Trouble Making So & So

Lesbians! Women! Funny Gifs! More Lesbians!

[smashesthep-deactivated20171221]

MichFest Closing Ceremonies

At the closing ceremonies, one thousand women were given candles for the end of the candlelit service. The only light had been dusk as it slowly turned into night. The trees framed the acoustic stage, and I stood on the edge of a bowl of women whose eyes faced the drums, the guitars, the piano, and the dancing women. I also hold that female sovereignty over our own bodies and lives is the first requirement for the new world we envisioned for one week in August. It’s a short way to refer to what we had begun to create, but it is not the end. I agree with many radical women who say that we’d rather this truth be acknowledged and face the end of fest, rather than compromise on this truth and see fest continue. Already the seeds of MichFest are beginning to bloom in states and countries everywhere, and the anticipation of this future fills me with excitement and a sense of being part of women’s history.

The closing ceremony asked that we snuff our candles out, as a signifier of the end. I wet my fingers and closed them on the burning wick, as women around me did the same. Then the mourning, painful howls began. We howled into the darkness- wolf howls of grief, of power, of female sovereignty, of home, and of love. So many howls whooping into the night, then died down, then from here to there began again, as we walked to our separate destinations on the land. Tearfully, we comforted each other through our presence together. I treasure my candle, the flame of Michigan, and the power of women symbolized in its flame! As Crys Matthews sang, this is just so long for now/this is not good bye. I believe it, I hope for it, we make it, and we live it. Amazon women, rise. Now. In your town, in your family, your friendship, your hearts. We are women and we rise.

There are many emotions when it comes to women centered events. By celebrating you, I celebrate myself, and reject patriarchal existence. I find my place among sisters, and become valuable just as I am. Thankful, grateful, and passing it on.

[smashesthep-deactivated20171221]

Radical Feminists at MichFest

I spent time with radical feminists at the Radfem Tree and the Rhapsody tent, where we discussed activism and the truths of our lives. We ate meat and eggs, and drank coffee, and I was so grateful to be a part. I truly belonged. I curled up and listened to radical songs, and I shared my beliefs and feelings without censorship. We talked about the harms of gender, and how to practice sisterhood. There were hugs with women I had just met, and others I have struggled together with before. What a relief it was for this one radical event to not have to worry about a venue cancellation due to threats and harassment. I treasured each moment with my radical feminist sisters.

[smashesthep-deactivated20171221]

Michigan Coffee

I don’t know why the coffee at MichFest is so delicious, but it tasted amazing. I loved stopping at Saints (the food and drink vendor) for a morning calzone and coffee (cream, and sugar added) while I microwaved my pepperoni and cheese calzone, making sure to leave the DART nuker for those women who needed it. Sometimes I would spot a friend and we’d enjoy the morning together, and sometimes I would sit on a leaning bench alone and listen and watch women at the August night café learn to couples dance while I perked up from the drowsiness. I can still taste the coffee, the cream and sweetness, hear the sound of women talking and laughing, feel the breeze in the trees, and see blue sky peeking out of clouds, or the shade I escaped into. I loved the opportunity not to rush or worry that I needed to be somewhere, or find out what time it was. I could let the day begin on my own time frame.

[smashesthep-deactivated20171221]

Kitchen Shift at MichFest

My shift in the kitchen was challenging. My feet were already hurting (I was still recovering from a twisted right ankle) and I had unwittingly signed up for the busiest food event- burrito night. It was actually more like taco night, as women were given tortillas to load up with rice, beans, tomatoes, cheese, lettuce, and sour cream.

At fest, you are supposed to slide your plate/bowl/Tupperware across the table as you move from station to station to avoid having your plate above the foot trough and have food fall into your bowl and then back into the communal tray. If this happens, the communal tray will have to be thrown completely out, due to cross contamination. So a big part of my job was making sure that sisters were mindful of this requirement. At one point, the tongs for the tortilla chips were contaminated so we didn’t have any for about a half hour, but since women weren’t able to reach in and grab chips, they either had to pour them into their dish, or we could do it for them. It was challenging to communicate and also make sure that women knew they could take as much food as they wanted. We also wiped up any spills with a soaked rag, which dried my hands out pretty quickly.

It was neat to see the ways that women worked together to get more food when needed, and to combine old food containers with new ones as they arrived. Shifts are four hours long, and when my dinner break came, I was so worn out. It had been an exhausting shift, and the delicious food I enjoyed as a reward made it worth the challenge. It was great to work with sisters- I’m glad I decided to do a kitchen shift, despite the difficulty and exhaustion. After that I met at the Radfem tree with my feminist sisters. I just loved being surrounded by radical women in the woods.

