Breakfast club

What's on The Agenda? We often gathered around tables in the yellow dining room and talked about everything & anything. Now, what are we?

[kafkasapartment]

Still life with a plate of onions, early January, 1889. Vincent van Gogh. Oil on canvas.

[puppy95]

Yeahhhhhhhh!!!! Hell yes!!!

[yellowdiningroom]

Status Report

What’s been completed:

Received unexpected job offer (August 16, 2018)

Packed up my life, Chris included (September 2018)

Bought a house; received keys and moved in (October 14, 2018)

Started new job (October 15, 2018)

Learned the ropes and built a new team (2019)

Learned how to bake sourdough bread using dehydrated starter from Tess (2019)

Attended Celene’s wedding in LA (July 13, 2019)

Hosted a Breakfast Club Summit on the Oregon coast (January 24-27, 2020)

Hosted Arden and Alana during their road trip (March 12-13, 2020)

Closed my work campus; started working remotely (March 16, 2020)

Made decision to keep my full staff on the payroll at full pay through the pandemic; got board of directors support to do this (March 23, 2020)

Re-established Tumbler account (March 28, 2020)

What’s in progress:

Applying for CARES Act relief funding for my work to cover payroll and other operating expenses

Continuing the Debt Liberation Lab experiment with Chris D, Sylvia, John, Cleo, Lauren, Marshall, Jordan, Erika and others, including acquiring IRS 501(c)(10) tax exempt status for the organization

Cheering on Dane in his current bid for a 2-1 Vermont House seat

Preserving a jar of lemons (ready mid-April 2020)

Stepping up my running

Worrying about my brother who is a physical therapist assistant in San Deigo doing high-touch “essential work” and a dad with small kids

What’s next:

Bake bread (Monday)

Get in a 12 mile run this weekend during a break in the rain (24 hr goal)

Clean my home office (24 hr goal)

Plant nasturtium seeds (24 hr goal)

Write Syliva back

Drink less (including 24 hr goal)

Come up with a new set of homebound personal practices and experiment with what works (24 hr goal)

Get a post-pandemic dental appointment on the books

Commission updated headshots with Abby post-pandemic

Plan and write my April newsletter “Director’s Journal” piece for work (if you scroll down on our homepage to the bottom you can sign up for our monthly newsletter; my March journal entry is cut and pasted below

Director’s Journal March 11, 2020

The divide some grownups perceive between science and art has always perplexed me. My earliest four-year-old memories of drawing revolve around nature and animals. I remember the artistic liberty I felt painting wings on a yellow lion ascending into an azure manila paper sky, and the anatomical accuracy I strived for the day I took my naturalist sketch pad to the zoo. As young people, our curiosity about the world around us and our desire to find our own voice within it are as natural as our biological impulses to sing at daybreak or howl at the moon.

If there is an intellectual ravine between the arts and sciences, the imaginations of Sitka's spring residents leap spryly back and forth across it daily. Eli Neumann-Hammond samples sounds from the natural world to make his music. Photo-transferred barnacles collect on the floor and tabletops in interdisciplinary artist Brie Schettle's studio. Meanwhile, in naturalist Ingrid Erickson's studio, constructed wings and skulls are pinned to the walls and peek out from the windows like origami-meets-taxidermy specimens.

The more time I spend at Sitka, the more convinced I am that the art-science gap is a paper tiger.

While the coexistence of art and science has been a naturally occurring phenomenon at Sitka for decades, it's becoming an increasingly popular-and urgent-societal idea in the context of finding fresh approaches to solving 21st century problems, from mental health to climate change.

Spring resident and rare species biologist Susan Waters studies the impacts of native pollinator restoration on endangered butterfly populations. The offset couplets in resident Chris Rose's poem, Coastline, ebb and flow like waves: "He walked into the water and drowned. / You walk into the ocean. And breathe." Fabric artist and resident Laurie Lambrect's yarn-covered rocks simultaneously evoke a sense of geological patience and the inner quietude of the knitter. I imagine her besweatered stones perched on promontories, bearing witness to rising sea levels, ready to remove a layer as things heat up. The humor in Lambrect's work and the beauty in Rose's help me stay with their uncomfortable subject matter longer than is my nature.

