Upcoming workshops and events

Spring has not sprung here, not quite yet. It’s snowing and will be for another couple months. This is my favorite time for diving into studio work and preparing for the year ahead.

We’re deep in the thick of winter and I’m planning a couple workshops, getting ready for a reading at a queer storytelling event and prepping for the spring show at Artemis Gallery.

Free Workshop for Maine Residents:

The City of Van Buren has been spearheading community and economic development through the arts in Aroostook County and I’ve been brought on board to teach an online photography workshop that is fully funded - which means that it is FREE for Maine residents! Whoo-hoo! The title of the workshop is Finding Beauty in Everyday Places and it runs for six weeks. It will be on Monday mornings from 9-10:30 a.m., starting on February 23rd. Sign up here: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/S4kypg67R2iUrD7FMkr28w#/registration

Online Creative Photography Workshop on Diptychs and Sequencing:

This workshop will be hosted by the Colorado Photographic Arts Center and is on diptychs and sequencing. It starts on Sunday, May 3rd and runs for six weeks. Here is a link to sign up: https://cpacphoto.org/diptychs-and-sequencing-creative-photography/

Live Reading and Queer Friending Event:

On Saturday February 21st from 1-4, I’ll be reading a creative non-fiction essay that I wrote at an event hosted by Queerly Maine and Equality Maine called “Love In All The Ways”. Tickets are available here: https://secure.givelively.org/event/queerly-me/love-in-all-ways

Here is more info from the ticket site: “Join Queerly ME and Equality Maine for another intergenerational storytelling & speed-friending gathering! This time we will be meeting in Ellsworth to share and learn about matters of the heart. Stories will highlight romantic, platonic, or familial love.

Following our storytelling hour, we invite participants to engage in an intergenerational speed-friending activity during which we will pair up folks from different generations to hold mini-conversations with each other. Every 2 to 5 minutes, we will create new pairs and introduce a new conversation prompt to discuss.

Exact location and additional details will be shared with those who register. Please keep in mind that capacity is limited, and that if we reach capacity, we will not be able to allow drop-ins.

Tickets are on a sliding scale from $5.00 to $50.00 per person pending individual financial capacity. Please select the ticket option relevant to your financial capacity. There are also no-cost options available for those who are facing financial barriers that inhibit them from reserving higher cost tickets. Contact info@queerlyme.org for more information.”

Here is the essay that I will be reading out loud at this event:

When Mary Oliver Writes About Foxes

When Mary Oliver writes about foxes, they are longing and freedom, agility and playfulness, all rolled up into a spinning ball of electric fur.

When I write about foxes they are flattened on the side of the road. Freeze-dried crow food or fox jerky in the summer sun, being slowly dispersed by maggots.

Here, once in a while, I notice a fox sitting alone in an icy field, contemplating the pastoral view of a road.

Mary Oliver writes about the other-than-human world in a way that reminds me of the best parts of my childhood. Those parts spent alone in places where I could hear the conversations of plants. I fell in love with leaves and taste-tested the dirt. I knew all the colors of the construction piles by taste.

Apparently, when Darwin wrote about the survival of the fittest, what he was really talking about was the survival of those most fit to their environment. Who knew.

Those whose belonging and survival were fully integrated into their relationship with the place they inhabited. Those who thrive in place are those who are the closest fit: they are those who belong because they are of that place.

At half a century years old, I’ve lived in the northeast for ten years. I looked for a fit in the jigsaw puzzle of Vermont, temporarily stayed in New Hampshire where I knew I would never fit and then moved to Maine, where once again, I looked for a fit. If I was dependent on finding a fit in order to survive, I would have moved back to the Pacific coast a long time ago.

Yarrow welcomed me to my first house in Maine. I was so happy and surprised to see this old friend from the west. Just maybe, I thought, I could grow here, too.

Living here, I need help from those who fit more than I do. Those who do not panic at the thought of walking outside when it is seven degrees out. Those who know that they will be fine, unlike me, who knows that, for sure, I will quickly die.

I love being loved and I’ve accepted that I sometimes love companionship, too. I love convenience and having help sometimes and a solid roof over my head. I love living in town, across the street from the gym, a five minute drive from groceries or the hospital. I love putting my car away in the garage and not having to commute. I love the baby woodchucks that frolic in my yard every spring, except, for that one year, when they did not.

I love seeing fox paw-prints in the snow, arcing across my yard towards the road.

I love it that most of the time, I do not see the fox.

I love frozen sunrises and air so cold it makes me cough.

I love the chickadees that hop into their happy place at minus 21 degrees. They are not having panic attacks about exposure.

When it is minus 21, I like to go outside and blow bubbles, to watch them freeze.

I love to pretend like I fit and like the cold is no big deal, but really, most of the time, I just want to go back home to the Pacific coast.

I love it that people here fit into old houses with cellars that flood every spring and somehow this is normal.

I love the snow plow driver teams who diligently, obsessively, scrapingly and clunkenly clear the roads at 3 a.m.

I love my queer friends who have welcomed me into their homes with cups of tea served in odd assortments of mugs.

My fit here is ragged, the puzzle piece that is bent and doesn’t quite work. Misaligned but allowed to occupy it’s place, because otherwise, it would be missed.

I don’t know what Darwin would think about that. Maybe, that my existence is delicate and tenuous, dependent on those who fit and who are better adapted than myself.

I love it that here, strangers are frequently kind and stop to check on me when I pull off the road to contemplate the landscape.

I love all the species whose existences are broad and adaptable and span entire continents, like yarrow and like foxes.

When Mary Oliver writes about foxes, it is love. When I write about foxes it is grief. It is hard to love a flat fox.

XO friends - I hope to see you online, at the storytelling event or around town. If you are one of my workshop students and want to drop by while you’re visiting northern Maine, reach out and I’d be happy to hang out for a bit over coffee or tea. Be well.