Saving Democracy: 100 Days (35)

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Tying Up Loose Ends

Day 35: 

Resting here after No Kings Day, I made two more little poppets. Approved by Sachs, director of quality control (for everything–he’s VERY judgy).

The Lancaster rally was wonderful! Liz Fulmer and Bumbada and Leo DiSanto and the Lancaster Justice Choir and Slap and The Infamous Unstoppables Drill Team and Drum Corps brought the energy. Great speeches, too.

No Kings in the United States! Build community. Love your neighbors. Create safe spaces. Protect each other.

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NO KING ANY TIME: 100 Days (34)

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Tying Up Loose Ends

Day 34: 

Today’s Project was a couple more little dolls for the second set of ten.

I was going to make a new sign for tomorrow’s NO KINGS march:

TURN THE FILES INTO TRIALS

PROSECUTE THE PEDOPHILES

because I think it’s really important to keep calling for prosecutions. But I pulled out my signs from previous NO KINGS Marches, and decided to re-use the one from last time.

No King Any Time (A Side) and Nothing Is More American Than Rejecting Kings (B Side). I usually wear Weeping Liberty around my neck. George Washington was from NK1. I’ll carry my Wave Goodbye to the Patriarchy handkerchief.

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Back Into the Woods: 100 Days (33)

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Day 33: On Which I Go Back Into the Woods

While we’re on the subject of fairy tales, I’ve gone back Into the Woods this evening, stitching a wolfy character hiding behind a tree. He was designed by one of our brilliant seniors to look like he’s slinking up the trunk. Creepy fellow, he.

Watch out for the wolves, the old wives said. And while the wild things in the forest were definitely a danger, we can guess that the old wives had other wolfish characters in mind.

How can we protect our daughters, our children, our sisters, from the wolves when the wolves escape consequence with such ease?

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Vasilisa the Brave: 100 Days (32)

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Day 32: On Which I Tell You a Tale

In one of the old tales, the child Vasilisa is sent out into the woods by her wicked stepmother to ask for fire from Baba Yaga, the witch of the woods. Brave Vasilisa does not go alone, however: she is guided and aided by the tiny poppet she carries in her pocket, a doll made for her by her mother before she died. The doll carries her Mother’s Magic. When Vasilisa becomes overwrought at the impossible tasks that Baba Yaga (the Initiator in this story) sets for her, her poppet tells her, “Do not worry, Vasilisa, for the morning is wiser than the evening.”  In the end, the doll helps Vasilisa win her fire from Baba Yaga.

I make poppets, too, like Vasilisa’s mother, and sell them at Radiance. For #The100DayProject, I decided to make twenty, so I will have some on hand next time they need a new batch. My poppets are made of fabric scraps and embroidery floss and lots of love, filled with the energies and ideas I am pondering as I make them.

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No Kings!: 100 Days (31)

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Day 31: On Which I Beg You To Stand Against Kings

Do you have a plan to join or support the No Kings Marches this Saturday, March 28th? You can look up No Kings Marches Near Me and find one to join. If you can’t join for some reason, can you make signs for friends? Or drive folks to a march? Or photocopy Singing Resistance songs for people to hand out? Can you lend someone a tambourine? Can you prepare a meal for marchers afterward? Can you call your congresspeople? Or write letters? Can you donate food or money to local food banks that are helping people who are afraid to go out for fear of ICE and CBP? While we want as many people as we can get into the streets, there are other ways to participate if you don’t have time or feel safe.

I outfitted two more poppets today, and I’ll get them to Radiance this weekend. They’re ready to get out on the streets and do the work! I always fall in love a little with the poppets I make. Tonight’s two are going to be difficult to part with. Wide open hearts. Fierce and hopeful.

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Into the Woods: 100 Days (30)

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Tying Up Loose Ends

Day 30: On Which I Pivot Into the Woods

This year’s fundraising Gala theme for my school is “Into the Woods.” My fearless colleague has worked her magic with a group of students who designed, cut, and laid out a quilt to be auctioned off. This is powerful pedagogy, having students collaborate, learn design techniques, work with fine motor skills, and feel the satisfaction of a job well done.

They’ve begun appliqueing, but the process is taking longer than we expected, so for tonight’s project, I brought the quilt home so I could catch up on some of the needlework. Here are some elements of the quilt—the final reveal will be the night of the Gala.

This too is resistance—to apathy, to indifference, to control—to enable children to create a thing of beauty, something they can take pride in, a way that they can give back to this community that has given them (and us, their teachers) so very much.

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Fierce: 100 Days (29)

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Day 29: On Which We get Sweet and Fierce

I outfitted five more fierce poppets for Radiance today. Don’t be deceived by their sweetness. They’re ready for the work, and they have no more patience for patriarchy. 

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Little Warriors: 100 Days (28)

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Day 28: On Which I Invoke the Warriors

One of the awakenings brought about by the Epstein/Trump Files is the certainty that it takes a village to protect a predator. It takes people like the Chomskys, who claim they were innocently naive, despite Noam Chomsky’s deeply thoughtful critical analysis of social movements and philosophical ideas. Opportunists like the former Prince Andrew and the United States President and other wealthy and privileged men, predators themselves, who counted on the circles of secrecy to keep them undetected. Winkers and nudgers like Deepak Chopra, who clearly knew what was happening, and enabled the predator, kept his secrets, considered themselves and him to be outside the bounds of social convention. Women who groomed the girls. All the staff at all the properties. People who suspected but turned a blind eye. A flagrantly unlawful DOJ. Senators and Congresspeople afraid of what they might discover. Shame on the village that guards the secrets of predators.

I outfitted three of the Little Protectors today. They will be warriors, feral and fierce. A definite Do Not Mess With Me energy here.

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Bless Your Seeds: 100 Days (27)

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Day 27:

Joyful Spring Equinox to you! 

The seeds of ideas and plans we brought into the light in the season of Brigit are ready to sprout. How will we nurture them in the coming season? 

May your seeds sprout, your sprouts flourish, your flowers bloom and bear magnificent fruit.

The Little Protector Dolls I made today will carry some of that bright hopeful energy of spring’s awakening, along with the fierce energy of the times.

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What I Want from Men: 100 Days (26)

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Tying Up Loose Ends

Day 26:

Here is what I want from my beloved male allies right now:

1. Listen to women. When you feel an urge to explain or contextualize men’s speech and actions, just don’t.

2. Amplify women’s voices. In your speaking, and on your social media.

3. Know that, no matter our own histories—from boundary-crossing to harassment to coercion and violence—the stories are hitting us hard right now. The ground of the narrative today is our bodies. We might be feeling vulnerable, fierce, invisible, endangered, dangerous.

4. We don’t really want to deal with your feelings about it all right now. Do your own emotional labor.

5. Speak up, dammit. Call your brothers to account, for their sexist jokes, their boorish behavior, their silence.

6. Stand up for trans and nonbinary folks. They take so much of the weight of gender hatred perpetrated by men.

*****

I spent some time today organizing some scrap fabrics, cutting pieces for the 20 little dolls, and braiding up a couple little people. I’m also playing with free-form crochet on a neck-piece. 

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