What wisdom do animals on the brink of extinction have to share with a population just beginning to grapple with its global interdependencies? What if human empathy and altruism could spread as rapidly as a virus?

It seems both butterflies and poetry have something to teach us about our own fragility and resiliency.

Alison Dennis Executive Director

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Yeah, this hurts.

Wednesday, March 25, 2020

How surreal does it feel to be here now. When I go outside, the air in Los Angeles is more clear than I remember it being in a very long time. The roads are near empty. I can really get anywhere in twenty minutes, when sometimes that trip can take me an hour forty. And actually, when I rode my bike the six or so miles East from my parents house to where I live now with my partner... everything looked pretty similar. There were more closed signs, and almost every commercial window had a piece of paper taped to the door, some people wore masks or gloves... but other than that.. it’s still my hometown, like it’s always been. That concerns me.

I wish it were emptier.

But jobs are still open, and people will go where you pay them to be. In fact my job is still open, I just chose to stop working because I can’t work from home, even though that’s what the note from rheumatologist said. My rheumatologist did not say that I have an autoimmune disease, and that puts me at high-risk during this unprecedented time period.

I wish he had.

If he had maybe I would be able to access the eighty hours of paid sick leave I have earned in my more than three years scooping ice cream. But he didn’t. So I can’t. And I wasn’t laid off, even though I’m not working and all of my photography gigs have evaporated- parties and weddings canceled, so I can’t access unemployment. So I’ll try disability I guess, since I’m high risk and all. 

I wish we had any guarantees.

I am high risk because I have systemic lupus erythamatosus. I have had it since I was twelve years old, or that’s at least when I started showing symptoms. My left knee buckled on a trampoline and then over the years the other knee and then my hands and then everything else. I was diagnosed when I was twenty-two, in June, right after I graduated college. I was given a prescription for hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial that rarely is used like that anymore. Now it’s for us, for people whose immune systems don’t work properly. Basically what it does is it redirects the immune response away from my internal organs. It slows the progression of my disease. It means that I really only have minor flares anymore, like smaller inconveniences, as opposed to major ones where all my joints have swelled, even my jaw, and my teeth don’t line up properly anymore, and have to take steroids or other chemotherapies. There are side effects, sure. I had to stop my car a couple times to vomit in the first couple months. But it’s fine now. I still have to get my eyes checked every so often, just to make sure the most serious side effect, retinal toxicity, isn’t creeping in. And of course ironic to be a photographer with a looming loss of eyesight eh? But despite all of that, it saves lives. I will take it until something better comes along (there are only two drugs approved for lupus), it takes threatens eyesight, or I die.

I wish it could actually be a treatment for COVID-19,

like D*n*ld Tr*mp said it could be. Actually someone on reddit said it could be first, there were reports out of China and in the Op-Ed section of the Journal Nature. And then El*n M*sk was tweeting about it and then it was actually on F*x N*ws right before Tr*mp said it’s was a “good plan” on the global stage- oh... wow yeah at that point I should have known this was going to be a problem.  

I wish that all the decisions made about of all the systems in place to make what is happening happening had been made just a little differently.

Already one man has died and his wife is in critical condition after self-medicating with chloroquine phosphate aquarium cleaner. Because now people with lupus and rheumatoid arthritis and Sjogren’s Syndrome can’t get their prescriptions. It’s too expensive. They’re backordered. Doctor’s prescribed too much to own their friends and family. Kaiser is “conserving the current supply for those critically ill with COVID-19... Thank you for the sacrifice you will be making for those who are critically ill; your sacrifice may save lives.”

What.

You’re telling me that I can’t have the drug that’s stopping my body from killing me, because it might work for people infected with a virus we know nothing about? When I’m already at-risk of infection? And when I have to go in to the hospital to stop my body from killing me during a pandemic there won’t be any space for me and the staff is overworked and underprepared and their re-used personal protective equipment will all but guarantee my own infection? While I’m flaring? And ventilators are probably being prioritized for those who have a better chance of living anyway?