[lesbianartandartists]

Fiona Clark, Club 47

[smashesthep-deactivated20171221]

Drum Circle Fire Pit at Triangle

After Sunday’s closing ceremonies, we went to Triangle fire pit, which was cold. There was no fire. We waited a few minutes, until women came and said that there was not any wood left to burn, as the logs had all been used throughout the week. But, we could collect burnables and start the fire again if we wished. So In my long blue sun dress, with my ever dimming head lamp, I hauled into the woods to knock down dead stumps and contribute logs for the fire. I am a frequent camper, so it was not an unfamiliar process, but the importance of the circumstance gave me particular strength. We needed fire, and I can collect fuel. So once I had contributed a share, we sat around the deep dirt pit and the drums began. More women came. Several women slapped their hands and arms on the drums together, and a lovely naked woman danced as the fire shadows moved over her. We began chants, and songs, and we sang rounds, we clapped, and we looked into one another’s faces.

As women, we felt the importance of the ritual. We taught one another songs, and we listened and learned and all participated. I could have stayed there all night, but we had to load out in the morning, so reluctantly I left the sacred circle and went back to my tent one final night.

I couldn’t believe it was ending. I still don’t feel that it has. At the same time, it’s hard to believe it ever really happened. It feels dreamlike, because it was so different from the rest of my life. It’s been hard to write about fest because of this disconnect- I don’t really know how to use words to communicate my experiences. But I am so, so grateful I have had them.

[smashesthep-deactivated20171221]

Opening Ceremonies at MichFest

Opening ceremonies were very powerful, as Stacyann Chin spoken word spoke what our hearts wanted to say. Then her mic had issues right at the end, and the mc Elvira Kurt joked that fest didn’t want to end, so it was just being prolonged a little bit longer. The music was amazing, and the drumming women, and all the signs thanking amazon women, workers, campers, etc. Ah, lovely. Then it got dark and Skip the Needle came on. A friend and I got up front to dance, and women started crowd surfing. I hadn’t been in a mosh pit like that in over 10 years, but it was amazing to dance and see women so free together. We danced for hours that night until we were so exhausted. Then we went back to the fire pit near our tents before we finally went to bed.

[smashesthep-deactivated20171221]

Arriving at MichFest: Challenges and Gratitude

The night we arrived finally was preceded by a full day. Strange women, only knowing each other from the internet, piled with too many tarps and groceries, drove from Grand Rapids, through small town Hart, Michigan, to a grassy pastoral scene on the side of a two lane highway. Well, here’s the line. Cars off the side of the road stretched for miles. We didn’t have any idea we’d be in the car lined up for eight hours. We were three strangers who internet-know each other, with open windows in humidity and bug bites, or cooling off in air conditioning and sweaty human smells. We finally turned right onto the three mile road leading to fest, and were able to sneak off into the woods to pee. I recognized the woods- they were so very like the green canopy of leaves in the Midwest town where I went to graduate school.

We kept ourselves busy discussing the reddit board they moderated, and many cartoons I had never heard of. We got goofy and sang little mermaid and other Disney songs. We listened to Ani DiFranco, and we waited.

When we finally made it to turn in our tickets for wristbands, it had been dark for many hours, yet that was only the beginning of the ordeal. An orientation video and work shift selection awaited. The video appeared to be a VHS copy with occasional lines streaking through it from being shown so many times. It showed images of children standing under tents, and topless women chopping potatoes. It explained the fest experience, and what we should expect. Then it was to the next tent, where clipboards showed work schedule availability. The work shift choices were getting slim, but I selected a shift at Sprouts (childcare) and one at the Kitchen. Next it was on to the shuttle, where we piled our gear next to a white metal van to take us up to Triangle (one of several drop off points on the land). The shuttle got packed up with people and parcels. I sat on a cooler, and near the open door, so as I watched the trees slap the roof I felt fear that I would fall out of the vehicle. I had flash backs of being dumped out of a raft into white water the previous summer, and in my head, I thought “this is a lesson for me. I should learn not to step out of my comfort zone,” as I worried and worried about falling out of the van. Also, I wondered, where is my head lamp?

