when we got our first speeding ticket of the trip. Such a bummer to have made it around the entire country - over 10,000 miles - and then get a ticket back on the west coast. Oh well. We then realized that Seattle is North (not South) of Olympia (whoops) so we made a quick stop there to see Freddie's grandpa and headed to Olympia as planned (skipping the overnight in Seattle since neither of us could imagine backtracking even if it would have been just a few hours). Haha. Definitely a time of unraveling, sillyness and overcoming obstacles.

Oh and we stopped in the famous town of Wall, SD at Wall Drug to get in a photo booth session of course.

 

Passover matzah on the road (not my favorite road snack)

You might remember our companions from earlier posts...they got a little wild on the drive

Alas, we made it to Olympia where we stayed with my friend Sarah. It was so lush and dreamy and I felt soooo relieved to be back on the West Coast! I loved so many of the places we went on this trip, but I really am a west coaster, born and raised, and still committed to the Pacific ocean.

Now we are in Portland visiting friends and Freddie's family, with just a few more stops before we are back in the Bay Area.

Thanks for reading,

Eli

On the Up and Up

View from the look out at Watershed Retreat Center

Bash Bish Falls adventure with Lissa and Margot

I had such an amazing time in upstate NY - lots of fun, sillyness, learning, reflecting and connection. We started off our time staying with a mutual friend, Margot, at the Round House in Millerton.

Lissa and Eli

Another jewish queer radical....we hit it off :-) It was nice staying there and talking with her and her housemate Adin about their farming ventures, jewishness, and anti-Zionism. (And watching Beyonce in the bathtub while eating chocolate ice cream). They both used to live at the Isabella Friedman Retreat Center so we got to hear some of their reflections from being there, and of course there was the visit with the baby goats (pictured in previous post). Also, they are starting a farm called Linke Fligl, meaning Left Wing in Yiddish. So cute. They are doing that project on one of the parcels at Wildseed. Wildseed is a budding POC land project that is getting started by some people from Harriet's Apothecary and other folks doing inspiring and transformative work. I am excited to see what ends up being created there and how the different dynamics work out. It is a unique model and they have a lot of potential to do something amazing on that land. Moving along just across the road there is Watershed Retreat Center where my dear friend Lissa works. We stayed there a couple nights and it was great to connect with Lissa - she was a good friend of mine in the Bay Area and I have really missed her. She lives part time in Brooklyn and works at Watershed which seems like an intense but interesting way of having connection to both urban and rural living. She is also involved with the White Noise Collective in NYC, which I am a part of in the Bay Area. Anyways, she had so much insight about the different land projects in the area and how they function, and what is challenging. She also used to work at Soul Fire Farm which is just North of there in Petersburg, NY.

Potluck after Workday at Soul Fire

We went up to Soul Fire for their workday and got to help out with some mulching and hang out with a bunch of folks - they had 40 people show up to their workday from surrounding areas and NYC! Pretty amazing to see their reach. After the work part of the day, Leah Penniman the owner/manager of Soul Fire (who also happens to be the sister of one of the Wildseed folks) gave a talk about Soul Fire and food justice. She began by talking about the history of black people in the U.S. through the lens of slavery to share cropping to farming to land trusts. She spoke about their relationship to the food justice movement and talked about how we can address what are commonly called "food deserts":  geographic areas where residents’ (typically people of color and low income folks) access to affordable, healthy food options is restricted or nonexistent. She proposed we call them "food apartheid" areas instead of food deserts because as she points out, these are not a natural phenomena, they are the result of structural racism. The way she talked about food sovereignty, environmental justice, and imperial colonialism was so on point and so clearly connected these politics directly into practice and action. Soul Fire does a lot of different programming including artist and activist retreats, Black and Latino Farmers Immersion, International Solidarity, and farming apprenticeships. They have become a model and a leader in the food justice movement in New York.

Self explanatory, right?

"Treyfe" Band Photo (see Freddie's post)

So yeah, our time in this area was pretty epic. It was great to stay there for close to a week and get a sense of the magnitude and myriad of projects happening in that part of the Hudson Valley. As we drove away, I found myself gazing out the window dreaming and visioning about all the ways queers and people of color are fighting for liberation through land sovereignty...