So- and sure, worst case scenario- you’re telling me you are sacrificing me?

I wish it didn’t have to be like this. 

Thanks for reading.

Sign this to help secure lupus patients our medication.

To be clear: I have about 2.5 months worth of Hydroxychloroquine, and if I ration and/or forget to take them some days, like I do, then I have a little longer. I am safe. But I’m acutely aware of what I would be facing if I werent.

Hope you’re well, all things considered.

With love,

Abby

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Prepping the last Summit

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What do we do, now, ever?

Those of you from college may remember my environmentalism. Or remember Onur’s. Or Cleo’s. Jesse’s. Forest’s. Lauren’s. Joanna’s. Michelle’s; list goes on.  Heroic advocates like Bill McKibben, Al Gore, Jane Kleeb, countless scientists, the IPCC, First Nations Tribes, Xi Jinping, Naomi Klein. There was a sense of pounding urgency with every meeting we made, paragraph written, speech, pipeline stunted, endowment analyzed, conversation with family, friends, each other. A pounding urgency not always met with equal enthusiasm.

Anyways, this summer the west coast is on fire. There are about to be three consecutive juggernaut hurricanes trudging through the gulf/our coasts, and that’s just this country. 1,000+ dead in South Asian floods. Famine in Yemen. Water scarcity. Not that we have never had natural disasters before, but surely you’re noticing. More than usual, more different, more destructive, more.

And all I want to say is that the “I told you sos” don’t feel good.

It’s all shit.

There will be beauty between the shit, but it’s all going to shit and we know it. Not to mention the socio-political, WW3 imminent, racism abounding.

Anyways, get ready for the future folks! It’s gonna be a rough one. And with every ‘I told you so’ I want to say, like “we had countless meetings with you Mariko, David, & Brian Murphy - in fact, we fuckin’ helped hire you, you dipshit” or  “We tried to restrain ourselves best we could at that black suit endowment firm PR meeting while you made us look like idiots for trying” or  “I swear mom, one day you’ll see that the Harvey tragedy you soo loved grief-porn-consuming on the television is related to that argument in the car about our portfolio”  or  “I know we should excuse your rural conservative roots, but hanging onto denial this long was a little excessive”  or  “Sorry ______ congressman, but if you wanted your family to vacation in Italy in future summers, you should have let the oil companies f’in blackmail you for a change”, I swallow in a breath of dry hot air, instead. 

- Erika

[yellowdiningroom]

SUMMER SUMMIT: >24 HRS

Our Summer Summit is commencing so soon I can’t even believe it!

I mean, look at all this!!! I want to attend all of them, but I wouldn’t be able to use my internet for probably a month!!!

We’ll be hosting workshops via Rabbit, a streaming/skype like thing, that definitely has a period mark somewhere in it’s name but I’m not hip enough to remember where.

Check yo’ email for a detailed schedule and tech related things!!!

SEE YOU THERE!!!

P.S. - Any questions? Email me: [email protected] <3 

[yellowdiningroom]

Past year - E

Well, this year has been pretty shitty for me!

I don’t mean to sound so terse, but it’s the truth!  Some of you may know I’ve got chronic headaches nowadays, so that’s screwing a lot with my wellbeing on the daily. No need to feel sad reading this, though! The bummer shouldn’t transfer. You’re out there living a full life, right? 

Mine is just... halved right now. Cleaved. A special little erika challenge of sorts, because often I can’t listen to music, get out of the house, or dance. (I shed a tear as I write this.)

I expect this not to last forever, at least to this degree.

Light sensitivity is one of the first symptoms; I’ve learned to wear sunglasses in sooooo many faux-pas places! I’ve learned to wear sunglasses at the movies. Photos of me this year have been like a mega-portrait of this beautiful broken Erika. I have photos where I look like a prick having fun but I’m actually ailing. so many pics of me in sunglasses this past year!

I like to call this 500 Days of Sunhurt

My new fashion inspiration is obviously celebrities trying to hide their identities.

Puns and jokes aside, though it has been truly the most challenging year of my life thus far, there were some good things in it. I reveled in my gayness tenfold. I can’t explain why this became such a thing for me, or well.. I can, if you give me 3 hours. 

