Hey Garden(ers),
As a reminder for our folks outside of the US, the majority of the United States has jumped forward one hour due to Daylight Savings Time. If you are ever unsure about the time difference between where you are and the PT (Los Angeles, California, USA) time zone we list our events in, please check World Time Buddy!
For our Garden Members that are culturally and/or religiously Muslim, J Mase will be hosting a casual Eid al-Fitr gathering on Sunday, March 22nd at 12pm PT! This space is welcome to those who were raised, were and/or are Muslim and would like to have a place to honor the ending of Ramadan. For those who would like to engage in prayer, there will be a space set up for that. RSVP here for a reminder.
As we welcome the Spring Equinox this week, we are also in prep mode for the Summer! For those who would like to support this year's Summer Solstice festival in Garden, we are starting to plan early! Want to vend, volunteer, host a workshop, perform, share your art, DJ or offer any of your community gifts? Check out the volunteer sign up form here!
⏰ Our events are generally listed in PST/PDT. Need help converting to your time zone? We recommend using World Time Buddy!
🌻 Join us, Thursday March 19th at 6pm PT (sharp) on the Eve of the Spring Equinox for a preparation platíca (discussion) and to help us wrap-up Winter as Spring has sprung! Sharing their Indigenous heritage, wisdom and traditions, ze (they/elle/yēhuātl) will help facilitate our collective practice of reflecting upon this past solstice season and blooming together in this powerful time of balance and renewal. RSVP here!
🥬 Want to spend Friday night laughing and cringing? Join Sam every other Friday (starting Friday March 20th at 6pm PT) to watch “Rutherford Falls”, a lighthearted comedy series about the relationships developed between a fictional small town in the NE USA and nearby Minishonka Nation (also fictional), along with the conflicts that arise. It tackles some heavier topics like cultural preservation and Native erasure with laughter, warmth, and shenanigans. RSVP to get a reminder!
🩹 Community Practice: The Pain We Carry. Join us in on Sunday March 22nd in the Observatory at 5pm PT/ 8pm ET for a community practice space inspired by "The Pain We Carry: Healing from Complex PTSD for People of Color" by Natalie Y. Gutiérrez. Instead of our usual study group format, we’ll spend time engaging with grounding and reflection practices from the book. No need to be part of the study group or have read the book to join. Message Deeda for more information. RSVP here.
🏋🏾♂️ Movement Mondays: Need to stretch more? Commit to your physical therapy? Do some resistance training? Whatever your movement needs are, this is a weekly time to do your independent movement work, while also being around others who need to move with intention! Weekly on Mondays at 7:30pm PT w/ J Mase & Chanelle. RSVP here!
📰 Codenames Game Night! Garden Game Time on Friday March 27th at 6pm PT! Hosted by heather, we'll primarily be playing Codenames (and will do a walkthrough if you don't know or remember how to play), though we can play other online games depending on peoples' moods and interests. RSVP here!
👑 Let Us Eat King Cake: A Garden Gras Celebration! Mardi Gras is one of the grandest celebrations on the planet, and you're invited to join the Garden parade! So gear up with your masks and beads for a night of trivia where we’ll be crowning the next Mardi Gras monarch. Later we'll immerse into the New Orleans atmosphere as we stream the first few episodes of Interview with the Vampire, a gothic horror TV show about the vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac set in early 20th-century New Orleans. *Content warnings here.* // Join Groovy & GenDoc as we bring the vibrant spirit of Mardi Gras right to Garden on Tuesday April 7th starting at 4pm PT/7pm ET at the Game Spot. Join anytime, we plan to party all night! Check out recipes and music ideas here!
🎙️ Slam Poetry Feature: Invisible Poets Collective // Join us for an evening of spoken word poetry performances by the Invisible Poets Collective! After months of collaborating to write and memorize new poems, this team of queer, nonbinary, disabled slam poets is ready to take the stage. Showcasing poems about ADHD, top surgery, climate change, Interview with the Vampire, disability justice, and queer joy, the Invisible Poets Collective brings fiery energy to their live performances. Come ready to listen, witness, and cheer on the poets! Hosted by coach and national poetry slam champion Ariana Brown, this event is also a fundraiser for the team to travel to Minneapolis in late April to compete at Midwest Poetry Mash-up poetry slam competition. RSVP for April 12th at 5pm PT!