More soon,

Eli

catching up: boston --> upstate new york --> cleveland

we started heading west today, and it feels so good! with under three weeks to go before we make it back to the bay, we still have 11 more places we'll be sleeping in before then. i'm currently writing from a motel in cleveland, ohio, where eli and i are gratefully crashing after a VERY stimulating cleveland cavaliers playoff game we attended. i know, we're a long ways off from the woods.

and now...
a recap of the past two weeks!

boston was hard and beautiful and heart-achey for me! eli was sick the whole time we were there, like, entirely out of commission, which was a big bummer for many reasons. i'm so grateful we have the resources and support to have taken the space we need (which in this case looked like a private airbnb in my old neighborhood) for eli to rest and for both of us to take refuge.

so to follow up my last post, i ended up slowing down in an unforeseen and forced way, but still managed to see many loved ones, friends, and special places i've missed since leaving for the bay in january 2014. it felt good to be in boston in that it's familiar and i feel pretty constantly nostalgic for it, but i also felt pretty raw and like i was really grieving what was my home there (specifically, "the fort," the collective house i used to live in). housing has been really unstable for me since moving to the bay -- i've lived in four different situations in just over two years, and am gearing up to figure out what the next one is. and being in boston now, i was able to experience visceral memories of what it felt like to turn the corner and look up and see my house and feel like i was really coming home. and how it's not my home anymore, and nor do i wish it was... but how deeply i crave being in the right space to lay down some roots and stay a while.

i've found home in so many of the amorphous senses, and am so fortunate in that regard. but, i am really hoping to find a geographic location to call home in a more permanent sense sooner rather than later.

Jamaica Pond, in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston where I used to live

 

anyway, i cried a lot in boston, and i cried a lot driving out of boston, and it was good, you know? and as soon as we were on our way outta massachusetts, eli started finally feeling better, and that was good too.

after boston, we spent almost a whole week in upstate new york, mostly in a tiny town called millerton. we spent time between several retreat centers, farms, and land projects i'll let eli share, and  additionally had lots of fun endeavors and adventures with friends including but not limited to:

• me and margot (one of our hosts) spontaneously starting a band called TREYFE: having band practice on a sunny wooded trail, and even having a delightful and ridiculously fun "concert" with our three year old friend lev guesting on the xylaphone
• watching beyonce music videos in a giant bathtub, i mean hello.
•  a sort of failed but still really fun water balloon "fight" (before we get back to the drought, you know?)
• watching "the jungle book" at the drive in movie theater in adin's (another host) new/old bright blue pickup truck!

there was lots more, but again, i'll let eli share their thoughts and reflections on the different projects we had the opportunity to visit.

the treyfe "concert" (recordings to come! really!)

finally, we spent a night in niagra falls, which honestly and somewhat confusingly was one of the most depressing places i think i've ever been. the falls themselves are so beautiful, and i was warned that the surrounding area was a huge tourist trap... but i think i was picturing, like, a tacky gift shop (something i secretly love). and what is actually there is so much more intense -- planet hollywoods on top of hard rock cafes on top of arcades on top of "dinosaur adventure golf" on top of like, five wax museums. like if fisherman's wharf and the jersey shore and times square had a baby, and it barfed up all that plus a colonial nation-state border. it's just kind of amazing/terrible how something so intrinsically beautiful and incredible could be exploited and profiteered to such an extreme. anyyyyway... i don't think eli and i were the target audience for all that. but, we rode the ferris wheel, and felt the mist of horseshoe falls on our faces, and that was nice.

the wackness of niagra falls. we did get to walk to canada (pictured here) and back without a hitch, pretty wild (but unsurprising) compared to our border patrol experience in texas...

!!!!!!!!!

tomorrow, we head to chicago! and all that jazz...

til next time,
xo freddie

Concrete Jungle

We are just coming off of a string of time in the big cities of the east coast: DC, Philly, New York and Boston, oh my! There are some posts below about our time in these places so I just wanted to add a couple updates.

First off, we went to my sister Rachel's kindergarten class in Manhattan which was ridiculously cute...

Unfortunately, I started my period on the subway ride over to class so wasn't feeling so great...I ended up leaving and spending the day in bed. And then continued to spend the subsequent 5 days feeling terribly ill. It was really rough, physically and emotionally, and there is so much to say about it, but I'm moving on, and feeling stronger every day.

Now, we are in Millerton in upstate NY which has been a sweet relief of sunshine and fresh mountain air. We are staying at the Round House with a friend who is a radical queer Jewish organizer. We went to visit the newborn baby goats at Isabella Friedman Retreat Center as well as Wildseed. Today we are headed over to Watershed and will write more about our experience at these different land projects soon.

