thanks, wow
Well, now that was an amazing day. Impressive.
First off, huge thanks to everyone who came out, swung by, sat in the shelters and sang or talked for hours. What a wonderful day! I would say that around 300 people came through, and the majority of them stayed for a while. There was probably another hundred or so at the Friendship Center in the evening. Amazing! And so fun! We will post up photos soon - I know hundreds (maybe thousands!) were taken
Second, apologies/condolences to those folks who planned to come out and couldn’t because of the challenging weather. I know there were a lot of folks who organized hard to bring elements to the celebration, only to get blown off course. Especially Oxfam - their involvement in organizing this event really helped spread the good word. Sorry they could not be there. Yup, many things did not happen as planned. But I would also like to thank all who did show up with something and were delightfully flexible in finding a cozy corner and making the best of it. The few shelters we had could not have held any more people!
Third, huge thanks. Thanks to those who helped (in the freezing rain with freezing hands) to help set up the structures, and prep the site. Thanks to Joannie, Tammie, George, Billy, Tony, S’bruce, Kim, etc. who opened the celebration with a ceremony of smudge and song, and filled the event with the heartbeat of drums all day. Thanks to Jeannie and Lindsay who did a 7am run to get haybales to sit on. Huge thanks to Tyler & Zenovia for working crazy hard to prepare a huge amount of local, organic, gourmet food that held people outside around the food table for hours. Thanks to the midwives and doulas for hosting the Red Tent, for the nettle tea and brownies; everytime I poked my head in the squirt (the little yurt), it was packed and in profound conversation. Thanks to the Ecology Action Centre crew, the Friends of the Halifax Common, the Grainery, the Musuem of Natural History, the Community Design students, the facepainters, and kids crafters for creating the buzz in the big yurt. And huge thanks to Joanna Brown of Spryfield Urban Farm Museum for hosting the garden workshops all day with cold hands, and thanks to all of you who brought plants to share. Thanks to Steve for maypole! To the Tai Chi Society for coming out.
So impressive!! It was amazing and wonderful to see so many people come out, warm up, and settle in, and contribute. What an amazing community to be part of.
The core intention of this event to was strengthen community, and to increase our capacity to organize. To that end, the event was a great success. From the conversations overheard of people packed together in soulful structures, relationships were formed, strengthened, deepen, begun. After learning more about the story of Africville, and in the light of climate chaos, hurricanes Juan and Katrina, and the impending global food instability, our autonomy depends on our capacity to organize - especially in a crisis situations. We still need some practice, for sure, but I think we did pretty great. It sure is a strong community we have here. Diverse, persistent, flexible, talented, dedicated, motivated, and interconnected. I am in love with this place I live, the social web that holds me, and I am becoming a better person for it. Great success folks! Hugs all ’round.
Thanks to Jeff Torbert and all the musicians who relocated to the Mi’kmaq Friendship Center on the fly. With bellies full of more great food (thanks Billy, Dominique, Tyler, Lydia, Robbie, and Anka), that dancing was so fun! It was amazing to see how many people made it there- how did everybody find out? The word-of-mouth communication web is immmmmpressive! So many people came; the room was perfectly full with folks from so many different communities, and the vibe so warm and lovely. HUGE thanks to the folks at the Friendship Center for allowing us to spontaneously invade and keep them up late.
Thanks to Mother Earth for bringing challenge, taking it to the next level, making her presence felt, and reminding us we are thin-skinned social creatures that need others to survive.
Finally, to the organizing committee, what a hilarious, fantastic crew of people you are! Throughout this whole process, we have been pretty free-flow, irritatingly long-winded, off-topic, and strong-personalitied, and continually cracking jokes. Metaphors and medicine, pranks and frankness, from the name-storming, to the dreams of lassos, zip-lines, mid-night missions, and hiding in the trees - it’s a make-your-own festival!… I am pretty sure we all had a really great, growing, challenging, bonding experience. I got my laughter medicine doubled in this process, and my heart is bigger for it.
So, I think this is now an annual event. After our post-partum and sweat with Billy, we will begin to frame out next year’s. If you want to jump on board, please do. Bring your wings, winds, and bandwagon.
In the meantime, see you at the World Naked Bike Ride, (June 29), at Harvest Fest, in the gardens and in the streets. Resistance is fertile. In solidirtity, your devoted queen bee!