Summer Solstice, Global Warming, and a Mini Zine
I've been busy. You've been busy. We're all busy.
It’s been a minute, I know. I have been feverishly busy over at my other side job as I finished the layout on A Postmodern Witch’s Guide to Litha. If you’re not familiar with the Wheel of the Year, Litha is what a lot of neopagans and Wiccans call the Summer Solstice. I try not to do too much cross-promoting, but I think this particular entry in the Postmodern Witch’s Guide series has relevance beyond witchy and witch-adjacent communities. In its pages, Cecily Sailer, Sasha West, and I explore what it means to honor the rhythms of nature when human activity has thrown those rhythms out of whack. Cecily and I both have essays. She reflects on how living in Texas has changed over her lifetime. I provide an introduction to Litha and make an argument for getting to know the plants growing around you. Sasha generously allowed me to reprint two heartbreakingly beautiful poems from her latest collection, How to Abandon Ship. And Cecily and Sasha, together, share an insightful conversation they had about climate change’s impact on art and, you know, just being a person in the world.
Ask an Old Lady
I live in a small city with amazing opportunities activities for kids 12 and under and… not much at all for teens. They can hang out at the library, and they can hang out in the park. Unless they’re spending money, that’s pretty much it. I am, of course grateful for our public library—possibly more grateful than someone who has never lived in a town that voted down a millage to keep the library open. And I love that my city has an abundance of public parks. But neither the library keeps normal library hours, and the parks really are not a salubrious place for teens to be after dark. This is the context in which I recently decided to host a free zine-making workshop for teens.
I taught the youths how to turn a single sheet of paper into a mini zine and set them loose. They wrote. They drew. They collaged. They talked about My Chemical Romance and hair dye. They ate Better Made chips and drank Faygo (Pure Michigan®). They really didn’t need much help from me, so I was able to go to town on my own mini zine, crafted from a treasure trove of old Us Weeklys. What I’m saying is that it was great!
While the youngsters worked and chatted and drank Red Pop, I asked them to help me out on a project I had cooked up that morning: Ask an Old Lady. This involves teens telling me what they would like to know from old ladies and old ladies answering their questions. The teens delivered.
Ask an Old Lady is now a mini zine, and you can download it here. If you print it out and follow the instructions you see here, you will have a mini zine. HUGE CAVEAT: I am spatially illiterate and I guess I made my mini zine in an upside down or inside out fashion relative to all other mini zines? The folds and—crucially—the cut are the same, though, and I trust that you can figure out which pages are the front cover and back cover because I am not doing this thing again.
I hope you enjoy this mini zine for what it is—I think it’s cute—and I encourage you to respond to these questions so that I can craft Ask an Old Lady, Part 2: Answers. Please email me if you feel so inspired. I will also be keeping an eye on Instagram for #askanoldlady and #croningcollective.
The aforementioned Cecily Sailer is offering a Litha gathering of her Creative Coven, and it’s open to all. Learn more and get the Zoom link here.
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