Making Parties, Making Progress, Making Faire, Making Soup!
I feel like I’ve been neglecting my blog… even though it’s quite likely my only readers are Kyle, my Grandma Pat, and my Aunt Ruth. Still I don’t want to keep them in the dark….
About 2 weeks ago (July 17th) was the Big Inch Block Party, and it was an outrageous success! THANK YOU to EVERYONE who came out! Thank you so much to our sponsors: BetaWorks, McClure’s Pickles, Valentine Vodka, and idetroit! Thank you to Cafe D’Mongo’s and the Isaac Agree Downtown Synagogue for hosting! Thank you to the fantastic volunteering skillz of Jennifer Ruud, Nikki Barr, and our Inchtern Nicole Itkin! And thank you so much to our collaborators Rita J. King, Joshua S. Fouts, and Larry Sheradon for traveling so far to be here, having the whole team together for the first time was in itself a fantastic event!
We’ve also had huge progress at the Imagination Station. Last Thursday a team of about 40 young volunteers come out and totally rocked it!
They got the Roosevelt Hotel boarded up and completely gutted the second floor of the house we’re going to rehab at the Imagination Station. Such a volunteer effort is ridiculous exciting to be part of!
The Maker Faire was this weekend too! Jerry, Alan, and I had so much fun. There were a ton of super awesome projects there.
p.s. Yes, this car actually shot Twinkies.
Alan took a mobile version of Lemon Battery out into the faire and was able to document it, which is awesome, and probably the most comprehensive documentation of the event.
The excitement of Maker Faire was exhausting enough, but on top of that Jerry and I had to move Saturday night, and make 2 birthday parties too!
Back to Maker Faire Sunday and then a very, very exhausted Mary and Jerry made their way to Detroit SOUP. Which is a really fantastic event put on monthly by our friend Kate Daughdrill and Jessica Hernandez. SOUP has a $5 admission which pays for your, well, soup. This admission reimburses the cooks and then the rest of the admission gets put towards a micro-grant. A handful of people present different projects that they work on that would benefit from a small grant, all of the SOUP attendees vote for which project they think would get the most out of the grant …. and you know, the most popular project gets the money.
Last night a project to clean up Avery Park in Woodbridge got $300 for materials and supplies. Good luck to them! Detroit has a lot of very committed volunteers and I’m sure the park will look beautiful.
