April 2016

As has been the case the last not quite decade or so, Spring has come early to the Ranch. Not to say the weather demons won’t heave more white madness upon us, but the ground has unfrozen and green peeps out of the fresh-raked lawns. That also means it’s Mud Season hereabouts, and we have to be careful as we are in the process of re-terraforming several places around the Shovel which are currently mud-swamps. But the work is a joy after being shut-in during winter, the efforts we put forth now make our little patch of reality an Elysian garden come summer-time.
We know Spring has arrived as two nesting hawks have returned to last season’s nest in our gulch, Mama Moose & two yearlings are munching the fresh grass on the hill, and the first of the wandering home-bums tried to “drop by” today. Gotta put that “No Road Kids” sign back up, we only have time for heroes around here. But slowly winter’s debris is cleared away, and we make room for the coming of the BAFS Summer Poetry Camp.
Aside from all the general ranch work, three cornerstones of the local poetry scene, the Bouldering Poets Monthly Reading Series, the Boulder Poetry Tribe (local newsweb and reviews), and the Beyond Academia Free Skool are combining efforts to become a joint non-profit entity in order to pay teachers and features, support website and recording infrastructure, and perhaps even provide a physical P-TAZ (‘Permanent’-TAZ) for a reference library and publishing options. Needless to say, such an organizational effort is highly taxing given all the readings and classes every month (& other-side-of-the-hedge interfaces like employment), not to mention it’s Ruttin’ Season, folks! BAFS has been running our Monthly Workshops every last Sunday (followed by the Blue Owl Open Mic in Ned) since September, and the caliber of participants as well as course material has been astounding. These Monthly Workshops are a great way to introduce new instructors to the Skool, and we were proud to host Ellie Swensson & Forrest Lotterhos as well as the infamous Max Toast as guest faculty, along with a MeToo! workshop from one of our founders Prof. Jonathan Montgomery.
So what’s coming next? Well, we’ve got three more BAFS Monthly Workshops before Poetry Camp in July, the last of which is rumored to be a weekend intensive on Sacred Desires facilitated by a couple of outstanding folk. As we’re oftimes a bunch of pagan Celts we’ll engage raucous bacchanalia for Beltane at the end of the month. Weekly Big Pasta Dinners on Wednesdays has been rocking almost six years now. Come June we’ll be piratin’ what’s left of the JKS SWP, and we’ll shove(l) the disaffected back up into the hills behind the lilac hedge to offer them Sovereignty, or Death. What else would we be doing? The Hawk watches; there is no compromise.