11 Reasons to Attend the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival This Summer

March 21, 2013 by 9 Comments

I’ve written about my attendance at the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival here before. It’s a wild and wonderful adventure I take every August, where I totally unplug from the outside world and set into the hum of a life in the woods, sleeping in a tent (with many fabulous amenities) and creating something truly one of a kind every year with hundreds of other wyms.

Since I love the Festival and the amazing things it’s done for me in the 12 years since I started attending, I have a vested interest in getting as many Fest-curious wyms to attend as possible. Further, I’m part of a group of past, present and future attendees of the Festival who are working, in love and in direct one-on-one communication with other attendees, to change the intention of the Festival (See #9 below) and we need more, fresh wym power to help us continue the work.

If you’ve always thought about coming, now is the time to turn that thought into a plan. Without your support, it can’t continue. In order to turn folks’ maybes into a yes, I’ve compiled a top eleven list of reasons to attend the Festival.

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Re-Entry Nacho Bites

August 23, 2012 by 1 Comment

It took over two hours to prep and then more time to clean-up but I thought it was totally worth it. I usually turn on some kind of inspirational noise (like a talk, sermon or interview) and it’s very meditative.

So, here’s how I cobbled together my Nacho Bites and I am interested to know if folks have better/different/faster dumpling assembly methods than my sort of figure it out on the fly methods. I always love when my favorite bloggers share recipes so here goes.

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New Episode of the Lesbian Tea Basket! Womb Tea at the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival!

August 14, 2012 by 2 Comments

That said, there is something to be said for the perfect environment to enjoy a cup of tea. At Michfest folks are pretty Goddess-oriented and witchy, and the healing center (the “Womb”) is totally tea-core. There’s a tea for most of what ails you and I have been healed several times by a wham-pow tea.

So this summer I was enjoying a cup of lemon, ginger and honey tea served in a cauldron in the Belly Bowl on hour 36 of persistent rain and cold, and I thought I should film an episode of the Lesbian Tea Basket. I didn’t do it, but on Sunday decided to trek over to the Womb to get some tea to soothe my tender heart. I’m a girl who believes in feeling feelings and I was really experiencing them.

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Rebel Cupcake on Thursday! Sarah McLachlan Tribute Show Next Week! Queer Memoir Decades, too!

July 17, 2012 by 1 Comment

On July 23, a Monday night, I am performing a lesbolesque interpretation of Sarah McLachlan’s “Possession.” My act is based on a tie die bandanna I bought at Michfest in 2001 and about Femme identity.

The entire show is a queer performance art tribute to the album Fumbling Toward Ecstacy, with each track on the album represented. It is truly a one of a kind show that should not be missed.

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Everyday Glitter: MichFest Edition

June 25, 2012 by 1 Comment

This year, I focused on letting go of my high expectations for doing things and let the Goddess be my scheduler. It made things really beautiful with a lot of opportunity for quiet Shavasana. The glory of a digital camera and my relentless documentation of my queer life has helped these past few years for me to record precious memories, and 2011 Fest for me was not spectacular or earth shattering. It was better than that, a lot of joy in the everydayness of two weeks in a wym-created wilderness civilization. I barely make any of my photos public but I wanted to share a little of what makes this place so special to me.

EVERYDAY GLITTER THE FIRST: SPA TREATMENTS IN THE WOODS

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Towards a Spiritual Definition of Wymhood: Working Towards Trans Womyn’s Inclusion at the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival

June 14, 2012 by 12 Comments

Why, in a space so inherently Womyn-centric, lovingly built from scratch by Wym hands, where we worship the Feminine divine either explicitly or implicitly, are we dependent on a patriarchal medical definition of sex to define who we bring together to celebrate wymhood and all it can be?

It is an incredible effort physically, mentally, financially and emotionally to attend the Festival. The wyms who are drawn to it are drawn for a reason.

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Music Monday: Lovers!

August 22, 2011 by 4 Comments

You know who will give these feelings in a way that my fellow musical emotional cutters will totally appreciate? Lovers will give it to you in the hurty way–hard and with a tortured look in their eyes. I saw Lovers live for the first time at Michfest a couple of weeks ago and have renewed my love for them from a firey and passionate place in my heart reserved for the most poetic and heart-breaking music.* You know how some music can take you on an emotional journey and relies on the instruments? The way Carolyn Berk sings you can tell she’s feeling every moment.

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Glamping Tips and Fashion in the Woods

July 9, 2011 by 9 Comments

I received another good question in my Tumblr ask box from Fuck Yeah Femmes about how it is that I am able to go camping at Michfest and maintain my fabulousness. (Trust that the original question was far more articulate but Tumblr deleted my ask box contents recently.)

That is a really good question. I’ve actually had people reference me before as an example of someone who doesn’t appear to maintain the rugged exterior of a stereotypical camper but who does enjoy it. Like everything in life, I’ve found camping is exponentially better when I do it with the courage to be myself at all times.

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So Much Loss

June 20, 2011 by 13 Comments

This marks the third person I have known personally to pass away in the last three months, all under 46 years old. I am so shocked at how much loss my communities have experienced and grateful for how much love there is going around.

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Home is Wherever I’m With You

April 3, 2011 by Leave a Comment

But instead of streaming I grabbed a book and put on some Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. And instead of reading I started daydreaming (this is why I am such a slow reader). I was thinking about what home means, especially what it means to me these days.

I had an incredible experience at the Queer and Trans conference I presented and performed at Swarthmore College last weekend. (More on that later.) There was a workshop given by Mia Mingus and Stacy Milbern that has totally reshaped how I think about home. They have a blog about their experience moving together from different locations in the South to their new shared home in Berkeley, CA. They are two queer disabled diasporic Korean women of color and there is an incredible amount of thought and intention behind their home and their shared values. In addition to an incredible primer on dis/ability justice, what it means to create truly accessible space, crossing the boundaries between different kinds of dis/ability, they also showed us in a truly intimate setting–their home–how they are re-imagining how they and the collective “we” support liberation.

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