Dear Everyone,

As I’m sure y’all can tell from the weather it’s just about time for the latest episode of the infamous Winter Gathering! We are so excited to see you, whoever you are, and we figured we ought to send out a little info about the event seeing as it’s supposedly coming up so soon.

July 1st – 3rd in the Irish Hills of South East Michigan. Gates open Friday at 2pm

Relax your breath
lean into yourself
here’s what I know is true
the sun hasn’t left
the sea still has depth
the rain is still wet
try not to forget we’re not so bereft
so here’s a bell that still rings true
there’s still something left, still something left for you
You’re not wrong things are a mess,
but there’s still something left –M.M.  

We usually gather in winter and brood over all the doom and gloom, but after 15 years of that kind of thing this year we are feeling like taking some time to celebrate the good things that are still left of life here in the later years of civilization. The living, growing, communicating earth. The song of the world. The bright summer sun of friendships old and new.  

This gathering has been built on the foundations of beautiful music, wild nature,  critique of civilization, and anarchistic spirituality, but the rest of the building is a nomad’s tent reconstructed anew each year by whoever happens to arrive and whatever they bring. Part cattail, part birch bark, part buffalo hide, part plastic bag. As we daily work to make a home in this place your presence completes something that can never be finished in time, but can be continued in the eternal present. When a bunch of us get together in person we are both the pretty flowers and the pollinators searching for the nectar of the gods, both the neon lights and the thirsty drunks, the songbirds singing, listening and migrating towards community. Point is we need each other, so don’t be a stranger, even if you are one. Hey, there’s always room for one more!

A summer storm absolves us all, and the tent of this gathering is torn, No longer a small shelter, now we are a complex ecosystem. This year you get to explore the landscape at the peak of growth, and green, and light. Renter the living complications of long term friendships. The thorns and the berries that we have been to each other over the years. Make new friends who show up like long lost local species emerging from the seed bank saying “Surprise!”

And what else are you going to do anyway? Go to Cornerstone Music Festival? Ships sailed. I mean the Winter Gathering aint’ no Audio Feed, but I think you’ll still have a good time, and besides it’s free.

What’s better than a summer night with music and friends to cure us of our pointless cynicism? Driving with the windows rolled down. Who cares how much gas costs? Just get here. All the winter gathering really tries to do is open a space, a road to community so we can exchange news face to face in a beautiful place to a good soundtrack with a few activities that serve as conversation pieces set at our communal table. We’ve never planned for the future, but every year someone says, “Hey, do that again!” So, here we go…

There will be an area to pitch a tent. Bring you’re own everything. There will be classes on everything from how to forage wild food to how to identify butterflies, a talk on ecological restoration, lots of music including theillalogicalspoon, and much more!

Contact Jeremy at 517-435-6079 with questions.

Dear friends and family, Happy Valentine’s Day! Here in Michigan the snow and cold remain for now and I am thankful for it. We all know the spring is so beautiful and everything, but it is also a time when life gets so busy again. I, for one, could use a little more time with the dark and stillness of the winter, dreaming by the woodstove. Actually, we have not been idle this season. As some of you know we’ve spent the time we’ve had working on a Little Spoon River album. We recently finished tracking and are now in the mixing phase and are excited to share with you a short clip from the rough mix in progress. Listen here at https://theillalogicalspoon.bandcamp.com/. We hope to be ready to release the CD this summer. This project is probably the closest we’ll ever get to writing an album of love songs, but be warned they are not all fun and games, yet I don’t think they are cynical either. We still believe in the power of love. And we love you, whoever you are, just the way you are. XOXO, Little Spoon River O, here it comes again! Love is a spring wind swirling around and in-between us and all our lovers and even our enemies. I know they say that love is our true home but underneath this Hunger Moon I’m all alone and eating bones I know that there is still nutrition in the marrow I’ve read Walden a couple of times so, “suck it” Henry David Thoreau Right now I can only hear the cracking of the ice the lake is freezing up again I drain another bottle of wine

“To be a musician is really something. It goes very, very deep. My music is the spiritual expression of what I am — my faith, my knowledge, my being…When you begin to see the possibilities of music, you desire to do something really good for people, to help humanity free itself from its hangups…I want to speak to their souls.”
― John Coltrane

“Music at its best…is the grand archeology into and transfiguration of our guttural cry, the great human effort to grasp in time our deepest passions and yearnings as prisoners of time. Profound music leads us–beyond language–to the dark roots of our scream and the celestial
heights of our silence. ”

― Cornel West, The Cornel West Reader

A note from our friend Mark Van Steenwyk at the Mennonite Worker in Minneapolis: Here are 10 ways to support the struggle for justice in Minneapolis.

1. Add your voice to this list of demands from Reclaim the Block and Black Visions. 2. Support the Minnesota Freedom Fund, a widely respected bail fund for those arrested in protests against oppression. 3. Support George Floyd’s family on GoFundMe.  4. Support the Black Visions Collective, a grassroots organizing group intent on improving the Cities for black communities. 5. Donate funds to Holy Trinity Lutheran Church. They are directing funds as need. When asked to choose a fund, select “Other” and simply type “Justice.” 6. Support the North Star Health Collective, who is providing street medics during this uprising.  7. Support Reclaim the Block, a group focusing on shifting municipal budgets away from the carceral state and towards needed social services. 8. Support MPD 150 a police abolition group working to support the ongoing institutional struggle to defund/abolish the police in Minneapolis and beyond. 10. Give food, supplies, and funding to CTUL, which is collecting (and giving out) food, formula, masks, household/cleaning supplies, and more. For a no-contact dropoff, leave resources at the door. 3715 Chicago Ave Minneapolis.  Besides these things, join your local protests to add your voice to the cries for justice. And pray, sharpen your compassion, and remain vigilant.   Peace and Resistance, Mark Van Steenwyk Director, the Center for Prophetic Imagination

tired of the news? listen to a fresh perspective on the John Zerzan raido show: https://www.johnzerzan.net/radio/