2:48 pm - Sun, May 13, 2012

The Uncivil Union: Details, Requests, and Directions

We’ve dreamed and planned and written about it from afar, and now that we are back stateside it’s time to start getting down to the details of our upcoming Uncivil Union.  Our hope is for this event to unfold as organically as possible, both in the planning stages and during the week itself, as we spend time on the land, have conversations with all of you and with each other, and figure out how we can put our ideas/ideals into practice.  So it’s possible (who are we kidding, it’s almost certain) that things will evolve and change throughout the planning process.  To save paper we have decided to mail a short invitation and then make all the details available online.  For the next few months we will be using this blog primarily as a central/written source for updates about plans for the event, some more philosophical information about why we are choosing not to call it a wedding, and as a place for sharing pictures after the celebration.  If at any point during the planning process (or ever) you have questions or concerns, or just want to chat, please feel free to send either of us an email, give us a call, write us a letter, or stop by if we’re in the same town.  

Union

Drew and I have lived together for just over a year and a half and have been a couple for a year.  We know that when we are together we push each other to be more well rounded human beings, we have created and nurtured our relationship as a safe space for each of us to feel comfortable in our own skins and to express ourselves fully, we have found comfort and support in each other that fills in when one of us is sorely lacking.  As partners we feel ready to be and do in the world in ways that we didnt always feel when we were alone, and we want to celebrate that discovery in each other and promise to continue on our journey together in light of it. We want to commit to living our lives in loving, equal, and respectful partnership with each other.

One of the things that has been a big part of our lives in the last few years, individually and together, has been a lot of reading and conversation in the veins of primitivism, feminism, and anthropology, with the result that we have been learning rather a lot about the ways that humans have related to each other over the centuries (or at least our best guess based on the records various groups have left).  Not surprisingly, one of the points of intersection between those topics is the ways that marriage and gender relations have evolved throughout the world.  In many societies (including our own European heritage) marriage traditionally functioned as a property transaction between male members of two families where the “goods and services” traded were the body and labor of a woman.  While marriage law in this country no longer legally considers a woman’s body, property, and behavior to be a part of the assets of her father and then her husband, this heritage is still present in the wedding ceremony when the bride’s parents “give her away” and afterward when the couple becomes “Mr. and Mrs. Joe Smith.”  Most of the people we know do not get married or go to weddings thinking the bride is becoming the the groom’s property, public opinion has shifted a lot in the last hundred years and I think people generally think of themselves as marrying for love and partnership, to have a stable relationship in which to raise children, to consolidate assets and facilitate tax forms and hospital visits (and surely lots of people under old marriage laws married for those reasons as well).  For us it makes sense to not only acknowledge that we are both competent adults who are entering partnership from a place of love and freedom (as most of our friends who get married do and have done), but to not use the old language and traditions that imply that my Dad has the right to negotiate a situation in which he gives me to Drew or that Drew has the right to make unilateral decisions for me or our family from here on out. So many people we know, and countless more that we dont, have made similar decisions about the way that they view partnerships and live them out in really beautiful ways, but we as a culture are still stuck in the old symbology.  So by trying to use different language and a different ceremony, we hope to honor our respect for each other and for the struggle/blessing that is long term committed partnership by together and with our community working to create a symbology that better reflects who we are and who we want to be.

Uncivil

We deeply hope that our celebration and our lives together will be uncivil - not in the pejorative sense of being mean to each other, but in the sense of wildness and freedom that is reflected in what we know of life in gather-hunter societies before the coming of property, hierarchy, and states that heralded civilization.  We want to use our lives to continue in the work that so many others have started to regain our collective memory and our consciousness of our bodies and of the earth that sustains us.  So we want to honor that in our celebration as well by having a simple gathering on the land focusing on being present with the people who are gathered in that place, sharing food and ideas and skills, practicing living in cycles with as little waste as possible.

It will also be uncivil because we do not intend to ask the institutions of government or church to give us the magic stamp of approval.  Being impersonal organizations, we do not feel that either institution ought to prescribe the status of our relationship or have the power of approval over it or us.  We do believe that our friends and families as members of our extended community have the personal knowledge and the space to speak into and be a part of our lives.  We have no delusions that on September first our relationship will suddenly be like a fairy tale happily ever after, a sudden and external shift to a perfect way of being in a committed partnership.  Rather we celebrate because we recognize that we are and have been in a committed partnership and we want to acknowledge that in our community.  The transition from being a single person to being half of a long term partnership is an important shift in life stage for those who choose that path in life and though we feel uncomfortable with the traditional ceremony we do feel it is an important moment to mark and to celebrate.  We are asking those who have been important in our lives thus far to accompany us as we celebrate our passage into the next part of our journey so that we can continue to support each other as the future unfolds.  We do not purport to have all the answers or all the words, so we will ask our extended communities to accompany us in the questions and the exploration as well. 

