Hi Friends,
Your folks are on a road trip this week. Joe (aka @gunksgrooves aka Mr. Gunks) and I have been together for 13 years, and a lot of that time has been spent driving in circles that loop increasingly northward. When we met we were both living in Woodside, Queens. Joe had a plucky little Jetta that we would jump in on Saturday mornings when we didn’t know what else to do with ourselves and sometimes end up in Vermont or the North Fork. Moving to the Hudson Valley in 2017 satisfied a lot of those urges. And yet.
Last month found us with a new hybrid Ford Maverick, a SOW with Creatures of Place, and the storied Brimfield Antiques Market on the horizon. So we started planning around that, but then - why not go to Vermont on our way up? And swing through New Hampshire because it’s right there? We’re actually staying in Connecticut to go to Brimfield in Massachusetts. When you live in the Hudson Valley, another hour in the car doesn’t seem like much of a diversion. As you well know.
It’s a week of stuff that underlies why I started Makers & Lovers: Supporting small businesses, talking to new folks, shopping second hand, and taking risks to discover new, wonderful, potentially extremely weird shit. And we’ve seen so many alpacas! Including a couple you could feed on your way into the Quechee Antiques Market.
The Hudson Valley is not waiting for me to get back, nor should you. This week there is a shofar dance party at Unicorn, drones bouncing off the walls of a cement mine, and Joe picking a fight with a bourbon label the moment I left the county. Go be somewhere.
NB: I have a free event coming up at the end of the month with Branchwater Farms and Ultimate Thrift Shop in celebration of HV Slow Fashion Week. It’s going to be an open bar of tastings, mini-tinis and old fashioned. Space is very limited so invitations are going out to the wait list first.
Forge Project is opening its Taghkanic site for two small group visits on the 11th, coffee around the dining table first, then a walk through the residences, the gallery and the land. RSVP required and they take a handful of people at a time.
The New Moon Mycology Summit is about 50 registrations short of covering its costs, and it is three days of fungi, 30+ presenters and eco-social justice at Camp Stomping Ground, September 11 to 13. Sliding scale, camping and meals included, nobody turned away.
Hudson Valley Sustainable Fashion Week needs hands for the organic runway: backstage, VIPs, parking, all of it. Sign-up is in @hv_sfw’s bio.
The DEC’s Saratoga Tree Nursery pays for fruit and cones you collect off native trees, which is either a side hustle or an excuse to be in the woods with a bucket.
It’s Time to Take Our Power Back Are you freaking out about your power bill? Are you freaking out about the midterms? Did I just irreparably raise your cortisol? Sorry. But this will actually make you feel better: On Tuesday, Sept 15 Assemblymember Sarahana Shrestha and NYC council member Chi Osse (a very close third in the race for the most charismatic NY elected official on Instagram) will talk at Unicorn Bar on why your utility bill keeps climbing and what a statewide movement to claim the energy sector could look like.
Thursday, September 10