Xo,
Eli

love me a new moon

oh my gosh, i am so tired. we're on day 2.5 in nyc/bk and it's been a sweet and magical time here, though jam packed with loved ones and inherently more exhausting than being in the mountains or forest or anywhere else we've been, really. and tomorrow, we are headed to boston, my old home!

i am really coming up against trying to see all the people i care about in this part of the country and struggling to admit i don't have the time nor the energy to do it all. i am very loyal to chani nicolas' weekly horoscopes, and she spells it out clearly for me this week: "You may need to redirect your energy and use it for more intimate relationships. You may need to promise your self, your efforts, your support and your allegiance only to what helps you feel alive and fits in your schedule." easier said than done, but i am working on it!

this blog has taken a backseat as free time becomes scarcer -- since i personally last wrote, we've been at twin oaks, and in richmond, shenendoah national park, washington DC, and philly. honestly during these visits, i'd largely been trying to rest up for nyc and boston. the shenendoah cabin eli wrote about was incredibly dreamy and a much needed bit of serenity and solace in a beautiful and isolated place. i've been to dc at least half a dozen times, and i still don't care for it much, but i do love the greenspace, the sunsets, and spending time with my old friends natalie and max, who've been there for the past four years and are now preparing to move back to natalie's (and my) hometown of portland, oregon.

philadelphia was a very sweet albeit brief time with owen and chris, the former of whom i met a few years ago when his band my gay banjo would play shows at my old house in boston. eli and i split our one full day in philly at both owen and chris's inspiring work.

chris manages the community farm and food resource center in southwest philly which includes youth & adult education programs, garden plots for neighborhood families, and a strong emphasis on urban Black folks re-learning and drawing upon the wisdom and knowledge of previous generations of farmers and people who grow food. something chris said that stuck out to me was emphasizing that the education is not just to give expert knowledge to the neighboring residents, but to trust that they have their own knowledge and abilities to share with the farm and its community. 

owen manages roughwood seed collection, a prolific seed library in devon, pa, where he has been for the last four years and which has recently become a more sustainable situation for him. he quotes the POC-led seed keepers collective as part of his motivation for his work: “A Seed Keeper doesn’t just save seeds and store them; they carry the stories of culture and history, power and struggle, and perseverance of our communities, and have an eye on and a hand in the world that is coming into being.” - Seed Keepers. we ended our day in philly at a last minute seed packing gathering, where many of owen's friends showed up to help him fulfill a surge in seed orders. 

and now... we are in new york! eli and i split up to do our own things with friends for the first couple nights, and together we saw fun home on broadway (complete with an experience of getting gender-policed on our way to use the restroom -- at a show based on a queer person's queer memoir. you can't make this stuff up.) i spent last night at silent barn, an inspiring community/art space and collective in brooklyn's bushwick neighborhood, where my old friend liz pelly and my new friend dandy hosted a sober queer crafting potluck to gather with friends. it was really, really sweet, and the conversations i had were really enjoyable, and so i stayed up til 1am (way past my bedtime), and to re-state the beginning of this post... i am very, very tired. 

i don't have pictures of everywhere i wrote about here, but here are a few!

xoxo freddie

seed packing party in philly

fun home on broadway

times square, the last place i imagined being with the last person i imagined being there with

my "craft" from the potluck, the hanging fragment that continues to propel me...

, 

Sister Family

A bit of a late but sweet update from our time in Richmond, Virginia. It was so lovely to see my sister Sadie and her to-be hubby Leo at their home with my favorite dog niece Patterson! We had a fun time walking around town, playing with Patterson, and eating cheeseburgers and ice cream. Then my other sister, Rachel arrived so we all got to hang out and play Yahtzee together! (And watch Magic Mike XXL) So ridiculous...

Rachel got a 5-5-5-5-5 YAHTZEE and Patterson was very excited about it.

Then Freddie and I went and stayed in the dreamiest cabin in the Shenendoah National Park. Sadie is a member of the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club so has access to these isolated rustic cabins for $25/night! It was a really nice time for us to rest, rejuvenate and connect. We harvested wood for a fire to keep us warm, collected spring water, and otherwise laid in the sunshine, talked, played music, and had a sweet time.

We returned from the cabin and I had a somewhat drastic transition to my sister Sadie's bachelorette party in D.C. The party element wasn't my thing (not a shocker) but it was so special to be there with her and celebrate her life and love. My sisters and I lead such different lives, and I am so grateful for the many moments and ways they intersect and we get sustain beautiful relationships.

No comment necessary, right? Lol.

Rachel, Sadie and Me

We are now about to leave Philly and head to NYC. Its a time of the trip with lots of big cities so things are moving fast! We will write an update about our precious time in Philly soon....

-
Eli