greetings!

happy pride! i’m having a sale in my shop for the month of june, 10% off with the code BRICK at checkout. may was a lot of things— busy, beautiful, stressful, and exciting (to name a few). this newsletter is a lil late because olympia zine fest was may 31st!

zine fest

OZF was lovely, if a bit chaotic and stressful to start. though enforcing masks and coordinating volunteers on top of tabling for 5 hrs is not something i necessarily wish to do again, i’m glad i pulled it off. i couldn’t have done it without alexia, william (and their roommate whose name escapes me), frost, frances and cash, who held down the mask tables at the fest and the pre and post events respectively.

i got to sit between ellen and mara <3 i saw lots of friendly faces and i got to meet someone from freakscene! soooo many people showed up for me. clover ordered extra kn95s at the last minute, kyle helped me load in and out, eli brought me lunch, william came all the way from tacoma to table masks all day, ember delivered me a beautiful bouquet of flowers that lanen picked from their backyard. kelsey gave me a zine fest shirt cuz i forgot to bring a blank to be screen printed, other friends texted me to wish me well or ask how it went. feeling very held and supported lately and it’s really nice. i know some incredibly sweet people.

upcoming

june 22: masks required pride picnic!
1-4 pm at lion’s park. i’m not the organizer for this, just stoked on it!
A low-key, covid conscious, family friendly pride event. Art, picnic games, and hangs. Masks required & provided. Bring your own picnic, and portable seating if you have it.

→ more covid conscious oly events ←

july 20th: seattle zine fest!
free, masks required, all ages. will be held in capitol hill, not sure hrs or location yet.

clean air oly

good news! new clean air kits xl ultra has been funded (mostly thanks to robin tbh <3), which will be the new “medium room” air purifier in the lending library. in may i decided to put the smart air blast mini out to pasture at decay, because it’s too frickin heavy for me. so decay now has more than 100% 5 ACH coverage, and my heaviest lending library purifier will weigh 10lbs instead of 65lbs. win-win. the bad news is, i broke one of the fans while assembling the new guy, so it’ll be a minute til it’s operational lol.

garden report

at the time of writing!

• all my berries are either flowering or forming (strawberries, blueberries, blackcap raspberries, red raspberries, thimbleberries, and our native trailing blackberry volunteer)

• currently blooming: foxglove, dame’s violet, california poppy, calendula, sage, thyme, chives, alliums, sweet william, carnation, snapdragon, yarrow, daisies, comfry, probably other stuff i’m forgetting!

• lavender, poppies, cosmos, nasturtium, asters, dahlias and some (sorta sad) zinnia sprouts in progress.

• veggies planted are potatoes, tomatoes, two types of summer squash, scarlet runner beans

• newly added native plants include deer fern, sword fern, bleeding hearts, red flowering currant, lupine

• we have sage, lemon balm, mint and marjoram out the wazoo!

sitting in the garden is one of my favorite things to do this time of year!

some photos

some songs

i got reallllllly into mj lenderman’s self-titled album in may. specifically i spent a lot of time listening to the last 3 tracks on repeat.

and here’s a completely different vibe! saw these rippers at decay in may. they’re a family band, which is so fucking wholesome. i love diy lifers! i spent a lot of time talking to them and ended up unexpectedly hosting/keyholding their gig. glad they knew how to run their own sound lmao.

this first song off the album of the same title really threw me when i heard the lyrics:

i thought i’d have it all sorted out when i turned 25
but i still feel like i’m falling down here past 35

when i was 25 and brand new to washington, i wrote a poem that i published in wanderer issue 2, which describes listening to snowing (a john galm band that was formative for me) and included the words:

i remember thinking that at 25
i would totally have the hang of being alive (wrong again)

i dunno, i’m just tickled by it! and i’ve been enjoying river of blood.

tiny victories

• i have a mutual crush!!!!!!!!!! they’re uh, pretty much all i wanna think about rn!!

• submitted my finished greeting card designs to my big boy job!

• reopened and have since closed the submission call for posthumous (defunct diy music venues tribute zine) and i’m in the process of doing layout for it

• did some Noticing about my stress levels and delegated my clean air oly lending library duties to devin for june (they’re a life saver!!)

• got a suminagashi tattoo from my bff clover :)

• saw sadurn play a magical backyard gig in my neighborhood

• went to a lil shindig for decay staff where we walked in the woods and had a fire together (and found some HUGE newts!)

• finished my first “I SAID NO” punch card and i guess the treat i’m giving myself is an extra day off (yet to be scheduled)

• i’m not not burned out still, but i’m having a good time in between overwhelm and exhaustion

til next time! hope yr all hangin’ in there <3