Tiny Magic
In memory of our friend Jessica Green
On May 31 of last year, we lost another beloved friend, Jessica Green. She was a weaver, a leader, a mother, a lover, and a revolutionary in every sense of the word. For a long time our grief was too much for us to share. Please consider our long hiatus an extended moment of silence for her.
The words and images in this issue were chosen so that those who knew her may remember her together, and those who did not may know her for a moment.
We have compiled several photo essays offering a glimpse of Jess’ time teaching at Penland, her experiments at the Cabbage School, the Seven Day Society of the Otherworld, and finally one memorial her friends and comrades held for her last summer. Between the images, you can also find remembrances, letters, and essays from her friends and comrades.
"Grief is praise, because it is the natural way love honors what it misses.” -Martine Prechtel
A Letter from M
The idea of another world that is produced through will and passion might seem like fantasy, a space of privilege, divorced from reality, but within it and within Jess’ care, all that was real was welcomed. Practicing this spiritual and affective severing is a crucial ingredient of making ourselves capable of inhabiting revolutionary horizons.
Penland School of Craft
The class was 8 weeks and the first week Jess wouldn’t allow anyone to even touch the looms in order to “create longing.” Instead we did things like “follow the threads of our attention” as we each were assigned to follow and re-spool a single thread through wet fields, across campus and through the brushy woods for hours at a time. Jess’s teaching methods were riddles that lead sometimes to answers and more often to questions.
Photo courtesy of Emma Morehouse
The Cabbage School
In its conception, The Cabbage School has looked to the various disparate but resonating traditions of alternative education, experimental communities, radical politics and philosophy, with the careful hope of walking the narrow line of a dynamic and open institution in an age when institutions have lost our confidence and are collapsing all around us.
The Otherworld
Our time at the farm was spent foraging, bathing, and talking together. And, even though our lives and deaths were embedded in the uncertain present, we were not concerned with who identified with what, with whatever niche ideological pursuit. At night, we made delicious meals and sang together a song that we’d eventually chant at Jess’ memorial a year later.
A Memorial
Thank you for teaching me the song of the earth–through the worlds of the shaker song we sang together in high grass, and on hills, in the twilight of a thousand fireflies. With you, I’ve dwelled in our glacier’s path. First, in distance and yearning, then a mere 45 min drive. Together, we’ve been carried by the seasons, talking with excited anticipation when it seemed like civilization was falling apart, and sharing in the darkness when winter came. You’ve been my confidant and co-conspirator. We’ve shared a form of life, knowing the pleasure and burden of tending to our critters–nurturing the lives we would have to take. With your spark, and magic, you’ve helped me learn gratitude from the beings with whom we share the earth.
Thanks so much to Rinne Allen, Mia Beach, Elizabeth Day, Katherine Finklestein, and Alicia Brown for the beautiful photographs found throughout this issue. We have linked each image to the photographer’s website.