Here a few highlights of 2021, where I…
- Completed my 7th & 8th iterations of Walk Around Philadelphia, which several hundred folk have now participated in.
(WHYY / Inquirer coverage) - Got licensed as a massage therapist, got vaccinated, launched that practice, met & exceeded first year goals.
- Did a whole lot of small scale community tending via events like tiny campfires, online concerts, listening sessions, block parties, french conversation groups, hosting travelers as it felt safe etc etc.
- Was hired by Penn to design and facilitate a retreat based around the walk and it was awesome.
- I’m now getting ready to hire a part-time project manager to help support next iterations of the walk.
- and plenty more…
Read on for a recap of the year’s adventures…
This time last year, I’d just begun wrangling little tiny firepit gatherings in front of my house to create opportunities for neighborly connection amidst the pandemic winter lockdown when safer outdoor opportunities were few and far between…
… and had an opportunity for a winter walk gathering on the city’s edge with Sam, Ann & Adrienne, my beloved fellow perimeter walkers with whom Walk Around Philadelphia was born in 2016.
Looking back at the last year’s snapshots, I find several strange ones…
… of my own feet, as I was feeling quite concerned and anxious about this strange lil spot forming on my big toe.
It doesn’t look like much, but I’ve already found myself standing in a puddle of my own blood on several occasions over the last few years as a result of my mild case of Klippel Trenaunay Syndrome (weird vascular stuff) in my right leg…
… so when I see this, I worry that I’m going to spring another leak and bleed all over the place again, and it triggers larger fears about future mobility and how that might impact my life. Ack!
But, hey, physical vulnerability is an inherent part of being a human being, and I’m pretty fortunate right now…
… and we rang in the new year with a sweet gathering of neighbors by the fire.
While the pandemic obviously resulted in all sorts of restrictions, one highlight was the scheduling freedom of virtual events…
… which allowed me to start 2021 with a really solid concert lineup, the first time I’ve had a whole season planned in advance.
Doing it on zoom was kind of weird, but we managed to replicate some of the sweet intimate energy of the regular series, using breakout rooms in between sets to facilitate some connection between audience members.
Inviting folks to unmute in between songs was a tiny bit chaotic, but also super key in making it more interactive and letting the artists know we were out there – they appreciated it.
You can find a couple of recordings of the shows on my youtube channel…
(Yes, I deleted my @jjtiziou Facebook/Instagram/Twitter a few years ago and haven’t looked back, but do still have youtube…)
Another strange format change was starting up my budding massage therapy practice in my studio at The Cedar Works… this little concrete & computers & open-ceiling space isn’t quite what you’d picture as the traditional “wellness room”, but with a couple fans and filters and very few people using the space, it felt like the safest place to start seeing clients. (Still masked – this is Jan 2021 we’re talking about.)
And so through the dark days of winter, this was regularly the scene in front of my house…
… while I found myself fortunate enough to get a vaccine dose via Philly Fighting Covid, just days before they imploded dramatically…
(Mixed feelings about my new work as a massage therapist qualifying me earlier than many others, but it felt important to keep my housemates safe too…)
I did my best to make some contributions, having the great fortune to be financially stable through a moment that was precarious for many…
(not through my own skill and financial savvy mind you, but through the great privilege of a buffer of wealth inherited when my father‘s life came to a close a few years ago)
Our beloved community hub Studio 34 could still use your help, by the way…
And what’s this?
Why the weird facepaint?
Halloween is still many months away…
It turns out that one of the highlights of my pandemic winter was participating in Social DisDancing, the sweet online dance party community lovingly nurtured by Bear Hebert.
The January 23rd theme was “Geometry” – If you want to get a vibe for this sweet gathering that is still meeting weekly on Wednesdays plus first Saturdays, ignore the stock images on the website, and scroll down for the screen capture from the night when the theme was “Outer Space Architect Giraffes“.