When we arrived at Triangle, I pulled out my Christmas decorations (to decorate my tent) for use in place of my lost headlamp. The battery box kept dropping the double A batteries out on the path, so it wasn’t a reliable source of light. Besides that, the woods were very, very dark, as no decorations had yet been put up to light the way. I didn’t know how we were going to find a place to camp that night. My bag was 47 pounds and as I dragged it down the dirt path, the wheels would give out and it would spin over. I would flip it back onto the wheels again for a bit, and then it would dump over again. I kept apologizing to my new friends for delaying them, and finally I gave up using the wheels. I then dragged it upside down, so heavy and miserable, along with my carry-on bag filled with clothes. Finally, I began to despair. Where! How! can I go on! My new friends went ahead of me on the path to find a spot as I waited in the dark. I tried to put the pack on my back so I got down, stuck my arms through the handle straps, and placed my knee to the wet ground, and tried to stand. I then found defeat, as my legs couldn’t lift the weight on my back and I began to cry. I silently screamed in frustration, and my face was covered in sweat and tears. I don’t know anyone, it’s dark, I’m exhausted! I. cant. *do*. this. Women came down the path and asked if I was okay. I dried my tears and calmed down as my friend came to get me. They had found a good camping spot not too far away, and she helped me bring my gear (thank you!). We began to set up our tents, as I hung my blue Christmas snowflake lights around my neck for light. Moths flapped at the light near my neck, as I shoved tent poles in sleeves and finally got it up. I placed my gear inside, and lay on top of my sleeping bag. Finally, alone, I could rest. I cried, and curled up, and sobbed for loneliness and fear. I felt I had made a mistake. What was I doing here? I was embarrassed that I was having such a hard time, and exhausted after all I had endured. I thought I was tougher than this. It was two am, and I finally crawled into the sleeping bag and drifted off into the night.

My MichFest story is not about a perfect paradise, but rather, a narrative about overcoming, my strength, and the power of other women. All week it was a struggle to stay hydrated and fed, clean and sanitary. The humidity was constant, and sticky was the new reality. My air mattress battery fiasco meant I slept on the hard ground all week (thankful for my 5$ pillow!). I kept losing things. I had short term memory problems- possibly due to exhaustion, or over stimulation, or potentially due to the extra emotions I kept experiencing. My feet, ankles, knees, back, and arms were always sore, and there was a lot of sitting in the dirt or grass.

Despite these challenges, MichFest was one of the most amazing weeks of my life. I learned a lot about myself as a woman in her 30s with body image and confidence issues, and felt the pull of radical feminist revolution. I was able to extract patriarchal perspectives and discard them from clouding my reality (for the most part). I found easy laughter poured from me and tears welled up many times a day- but grateful tears, of sadness at the end, potential for beginning, and awe at the love women have for each other and the community. The potential of another world where we help one another, a more liberated existence, and the freedom from men’s visions.

[songsforgorgons]

The Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, 1976. Photos by Diana Davies, NYPL Digital Collections and Smith College Libraries.

[songsforgorgons]

“Imagine this. A luscious summer evening in mid-august in the woods of northern Michigan, just at dusk. From a large stage overlooking the field, a young (Jewish) spoken-word artist, Alix Olson, rouses us with her eloquent rap against globalization and oppression, urging us, ‘Steal back the truth!’

As she disappears offstage, fifty figures silently rise throughout the field — dressed all in black — and begin walking, slowly, with intent, through the audience of thousands of women, towards the front of the stage. We range in age from 13 to well in our 50s — we are African-American and Euro-American/Canadian, indigenous, Ashkenazi & Mizrahi Jews, Iranian-Americans, Puertoriquena-Americans, Afro-British, and more. And two of us have just returned from participating in the International Solidarity Movement’s ‘Freedom Summer’ Campaign, doing nonviolent direct action with Palestinians against the Occupation. And we are carrying signs, lettered white on black, on sticks; most are in the shape of a hand, or ‘hamza’’ (an indigenous Middle East symbol for warding off evil). They read ‘End the Occupation’ (in English, Hebrew, Arabic), and ‘We Refuse to be Enemies,’ ‘Support the Peacemakers’ and ‘Israel/Palestine: Two States for Two Peoples,’ ‘Try Peace’ and ‘Salaam/Shalom,’ ‘Mothers are Grieving in Palestine & Israel,’ and ‘Mothers are Grieving in New York & Afghanistan,’ ‘End all Wars,’ and ‘Not in my Name.’ There are also signs against militarization in Northern Ireland and Vieques.

It is the opening ceremony of the 27th Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, the largest annual predominantly lesbian gathering in the world.

As we make our way through women sprawled on blankets and tarps and low-slung chairs, a hush falls over the crowd. Reaching the front of the stage, we turn around to face the audience, lined up together, holding our focus and intent — and as the last of us turns, thousands of women rise to their feet and begin to cheer. The Dance Brigade leap and whirl their way down the ramp, beating their Taiko drums. Krissy Keefer passionately calls out words written by ‘witchy revolutionary’ Elizabeth Roberts:

‘the days of the prison industrial complex are marked. the World Trade Organization and the World Bank … are going the way of the dinosaurs. we, justice loving feminists, anarchists, anti-imperialists, we, Sojourner Truth’s children, the children of Emma Goldman, Rosa Luxemburg, Ida B. Wells, and Ella Baker … are taking back power to see another way … we’re sitting down in the streets … disrupting your dirty business as usual … building unity and new models, arming ourselves with economics theory and compassion we’re bent on being human, and don’t have another minute for your hate, for your greed, for your repression. we are taking the world of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy carefully and absolutely apart.’

