Greetings Dear Ones!

There is no unified or coordinated rubbish disposal or pick-up service at the Cotton Mill. Since the tenants produce differing amounts of waste, we are each on our own to subcontract accordingly. Out the back of the building, the long row of varying-sized dumpsters hunched together like linebackers on a defensive end is a mute testament to the variety of needs. When the building manager explains all this to me, I sigh. I will never need a dumpster’s worth of rubbish removal on an annual never mind a monthly basis. I save most of my scraps and it takes a long time to fill a contractor bag with threads and floor sweepings. I resign myself to dragging a single bag to the dump and paying for it whenever I happen to accumulate that much. Strangely, the sight of all those dumpsters in a row makes me feel very much alone and small, sad that so much is getting thrown away.

I think of a dear friend of mine who gathers food from her local grocery store that must be discarded because it is past its sell-by date. She feeds it to her farm animals so as not to waste it. Many times we have dined together on the gleanings that are too good for the chickens and yet deemed unsuitable for other humans. “No food can hurt you if you bless it,” she announces, taking a large, cheerful bite of stale bread, “Our society is too quick to dispose of good stuff.”

Later, some folks stop by my open door and invite me to share one of those dumpsters! Five other tenants, who produce as little trash as I do, have joined together to share a single small dumpster. Like I said, I don’t so much need the trash outlet but I feel incredibly happy to be invited to belong to the group. We stand there chatting, comparing notes about our businesses and what it is like to work and thrive in this wonderful old building. One woman’s grandmother actually worked in the mill, in its day. They tell me which dumpster is ours, how to work the combination lock, and to call on them if I need any help.

“Hallelujah!” I think, no longer feeling so solitary, “I have TRASH friends!”

A day later, to my surprise, a customer wanders in the door with a pair of pants he wants hemmed. “You’re open, right?” he asks.

“Yes, sir, I am—as of Saturday. But I’ve been a little under the weather and behind on things. I have not yet done much advertising. And by much, I really mean any. How did you find out about this place? It’s not exactly easy to find. I don’t even have all my signs up yet.”

“Tell me about it,” he says. “I had to wander through the entire building. But I saw it on FaceBook this morning and I was so excited, I came down right away. I’ve been looking for someone and I heard good things about you.”

“Well, thank you so much!” I say, blushing with confusion, wondering who could be spreading such rumors?

When he leaves, I scan all my local friend’s pages to see if they have been promoting me on their sites. They haven’t. Who then???

The mystery is later solved when one of my trash friends stops by to introduce some more fellow tenants. “Have you been posting about this shop on social media?” I ask. He claps his hands and grins. “We GOT you, little trash buddy!” he says happily. “Word is spreading really quickly. I got over two hundred ‘likes’ and comments from one post.”

His kind words filled me with about 80% joy and 20% panic, if I’m honest. I gaze around the shop. Clearly, I thought I had a few more days to slack off and put things away, perhaps clean a little (and by that, I really mean clean A LOT). But no, appointments are rolling in and the rack already has seven things on it. My trash friends are extremely well-connected in town. I guess it pays to have friends in Low Places!

How lucky am I that, in the space of a short week, my life leads me from pots to dumpsters for deep communal bonds? Last week, at PDB, it was all about being part of a Pot. How funny that both are big things made of metal that hold space for what we need to consume or get rid of.

I did not know there was such a thing as “being a pot” until sweet Nora danced into the kitchen this year and announced, “I just realized YOU’RE the pot! I’m so happy because I’m usually the one who has to be the pot. It’s so relaxing to have someone else be the pot for a change!”

Er???

She laughed at my confusion. “You are not so much the “boss” of this kitchen as the “container” for this energy. You give this thing shape. You hold it all together—we all throw in what we can and somehow you cook it. YOU’RE the Pot.”

“WE cook it,” I insisted, “I don’t want that much credit…” I feel uncomfortable with Credit because its close cousins are excessive Pride and potential Blame—both of which scare the crap out of me! “Seriously,” I said, “aren’t we ALL the pot this time? Can’t we hold hands and make this a really big pot? I don’t feel like being a lone Pot works all that well for me. Besides, I don’t want to be thanked; I’d rather be helped!”