I’ve only taken one turn at playing DJ for the group, but you can check out my “Interdependence” mix…
Another strange sight in 2021 was nearby on Chestnut Street:
The side of a parked car scraped away, the inner workings revealed.
This makes me think of what the pandemic’s revealed about our world in all of its complexity & interconnectedness. All of a sudden we see a little bit more how it works behind the scenes… what kinds of labor are essential for our everyday lifestyles… how our own health and wellness is inexorably linked to the health and wellness of all of our fellow neighbors on this little planet.
The beginning of 2021 brought a snowy winter…
… which looked real cute on our block.
I built that lil’ free library w/ my former housemate Brittanie a few years back and it’s been such a gift to see how beloved it’s become in the neighborhood and how dynamic a life it’s built.
Like many of the other facets of my practice, it’s about creating a container/structure & extending an invitation…
It takes a planning & prep & tending, but once it’s in place, folks just come out of the woodwork to participate and magic unfolds.
The snow also meant that it was time to gear up…
… to prepare for my 6th annual (and 7th total) walk around the city’s perimeter…
… it would be the first time that we did it in real snow!
This particular iteration of the walk through snow and ice was intense and amazing – bookmark the full recap if you’d like.
Our second day took us up and around Chestnut Hill and along the northern zigzag segments of the border to Fox Chase…
While Day 3 took us into even more vast expanses of snow…
… with many a discovery along the way.
The fourth day was our Delaware River adventure from Glen Foerd all the way down to Pier 68…
… while the fifth leg took us all the way to (and around) the airport…
… leaving just a half day journey that included a superfund toxic waste site…
… and a jaunt through Mt. Moriah Cemetery…
… to complete the loop back to 61st & Baltimore.
This crew definitely earned their stylish Walk Around Philadelphia t-shirts.
If you’d like one, they’re available for porch pickup in W. Philadelphia or at for $35 & help support the project’s accessibility initiatives & continued growth. Shipped to you anywhere in the US for an extra $5.
Available in standard Gildan sizes:
Youth Small / Medium / Large
‘Regular’ Small / Medium / Large / XL / XXL
‘Ladies’ Small / Medium / Large / XL / XXL
Venmo @jjtiziou w/ your order & text 267-702-5464 to coordinate pickup.
Of course, all you really need to undertake this adventure is a solid pair of shoes, but I like to think that the little details like shirts, passports, lanyards, maps, narratives and group facilitation enrich the experience.
Want to participate future iterations of this project?
Hop on my email list & make sure updates & invites aren’t getting flagged as spam.
Want to help make it more accessible to others?
Continuing to look back through the year’s snapshots, I notice that I’m always that I’m always trying to feed my neighbors…
… and create spaces for them to gather…
… and as the spring comes, I’m delighted to see these first blossoms on one of the 9 trees that we planted on our block last fall.
Together with my massage school classmates Kimberly & Nell…
… we head out to the park to offer our neighbors some care…
… with a plexi-glass sneeze-guard with hand sanitizer on either side and masks outdoors, this feels pretty darn safe…
and for some isolated neighbors, it was the first touch that they’d received in a year.
For my own wellness & care, I found myself going back to the river…
… and while I’m still worried about all that vascular stuff in my right leg, it’s nice that more than a year has unfolded without another weird bleeding incident.
… although those spots remain & keep reforming on my ankle and do keep freaking me out.
Towards the end of March, it feels like things are feeling safe enough pandemic-wise that I can not only gather near neighbors but resume hosting my little ‘Francais et Fromage’ French conversation group twice a month…
… and even have some beloved former housemates over for a little dinner – it’s a true gift to be able to gather and share meals indoors again (cautiously.)
Over the pandemic I’ve done a lot more tending of house plants, and figuring out their needs.
With water, it’s not just quantity, but frequency and regularity of careful tending, which are things I’ve struggled with in the past and still have much to work on.