🫁 Want to increase your lung capacity? Come to Breathing in the Knowledge Nursery! Every weekday at 9am PT. RSVP here!
💃🏾 Co-Twerking is on Tuesdays at 3pm PT with Caroline! RSVP to get notified!
📔 Quiet-ish Reading Club / Connect (QRC) 💜💛📚 meets Tuesdays at 6pm PT! QRC - Garden Edition is where we chill together in mostly quiet company of 45 min reading blocks. Bring your own: book, audiobook, article, magazine, comic book, training manuals, graphic novel, paperwork/forms, poetry, etc. anything you’d like to or need to read. Most of the time will be us practicing sustained silent reading (SSR) in cozy, quiet company together. We will take occasional breaks to chat and socialize - mics optional. Like to be kept up-to-date on QRC meet-ups in Garden? Fill out this interest form. RSVP here
🎥 Name That Movie (Night!) is Wednesday at 5:30pm PT! This week's movie is a 1974 Cuban film that is part fictionalized narrative and part documentary (Spanish audio; subtitled in English) by the first woman in Cuba to direct a feature length movie. Themes revolve around revolution, romance, race and gender in this time when Cuban people are reconciling what it means to be part of building the future. Think you know what it is? Come thru and find out! RSVP via the visit page.
🪷 Stretch it out as Caroline leads us in a weekly afternoon Yoga sesh Fridays at 3pm PT by streaming a yoga video from YouTube and following along. Videos will be between 25-45 minutes long between easy to moderate pace. Drop ins are always welcome! RSVP via the calendar on the visit page.
🍿 Mondays, B will be hosting Black Movie Night, a now weekly movie (and show) night to highlight movies (and shows) made by, for, and about Black people. The media will generally be entertainment focused, but will also include nights where the intention is education. (Black Folks only.) RSVP! Next movie: Blade
🫂 The next session of Chronic Illness and Long Covid Support Group will be Thursday March 26th from 5:30pm-7:30pm PT with Chanelle! Navigating everything that comes with chronic illness can be difficult - from managing symptoms to experiencing grief over missing your pre-illness life. This is a peer support space where we can share our feelings about living with any chronic/long-term illness, including long COVID, during an ongoing pandemic. RSVP here!
✍🏽 Are you an aspiring writer? Come join The Storytellers' Anthology which is every other Saturday at 1pm PT (next session is March 28th), hosted by Louis! This group is created for writers who want feedback and constructive criticism on their unpublished literary works, especially for those looking to publish their piece, but just need an extra pair of eyes and encouragement. All genres are welcomed and encouraged. RSVP to attend here.
🎭 Places, theater nerds! At Do You Hear the Garden Sing? we watch musical theatre movies, pro-shots (and some slime tutorials) every other week. This is a space to nerd-out about musical theater, enjoy some tunes and even share some hateful takes ;) Our next watch will be The Wiz Live! (Pro-shot), a reimagining of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz through an African-American lens. Whisked away from home by a tornado, Dorothy finds herself transported to the magical Land of Oz, where she sets off on a quest to meet the powerful Wizard and find her way back home.Come join the curtain call on Saturday March 28th at 5pm PST! RSVP!
😷 Hang out, chill and play games with Black folks who take COVID precautions at Bonfire in Garden! The next Bonfire will be Saturday March 21st at 5pm PT RSVP here. This month we are watching the series the Comic Shop. (Black folks only.)
🏳️⚧️ At our first Trans Meetup, the group was unanimous in deciding that Trans Meetup will be a monthly occurrence. Every fourth Sunday in Garden, at 2pm PT will be a day that Trans folks have made! The next meetup will be March 22nd! Join us by RSVP'ing here.