As the crowd roars, the ‘Amazon Band’ appears onstage (with Judith Casselberry, Aleah Long, Bitch & Animal, Toshi Reagon, and more) chorusing ‘Amazon Women, Rise!’ — and suddenly, thirty white doves fly out from the stage, over our heads and into the audience, circling overhead into the summer evening, framed by a crescent moon.

With tears streaming down my cheeks, I clutch Mel and Juanita’s hands — and for the first time in a long time, I feel: Hope. That we really CAN do it. We can change things. Together. We just need to BELIEVE that we can.”

— “Imagine This,” by Penny Rosenwasser, Off Our Backs (November-December 2002).

Photo: MWMF opening ceremonies audience. Photo by Candi Hoffman, reproduced in “Michigan Happiness,” Off Our Backs, Vol. 37, No. 4 (2007).

[notcisjustwoman]

When you spend a full week surrounded by nearly 7000 women, the differences between a society of women and a patriarchy become too obvious to ignore.

In this motley crew of lesbians and radicals, I was given a sacred welcome. That’s all I can say about that will make sense.

I’m so glad to have met you all. Those I didn’t, I’ll see you when the daughter rises.

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

[hot-flanks]

I’ve had a couple of my old friends sitting heavy in my heart since the first couple days of Fest. I remember very distinctly walking down Whistle Trail and thinking to myself how if they could have been here, if we all could have been here together ten years ago instead of drunkenly ranting most nights away sitting on the kitchen floor talking about how we were men, how some day we would be seen as men, treated as men… We talked a lot about how we weren’t Butch - there was nothing wrong with Butch, but it wasn’t us. We were men, which was different from being Butch. If you asked us how it was different we would’ve told you that Butches are comfortable in their bodies and with their roles in society, clearly. I know now how obtuse that is, but at 18 it fit nicely with our worldview and our self-identification. 

I was the first to physically transition, I led the pack. I was the one that my friends came to with questions, seeking advice, guidance, console or compassion. I reassured. I placated. My trans* friends expressed jealousy of the fact that I seamlessly blended into the hetero world, accepted by my male peers as obviously “one of the guys” and was never questioned or challenged. My friends longed for that social confirmation of their maleness, a validation of their personhood. Straight women saw me as an interesting adventure or conquest, and we had all fooled ourselves into thinking that dating straight girls was a good way to affirm our boyhood rather than a good way to keep sinking further into the loss of our Butch reality. I now feel the weight of having led my friends astray.

Some days I am absolutely racked with guilt and grief. I grieve my friends as if they are actually lost and gone, instead of just sickened by me. I walked down Whistle Trail several times by myself, weeping openly for the loss of my sisters. I watched old Butch friends see each other from across the field at Night Stage, and hurry to embrace and kiss, their smiles reaching from ear to ear. I felt their joy entwined with my perpetual sadness that I will never have this with my oldest Butch friends. I want to reach out to them, to tell them that I am always here when they want to come home - because I know in my deepest heart that some day they will come home. I am held back by fear of rejection, fear that my openness will do nothing but hurt me and push them further away. I miss them so deeply every single day of my life. 

[antilla-dean]

can you please describe what a typical day at michfest is like? i'm trying to imagine being there but i realized i don't even know what happens on a day-to-day basis! also, i'm kind of scared to go because i hate camping/never leave the house without makeup/am shy. however, i'm desperate to see what it would be like to be in a lesbian-centric community, so i'm hoping you can help me work up the courage by understanding more about michfest. thank you for your time <3

But of course!

So here’s the thing:  your day is whatever you want it to be.  There are three stages, so there are basically performances going on most of the time, workshops of all types all day, movies under the stars in the evening (think of it as a drive-in without cars), and then a dance every night till about 11:30.  There are always people hanging out much later than that at campfires, or just chilling and chatting.  You also have to do two workshifts while you are on the land; that ranges from working in the kitchen to cut up food to doing a garbage run.  Workshifts are a GREAT way to meet other women and to be social.

So…you can stay in your tent for half of the day, then get up, take a shower, go to a workshop, go to dinner and then chill.

Or you can go to every stage, every performance, go to a dance and then go to bed.

Or you can go to the community center area and just hang out and play basketball.

or, you might meet some fabulous woman the first day and the second and third and have non-stop sexin’ for a week.

or, any combo of the above. Your day is whatever you make it.  And that will change by the second.

There are folks there in full makeup!  Folks have full length mirrors out there in the woods, and girls be trompin around the woods in heels and shit.  Plus, there is a femme parade, so trust, you won’t be alone; in fact you’ll be in GREAT company.  But that being said, this might be the only place in the world where NOT wearing makeup won’t be scary to you.

