I’ve been writing for Social Work prn (that is, pro re nata) for almost three months now, and by god, it’s a great way to spend time. It’s definitely a favorite as gigs go, and they are good people. Here’s my preferred list for the stuff I’ve put together since I started, if you want to bop around and take a look.

My Favorite Single Posts

• Fully-Integrated Social Change
• Better Kids, Better Us, Better Everybody
• Social (Detective) Work, Perseverance, & What Matters

On Homelessness and Social Change

• A Need for Social Change
• Finding the Connection for Social Change
• On Desperation and Locked Doors
• Seeing Clearly: What Help for Whom?

Angel and Michelle’s Story

• Outside Looking In, Part One
• Outside Looking In, Part Two
• Outside Looking In, Part Three

Burning Flipside and Alternative Social Structures

• Alternative Social Values for the Real World
• Civilization and Self Reliance
• Social Systems, Invisibility, and Self-Reliance
• Self-Reliance: Creativity, Ingenuity, Growth
• Remembering to Connect

Sweat Lodge Ceremonies and Social Work

• Assuming Social Connection
• Sweat Lodges and Social Work
• Seeking the Sweat Lodge
• Inside the Sweat Lodge, Self-Work and Spirtuality

If you want to catch posts as I make them, you can see them most Tuesdays and Thursdays at Social Work prn’s blog, The Social NetWorker. Rob Plotkin posts there regularly, and we’ve had a smattering of other guest bloggers in the last few weeks (including our friendly neighborhood Freak Revolutionaries and the ever-awesome Bob Poole). If you’re interested at all in social work (or being mindful of the world around you!) it’s a good read. Here’s the RSS feed.

Have a super-great weekend, folks!

If you’re wondering how the hexayurt held up at Burning Flipside this year, whoa, man, that thing is nicely designed. While everyone else was shrieking and scrambling to hold their tents down as Ginormous Torrent of Rainstorm plowed through Flat Creek Ranch, Marty and I and a friend of ours were holed up in the yurt, sittin’ pretty, eating snacks and chatting over the clamor. (Heavy rain makes the inside of a hexayurt just about reverberate.)

With all the wind and crazy, the hexayurt did not budge. There was clearly no danger of it falling over, or even becoming less structurally sound somehow. There were two or three tiny drips coming through the taped edges—where we’d half-assed our construction, no doubt—but Marty added more tape and we had no problems with water. That is, until the storm was over and we started tracking in mud. Yeek. Oops.

Here are some pictures from the outside, if you want to see what we put together! (The noise is one of the generators nearby.)

And backtracking a bit—because the countryside was simply beautiful on the drive there, I stopped to take a clip of some of it. Texas hills are truly fantastic.

May feels to me, strangely, like the turning of the year—as if its pivot is not New Year’s Day, but a certain week in late spring when we all go running around in the wilderness like heathens. I’m sure that if I attended Burning Man, that would feel like the pivot. But because Burning Flipside is my thing, instead, it’s the pivot. There is a clicking and snapping in my brain that says it’s time to turn things over. Geeze, it’s only my second year. I’m still a n00b, man.

But this year I’m gonna live in a yurt.

That’s gotta count for something.

The last week or so has been a huge blur. There’s a limit to how much one person can get done in a certain amount of time, but I’ve been pushing it. Today’s list is the biggest, because early tomorrow morning we’re packing up the car and wandering out into Texas Hill Country. To that end, this is really a scheduling post, so that you all know where in the hell I am while I’m not answering your emails or picking up my phone.

From May 21-25, I will be in the middle of nowhere—really!—braving the hot sun and dust and desert creatures in Flat Creek with nothing to protect me but some insulation panels and, uh, TAPE. It will be wild. There are no computers in the wilderness. As such, I will (obviously) not be answering email during that time. I am also 99% certain that I will not have any kind of mobile reception, so although you’re welcome to leave me voicemail, please do not expect responses while I’m gone (swift or otherwise).

From May 26-27, I will be back in town and on a super tight deadline. We’ll be getting Marty ready for A-Kon in Dallas, and making sure nothing slipped past our radar while we were camping. It will be fairly difficult to get a hold of me, but possible. I would beg you to only send me emergency items during this couple of days, because time will be very short.

From May 28-31, Marty and I will be in Dallas at A-Kon. I will be working, but internet connectivity may be spotty or non-existent, depending on whether the hotel’s wireless works and possibly on whether I can find an alternate ‘net location without compromising my ability to help Marty run his table. It’s best if you don’t depend on me for anything desperate while we’re in Dallas.

June 1st I will return to my apartment and pass out for three days underneath the floorboards, eating small insects and rodentia and rebuilding my strength for the day when I may rise again to once more wreak my unholy havoc upon the world.