Of course with my background as a photographer I already appreciated good light…
… but this appreciation of light makes me uncomfortable, as this sign at a gorgeous church converted to lofts is a sign of a larger phenomenon happening across our city…
… where beautiful historic structures that were designed for gathering in community are being knocked down and/or carved up into smaller privatized spaces…
… and once they’re gone there’ll be no reclaiming them.
I have all sorts of complicated feelings about religious institutions, but feel strongly about the need for community centers / spaces for meetings & gatherings, and it seems so unfortunate to see these spaces lost.
We have an organization in town dedicated to helping preserve these buildings, but they seem focused on historic preservation of physical structures more than the use of the space, and don’t seem to have the resources to get ahead of the developers.
I have a hypothetical side project that involves recruiting folks to visit all the congregations w/ aging buildings across the country, establishing relationships & helping steer towards other outcomes where buildings are converted to nonprofit community centers that might, like the Calvary Center in my neighborhood, be home to multiple congregations and community organizations.
I definitely encourage you to check in w/ any such communities and buildings in your neighborhood. It *is* possible to shape other outcomes… but takes a lot of foresight, planning and resources, which obviously I don’t have on my own.
We particularly need spaces to gather in community in hard times, and these are hard times on many fronts…
… which made me revisit this lovely little book by Alice Walker…
(A few of you might remember that I had one of my How Philly Moves photos included in an exhibit in Washington DC celebrating the release of this book…)
… and send care packages including copies of the book and the HPM greeting cards to some of the new friends that I’ve been dancing with in virtual space.
Speaking of new spaces…
… my porch has occasionally turned into a wellness space for the pandemic…
… and I did get booked to do a chair massage gig to share some appreciation for teachers at a school…
(… and this week a surgeon friend is bringing me in to do something similar for her team. Info on rates here)
… but one of the most rewarding sessions was one we did pro-bono to support Why Not Prosper, an org that serves formerly incarcerated women.
Nell and I also took a stab at complementing our park massage practice with selling some of our wares (she makes some lovely handmade masks) … but no one really wants to buy cards w/ my photographs on them – they’re better as gifts.
With all of the little gatherings that I was instigating, gathering firewood was a recurring theme of the year too, to the point where I invested in a chainsaw…
… which I then found myself biking around town to help friends with small tree projects…
(They say you shouldn’t run with scissors but didn’t say anything about biking with chainsaws…)
… but as the weather warmed up more we were able to start gathering without needing the fire pit…
… and even resuming hosting block parties!
Neighbors gathered on the porch to make lots of origami for a morning treasure hunt for the youngsters…
… and we took all of the rakes and shovels that the city gave me as block captain…
(That’s about the extent of the perks that come with being block captain, which is the highest public office that I aspire to… If you’re interested in organizing in your neighborhood, I’d point you towards the Citizens Planning Institute programs & toolkit and the Civic Engagement Academy‘s courses.)
… and we took to the streets to sweep away leaves and litter…
… and claim public space for play…
… while our big barricade sign both kept the cars out and made it clear to passersby that they were invited.
The city lets you close off most streets up to five times a year. Do it!.
Most of the day is unstructured playtime for the young folk…
… but it’s the evening BBQ component…
… that creates a great opportunity for neighbors to come together…
… and share time with old friends and/or make new ones.
Of course this too takes a lot of work to prep for and wrangle, and by the end of the night…
… my porch is a bit of a mess…
… and then first thing in the morning I try to make sure to take down all of the invite flyers that I’ve put up around the adjacent blocks (all that crumpled yellow paper in the back of my bike baskets there.)
So many neighbors help out in so many ways (bringing food to share, helping set up, inviting friends, including neighbors in conversation, helping tend the grill, contributing cash, helping do dishes & put things away the next day etc…) but at the end I still end up pretty exhausted…
… and try to remember to make some time to relax myself.
Yes, I do sometimes swim in the Schuylkill.