Michfest isn’t really camping; its Glamping (glamour camping).  There are folks who come with tents just for outfits, there are hot showers, there are a lot of things that don’t exist in regular camping scenarios.  There are also people who come with a one person sleeper and only have underwear and sweatshirts.  Others still who wear nothing all day until forced to put on warm clothes at night. I had NEVER been camping till I got there and I’m telling you, something about it is fantastic.  I’m not gonna lie; a shit ton of rain can be a bummer.  It gets cold at night sometimes.  But something about being in the woods and not being scared?  It is just amazing.  You breathe deeper, you slow down.  People look you in the eye.  We smile.  We care about each other.  All things that are worth being a little bit dirty in the woods, right?

Fig. 1.  More amazing shit that women put up randomly in the woods!

Please check out THIS website.  It gives much more detail about people’s experiences that I might not be able to explain here.  Here is info about coming for the first time generally.

Are you an introvert?  If so, you will literally be around thousands of people.  So you’ll need to take shelter in a tent sometimes.  But that’s okay.  Shyness?  Never fear.  It is impossible NOT to talk to people and not to make connections.   Also, you will have a Michigan moment when you will burst into tears.  This is like nothing you have ever experienced before; nothing in the world and you don’t know it until you’ve been in it.

Honestly, all I can say to you is bring a GOOD tent that won’t leak; bring plenty of clothes for all kinds of weather (and fun clothes to play in); have no expectations and understand that you are going somewhere where you can be whoever you are, unapologetically.

People are people…there will be assholes.  There will be people struggling because the place makes people emotional.  The food can be meh.  But barring utopia?  Things don’t get much better.

Just come, sister.  It is okay to be scared!  Just know that you will arrive and be held.

[michfest-as-is]

It was a couple of weeks before the festival, and I was on a weekend trip to Detroit, Ann Arbor and Lansing in my 20 year old Rambler to pass out our newly minted brochures and meet with our sound company outside of Ann Arbor. I pulled up to their warehouse, a 12 pack of cheap beer in tow, and proceeded to act like I knew what I was doing, even though it was the first concert I had ever produced. I hit it off with Mr Sound Dude as we talked about shows we had both been to in recent years. Jefferson Airplane. The Eagles. Buddy Miles. Bonnie Raiit. Rolling Stones with Stevie Wonder. Everything was going great with our shared rock & roll hippiedom until he asked me how many people we thought we would have at the show. “I think we might have as many as 1000 womyn” I said, still not believing my own number. “How many men?” “Ugh….none. It’s an all womyn’s festival…no men.” Our sound engineer from San Francisco who had booked the sound company had not discussed this fact, and right there, ¾ of the way through my 12-pack of beer, the sound was cancelled for our festival. No men – no sound.

We had no absolutely no idea what we were doing when we produced the first festival. None. I personally had produced nothing more than a few major keggers, and though we were swimming in the exciting energy of lesbian feminism that we found in books and on trips to cities like Chicago, Boston, Lansing and Cleveland – creating a space on our home turf bigger than what our living room could hold, and doing it with zero money, meant creative and old-school working class sketchy skills had to come into play. To buy postage we had yard sales. We first promoted the festival with fliers we made off the ditto machine at the local university that we snuck into at night. To print a real brochure we had a car wash, ran a kegger, borrowed money $20 at a time. To rent the festival site I met with a man in the Holiday Inn bar who had advertised in the local paper he was selling lots of land outside of town. He had 120 acres and was selling them 10 acres at a time. I think we could really sell many of these lots to the people who attend this musical retreat….we will happily hand out fliers and promote the parcels between each concert. To get a baby grand piano from 100 miles a way delivered for $150 – we will happily hand out fliers promoting your piano company and announce your company between each performance. This festival is pretty much a festival of pianists, the performers and the audience. All pianists.

We decided we would build the stage like we saw at many rock shows – scaffolding with lumber laid flat then covered with ply wood. Kristie and I did reconnaissance as they set up one afternoon for an Alice Cooper show at the Saginaw Arena. This looks doable. We didn’t see how they did the stairs though, and we started to wonder, how are we going to get UP on that stage… anyone ever build stairs? The scaffolding was 6.5’ high…hmmm…have to figure that out soon. Problem solved when Digger rolled in with two stair stringers (the zig-zag side boards that make a set of stairs so you can put tread boards (the part your feet actually go on) hanging out of her car window that she had borrowed from a building site the night before. We didn’t have the money to buy the wood to build the stage, and we convinced the lumber yard to rent us the 2×10’s at $1/board. “We will only put two little nail holes on each end. No one will even notice them.” Most of our asks were so weird and yes, desperate, that we got confused yes’s before anyone knew what hit them.