I steeped myself in positive representations of queer women in movies/tv. This happens to be the area where I feel most positive about the world right now. Our representations are expanding rapidly, currently, and there’s a bright future ahead. Lemme tell ya! the other day I saw a slow-motion-romantic-two-people-running-to-each-other scene at the end of a movie with TWO LADIESS! yeah. Ask me and I will make you a tv/movie guide for the summer.  

What I need from you re- chronic headache lyfe is nothing but love, right now! You can recommend things, but don’t assume that I haven’t already been recommended them, or been looking into them. ‘s a slow process, babes.

As far as being 1 year out of college goes... well, I just wish I didn’t have to pay most of my expenses now, but hey, who doesn’t?! 

Erika.

[yellowdiningroom]

year in review

hello hellO it’s been forever ! thank you for the prompt, erika/julia !

Just came home from the spring term of my sophomore year.  Watched some wonderful people and close friends graduate today; I’m halfway done with college somehow (!?!) and feeling the time slip out from under me.  This year has been a crazy year! Been doing a little too much thinking and feeling about Who I Am As A Person and severely overthinking the ways that I interact with the people around me, definitely feeling like 20 is a very weird childadult kinda age to be.  I’ve been a little too in-my-head for the second half of this past term especially, and am hoping that the change of scenery will help focus my attention on my surroundings a little more.

This past year I’ve continued studying VA (and psychology) and got to be in studio classes where I could focus on developing more advanced work, find my footing, & try to figure out what the heck i want to be making and doing.  A couple of answers but most importantly a whole lot of new questions ! Been making some blobby friends recently and starting a new one soon now that I have the free time.  Thinking lots about what makes things seem like they fit into the environment they’re in & also about the human tendency to anthropomorphize inanimate things– as a way of creating empathy or maybe also as a way of not feeling lonely ? 

I also helped design and paint a mural in the stairway from downcaf to upcaf during the fall term, which was an incredible collaborative experience with an incredible group of people. Very proud of the final product, which is very hard to photograph in its entirety !

this past winter I spent my field work term at Creative Growth Art Center, a combined studio and gallery space for adult artists with disabilities. It’s a phenomenal place with incredible, talented, and kind artists and staff and I had a really great, really difficult time.  Got a whole lot of experience working in a gallery, pushed myself, was too much of a perfectionist, messed up SO many of the things I was asked to do, and learned a lot a lot a lot.  My boss called me a “top-tier intern” on my last day and I said “god bless” and she said “did you just say god bless under your breath?” 

This summer I’ll be spending my 5th summer working as a camp counselor at a tiny Quaker farm camp in PA and spending the rest of my time at home working on art projects.  Next term I’ll be house chair of fels– very exciting and terrifying and wonderful !

hope you are all doing well & learning a lot as u ““NAVIGATE THE WORLD”” !! I haven’t been doing a lot of posting but I always read and love your updates.  All my love always !

-Phoebe

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Inspired by Julia’s post, 1 year post!

For those of you who are out of school, what did this past year feel like for you? What did you do?

Anything you’ve gleaned?

For those of you still in school or about to leave, same questions. 

How does it feel to enter the summer? Let’s see what y’all’ve been, this past year!  (Yes, I just said y’all’ve)  E.

[yellowdiningroom]

Filling In, Today, and Where Next?

Greetings breakfast club posters and readers!

Much has happened since one year ago, for myself personally and certainly globally.

I’ve been missing having a community of peers in close proximity, and while a digital space has limitations, I’m happy to join in on this blog.

-I haven’t seen or spoken with many of you since last year, so this post is somewhat lengthy-

A year in review:

I’ve been living at home in Central Vermont since last June.

In June, I started doing elder care for a woman in her nineties. I hadn’t ever done this as a job, and I am grateful for having had the opportunity to do so. It opened up space for reflection, being present, and sharing life stories.