It’s great, but be careful, and check the water quality!
It’s good to have a few moments to recharge, because before you know it, we’re doing it again…
… this time for West Philly Porchfest. So great to get to hear Joy Ike live again!
(You might remember that Joy & her sister Peace played the last live concert that I organized as we were going into lockdown, where what was supposed to be a 3-band indoor concert w/ shared food became a single band porch show w/ sidewalk chalk distancing circles… a recording of that one’s here. )
Combining a block party street closure permit with porchfest seems like a natural fit…
… and we got to have our old porchfest regulars Driftwood Soldier too.
But after all of that wrangling of crowds in the city, it was really great to be able to also travel again for the first time in a long time…
…for a few quick days at a friend’s place in Vermont for some green space…
… and more swimming, this time in a giant reservoir…
… not near this big crazy drain though!
(Check out the satellite view of 42°47’32.8″N 72°54’46.0″W)
There was one more wild sight from this Vermont trip…
… and that was this car on fire by the side of the road.
(Yes, seemed everyone was ok, and if you look closely in the distance on the left there you can see the fire truck on its way…)
Besides this quick adventure to Vermont…
… and many visits to the river…
… and sweet visits from a beloved former housemate’s sweetest pup…
… much of my energy was going to planning for the perimeter-walk themed retreat that I was planning for the SNF Paideia program @ Penn.
(If you click through to that article about the retreat, make sure to check out the sweet little video/slideshow embedded in it which I’d missed the first time around…)
Before we got there, there was another summer block party to host, and one thing I was working on was more advance planning and delegating…
… as it’s so great to gather with neighbors to prepare to feed the neighborhood rather than scrambling last minute trying to do it all on my own (I’ve done this plenty of times…) – in this case then the work becomes recreation & community building in and of itself…
… and makes for an even greater event.
As the summer unfolded, a new challenge arose:
Rather than worrying about staying warm when gathering outdoors…
… we struggled to keep cool for the french conversation groups, but a couple fans helped.
This little narration of my year is in chronological order, which is why as I go through the images I keep on coming back to weird photos of my feet…
… here I was worried because while the one spot on my big toe had faded, it was still there, and there were two more forming (one on the left side, one center on top of the foot.
Again, just tiny weird spots… but if you want to see what this has the potential to become, drop me a line and I can send you the photos of the gruesome blood-spattered wall that looked like a crime scene when I was just trying to climb into bed and instead found myself dealing with a (literally) bloody mess. Fun!
Ok, that’s not really fun… but, well, it sometimes helps to make light of it.
What was fun was being able to repurpose a room in my house once a housemate moved out…
… making this a double duty guest room…
I love hosting travelers and do so whenever I’m able via Couchsurfing and occasionally via AirBnB, as well as to house out of town guests for local arts organizations & social justice oriented orgs like Training For Change.
(I also have complicated feelings about AirBnB and how problematic it can be as an engine of gentrification when it turns residential neighborhood space into hotel space, but I feel ok about using it occasionally in the way it was originally intended, for folks who are actually interested in hospitality and hosting travelers in their own homes, and the revenue helps support community events and other facets of my work.)
… that converts to a massage studio where I can see clients in addition to at Studio 34, Every Body & The Cedar Works.
Another summer highlight was getting to go on a road trip to New Orleans with two sweet friends…
While I’ve been fortunate to be able to travel a lot, most of my cross-country drive time has been for things like documenting the Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ protest tours or the like…
… and this felt like my first real “road trip”.
(Besides east coast zigzags to Vermont and what not, but this felt different with nights spent on the way and hikes and the like…)
Being in New Orleans in late July and seeing Lake Pontchartrain was an impressive enough sight..
… but would then give me a different set of associations when my friends would be forced to evacuate these beautiful lowlands a few weeks later as Hurricane Ida threatened the city.