This land we rented had no water and no electricity. We thought we could “drill” our own well, and off we went with a couple of friendly guys from the water dept where Kristie works and a 2” pipe to manually bang this point into the ground until we reached water (one early massive failure, accented by massive blisters all around). I called milk companies, farmers, anyone I could think of who would have huge containers for potable water, because in the day before bottled water was anyone’s idea, surely we would have to haul drinking water – and lots of it. The Army! They have to haul everything – water for sure – and tents! They have tents! I discovered that if I was a reservist (in theory) I could buddy up to the local commander, and borrow all kinds of things. I collected names of the Lieutenants and Commanders in 150 mile area, and would call one post and say…”Captain Big Dude from Grayling said to call you, that he thought you had a water tank I could borrow for this community event”…or some big tents, or some cots. The army guys really helped each other out, and I found that they were very nice to one of the few (faux) female reservists that were in the know of all the officers. We pulled off the army borrow trick for three years before they caught up with us.

The first festival ran Friday – Sunday. Digger and Kristie were both off on an airport run, and womyn were flooding into the land. From everywhere. And these womyn – wow – they were so much more sophisticated, political, and just generally awesome than we were. They were from Chico and DC, Toronto and St. Louis, places I couldn’t begin to find on a map. I was intimated to even talk to some of them. Up the dirt road and turning on to the property came this huge Army truck decked out in full fatigue with the total iconic jarhead behind the wheel. Panic filled these radical 70’s hearts and minds of the newly arrived womyn, then came the start of retaliation. Our worst fear – we were being invaded by the fucking army! I was the only one who understood this guy was delivering a tank of water for us. I jumped up on his running board, one foot on the step-up, one arm slung around the driver’s mirror and told him to just keep driving (5 miles per hour) and let me talk to the womyn. Keep your eyes straight ahead, don’t talk to anyone but me, and you’ll be safe.

We actually no longer needed the damn water truck, but we needed the tents and we didn’t have a lot of hoses so a water tank was still super cool. Literally days before the festival was to start, a local well driller, the father of a straight but not narrow womon we drank and flirted with at local bars, took pity on us through his daughter’s story of us banging away on that pipe, believing we could manifest water. He put a well down, installed a pump and few spickets, we used it for a few days, then he pulled it back up. Now that we’ve had eight well drilled and paid for them, I realize what a miracle that really was. Everything was a miracle, and everything was happening so fast, and so…slip-shod, we just kept moving until the next thing that blew up in our faces, a steady mixture of terror, bravado and cheap beer pumping through our veins.

Deciding where to put the well seemed logical, it needed to be near the generator we were renting to run the electric for sound and lights, so…how about near that hill so we can put the showers on top and the water can drain down the hill? Excellent idea when it was just a handful of us out on the land putting the stage together just days before festival. But that sleepy 120 acres in what we thought was very remote country, where we never saw or heard a car go by in the days leading up to fest, was suddenly bumper to bumper with locals gawking as the nearly 2000 womyn arrived, spread out their pup tents and started to shower in the freezing cold water in that funky little shower up on the hill. Some enterprising guy sold time on his telescope from a parallel hill across the road, a straight shot to our showers, as whole families pressed their faces to their car windows to get a good look at the “international gathering of weirdoes” as we were called in the local county paper.

The gawking turned to name calling which morphed into sisters who were not having it. “Always wanted to give a dyke 10 inches” he said, safely behind his truck door. “If you want to leave with those 5 inches you better get out of here now” she said brandishing a machete like she knew how to use it. Who the fuck travels to a festival with a machete?!? We were in over our heads. We were in the crazy position of being between the local dudes who were trying to prove their manhood on the road and the dykes who were ready to send their manhood home with them in a bag. Let’s be calm sisters…your inclination and anger is understandable, but this is really not a good idea. Please keep your truck moving…not much to see here, just keep driving, keep it moving. A womon named Keyosha from Lansing had a Doberman, a van, and a calm that was lacking in most of us. We hadn’t thought of anything remotely like security…but Keyosha threw together an idea that seemed to match the seriousness of the situation. If you heard a car horn, everyone east of the Mississippi go the front gate road, everyone west of the Mississippi go to the south road, and so on. Every time a horn sounded womyn scrambled to their positions. It was intense, over-kill and kind of insane – but we were protecting our newly formed lesbian nation, and all methods were reasonable.

