Market season is here!

Hey all, going to be another short one this week. The Solidarity Festival was a lot of fun, but I was pushing myself pretty hard to get it done, and my body declared this week an involuntary rest break 😅

Events coming up

Friday, May 8th, 12-1pm - Dance for Democracy at the Weathervane! Bring your signs, visit with your neighbors, and dance the stress right out of your body.
Saturday, May 9th, 9am-2pm - Official opening day for the Montague Artisan Market. Come visit the Montague Commoners shop in Cabin 12, and check out all the other great vendors while you're there.
Monday, May 11th, 6-7pm - Montague School Board meeting at the High School CAT Lab. A group of local parents and community members who are concerned about a creepy church targeting kids at school are going to be meeting in the parking lot at 5:45 so they can all go in together.
Friday, May 15th, 12-1pm - Dance for Democracy at the Weathervane! Bring your signs, visit with your neighbors, and dance the stress right out of your body.
Monday, May 18th, 6:30-7:30pm - Whitehall School Board meeting at the Viking Athletic Center. A group of local parents and community members who are concerned about a creepy church targeting kids at school are going to be meeting in the parking lot at 6:15 so they can all go in together.
Thursday, May 21st, 11am-1pm - Open Studio time at the Nuveen Art Center! Get to know other local artists while you work on whatever you'd like.
Friday, May 22nd, 12-1pm - Dance for Democracy at the Weathervane! Bring your signs, visit with your neighbors, and dance the stress right out of your body.
Friday, May 29th, 12-1pm - Dance for Democracy at the Weathervane! Bring your signs, visit with your neighbors, and dance the stress right out of your body.
Saturday, May 30, 2-4pm - Electronics Recycling Drop off at Montague Farmers Market. It's as easy as loading up your car with your old electronics and dropping them off. Recyclable Items: household batteries, light bulbs, printer cartridges, and MOST household/portable electronics. NO large appliances, air conditioners or CRT monitors/TVs. Montague Commoners will be hosting a tech-take-apart table where we harvest magnets from hard drives.

May Day fun!

Our first annual May Day Solidarity Festival was a bit on the chilly side, but we found ways to keep warm! We split six or seven bundles of kindling, folded dozens of seed packets out of junk mail, and turned a giant pile of sticks into about fifteen gallons of biochar. We had a great time with our friends from Common Ground Community and the White Lake Area Climate Action Council, and we look forward to building on our experiences this year to make next year's festival even better.

New at the market: single-serving tea packets

Those of you who browsed our shop last year might remember Lizz Reid's excellent tea blends. They were one of our most popular items last year, so we're bringing them back this year in a new single-serving format. They're packaged in the seed packets we folded at the market last year, and if you bring back your empty packets we can refill them.

To make a display for them, I used some yard sign scraps (shoutout to Susan Newhof for the Senior Millage signs!) to build a long box with slots for dividers. I'll try to take some video when I'm making the next one, because the technique I figured out for the dividers is kind of cool.

And here's the finished result! It fits the size of the packets perfectly, and the removable dividers make it highly adaptable if our needs change. You'll be able to come see it in person, and browse the tea blends, at the Market this Saturday.

Recommendation Corner

Several recommendations this week! First up:

Dandelion is a 20 minute short film that had Nate and I bawling, but in a good way. It's about a young queer foster kid in the 1970s, and I can't say too much more than that without spoilers. It's a good reminder that no matter how hard society works to push us into the shadows, we will always be there together, and we can help each other survive.

Next: Signal!

Signal is an encrypted messaging app, and it's what Nate and I have been using for all our texting since 2016. It's also what we're using for Montague Commoners guild chats while we work on building a more comprehensive online organizing space. Not only does it provide true end-to-end encryption to prevent big tech from spying on your messages, and allow you to chat from both your phone and your desktop, it includes my #1 favorite feature in a group chat app: the "Mute all notifications for 1 hour" button. If you've been thinking of getting involved with one of the guilds, setting up Signal is a very good place to start.

If you'd like help installing or learning to use Signal, come talk to me or Nate at the protest or the Artisan Market. We'd be happy to show you the ropes.

Free customized sewing patterns

One of my favorite things about setting up our Mastodon server has been finding the amazing DIY/Solarpunk/Makerspace folks who've been increasingly walking away from the corporate internet but have been doing amazing projects out of the spotlight. One I ran across recently is FreeSewing.eu, which lets you plug in your clothing measurements and generate sewing patterns that actually fit your body. They've got quite a range of patterns available, and I'm looking forward to giving the jacket pattern a try if I ever get a couple of weeks free to sew something for myself.

DIY Mosquito Buckets

Another find from Mastodon: this guide to making your own DIY mosquito traps. Nate and I are going to be trying to put some of these together this weekend. I especially like the addition of the white plastic lid to check for larvae. It's easy to lose track of adding fresh mosquito dunks, and they only work against eggs, so once you see swimming larvae it's time to dump the bucket and start over.

This Week's Nails

You made to the end of the newsletter, and that means you get to see this week's nails! The gold is for the increased sunshine and the speckled blue is for the robins nesting everywhere right now 🤣

Get out there and enjoy the spring growth energy this week! If I don't see you around town, I'll see you back here next week.

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