These lil plastic dinos were our road-trip companions…
one for each of us…
… and the subject of many photographs.
When I see this picture taken of me, there’s unkind voices in my head that can easily fixate both on my right leg / ankle with its unusual and occasionally dysfunctional vasculature, and on my body image issues that revolve around an imbalance between my legs (which I use a lot) and my arms/shoulders (which I don’t and feel really scrawny whenever I see myself in a photo)…
… but this is also a sweet reminder of a delightful trip, of fun and of whimsy, of being in nature and playfully tapping into my photographer background to use a couple rocks and a backpack to jerry-rig a precariously balanced cell phone snapshot of the three of us with the dinos in the foreground.
It’s both of these things, of course, because we’re complicated humans.
A fun road-trip with friends like this is something I wouldn’t have done in the past, and it felt like a real sweet gift after all of the winter lockdown.
But that trip was complicated too, as it also involved some choices that I regret & conflict with other friends in our group, which was challenging, but also an opportunity for learning & growth.
At any rate back in Philly, the summer wrapped up with…
… more time at the river…
… more sharing food…
… and hosting neighbors…
(and also a bunch more work with massage clients, but there’s no photos of that…)
And before you knew it, it was time to dive back into the walk, with two back to back adventures:
For the Paideia retreat, we prepared kits of supplies for each group…
… prepared route segment maps…
… and traced out the perimeter of the city…
… on the floor of the Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral…
… which was a great, vast home base for the retreat…
… and conveniently had ten wall segments already perfectly lit to fit the ten route segments that I’d devised.
With welcome materials & guiding prompts ready…
… students, faculty, .staff & partners arrived and began reviewing the maps…
… many of them connecting in-person for the first time!
With the entire group assembled, we talked through the goals & guidelines of Walk Around Philadelphia, reviewed the city’s border, and divided the group into ten teams that would set out to ten different starting points the next morning with the aim to collectively circumnavigate the entire city in a single day.
Much like with my How Philly Moves project, I’d spent a whole lot of time in advance reviewing the participants’ survey responses in order to structure diverse groups with mixed abilities and match individuals’ logistical needs to appropriate route segments.
Even with all that planning, we had to restructure and merge two groups at the last minute the next morning…
And so I headed out with group 7…
… here we are our Bridesburg starting point getting ready to head down the Delaware River border…
… while in this similarly composed photograph, Penn’s Associate Director for Restorative Practices Pablo was halfway ’round the city with a group heading up Cobbs Creek.
It was hot and sweltery day with some big rain storms and many adventures…
(Check out this post for a more detailed recap of this day… a whole lot of cool stuff happened between those two above photos.)
At any rate, everyone maintained great spirits and made it through…
… for us to reconvene the next morning…
… where each group took turns presenting their experience of the city to each other…
… with annotated maps…
… and narrations of moments of discovery and surprise and beauty…
… and also of obstacles, challenges and detours.
After hearing all of the presentations…
… the group gathered together around the perimeter map outline…
… to discuss some of the greater themes that connected all of these experiences. We had a rich conversation covering everything from ecosystems to infrastructure to accessibility and privilege and questions of citizenship and wellness.
The whole retreat was really great, and I’d recommend this Penn Today article about it – don’t miss the sweet embedded slideshow/video!
As we wrapped up…
… we invited participants to take another moment with the maps in silence…
… and use yellow dot stickers to mark points on the map that they were now curious to explore after having heard their peer’s presentations.
One theme that came up repeatedly…
… was the way in which this unique experience created opportunities for connection with fellow walkers.
Speaking of opportunities for connection, it was time for…
… one more neighborly gathering…
Hot tip for hyper-local community organizing: make flyers. Drop them door to door.
A neighbor recently asked me why I still put fliers up, now that we have a block email list. But continuing to do this still feels key – we’ve always got some new neighbors who’ve moved in and aren’t on the block list yet, and physical reminders are super helpful in our world of easily overwhelming electronic communication…
… and so while we’d saved our next block party permit for later in the fall, we gathered for an evening on the porches and sidewalks.
