Category Archives: Learnin’

Somerville Skillshare

19 Wednesday Mar 2014

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Intro to Salsa at Somerville Skillshare 2014

It’s not everyday that one gets the privilege of attending the first of something. Especially an explosively popular and successful first.

Dancing salsa at skillshare

After six or more years participating in and teaching (on occasion) at the punky, funky, and deliciously grass-roots Boston Skillshare, I pretty much became an acolyte of this unique form of community-based learning. If you’ve met me in person, chances are you’ve heard me proselytize about skillshare’s virtues. Chances are even better that I actually dragged you to one.

I’ll just go ahead and state it: skillshare changed my life.

Don't just make art sign

Sketching out my skills

Putting marker to banner

When I caught wind of Somerville’s inaugural attempt at bringing community-based instruction to the DIY-hungry masses, you know I signed up right away. And by “right away,” I mean if a tornado had touched down at that moment, flinging me and my laptop to the sky, I’d have been no less likely to jab the “register” button.

I sure do love me some:

  • Don’t Make Art, Just Make Something!
  • Investing and Stock Market Principles
  • Intro to Digital DJ’ing

I mean, how can anyone resist:

  • Brew Like a Barista (missed it! too full)
  • Felted Orbs (missed it! too full)
  • Intro to Parkour
  • Link Stitch Bookbinding (missed it! at parkour)

See what I’m saying?

make something folk

thanks to everyone tweet

You’re going to come next year, right?

Skillshare door prize

Door prizes rock

(Also, I kind of “won the skillshare.” Thank you, Skillshare organizers!)

Holi Color Festival, Boston

11 Tuesday Mar 2014

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Ask me a week ago, and I wouldn’t be certain exactly what a holi color festival was. The word is less familiar to me than the idea of a celebration where whirls of color are tossed at participants.

Holi colors from the rear

Something to do with India, I’d have guessed . . . a week ago. Something related to celebration. Maybe spring. Maybe love.

Phoebe painted with holi colors

At the unlikely location of a bar across from the famous Fenway Park baseball stadium, I discovered a few more of the (American-edition) specifics: Top 40 pop hits, teenagers representing many different racial and ethnic backgrounds, vendors selling spicy samosa, revelers splattered with vibrant orange, yellow, green, blue, red, purple.

David with colors

David with colors 2

The actual activity of “color application” was another mystery, until it was our turn to go through a door into the bright unknown, which turned out to be a dark garage pumping with club beats, littered with empty bags and a dilapidated golf cart. Backdrop to perhaps 100 people, young and not-so-young, vying for bags of sand (“paid” for with raffle tickets that came with the entrance fee, though some people curiously had more than one ticket), chasing and smearing complete strangers with color.

holi dance party

Action shot of grimy, color-filled garage

So what have I learned about the holi festival? Well, it makes for fantastic photos. Also, there’s something to be said for not doing the research, for just diving in and trying something new without the shield of protective knowledge. Sometimes. :^)

Holi color eyelashes close-up

Holi color eyelashes close-up

Over the River, Through the Woods

30 Monday Dec 2013

Posted by in Green Life, Learnin'

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I’m the kind of person, a city bus pauses in front of me and snaps opens the door, I want to get on. Even if my course for the day is set, and especially if the bus is one I’ve never taken. Where’s that bus headed?

Shipyard Way sign

Around a corner, over the bend, I’m curious to follow the trails other animals (humans included) set. Marked and annotated, paved, tread-bare. Unfortunately, a fall season stuffed with work, personal, and social responsibilities and engagements offered few opportunities to engage in little explorations.

Trees by the Mystic River

This December, I fell sick enough to put a temporary halt to my ordinary dashing about. Days of sleeping and alternating between watching old TV favorites on Youtube and feeling monumentally bored finally gave way to something new.

Mystic River Route sign

We followed the paved Mystic River Route trail along a fast roadway in Medford, discovering, at dusk, an ornate green, metal bridge leading to an old New England-style shopping district, docks on the river, and a delicate amphitheater dedicated to human rights activist and writer Lydia Maria Child.

Over the green bridge

Mystic River at dusk

Over the river poem by Lydia Maria Child

I’d completely misremembered this poem. Thought it was “through the woods” and “grandmother’s house”!

