beehive real world

So, it's now week 2 (3?) of tour. After leaving Appalachia Rising, Michaela, Erin and I jumped into little red and hit the road.

You know, just taken good bye photos (the day east coast tour left dc- meaning we won't see each other in a super long time).

From there, we headed to the Yestermorrow Design School, in Warren Vermont. We rolled into town a couple hours before our evening show. It was my first presentation of the True Cost of Coal!

That night, we went out to the Theater/Coffee house/Bar/Open mic/doughnut shop across town.

And we got to sleep in a super cute strawbale cabin a bit up the mountain the school is located next to (they built it!).

Since it's a design school, they have all sorts of really cool building around- such as this really amazing tree house!

And it's handicapped accessible!

Horray for tree houses!! Too bad it was too cold and rainy to sleep in it that night...

Composting toilet... with zipper door!

They even helped us make a new back 'window' for our truck.

Ah, so helpful! They even helped us put it on, in the rain, under a tarp. Yippie!

After Yestermorrow, we rolled into Burlington and did a show in the garage of a collective house there. We weren't there very long and the show was fairly impromptu, but it was great and everyone there was super friendly.


Our next stop was in Troy, NY. We were hosted by the very cool Sanctuary for Independent Media , a old church that has been made into a community center that does lots of diy media work (and other cool stuff)!

On Friday night, we did an evening 'gallery' showing and presentation, and there was a very fun band that played, too! The next morning, we did a three hour workshop, an evening presentation, and helped facilitate a post-movie (showing of 2012) mind mapping exercise. It was busy busy, but lots of fun.

Once we left Troy, we headed to do a show at the Orchard School,. located in Alstead, NH.We stayed with Ann and got to help celebrate her birthday. We had infused vodkas she made (like orange pine and blueberry and other amazing flavors), slept in a yurt, and spent the next morning using a computer at the bakery there, and picking apples from the orchard!

We did a show in the after school program, with about 20-30 kids from ages 4-8 or so (?). It was really cool. We did 'where's waldo' with the coal poster, drew a bug dance party, colored the poster and shared stories about the poster! Super cute, but somehow we didn't take any photos (what!?). That evening we did an 'adult' presentation, which was really great, too- but not nearly as cute.

We did two classroom visits at Emmanuel College in Boston, sharing the True Cost of Coal and trying to get more indepth with Beehive method sharing, too.


And after a few other things in Boston, it was time for HONK!- a festival of activist street marching bands. Yes, it is as cool as it sounds! We had a huge set up and husstled posters ALL day, and then in the evening we packed up and went out to dance to the great music all around! We got a chance to see What Cheer? Brigade. We danced, they played, they danced, we all had fun.

After that, we headed to the after party, where they had amazing food catered there and FREE beer (free GOOD beer, at that!)

We saw many friends at Honk, including Woods!

The next day, was the parade! It was the first year the beehive with in the parade, and even though we were kinda small scale, we had lots of set up to do and folks worked super hard to make a way to carry the banner in the parade.

We could fold and unfold it while we walked- so cool!

Erin got extra dressed up for the parade- go erin, go!

Michaela helped break down the story of the True Cost of Coal once we crashed a space at Octoberfest.

Chattin it up

We love, love LOVE Rude Mechanical Orchestra, so much. We somehow made it to every show they did that weekend and dance the whole time!

And then we went home (being very much so in the way of bostonites trying to get where ever they were going on the sidewalks...)


Nate made out with Thomas...

Erin looked Hawt, super hawt.


Hanging out with Susie and John, at their great home in Sommerville (Boston), before heading out for dinner and the show at the end of HONK! They gave us a home for the whole time we were in Boston, and Susie helped organize HONK! which gave us a great in for things like the parade and after party.

That night, we all had tickets to go see all the bands play 3 song (or so) sets (we had tickets, thanks to Susie!). It was really great because we didn't have much time during the day to see bands so we got to check it out after. So many great bands played... I can't even handle it!

And no matter how sad it may be, good things like HONK! have to come to an end (until next year anyway). But, that's ok because we then headed to Gill, MA where we stayed with Aaron for a night on the farm. Always lovely. In the morning, we headed to do a show in Brattleborro High School, which was AMAZING!

We had two full hours, so we shared a bit about the Beehive, then did some methodology sharing and made mind maps. Then we got to connect the three different mind maps (Education, the War in Iraq, and Homophobia in Schools), which was really cool to see people making all sorts of connections that maybe we didn't see before.

We've been very very busy (as you can see...). So busy this has been the first time I had to update, and today we took our first real morning off. We had coffee, played scrabble, and went for a hike up a mountain that overlooked Brattleborro! So lovely. We also got to see some students from the high school do an art instilation, where folks are making artwork in the sidewalks all across the city! Really cool! And now, we have a show in about 2 hours and are getting ready to have a lovely curry dinner with our hosts! Horray!