I joined a local group affiliated with 350VT: Central Vermont Climate Action. Much of our work this past year focused on stopping the VT Gas Pipeline, which now has fracked gas flowing through it. We are now reassessing and looking ahead. I am consistently the youngest member of the group and am currently starting to work on outreach to younger folks.

The woman I was caring for passed away late last fall.

Then there was the election.

A few days after, I traveled to Los Angeles, where I saw a few of you, and was reminded of the immensity and the sounds of the ocean.

Back home in December, I didn’t have work and made my first monthly student loan payment.

In January, I started doing some childcare.

In February, with Central VT Climate Action, I helped make this climate focused newspaper issue happen: http://www.montpelierbridge.com/2017/02/read-the-february-2-issue/

Right around Town Meeting Day in March, my job ended and I found out that I didn’t get another job I had applied for.

Since then, I have been piecing together various temporary jobs and dedicating time to activism and growing vegetables for myself.

Throughout all this, I have been continuing to take photographs, finding time to take dance classes and keep moving, and walking in the woods.

I recently joined the time bank in Central VT. Time as a complementary currency is appealing to me. I have offered photography services through the time bank and have received some interest. Now I have to decide what I would like to use my time credits for.

So, those are some snapshots of this past year.

 Today,

I am writing this while visiting my grandmother, who is in the last stages of her life. She is receiving excellent care, and I am grateful to be with her today.

Today,

I am taking time to be.

Side note: directly after writing this sentence, I realize it’s a few minutes after 3pm and seek out news on what’s going on with the U.S. and the Paris Climate Accord...

Today,

I am doing really well. Due to a number of factors, I have more energy and stamina than at any period in the past five or six years.

Today,

I am celebrating the fact that yesterday morning, Vermont’s Governor signed H.308, the most comprehensive racial justice reform bill in Vermont history. Some info here: https://vtdigger.org/2017/06/01/racial-justice-legislation-gets-scotts-signature/

This marking of one year after graduating has me feeling that I am in another transition. This past year has been a time of many changes and transformations, and of getting my bearings.

Now I am asking myself, “Where next?”

I’m planning to stick around Vermont, at least through the summer, until after I get to eat all those vegetables I’ve been planting and tending.

I’m considering what I value in choosing a place to live, should I decide to move elsewhere.

The most time I’ve ever lived in a city was four months. I’m curious to see how that might be more long term. I have no idea where, yet.

I’ll leave it at that for now, while I consider what’s next in this world.

 -Julia Barstow

A photo I took at Concert in the Rye, 2016. 

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Summer Summit - will you join us?

Def fill out this survey to help guide the direction of the next summit! 

https://docs.google.com/a/bennington.edu/forms/d/19aDPxQLgpTjvIBJI_NhYlvcjhxRmXh4btUoOA-iDWsY/viewform?edit_requested=true#responses

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Survivor Advocacy At Bennington!

hey everybody, super quick post from me.  we’ve been designing a peer-to-peer victim/survivor/victor advocate program and are looking for feedback.  it’d be great if people could look at this since the document linked below has possible interview questions.  we haven’t really wanted to circulate the interview questions to people who might also be potential applicants.  

take a look and leave comments!!!!  Any tips on diversity in hiring, especially within a context like bton, are super welcome as well.  

missing yall <3

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hhdZOUQs6RIzZAF2QI1aCukyigkX8pR5H0KOlnT40l8/edit?usp=sharing

Liam

[yellowdiningroom]

The everlasting spring road trip

We don’t know where we’re going to be long-term. I am using WE wildly and irresponsibly. This is my first move to an all-out attack on the institution of responsibility in my life. So I’ll say it again: we don’t know where we’re going to be long term. (Tell me you do and we can wrestle when I get there.)

This not knowing is often a sticking point. How do we be together if we are not together? How do we help one another from afar? 

I don’t know.

But hey I’m coming to you!

I’ve committed to something between a month and a year of solid vagrancy. Below is a rough sketch of the map:

It goes like this:

UP THE EAST:

Petersburg, Richmond, Fredericksburg, DC, Harrisburg, State College, Philadelphia, New York, Western Massachusetts, Bennington, Southern NH, Portland ME.