When Goals Come to Life

30 Wednesday Oct 2013

Posted by in Bloggin Noggin, Learnin'

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Summer’s end, as part of the work plan that sets the tone for another year (my ninth) as a community worker, I made a secret goal: be calm.

Public art, Rockport, MA

It’s a new strategy.

Fall in the city of universities is crazy. Probably it’s the constant influx of the youthful energy that keep Boston and environs hopping from September to December. I’m throwing events out the window, there are so many festivals and friend-gatherings and work responsibilities. Years of flat-out running have trained me to expect that, once fall hits, I’ll loose my keys, wallet, time, name.

Public art/bench, Rockport, MA

What I’m trying to tell you, friendly reader, is that while I was able to carve out time to work on my novel, Whole Heart Local has been autumn’s freshest victim. I’ve been amassing blog topics, writing posts in my head on my bike commute, and carting my camera from event to event. I’m keeping half of the bargain of good blog care-taking.

Hoping to catch up with the other half soon . . .

Man with dog, Rockport, Ma

How Not To Be Afraid of Teenagers

30 Friday Aug 2013

Posted by in Community, Learnin'

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Leading the dragon

In a city, it’s not unusual to find oneself in the company of a gaggle of teens. On public transportation, at a sports game, in line at a popular ice cream haunt. Shouting opinions, selling raffles, engaged in chases-around-the-table. Their young voices make my ears stand to attention and I can easily be transported back to my years at that age. I feel a bristling sense of anticipation. To myself I wonder, will these “kids” taunt, ignore, or spy me with narrowed eyes? Am I safe among them?

Stilt-walker young people at Wake Up The Earth

Recent reading has led me to consider how I’ve been trained to be afraid of teenagers. Their sharpness and unpredictability. Their power. Their violence. In fiction and through media, we hoist them as ideals, but sometimes the reality sees us closing our doors, ears, and hearts. People mutter in person and on-paper: the world is going to pot largely because the youth are un or under-prepared (to rescue us.)

Dance line at Wake Up The Earth

Once I was on the MBTA and some loud teens at the end of the Orange Line car did what kids do when unchaperoned. Although I felt that familiar prickle of possible danger, I talked myself into just listening. I reinterpreted the shouting and goofing around to uncover creativity and curiosity. Their observations about one another were frank, smart, and revealing.

Despite having been a teen myself, I’m accustomed to stereotyping and reducing them to “trouble.” These keepers of our stories and traditions who translate technology into culture, who are neither our destroyers nor our saviors.

Dandelions at the skatepark

To be fair to these important people, I realized that I needed to address not only my past fears and failures of being one among them, but also the legacy of oppressions that dictate how I view young people now. I needed to learn how not to be afraid of teenagers.

Three non-exact strategies:

  • Remember: What was it like to be a teen?
  • Review: What have I learned from my family, friends, culture, and nation about being a teen and how to treat people that age?
  • Renew: The cracked lens through which I view and interact with young people . . . repair it! Accept that I won’t always get things “right.” See my failures and successes through with gratitude.

Whole Heart Washington DC

10 Wednesday Jul 2013

Posted by in Bike Life, Learnin'

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This is what I looked like the first time I wandered Washington, DC as a tourist.

PhoebeinDC

With few visits in between, one where I marched in support of women’s reproductive rights, another devoted to the company of friends, I have had little opportunity to explore the city on my lonesome. DC’s charms have remained -for me- long forgotten, under-appreciated, or elusive.

Exhibit in the National Museum of the American Indian

Exhibit in the National Museum of the American Indian

I was fairly sure I didn’t much appreciate the culture of our nation’s capital.

Broken skateboard in DC

Say DC and I’ll free-associate: khaki, suit jackets, ladder climbing, poverty, gentrification, and blindingly white, granite-smooth buildings. Hot hot heat. Free museums.

Statues in American Indian museum

However, a whirl around the city astride a shiny Capital Bikeshare rental spun my opinion.

Obligatory White House photo

Obligatory White House photo

I had arrived in DC a day ahead of the conference I was to attend on behalf of my “place-based” community agency. Figured to take in a few museums, eat some local fare, visit with my partner’s cousin, and maybe locate an outdoor market. I accomplished some of those, but it was the bike ride that finally won me over.

Coasting down Pennsylvania Avenue in the impressive protected cycle track located smack in the middle of the street, I toured the neighborhoods.

