Hi everyone! I hope that everyone reading this is safe and protected from whatever climactic conditions are currently present where they live. Where I live, we've been in the middle of a massive cold snap that's resulted in snow and freezing rain. The streets are basically sheets of ice, and pretty much everyone who doesn't have the option of working from home is facing the shitty dilemna of either staying home and not getting paid or having to navigate the dangerous streets and sidewalks so that we can get paid. Since my partner and I have been mostly home the past week (school and work essentially being cancelled), we've taken the time to develop our mutual aid projects for this year.

• My partner's currently working on a litter cleanup project. Essentially, we're going around to different places (both in the neighborhood and in the city) cleaning up the environment. Right now he hasn't come up with a name for it, but i'm looking forward to the work we're going to be doing this year with his project. I do hope that in the future it's a little bit less perilous; the last time we went out, my partner was balancing on a slippery plank to try to grab a piece of trash, fell and really messed up his knee. He's recovered now (and by god he got that piece of trash) but hopefully not any more of that in the future.
• My mutual aid project, NW PDX Action Kitchen (should be Direct Action Kitchen but whatever, Action Kitchen sounds snappier), is basically Food Not Bombs but smaller, crappier and not vegetarian. I think that Food Not Bombs is doing amazing work, it just didn't work for my project. Basically, I work as a line cook in a restaurant and they were having us throw out a ton of food because we were going to be closed the next day and the food would "expire". So i grabbed about 2 pounds of turkey, a pound of bacon and a loaf of bread and made and wrapped up a bunch of sandwiches. We gave some out directly to people, but we also left a box full of them in a well-traveled park (labeled)-- it's cold enough outside that they definitely won't go bad-- I'm more worried about them freezing. I think in all we managed to make maybe 20 or 30 sandwiches (with turkey and bacon). In the future i would definitely want to do this IRL as a community thing (rather than leaving a box somewhere) but i would like to have more of a group maybe? Also, i would probably get in major trouble at work if they found out i was (gasp) giving food away to the community rather than just throwing it in the compost bin. I think it's terribly ironic that this "B-Corp" (a bullshit designation btw) cares more about compost than hungry people in the community. IDK, i just can't do nothing. the # for NW PDX AK is 503-388-5277 if anyone wants to drop a text lol
• Obviously less important, but I also started some herb seeds in my windowsill. My partner actually made me a plant shelf out of random wood scraps that we found at a weird campsite and a slab of marble we found on the side of the road and i used to grow a lot of things on it before i got my community garden. It's been a little abandoned for the past 6 months but i really want to get back into it. I want to be producing as much food as possible going forward.
• anyways, i hope all of you stay warm and safe and dry! until next time.