I didn’t own or have a tent that first year but that was okay. I was so afraid someone would party on the Kauia grand piano late at night that my plan was to sleep right there, on the stage, directly under the piano. I was so screwed if anything happened to that piano. Saturday night Be Be K’Roche, a rock band from San Francisco, played the closing set, and then following their set the band headed out to do a security shift through the woods at a perimeter location we had discovered guys were coming through. I joined them, and we proceeded to party and get to know each other in the dark of the night. None of us were particularly nervous about the situation, so when we heard some noise in the woods, Peggy, the bass player, went off by herself to check it out. She came back with a drunk man hanging from his shirt collar at the end of her hand, bare foot, scared out of his mind. He had come into the land on a dare, got lost, and was roaming around in the pitch black woods getting his feet cut up. We put a hooded sweatshirt over him and told him to look down, don’t say a word, and we’ll take you to the road and then you should run like hell. As we were exiting the woods the horns went off. Womyn were scrambling everywhere. This made the guy absolutely shake. I told the band I was heading over to the stage, I had to secure my piano position, and off I went through the half-asleep half-drunk trails of womyn heading to their positions. A sister ran up to me – “where are you from?! – where are you from??” “ugh…michigan?” “You are going the wrong way! Michigan is at the front gate – it’s thata way!”.

We were freshly politicized lesbian feminists in 1975-1976 as we began to scheme about a festival, but we were already dyed in the wool leftist hippies. Both truths influenced a lot of how we wanted to do things, and one of the clearest directions we went in from the beginning was deciding to have communal food. It didn’t matter that we had no idea how to do this, and we hit learning curve after learning curve, mess over madness. Lucky for us that in the glow of 70’s feminism, expectations from our sisters were extremely low. Cooked corn and potatoes over an open fire in a drum, salad, fruit, bread, cheese, lemon juice and water. I had originally asked one of the womyn from the food co-op to be part of the first collective, because she loved music and knew food. She passed. I came back around and asked a group of womyn from the co-op if they would organize the food. I would do the ordering, they would prep on site. They agreed! They were music lovers, straight and mixed well with dykes, and they could all do it together. We got the celery from the celery farmer. We got a 40lb block of cheese from the co-op. We rented a little milk truck, no bigger than a pick up, to keep the dairy cold. We got bread from the bread delivery truck. We bought knives at K-mart. We had one table. Late in the morning on Saturday before the first “meal” was to be put out, it was already getting hot and the kitchen womyn headed out to the nearby swimming hole to cool off. They never came back.

I started the fire under the corn and potatoes and went to the stage to continue to try and smooth the revolving arguments flaring up between Margo the sound engineer and the womon who came with the sound gear I found last minute out of Chicago. I looked back towards the little kitchen area – to see a steady line of fire making its way from the potato pot to the stage, licking at all the dried grass in between. The potatoes were never really cooked that year. We had a 40# block of cheese on the table with a knife stuck into it – cut what you need sisters. We had watermelon, and carrots, and beautiful celery from down the road. We had the start of home. Sunday morning came and I realized we had to organize the money so we could pay the artists. We didn’t have a box office trailer or even a tent, just a little table with a tarp over it to block the blazing sun. I stored the money in my boots in the trunk of my rambler. I got my boots, headed out to the back of the listening area, grabbing a few womyn out of the audience as I went. “Got a few minutes to help me count money?”. We sat in the back of the bowl during the Meg, Holly, Linda and Teresa concert….organizing 5’s, 10’s, 20’s…catching them as they floated in the wind.

After we paid the artists, sound, lights and food…we had roughly $400 left. We could divide that up as our pay for our months of work….but we had a problem we hadn’t considered. We had a huge mound of garbage bags that had collected over the last three days, the trash of 2000 womyn – before recycling part of anyone’s program. The garbage had sat in the 90+ degree heat for days now, and the bags were exploding. It was a shitty gross mess. We decided as badly as we needed that money, we would hire a garbage company to haul the bags. We called everyone. We were told they would not come and get lesbian garbage. While we were on the land and having our little private festival in the woods, we had become infamous in the county.

There were five womyn who were the festival’s first “cling-ons” who just stayed after everyone left on Sunday…bless their hearts. With a borrowed truck from a neighbor (we didn’t have a pick up between us) we tore down the stage, returned the rented lumber, made plywood sides so we could pile the garbage high, and started the long gross process of hauling the exploding garbage bags crawling with maggots to the dump. We were amazons, we could do this. Rags wrapped around our mouths and noses, exhaustion as our bond – we could do this. Gagging as we worked – we would do this. But there was no doubt in any of our minds – we would never attempt to do this festival thing again.

[dyke-digest]

Fest firstie!

[michfest-as-is]

Me and Michigan by Maggie Jochild

“Turns out, the way a woman could look covered the entire range of human expression….”