Pennsylvania cycle track

Today, you say DC, I free-associate: charmingly colorful row houses with all manor of quirky embellishments, the sky a blush pink and cottony blue, mural of some of the U.S’s most popular brown faces –Bill Cosby and Barack Obama.

Tower against the blue sky

Sunset beginnings

Dramatic sunset, DC

So . . . this is what I looked like on the most recent occurrence of my wandering DC as a tourist. Notice any differences? :^)

Pho in DC 2013

Dispatches from Ladies Rock Camp Boston – April 2013

29 Monday Apr 2013

Posted by in Boston Moments, Community, Learnin'

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Some stories are so good, a person trips over herself trying to tell them. How to begin?

Hilken and Nora kick off Lady's Rock Camp

With my mother and her newly acquired electric keyboard? How she surprised me with an affirmative to my inquiry, asked slightly in jest: hey, Ma, want to do Ladies Rock Camp with me this spring?

With the brief essays we wrote for our applications, mining our memories for favorite musicians and artistic influences (me: Stevie Wonder; mom: Yanni.)

Sly Juice on the keys during dress rehearsal

With my learned love of alternate learning opportunities? Like libraries. Like volunteering. Like skillshare.

With forty-plus women, in support of girls, signed up for a three-day rock and roll bootcamp? With Girls Rock Campaign Boston, bursting on the scene in 2010, educating girls ages eight to seventeen in the ways of music and self-empowerment.

Lady's Rock Camp opening circle

The story, on paper or on screen, holds more than I can give words to. More nerve. More verve. More vulnerabilities. More inspiration. More risk-taking. More generosity. More skill. More dancing. More surprises. More support.

Disco ball

Song writing workshop

Guitars

Dance party - first night

Dance party with DJ Sit N Spin

Band coaches

Screen printing band t-shirts

Maids of Mayhem in band practice

First time on stage

Phoebe on vocals, Tonya on guitar

Getting prepared for band photo shoot

So I’m not going to attempt to tell this tale linear. Here are some impressions. Here are some photos. Here is a challenge for you to sign yourself up (or your daughter, your sister, your mother, your friend), and find out. Tell your own story.

Maids of Mayhem on stage at T.T. the Bears Cambridge

However this thing begins, you can be sure it ends with gratitude.

Oh. And a video. Rocking out to Maids of Mayhem!

LRC Maids of Mayhem 4-2013 from Phoebe Sinclair on Vimeo.

Local Maple, Moosehill

05 Friday Apr 2013

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I was encouraged by the number of people who showed up to Saturday’s sold-out Maple Sugaring Festival at Mass Audubon’s Moose Hill in Sharon, MA. Friends, families, and a few couples like us.

Two tours pass one another

Kids check out the wooden trough

Snow on the group, sap rising, and the sugar house was steaming maple smoke.

Catching sap in metal buckets

Yoke for young folks to carry sap

Yoke and metal pail

Displaying the color of maple syrup

Due to climate change and invasive pests, folks claim these woods are endangered. Spying the maples at Natick Community Farm and Moose Hill has been bittersweet. As a kid, having never seen them, I’d envisioned sugar maples as stately and smooth. I’ve since learned they’re more tall and gnarly, holding in their veins a thin, silent treasure.

Not a sugar maple

Not a sugar maple

Stacked tree trunks

Rarely Without A Book

03 Wednesday Apr 2013

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Throughout my life, I’ve found, no, made time to read. Early mornings, during lunch, staying up late with riveting fiction when I should be getting shut-eye for the next day. Whatever it takes.

I’m rarely without a book, magazine, comic, catalog, flyer, playbill, postcard, print-out from the web, fundraising letter. It’s got words? I have it in my pack, maybe two of ’em!

too much reading material

My partner and I bought these along on a ten-day vacation once. No lie.

My to-read list? It’s scary. The number of years in my life are a poor match for the number of books on my list.

I’ve been using the website Goodreads since 2007. Beginning 2013, I decided to at least get that particular to-read list under control. So I’ve worked to whittle -wicking a few books I’ll likely never touch, re-allocating some to Paperbackswap (if a book shows up in the mail, then I’ll submit to reading it), and requesting a score or two through library request systems.

Goodreads-screenshot

I’ve grown stricter about the length of time books can stay in the queue before being shoved off the edge like one of those coin-push games at the arcade.

Still. So much to read . . .

the haul from brookline library

Library haul