The 24 Hour Conversation

This will be the third year of our annual 24 hour conversation! I am so glad that this year we are spending our 24 waking hours in Hartford as part of the Bread Cycle Works Project.

The 24 hour conversation was a project we started two years ago as a way to engage people in community building through creative discourse.The first event was held in New York City at chashama art space, the second in Sofia, Bulgaria at the Union of Bulgarian Artists.The conversation will be simulcast on the internet for web based participation at www.24hourconversation.com as well as documented, recorded, transcribed, and printed into an ongoing book of shared authorship.

As a way to learn more about the Hartford Community we are hosting the 24 hour conversation as a community forum. We encourage everyone to come or join us online and share with us your vision of the ideal place or community and how your current place or condition can be improved upon to closer resemble that ideal.

I will leave you with this-

We are all longing to go home to some place we have never been — a place half-remembered and half-envisioned we can only catch glimpses of from time to time. Community. Somewhere, there are people to whom we can speak with passion without having the words catch in our throats. Somewhere a circle of hands will open to receive us, eyes will light up as we enter, voices will celebrate with us whenever we come into our own power. Community means strength that joins our strength to do the work that needs to be done. Arms to hold us when we falter. A circle of healing. A circle of friends. Someplace where we can be free. - STARHAWK

Come join Us

What: 24 Hour Conversation: A Community Forum

Topic:The Ideal Place/ What makes a Community?

Where: The Studio @ Billings Forge Community Works, 561 Broad Street, Hartford, Connecticut or on www.24hourconversation.com

When: May 1, 9:00 am- Sunday May 2, 9:00 am

The Wheat Field Volunteers

You are invited to a Weeding by “The Wheat Field Volunteers”

What are these weeds anyway? How can we use them?

When: Saturday May 1, 11am to 1pm.

Broad Street, between Jefferson and Madison, Frog Hollow, Hartford, CT.

Rain Date: Sunday May 2.

The Kindness and Imagination Development Society (K.I.D.S.) will bring together human volunteers and plant volunteers for a big volunteer party.

We human volunteers will pull plant volunteers (a.k.a. weeds) out of the wheat field, identify the plants using field guides, and use them to make costumes, jewelry, flower bouquets and edible salads for our party.

All are welcome. Come play with us. Volunteers of the world unite!

event contact: Emcee CM, colin@emceecm.com 860-420-8930

Through planting and harvesting a field of wheat in Hartford’s Frog Hollow neighborhood BREAD CYCLE WORKS is interested in engaging people in a communal way in order to affirm our relationship to the land and the physical and metaphoric sustaining qualities of bread. We aim to celebrate a multicultural calendar of rites and community activities associated with planting and harvesting. The breads we bake from the wheat will be shared with the Frog Hollow Community and volunteers and eaten at a fiesta.

Wheat Planting

It has been almost a month since we planted wheat in the community garden in Frog Hollow and I haven't had a chance to share the video's yet. Thanks to everyone that came out to help plant! We had a great time meeting new people and working together to clean up the garden to get it ready for the growing season. We had a beautiful day in Hartford and we worked from 10:00 am-3:00 pm weeding, plowing and planting the wheat.

Alex Hill, a collaborator in the bread cycle works project made an amazing bicycle plow that we used to till the land.

Martenitsa Party

Last night with the help of a dedicated friend and husband we made Martenitsas to share as invitations to our community wheat planting this Saturday. The Bread Cycle Works project celebrates multi-cultural traditions and collaboration. There is no better tradition to celebrate the beginning of spring than the Bulgarian holiday of Baba Marta Day.

Last year while visiting Bulgaria I came across a delightful surprise. While traveling in the Balkan Mountains I started to see tiny red and white hand made bracelets tied to trees. I later learned that this beautiful tradition was to celebrate spring. Starting March 1 friends make and share the bracelets with each other and wear them till the end of March. The red and white symbolizes the wish for good health. Many times you will find martenitsas tied around the first blooming trees of spring.

Community Wheat Planting

You are invited to a Community Wheat Planting and Spring Rites event.

When: Saturday March 27, 10am to 3pm.

Where: Across from 1055 Broad street, Hartford CT.

Rain Date: Sunday March 28.

Please come and help us to celebrate spring by planting wheat that we will harvest and bake into breads. The breads will be shared with the Frog Hollow Community and eaten at a community fiesta. Every helper gets a share of flour and bread at the end of the project.

Through this project we are interested in engaging people in a communal way in order to affirm our relationship to the land and the physical and metaphoric sustaining qualities of bread. We aim to celebrate a multicultural calendar of rites and community activities associated with planting and harvesting.

All are welcome to join the planting and festivities.