Part of the reason we weren’t doing a weekend block party in September was because I’d reserved my weekends…
… for the Fall Fringe Festival 10×10 iteration of Walk Around Philadelphia.
This iteration would use the same ten route segments that I’d devised for the Penn retreat (each roughly ~10 miles although some ending up a bit longer) making it a little bit more accessible than the ~20 miles/day segments that we’d walked in the winter.
You can read a little bit more about it in this sweet lil piece by WHYY’s Aaron Moselle (there was also a radio spot, but it’s not archived online…)
While this iteration of the walk was spread out over the entire month duration of the festival to maximize weekend accessibility…
… the first segment took us thought Main St Manayunk in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida’s floods..
… where we saw some signs of wrecked businesses out in the sidewalk as we passed by.
Each group’s size varied – and each day had two start times, so I met and welcomed and oriented the first group and walked with them a while…
… before sending them off on their own…
(… having made sure that each group included a few perimeter veterans like Hannah & Ann in here… yes that’s the same Ann that was one of the original perimeter walkers in 2016, and whose forthcoming anthology “Ways of Walking” will include a version of my essay The Edge when it’s published in 2022″…)
… before heading back to walk with the second group each day.
(This meant adding on a lot of extra miles for me…)
We saw the high-water mark…
… and the devastation on River Road…
… and I could go on and on about these adventures but turns out I already have in this blog post about the first weekend…
(Yes, spreading it out over the month also meant I could fit in river breaks along the way..)
There’s also an extensive writeup about the second weekend, which took us around the far Northeastern edges of the city…
… although that post doesn’t include this sweet shot of me at the start of the 5th segment with a couple of Temple University students whose professor had worked with me to include Walk Around Philadelphia into her “Sustainable Cities” course…
… nor this one of me ministering to a walker’s feet…
(Despite all of my FAQ & guidelines, not all of the students were fully prepared for a long day’s walking and some blisters were formed…)
… nor this one of me at Glen Foerd on the Delaware…
(Again, when I see pictures of myself like this it makes feel like my shoulders are real scrawny and I need to get back to the Philadelphia School of Circus Arts where I’d started to build a bit of upper body strength… all lost during pandemic times…)
The Delaware River segments were great, with small groups…
… and big ones…
… and strange sights…
… and colorful ones.
For a more detailed recap of the third weekend down the Delaware, bookmark this post.
I know that this post right here is already plenty long, but you really might want to check out those other day by day recaps…
… because they include treasures like how one of the groups stumbled upon Philadelphia’s Dead Fleet.
(Instead of trying to keep track all of the links in this post, you can also find many of them in the news section.)
After we’d made it most of the way ’round the city…
… and past the site of last year’s refinery explosion.
This year’s shorter 10×10 route segments brought us right by this spot which has special significance to me…
… where my two biggest projects (Walk Around Philadelphia and How Philly Moves) intersect in physical space.
Of course, you can only see one of the six facades of the 85,000 sq ft mural from this angle… the wide panoramic installation is too big to be able to easily catch in a single snapshot from any vantage point…
For our second-to-last day,
… I invited the groups to rendezvous in the B/C baggage claim…
… where the accompanying How Philly Moves permanent exhibit includes images of all 162 Philadelphians who’d participated up to that point.
This was a useful opportunity to contrast the broad diversity of participants that I was able to recruit for that project with the current participant pool for Walk Around Philadelphia…
… which you might notice is for the most part a pretty white crew. (All of them fantastic!)
This begs the question of what are the barriers to access & participation for this project, which requires not just far more mobility, but a much longer time commitment.
Well there’s the answer: a big barrier is time and money, which is why I’ll be fundraising more in the new year to help provide stipends to participants who need them.