ACROSS THE MIDDLE IN A SORT OF ZIG-ZAG:

Nantahala mountains, Great Lakes, Cando (House Truck! if the timing is right), Neosho Rapids KS

UP THE WEST:

Ojai?, LA, Monterey, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Vancouver

THEN UP A LOT MORE:

Alaska. 

I’m not saying I’m not scared. I’m just saying, I wasn’t even this dedicated to the notion of getting my BA. I am going to do this if it kills me. I have no idea what I am doing. I don’t know if I believe the world is ending or not. But I am going to get to Alaska before the darkness is complete up there. AND I WANT TO VISIT YOU ON THE WAY!!!! I love you all and miss you all (and there is that universal pronoun again. All of you as a group, and each one of you individually, I love and miss you all.)

Let me know if you want to hang out. Let me know if you need help with anything! Projects, life, housework, listening. (I’m good at: chopping wood, waiting, fried eggs, cleaning gutters, playing with kids, editing written work, gardening, making old men feel comfortable, The Floor is Lava, backing up pickups, running meetings, and rolling mugwort cigarettes.) Let me know where you are and when you’ll be there, and I’ll find a way to be there, too, one of these days.

Let’s wonder about stuff together. 

Love,

Sylvia

[yellowdiningroom]

Crucial listening for self care.

-ktrop

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Lil’ tidbit follow up from the White Suremacy wkshop we did.

It was an uncomfortable tough conversation, yes. I do believe it was also needed. I found this & thought it a great follow-up to that difficult conversation we had:

In other words, I LOVE YOU ALL! And just because we called out some white privilege & supremacy culture in our friend group does not mean that we don’t want to be friends! I see that more and more after being together in the winter. 

-Erika

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There are parts of my room that are indicative of it being not quite a normal room, existing in a normal time and space...

I like those parts of my room. - EL.

(okay, you could argue that living in times of imminent political upheaval has actually been a pretty normal human experience, but still..) 

[yellowdiningroom]

How to Live Life When You Are “Stable”

I feel sufficiently qualified to write this as I have had approximately 38 days of straight blissful sometimes hypomanic, sometimes normal, life experience free of depression, which is longer than I have experienced in the past, in over three years.

However, because it has been so. long. since I have felt this way, I’m kind of at a loss on what to do! Sleep 4-8 hrs a night instead of 12? What do I do with this extra time?! Energy to socialize? How do I burn this inconvenient new need for human interaction off??! 

If you find yourself in my situation: Congratulations! But it’s also scary! What if remission happens? What if your new positive behavior patterns don’t stick and you end up in the suck-hole of depression again? Well here is a few suggestions on how to keep busy and keep happy:

1. Start a new hobby. And by new hobby I mean a passion project which is sewing on your patches post-iron on so they are PERMANENT and FOREVER!!! Make sure the internet knows of your newfound DIY pursuits. Get that internet millennial street cred.

2. Try not to spend thousands of dollars of your savings in a hypomanic shopping spree over the course of a week. Oh, you didn’t follow my advice? It’s ok. I didn’t either!!

3. Seriously, unsubscribe from all of those shopping email lists. Do it. Now. Right now. I’ll wait. Sub for any sort of maladaptive behavior you are currently battling.

4. Correspond with people! Write a goddamn letter, or two, or three! Actually comment on facebook posts, voice your appreciation or confusion or whatever emotion you are feeling. Send it out into the internet! You have the energy to deal with whatever comes back at you.

5. Keep good life hygiene. Which is my phrase for regular exercise, regular sleeping, regular eating, whatever is “regular” for you - keep doing it and avoid temptation to go off-course.

6. Host a party around a ridiculous holiday like National Homemade Soup Day. Rejoice at all the leftover soup you still have and good times you had.

7. Take a nap when you need to. If you are like me, you are probably operating on a huge sleep deficit. 

8. Just more rejoicing in general, on getting non-junk mail, on a tasty sandwich, allow yourself to enjoy life without skepticism thinking it’s all gonna end again.

9. That being said, the world DOES suck a lot right now, use your newfound energy to make a difference where you can.

10. Forgive yourself for spending all that cash, eventually. ❧