The summer of 1977 began as one of the worst of my life.  On May 1, my lover of five years, “Astrid,” dumped me without warning in a particularly brutal manner.   I had almost nowhere to take my devastating grief.  I was daily suicidal, and only a couple of close friends plus my mother kept me going.  Astrid immediately moved in with her new lover, taking all our belongings and the daughter I’d been helping to raise for five years.  I was 21 years old and had no recourse to whatever Astrid aimed my way.

I turned to feminism in full force, and found answers, empathy, the kindness of strangers.  I wrote anguished letters to Ginny Berson of Olivia Records and Alix Dobkin, and got back personal letters full of encouragement.  Alix wrote me several times.  I read everything I could, I listened to wimmin’s music daily, I traveled to more urban gatherings where I could find dyke feminists, and I began exploring the idea of joining a women’s land collective.  Eventually, I narrowed my choices down to either a group in Durango, Colorado or the Red Bird Collective in Burlington, Vermont, both of whom extended invitations to check them out personally.

In August my best friend Jean told me she’d gotten a dream job in Cincinnati, and offered for me to move with her.  I didn’t know what to do:  I didn’t want to be a burden she took with her.  Instinctively, I felt I needed to broaden my community, somehow, somewhere.  In the end, we compromised on me traveling with her as far as Michigan to attend the second year of the already famous Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, saying I would decide after it was over in the path I would take.

We caravaned to Michigan in separate small cars, each with a helping-with-the-gas female passenger we’d picked up from Lesbian Connection or some such network.  Mine was a 17-year-old singer/songwriter named Dawna Price.  Somewhere in Missouri we picked up an Israeli hitchhiker named Mikki Gvilli who was not a lesbian but still amazingly powerful.The minute I set foot on the land, I knew This Was Different.  A space energetically distinct from anywhere I had ever been — me, who had already traveled around the world.  The variety of wimmin was staggering.  Turns out, the way a woman could look covered the entire range of human expression. 

Every single structure and process on this large tract of land had been assembled by someone who had survived girlhood.  All the work was done By Us For Us.  There was nothing we could not do.  Cooperation was instant and brilliantly effective.  Kindness and generosity flowed without limit, and we knew every interaction was with another who had been presented with the lies of what female can be in our culture yet had found her own way through it.

The third day, I cut my hair off and shed my clothes.  By the fourth day, I’d decided to go to Durango, to pursue separatism and alternate spirituality and vegetarianism, to continue this route of uncovering and clearing out the damage done by the patriarchy.  I have not deviated from that latter choice for one second since.

And I tell you:  If I had had to deal with male socialization there on that land, I would not have found the freedom to become who I am now.  It simply would not have been possible.  When you grow up behind bars, progressing to light leg irons is not going to free you from the experience of confinement. Michigan is the product of thousands of grown-up girls deciding to do all the work necessary to create a week-long town where the values left to us by the patriarchy are redefined and blossom into powerful, complete functionality.  Who on earth, besides us, is going to do this job? Maggie Jochild, August 2014

[michfest-as-is]

I had a vision

So I have had the following post in Drafts for a little while:

Right after the first Fest woman talked to me about doing the detransition workshop, I had this vision. I’d never even been to Fest but it had started taking shape in my consciousness. The idea that there was a place for us took root in my mind. 

It was a vision of a cavalry of young women–disillusioned and dissatisfied by the queer scene–coming to the defense of Festival in force. A critical mass of womyn loving womyn. Clear, purposeful, done with all mindfuckery, and ready to throw down for this place.

It’s happening. Army of lovers, come with us.

And the vision still matters but it has a different dimension. We will not get to inherit Festival; her time is passing quickly. But as many of us as possible need to come, so that we have taken part in the community, so that we have experienced Fest, so that we can take that experience to build on as we create the home we need for the future.

Lisa Vogel has been doing this job for 40 years. Anyone, no matter how Amazon, needs to retire sometime. Hers has been a hard labor, let alone the additional burden of being demonized, attacked, and misrepresented at every turn.

So young ones, we’re the next ones. Let’s choose it well. Come experience your heritage and let’s carry it forward in the best way we can.

[songsforgorgons]

“Sisters-Amazons … The goddess is smiling on all of us.” The first Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival land map, as reprinted in Laurie Kendall’s The Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival: An Amazon Matrix of Meaning (2008; 2013).

“Will there always be the Festival? Having land owned by women (and the bank) increases that possibility for sure. The Japanese have a festival they’ve celebrated every year for a thousand years. Michigan may not be another Gion Matsuri, but women will celebrate our lives in some form or another, underground or in the light, forever. If it isn’t Michigan, we’ll create whatever else we need, as some of us created the Festival. My commitment to the Land, as an absentee tenant knowing a second home, is a commitment to the women who work there, to the music that’s played there, and to the spirit that is in all of Us.”

— Therese Edell, in Lesbian Land (ed. Joyce Cheney, 1985).