Oh, wait. That was Marty’s copy. Uh. I’ll be around the first week of June. I’ll be tired, but I’ll be here. ;}

I’d say the next four hours are the best time for you to contact me if you have something absolutely urgent that must be dealt with before I head out of town—so get on that, it’s probably your last chance for a couple of weeks. Otherwise, I’ll be back in the saddle (or toppling, exhausted, out of it?) the first week of June, and we’ll catch everything up then. (In fact, by then, a normal work week will feel like a blessing from Heaven. Looking forward to that!)

If you are just dying for more posts and you can’t stand to be without something Megan M. for a whole! week! you can feel free to check out The Social NetWorker blog at Social Work prn—my posts there will keep going up Tuesdays and Thursdays as usual. Magic! As for my Personal Revelations, I’m sure I’ll have a great store of them when I return from the hills.

Just hang on a week or two, while I turn my brain over. ;}

The last few days, I’ve been daydreaming about something called Raw Camp.

You see, I went on an awesome weekend trip with a bunch of neat poly people last spring. And one of the friends who was there with me happened to be embarking on a 100% raw foods diet. So I said to her, “Hey! I’d like to eat strictly fresh produce while I’m camping this weekend. Would you tell me what to bring so that I can add to your raw foods stash, and you can help me eat raw all weekend, too?”

She said, Of course! And gave me a list. Thus began my great raw adventure.

I found out that weekend that preparation and consumption of raw food is easy and tasty, and that my friend is great at it. Because we were out camping, I didn’t have a lot of spare time to think about craving non-raw food, and I discovered that eating raw left me feeling light and energetic and fantastic. It was occasionally frustrating to figure out what the next meal was going to be, but we had a huge stash (and we came prepared). So it was pretty simple, and I was shocked at how fed and happy I stayed all weekend.

By the end of the weekend, I realized that I had eaten entirely raw the whole time… and I didn’t want any cooked food. Now or ever.

It was the most amazing feeling! Of course, I didn’t take it seriously enough for long enough and I didn’t really know enough about raw eating to continue with it then, but it proved to me that there was something really important that I needed to think about further. Something to aspire to. Something that made me feel really, really good, made my body function way better than usual, and made me happy on a fundamental level. I’ve had several raw experiments since then, and every time one ends I am dissatisfied with the way my body feels on cooked food. It’s just… less, somehow.

Fast forward to last summer, when I attended my very first burn event, Burning Flipside near Austin. (The Wikipedia entry is here. It’s a smaller offshoot of Burning Man in Nevada, which you may have heard of.) At Flipside there are groups of attendees who band together in theme camps, and every camp has a different mojo. Usually a camp has a particular personality and something specific to offer the rest of the community. There’s a camp that gives coffee to passers-by, a pancake camp, a taco camp, a polyamory camp, a body-painting camp, a Lakota camp—which held an amazing sweat lodge last year—and a huge number of others. We found a hill of big black ants where someone had planted a tiny sign. It said “Ant Camp”.

You might have figured out where this is heading. I’ve been wishing for a raw foods camp. Raw Camp. Doesn’t that sound awesome?

I don’t know of one that exists already (relative newbie as I am), and I don’t think I know enough interested parties to start one (at least, this year). I did eat mostly raw when I was at Flipside last year (highly necessary, especially since I was partly polyphasic at the time), but having others doing the same thing with me would be way more fun. Sharing the experience would really be something. And since my raw foods roots are in being away in the wilderness with only raw food to sustain me, and since I remember how wonderful that is… I crave it bigger and better, with more people and resources. Flipside would sure be a great place to try it. (And who knows? Maybe it will give me some extra impetus to just… keep going!)

It would also give me a huge thrill to share raw food yummies the way they were shared with me in the spring. And I admit that it gives me no small amount of glee to think of transitioning to raw food permanently. (Something I’m thinking about a lot.)

Here’s what I’m imagining: We all bring a certain amount of fresh produce. We get together the day or two before Flipside to put together some raw recipes, using food processors and dehydrators and whathaveyou. We package it all up, with a ton of easy fruit and salad fixin’s and useful items like knives and bowls and cutting boards, and pack it into coolers with plenty of room for ice. (We’ll need a lot of that!) We’d probably want some kind of wagon and ice-getting posse so that there’s no danger of running out. It was hot last year. And it would be awesome to have a plan so that many of us can prep and eat meals together. Raw potluck, maybe. And people not from Raw Camp can come join us, and eat our food! Just because it’s fun and yummy and happy-making!

So, you see: I have it half planned out. I just don’t know the integral details of starting a theme camp (without additional willing parties, even). But that’s okay. I liked Flipside, so I ought to have plenty of opportunities. It just sounds… delicious!

Me: I have to download the Doctor Who theme now. So I can masturbate to it.
Marty: The awesome thing about you is you’re not kidding.
Me: I’m NOT kidding.
Marty: I know. That’s why you’re so awesome.

[Edit: Burning Flipside had singing Tesla coils that performed, among other things, the Doctor Who theme. There are vids of the Tesla coils (skip to 0:36) but none that I can find of the Doctor Who theme, which just blew me off my feet. Anyone who supplies such a video will be my Best Friend Forever.]