Your presence is requested.
Salon is a strategic, emergent* invitation to welcome the future of our dreams as we say goodbye to the world we have known.
Meetings are facilitated by kiah on the 3rd Tuesday of every month. Please contact me directly for details.
The only lasting truth
Is Change.
– Octavia Butler
*thank you, adrienne maree brown, author of Emergent Strategy, for so much more than the book
Sustenance for the journey:
- OnBeing: Hope Portal
- How to Survive the End of the World podcast
- Imagining Our New World/basically a blueprint! with Dean Spade and adrienne maree brown. Other episodes of this podcast are also excellent.
- adrienne maree brown’s instagram: continuously uplifting and empowering
- The People’s Project, curated by Saeed Jones and Maggie Rogers a collection of voices you’ll want nearby
- How to adapt and not fall apart
- An Invitation to Imagining Your Preferred Future Esther Perel asks about our dreams
- Parable of the Sower, by Octavia Butler
Latest News
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Come See Me in the Good Light premiered this past week. We humans can hurt and laugh and laugh and fight and laugh and die and love, all at the same time. And we should.
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Fluorescent Light (Official Music Video) admittedly these musicians are close to my heart, and herein a bonus: the Southwest’s own Evan Benally Atwood made this film featuring Yoshiko Chuma. I recommend letting yourself sink in. Allow these four brilliant creatives to swaddle you in lovely relatability.
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Know Your Rights Training because fuck I.C.E.
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If you haven’t watched Andor, get to it. Or don’t, because Disney doesn’t deserve your money. Strategies in Fandom Organizing Loquacious, optimistic, even inspiring, these writers know exactly what is up. Plus they include a hearty array of helpful links.
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Bummer I couldn’t find a better rendering of the details than this one. The Pagosa Springs (CO) Unitarian Universalists are on the same path as Salon! Not for nothin, this is a truly revolutionary endeavor in a deeply conservative place. Who’s down to attend one of these community gatherings with me???
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Last week I was among some of the most brilliant women I know when the subject of apocalypse preparation was raised—not by me! We discussed how and what to prepare given where we live—some of us coastal and more urban, others with resources further away. The practicality of preparing for a collapse was generally agreed upon. Regrettably I had barely proposed preparing mentally and socially before our group moved on from the subject. I’m sure I missed out on some hot takes.
I can take first aid courses, practice self-defense, even pack my go-bag and have a go-plan. None of that matters if in the face of crisis I am stunned senseless, consumed by grief and fear. It’s fundamentally important, right now, to prepare our psyches for the worst case scenarios. In the manner of the Stoics, we might ask ourselves, “What if the worst occurs?” And in bravely riding this train of thought we might discover, face, and perhaps even prepare for much of what we’re afraid of. Can we begin to imagine our capacity, our capabilities amidst crisis? What might it look like to have a go-strategy on the inside?
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“Building an Opposition to Survive the Trump Era” from Hammer and Hope
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A brief history of Salon
I almost began by writing my history of disillusionment regarding the US government which within years of settling into my personal framework easily encompassed all of society. Obviously this retelling would include the big hitters like my biracial Puerto Rican background that snuck into every relationship, Vieques and Hurricane Maria and Trayvon Martin (who wasn’t boricua but who for me bore a strong resemblance to my brother, who also wandered around solo frequently at the time). Gender and sexuality have been big focuses of my life, so that also came up.
The most important and divisive part of my personal history is the fact that since 9/11 I have taken for granted that my fellow countrymen would come to understand how catastrophically fucked we all are. 24 years later I am finding that even the most like-minded among us have yet to face this truth.
“There’s a New World Coming” Bernice Johnson Reagon
Fear is a big thing lately. 9/11 was a watershed moment for a young punk kiah, and the US presidential election of 2016 affected a lot of people in a similar way. At that time I chose to invite only femme-identifying folks to my house to convene in safety while asking difficult questions. One of my favorite of these meetings hosted a collective deep dive into menopause and what we might expect from our bodies someday. In an utterly incidental highlighting of disparities we found that none of us—all nearing or around 30 years old—had any clue about our own future health. As our once and future dictator’s first reign wore on, the initial iteration of Salon naturally resigned itself to comfort. We spent the last several meetings watching the Queer Eye reboot and crying about loving humanity.
2020 also found more folks turning their head toward apocalypse. What a terrifying word for an already scary world moving toward implosion. What a scary way to define the potential of when the trappings that have always held us back start to collapse. I began then to believe a new world is possible. It took me a while to realize and recognize that folks are clinging to the known. Comrades and community aren’t predetermined side effects of fascist takeover. “Resist” took on a whole new meaning when this particular truth of our circumstances finally settled into my understanding.
Salon in 2025 is about planting seeds toward a future about which we haven’t been allowed to dream. It is a bid for safe harbor, a hopeful cultivation of community in which we might grow toward each other, rooted in the safety and strength of each other. Of course, the irony of needing folks to opt in isn’t lost on me. I will cultivate myself alone toward this goal, if need be, to be ready when others need safe harbor.
Our Lady of Perpetual Astonishment 