The Place

Our Uncivil Union will be held at the White Rose farm in Monee, IL just outside Chicago.  It is a partly wooded, partly cultivated, partly open piece of land which our friends at the White Rose Catholic Worker care for as it recovers from many years of slavery to the mono-cropped corn industry.  At the time of writing there are no buildings on the land, accommodation is in tents, food is cooked over the campfire, toilets are dry and composting (see our blog from December 2011 on composting toilets for more information).  There are a couple motels in Monee for those who are physically unable to camp.  Our long term vision for our lives is to live in a small community rooted on a piece of land somewhere, working with the earth as closely as possible.  And our vision for this week of particular celebration is to bring together a temporary village made up of the people we have loved and who have loved us up to this point to talk and eat and work together, and we hope that the experience will provide a space for all of us grow in our relationships with each other and with the earth.

The week

The event will be a week long in an effort to create ample time to be with those who have traveled to join us for the occasion, and to create space for deep sharing and experience of the land.  Monday August 27 - Friday August 31 we will be doing some form of common work to contribute to the White Rose’s work there, maybe some weeding, harvesting, or planting in the garden, maybe some natural building for a guest house, surely some cooking, maybe a little of a lot of things depending on the skills and interests of the people present.  We also plan to build a simple loom on which we can work together to weave a blanket, so we will be taking time to work on that throughout the week and weekend.  On Saturday September 1 we will gather at some point in the afternoon for a ceremony in celebration of our partnership, we don’t know exactly what that will look like yet, but we hope that it will be participatory, affirming for the whole gathered community, and fun.  We will not be setting a precise hour for the ceremony in recognition that life with the land is not particularly conducive to the clock, we’ll get started when people and the weather are ready.  If you are coming in for the day, plan to be there by noon if you can and we’ll take it from there.  Sunday will be a day for saying farwells, breaking down camp, and doing our best to clean up any waste we’ve generated during the week.  We hope that the whole week will be low-stress and relaxing for everyone, take time to smell the flowers, wonder at the honey bees, lay in the hammock, have a leisurely conversation, sing around the campfire, learn something new about earth.  Come for any day(s) or the whole week, however it works into your schedule we would love to see you.

The Food

As the time draws nearer we will be making preparations for there to be enough food for everyone throughout the week.  We are planning to prepare all simple vegetarian food and for all the cooked dishes to be nightshade free (Ariel is allergic to the family of plants that includes tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, eggplant, and tomatillos).  We will make every effort for the food to be organic, locally sourced, homemade, and arriving in as little disposable packaging as possible.  If you would like to bring food to share please keep these efforts in mind as you prepare it, and dont feel burdened to bring anything if that does not fit into your budget or travel needs.  Also please keep in mind that there is no electricity and thus no refrigerator on the farm, so make sure that your dish will keep long enough to be consumed.  Some suggestions for items to bring if you feel so inclined: bread, hummus, fresh fruits and veggies from your local farmers market, pies, or nuts. 

What we will bring

We will arrange for enough food and homebrewed beer for the week, shade tents, hammocks, any necessary tools for work projects, water, firewood, extra tents and sleeping bags for those who dont have them or are flying. 

What you can bring/do to help

1. If you have a tent/sleeping bag/camp chairs, bring as many as you are able - if you have too few for your family/traveling group we will do our best to find extras, and if you have too many there will surely be people who can use them.  Let us know if you have extra or need extra so that we can be adequately prepared.

2. A reusable water bottle.

3. Please bring scraps of yarn, thin strips of cloth, or cloth ribbon that we will weave into a blanket throughout the week.  No need to buy anything new for this, that half ball of yarn left over from your last knitting project or a pretty ribbon from a Christmas package will be perfect.  Since this is a community event we would like to create this blanket together with a little piece and a little loving labor from everyone so that we have a visual and physical reminder of our celebration and the love and support of our community wherever we end up. 