She cocked her head and considered me with bright eyes the color of pilot lights. “Wow,” she said, “perhaps that is the beauty of Community—that we all hold space for each other so that one person doesn’t have to hold all the space for everyone. We can all be the Pot WITH you.” I looked around the circle of women who were listening. They were nodding sagely. Yes. They all knew what it is like individually to “be the pot” in their daily lives—at work, at home, or both—and they know how to contain the ingredients and withstand the heat and pressure so that everyone else may be fed. They knew the dangers of getting burned and of boiling over. They knew what it was like to wake up feeling full of sludge yet deliberately light a fire under themselves so as to keep on cooking.

Yes, it’s one thing to exclaim over the Deliciousness of “Stone Soup” and all the contributions made by our fellow diners, but the truth is that the soup itself needs a vessel and that vessel needs both strength and capacity. “Being a pot” can be unsustainably hard and draining at times, especially when people are constantly dumping on or into you and you are trying to go it alone. And there is no way that “One Pot” can feed a horde of a hundred and thirty people unless it is a capacious pot, large enough to bathe a goat in if needed.

I feel incredibly passionate about the need to create food together as a means of forging communal bonds. Some think “good food” is just sort of a nice thing to have at camp—we’ve all been to those camps where the food is terrible. But other than that, they aren’t much interested. They think such food will magically appear and be satisfying without their personal involvement. They expect others to provide for their wishes. These are the first people to come through the line and say “what’s for supper? Oh, ___x___? Yuck. I hate x.” They think you can purchase wholesale food with the G minor fiddle tunes baked right in. You can’t. It’s true that we can buy all the ingredients—but they taste different out of different pots. When everyone takes part in seasoning, with music or service, the result is different. (As far as I am concerned, anyone who complains about the spices is auditioning for leadership!)

There is a big difference between thanking someone and heart-fully participating in her mission—in much the same way that saying “sorry” is not at all the same as Doing sorry (i.e. changing one’s behavior). Such beliefs create awkward inconveniences for people who want to sit around and let other people do all the heavy lifting. Claiming your place in the tribe means YOU are now Responsible. We are equals, you and I—this camp is not something you attend or “purchase”—it’s something WE co-create musically, socially, spiritually, communally. I don’t think we should ALL work in the kitchen any more than I think we should all play the same instrument—what kind of orchestra would that be? But we can create Harmony through sharing, sensitively, the burdens of hospitality—those corporal acts of Mercy: feeding the hungry, welcoming the lonely, clothing the naked, wiping up that tea-time biscuit table that looks like a storm of locusts just departed.

I have been thinking a lot about what it means to be “a pot”—which is a role that often (but not always) falls to the Feminine characters in a group. They Receive—then they churn; they heat; they mix and brew; they contain and hold safe during the transformation. Ultimately, they Serve. This is a hard and deep Privilege—for a person or a kitchen; for a community; for a town; or for a country.

When I was growing up, I was taught that America is a melting pot. I loved that image. It sounded comforting and yummy, like Good Soup—a real Cream of Yesterday, hobnail boots and all. My great grandparents (as well as my mediocre ones) and all their hopes and dreams and weird, ethnic spices got added to the broth and Uncle Sam and Lady Liberty took turns stirring and adding salt until my relatives dissolved, lost their distinctive flavors, and became part of the nameless, hollow-eyed homogenous mush filling the mills and factories and railways. But their dreams were our Food. Their stories are our Bread.

Today, I’ve been told by modern fifth-graders that we are no longer a melting pot. We are a salad—we get tossed in together but the peppers still stay peppers. We don’t need to lose our individual flavors to become American. In fact, it’s better if we don’t. I like this fresh take on things. I like that our taste buds mature and change as we age and get exposed to delicacies we never heard of in our youth. I love that this Mill building is filled with artists and creators, descendents of former immigrant workers, who are now unconstrained by homogeny for survival.

Even salads still need bowls—bowls outline a Space. Every aspect of being part of a Community requires that we give it Space, whether we are nominally “in charge” or not. I look at my cluttered little shop and wonder—how can I clear Space for a local high school student who wants to come learn tailoring? (My first mentoring job is already happening!) Politically, I look at our Leadership and wonder, how are we going to hold the space we need to HEAR each other? And most importantly, how are we going to keep this great POT we live in from becoming a Dumpster? Who will be our trash buddies who band together and help us look out for one another? How will we find the words, and songs, and deeds, and services to turn to one another and say “You Belong, little Trash Buddy! Your needs are not too small. We Got you!”

Be Well my Darlings! Keep up your Good Work!

Yours aye,

Nancy