☕ Sunday April 5th at 1pm PT, Garden will be hosting its next Social Hour series. Each Social Hour will typically feature a 15-30 min rant// talk// presentation// performance from a Garden member on a subject of their choosing as well as time for folks to meet other members in a casual hang out space with games and activities. Want a place to share your random idea, your new poetic works, to present something special, get feedback or even host at a Garden Social Hour? The format is flexible as needed, and can be a space to practice facilitation skills for those wanting a friendly place to try something new. Want to share your topic at the next, or a future Social Hour? Send us your proposals here! RSVP to attend here.
❤️🩹 Our Pain We Carry Study Group meets in the Kinship Room on the 2nd and 3rd Sundays of each month (with occasional adjustments around holidays). Upcoming dates for the next few months: April: 12, 19; May 17; June 14 Group begins at 2:30pm PST/ 5:30pm EST for reading and discussion. If you prefer to join after reading, we’ll begin practicing the experiential exercises together around 3pm PST/6pm EST. See Deeda for more information & materials. RSVP.
💻 Do you work from home and sometimes feel a little too isolated from others? Come Co-Work with us in Garden! We are a 24/7 drop in space for folks to join to co-work silently, listen to music, play a game or chat amongst each other in the chat box.
🎞️ For those who are close to Los Angeles: Femme Filth Fest, YUQ Studios, and Meadow Highland Park present FUND THE FILTH, a one-night pitch competition and filmmaker networking event celebrating emerging voices in fringe indie film. // Filmmakers get 5 minutes to pitch their short film in front of a live audience and panel of judges at York Manor. The winner, as decided by our panel of judges, will be the inaugural recipient of the Femme Filth Fund, an unrestricted cash grant (minimum $1,000 but may be more) designed to support a filthy short film project in any stage of development or production. Apply by April 13th.
🌍 Presented by the One Institute, Circa Queer Histories Festival is seeking proposals from all over the world. All Circa program proposals must address queer and trans history, or creatively and expansively approach the festival’s criteria. If the proposed program centers contemporary topics, the programmer must include in their presentation the subject's ties to LGBTQ+ history. In other words, we all stand on the shoulders of our ancestors. Who and what led us to where we are today? Apply by March 27th!
📖 The Black Trans Prayer Book, is organizing a Trans Book Fair, where we will be connecting virtually with Trans folks, and our solidarity partners, from all over the US and beyond, while also distributing physical books by Trans Authors to Trans people! If you/your org would like to support this work (attend // fund // be featured // etc), there is a form for that here! We are looking for people and organizations who would like to help us make this happen!
🥐 If for whatever reason, you are in the US and find yourself, or someone you care about, to be food insecure, here are three sites to find food banks where you/they are: Food Finder, FindHelp and Feeding America. If these are not resources you personally need, please share with your folks.
🍉 Centering Palestine has a zoom every Tuesday at 5pm PT, along with other resources to show up for Palestine available here.
😷 World Health Network has a weekly call to organize community members against mask bans every Friday at 12pm PT.
📢 As a follow-up to the Anti-Blackness sessions GenDoc facilitated with us a few months ago, she has graciously provided this Notes on Anti-Blackness write-up which shares some key takeaways about how Anti-Blackness shows up in BIPOC spaces and what non-Black folks can be doing to support dismantling that.
🌻 We are continuing to open Garden up to more community orgs who would like to share space with us here. If you are part of an org that may benefit from office/event space here, please email info@meetatgarden.com
🎉Want to host your birthday, or the birthday of a friend in Garden? Check out our Birthday Guide and email us!
💌 Don't forget, we can design and host non-Garden virtual events too.
Until next our avatars meet,
🪄Al , 🪻J Mase & 🪴Kwaku
PS: Have a one-time-event or a recurring event and need a place to host? Email us at info@meetatgarden.com!
Garden is a free 24/7 space, but it does cost money for us to maintain it on Gather.Town. If you'd like to donate to this work, consider throwing some money in the pot here. To send donations directly through our 501c3 fiscal sponsor, email us!