4. The clothes and personal items you will need for the duration of your stay.  Keep in mind that there will be a bucket shower for washing up, so you may want to bring a towel, but save yourself the weight and leave the hair drier at home as there will be no place to plug it in. Bring clothes you don’t mind getting a little dirty, no need to worry about fancy clothes for the ceremony just come as you are. 

5. Throughout the event volunteer to help with cooking/cleaning up.

6. If you play music, sing, read/write poetry, have a skill you would like to share, know about wild edible plants, birdwatch, stargaze, have a favorite outdoor game, or anything else you can think of - bring whatever you need and enthusiasm to share your knowledge/joy/talents with the rest of us.

Gifts

First and foremost your gift to us is your presence, at this celebration and in our lives.  If you still feel inspired to give us a gift in addition, we ask that you contribute to:

a) Helping those who will have logistical or financial trouble getting to and enjoying the ceremony. If you have an extra seat in your car, have access to an extra tent, or can throw in $20 to help someone out with gas money for the long drive, it will help us enjoy the presence of as many of our dear friends and relatives as possible.  And, if you are someone who needs help with finances or the logistics of getting there, please let us know and we will do our best to work something out.  Or

b) Volunteer to help set up for, clean up from, help with cooking and work projects during, or bring a dish for the Uncivil Union.  If you are in the Chicago area we can bring you some produce from the farm to include in a dish.  If you write/read/sing/play music or poems or stories, have a skill you would like to share with the group, or make art we would love for you to share that with us.

c) Some of you know that our long term life dream is to live in a community on and with a piece of land, practicing wildness and sustainability.  In order to get to that point we need to save a lot of money as they no longer give away free (stolen) land in this country like they did a few hundred years ago.  Drew’s dream for a way to work and save money in a way that feels right to him is to start a small brewery in Chicago later this year or next.  And as we have just returned from extended traveling we will need to raise (a much smaller amount of) money to cover the start up costs.  Drew would be happy to tell you more about the process of brewing beer or about his business plan for the brewery, and you’ll be able to enjoy several of his homemade beers the week of the Uncivil Union.  The first of those beers is bubbling on the stove right now and will ferment and age over the summer, and I can tell you it smells good so far.

We ask that you please resist the urge to buy us more stuff.  We have too much stuff already and are trying to do everything we can to have this event and our lives be less corporate consumerist and more communal/sustainable/local.

How to get there

From Chicago it is possible to bike the whole way, or to take your bike on the Metra Electric line all the way to the end (University Park) and then bike the last 5 miles to the farm. We can get more details on route if you are interested.

From O’Hare by public transit: Take the blue line into town, at Clark transfer to any other train, at Randolph cross to the Metra station (Randolph and Michigan) and take the Metra Electric line to University Park (end of the line).

From Midway by public transit: Take the orange line to Randolph and follow the same instructions as from O’Hare.

From Chicago by car: 94 East to I-57 South to Exit 335 (Monee/Manhattan).  Take a right (heading west) off the interstate and turn at your first left on to Ridgeland.  Go exactly 1 mile and turn right at Tom’s Auto Repair Shop (which is Bruns Road but is not labeled….it is just past the Pet Cemetery).  Go about 0.5 miles and the farm is on your left just past the Gorman Estates subdivision.  If you hit Harlem Ave, you have gone too far.  Our farm has a grass/gravel driveway with a single line of trees on each side of it.  We have the only open farmland on the left side (south side) of the street.

From the East by car: 80 West to I-57 and then the directions are the same.

If you plan to arrive by train at University Park and do not have a bike, please let us know in advance and someone will pick you up and bring you to the farm. If you are flying let us know what time you plan to arrive as we may be able to arrange for you to share a ride to the farm with someone who is driving from Chicago at a similar time.

RSVP

Please RSVP to one of us by phone or email (phone number is on the invitation, but message through the blog if you dont have it) with the following information:

1. How many people will be traveling with you.

2. How long you plan to stay.

3. How you are planning to arrive, and if you need to be picked up at the train.

4. If you have space in your car for extra people/are looking for a carpool.

5. If you have extra camping gear/need camping gear.

6. If you have any food allergies. (Be aware that there are bee hives on the farm, so if you are allergic to bees please bring whatever you need to be prepared for that)

We know that we are weird and running headlong off the beaten path, and we know that is not a surprise to most of you.  We hope that this celebration, the planning leading up to it, and the thoughts that follow will bring many opportunities for conversation and for us to grow not only in our relationship with each other, but also in our relationships with our family and friends.  And we hope that you will join us in our joyful dance into the wilderness of our lives.

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