At any rate, we made our way around Hog Island…
… and on our last morning we set out from the Heinz Wildlife Refuge…
(This last weekend included encountering many dead things, and other adventures recounted in the recap post of the final weekend.)
… with the last group being the largest yet…
… and all of a sudden here we were back at 61st & Baltimore, right where we’d started.
The perimeter walk is a circular loop and thus brings you right back where you began… kinda like each year our Earth revolves ’round the sun, or every day spins on its axis… bringing us to a new beginning, a chance to start again, this time informed and enriched by the experiences and lessons from the last time around…
And while I might keep stressing out about this weird vascular situation in my leg and how it might affect my future mobility / ability to keep doing these walks, I’m also so grateful that these feet have already been able to carry me so far… and grateful for so many other opportunities…
… like being able to act as a sous-chef & help provide food to our less fortunate neighbors…
… alongside much needed supplies at The Center Philadelphia…
(Both The Center & Broad Street Ministry are great service opportunities to plug into.)
… and finally, after so long, see my friends from the beloved West Philadelphia Orchestra play together again at the first annual Phonk Festival…
… which also included a sweet performance by my puppeteer studiomates Liz & Ali…
(They’ll be leaving town in August, so I’ll prob be looking for another person to share the space next fall just FYI…
… and a fantastic set by the Somerville, MA – based Second Line Social Aid & Pleasure Society Brass Band, the originators of Boston’s Honk Festival which inspired Philly’s Phonk.
And yes, we still had remaining block party permits…
…to gather together with neighbors…
… and share a little bit of music…
… and meals together…
… and gather by the fire.
And as Halloween rolled ’round…
… my neighbors were again able to roll down the nearby hill in the annual West Philly Dumpster Derby…
… and we were able to welcome Trick-or-Treaters again…
… while Spiral-Q Puppet Theater was again able to bring neighbors together in Clark Park…
… for their annual Peoplehood Parade!
The fall also allowed me to welcome some friends from the same group I’d gathered with in New Orleans and introduce them to Philly…
… which included adventures in the Wissahickon Park…
… and our last block party of the year.
I really do love the opportunity to use these big welcome signs to block the street off to cars…
… and allow for other less frequent (but far more special) uses of the road…
… and while even though this time the weather got rough, rain threatened, and a blast of intense winds started to tear the signs apart…
(… and I’ll have some work to do this winter to repair / reinforce them…)
… we were super lucky & the skies cleared and folks came out of the woodwork to join for a great barbecue, dance party in the street & yet another gathering ’round the fire.
Speaking of super-lucky – I feel super fortunate to have had you join me for this wandering review of the past year. T
hank you!
One last highlight of the year:
reinstalling the panoramic exhibit from my yoga photo project at Studio 34…
… this is becoming an annual winter tradition, and they’ll likely be there through February, but the rest of the year the modular panels are available to reconfigure in other community spaces.
And so here we are approaching the winter solstice and the shortest days of the year.
It’s both a time to lay low, hunker down, rest and recharge… and also one to gather together for warmth and light.
Looking forward to 2022, I’m gearing up for the next February iteration of Walk Around Philadelphia.
(This will be the 7th annual, and 9th total walk) – I’m both excited and daunted that the walk has grown from a little four-person one-off artist residency project to an ongoing thing that has captured the imagination of many and that several hundred have now participated in.
Going forward, I know that I can’t manage this all on my own so I’m both looking for a project manager to work with in supporting the next steps in growth and accessibility initiatives around the walk.
I’m also asking for your support in continuing to develop this work to help me meet a $10k fundraising goal to help hire this needed administrative support.
Financial contributions are obviously a straightforward & simple way to help me continue these efforts, but you can also do so by directing folks to my mailing list or referring them to my massage therapy practice or connecting me to potential partners for the walk.
For now, thank you again for your time and attention; I wish you and all those ’round you well as we step together into the coming year.
Peace.
