HAPPY WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH!!!
March 3, 2019
I am heading north from New York to Boston on an Amtrak
Acela for a gig at UMASS Dartmouth's Center for Women, Gender and Sexuality. This center was founded in 1970 and is
the second oldest collegiate Women’s Center in the country. Cool.
As I sip iced coffee and look out the window at the Long
Island Sound I feel excited for this trip because it is one of my favorite tour
stops - the return visit. Guerrilla Girls On Tour performed at UMASS Dartmouth
back at the beginning of the century (feels so weird to write that).
Feminist/theatreartist/Centerdirector Juli Parker invited us then and now. This
time I head back to the campus sans mask for two reasons. One is to lead a
poster making workshop and the other is to give my new talk, PUSH/PUSHBACK 9 Steps to Make a Differencewith Activism and Art.
After arriving in Boston's Back Bay Station I hope in a
rental car and make the shortish drive to New Bedford, MA - a harbor town with
a whaling museum and ferry boats to Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard. I find fresh
scallops on the menus of most restaurants
nearby and am told this is the heart of scallop fishing on the east
coast.
 |
| Workshop at UMASS Dartmouth |
That night a snow storm hit the east coast and I wake up to
discover that campus is closed on Monday – the date of my workshop. This is why I always put an extra day
into travel on tours that take place in winter. Yep, better to be safe than sorry and I am able to
reschedule my workshop for the next day.
Tuesday will be a marathon – workshop for 2 plus hours
followed by my talk. I really hope my rental car has a snow broom and scraper
in the trunk (it does!) because the snow is wet and heavy. It takes me a few
starts and stops to get my windshield wipers working but I head off to campus
midmorning for the workshop.
Mitch Berube of the Center greets me and we find a perfect
parking spot! “That’s odd,” says Mitch, “because Mercury is in retrograde and
since the snow storm everything is a bit off.” It seems my publisher has sent a
case of the wrong books to UMass Dartmouth and instead of 24 copies of UN/MASKED they received a bunch of books
on food styling! Somehow I’ll make
this work. (UPDATE: my publisher, Skyhorse, is sending UMASS a bunch of free
copies of UN/MASKED. Yeah!)
Workshop was awesome. I am always amazed at the posters
created collaboratively in just two hours time. After a quick break to grab coffee and refuel, I present PUSH/PUSHBACK 9 Steps to Make a Differencewith Activism and Art in the campus library to 100 students, faculty and
locals. They laughed, they cried,
they got the 9 steps. It was swell.
At the end of the day I grab dinner with Juli Parker and JessicaHarris of the Center. We are old feminist friends now. This repeat visit
reminds me that feminism is all about community.
Much love,
Aphra
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