The first drink I ever legally bought myself was a $7 airplane beer on the flight to Burning Man 2008. It was my first time. The theme was The American Dream, and as far as I could tell, this was it. Happy 21st birthday to me.

Diesel, my lover and associate, was in the seat beside me. She had more than something to do with getting me into this. We shared a blood brother, Harry; he and I played in a band together, and he was coming, too. There was also Val, AKA Human, another friend of theirs, whom I was just getting to know. But Vivid was the one who brought this all together. To the extent that going to Burning Man was any one person’s idea, it was his.

PHOTO: Jon Mitchell

Vivid hailed from Mendo, and he was in with the Phat Cat Lounge, a wild younger-brother camp to the Skinny Kitty Teahouse, which appeared to be a venerable outfit. He had the plan. Diesel and I would fly out to Oakland from Boston, where he, Val, and Harry would pick us up, and we’d strap our bags to the roof of his Subaru and take a midnight drive into the hills. The next day, we would buy supplies and try not to forget anything. Then, the day after, we’d go to Burning Man.

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The spirit of generosity is in the air. Checkout lines are miles long, stockings are hung by the chimney with care, and our hearts (and our wallets) are open. While the world’s attention is so highly focused on gifting during this holiday season, Burners across the world are creating ways for their friends, family, and fellow Burners to gift back.

A Vegas Volunteer at the Hot Dog Stand Smiles Photo Courtesy of BamBam

This weekend, Andie Grace, our Communications Manager, and her husband Tom Price held a Christmas party at their home in San Francisco. Rather than having guests bring the obligatory bottles of wine and holiday trinkets, Andie and Tom turned their gathering into a diaper drive. Their party invite read, “All we want for Christmas is to fill the bathtub with diapers to donate. Please bring a package of disposable baby diapers of any size to help Bay Area babies in need via Help a Mother Out.” When I arrived with my baby wipes in tow, the tub was already half-full. Andie happily reports that she and Tom collected four big bags full of diapers to give to Help a Mother Out.

As I talked with Burners across the country this week, I found other examples of friends coming together during this hectic month to make a meaningful contribution to their local community.

Feeding the Homeless and Hungry in Las Vegas

On Sunday, December 19, 2010, a group of twenty-five Burners, their children, and friends served over 450 meals to the homeless and hungry of North Las Vegas.

Last year, on Christmas Eve of 2009, BamBam, a ten-year Burning Man veteran and owner of the mobile hot dog stand he calls “Hot Diggity Dog,” enlisted the support of his partner Pebbles and a few other friends and took his stand down to the corner of Las Vegas Blvd and Owens in North Las Vegas. That evening, the crew served over 250 meals of jumbo hot dogs, chips and sodas to the homeless and hungry. BamBam set up a canopy and a big sign that read “HOT DOGS” and watched lines form around the stand. Read more »

Every year since 2003, Burning Man has used proceeds from ice sales at the event to make year-end donations to various charitable, art and service organizations in Northern Nevada and the San Francisco Bay Area. For 2010, we worked to increase the total dollar amount of our donations, committing a total of $159,850 for the year. On the heels of the recent news about the closure of the US Gypsum plant in Empire,  we gave special consideration to those charities that benefit the people and communities of Northern Nevada.

Below is a list of charitable donation recipients for 2010:

It is once again that most merry time of year when there is a sudden chill in the air and we are rushing around, planning, contriving, concocting, conspiring and otherwise devising our grand plans. We are making lists and checking them twice all for one reason and one reason only; that being that the day has come for us to download and begin filling out the Burning Man Art Grant Form. Yes, after waiting all year, it’s finally time to apply for a Grant!

First off, to get there, go to the Submit Grant page and read about how to Submit your Grant proposal. Then download the ZIP file at the bottom of that page at the Art Grant PDF Form Instructions and Submission Form ZIP link. There is also an updated Technical FAQ that should answer any questions you might have about filling out the form.

Minaret by Bryan Tedrick - photo by Anthony Peterson

Everything you need should be on those pages, but the short of this is that the Burning Man organization gives away a lot of money from ticket sales every year to artists to help them build and get their art out to Black Rock City. There are grants for large or small projects so don’t be shy about the size of your idea. The Art Grants from Burning Man are unique in that they require nothing but that the project is on display in Black Rock City, from the very start of the event and that documentation like video and photographs are shared with Burning Man and the community so you can take your rightful place in the pantheon of Art Installations that have graced the playa.

I’m also told that on January 13th there will be an Art Grant Writing workshop in a yet to be determined location where you can work on your Grant form from 5:30 – 7:00pm then afterward the Art Lounge will be a celebration of Artists. It’ll be a great place to get pointers on putting together your Grant form and as always it will be a good time.

These Art Grants are meant to serve as seed money for a project and one common misconception is that Burning Man fully funds projects. If you’ve been around in the summer as projects are getting closer to coming into fruition on the playa, you know that just about every group that has grown up around an Art project is throwing fundraisers or setting up accounts for donations so they can get over that last final push to finish it and get it out there.

Why is that? Well there are two things the Grant process hopes to encourage. Those are Collaboration and Interactivity.

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‘Tis the holiday season, and dirt-rave-goers know that Buy Nothing Christmas is the best way to spend the winter solstice — giving mutual gifts of togetherness, experience, action, pay-it-forward-ism, and all that other fuzzy stuff which lasts forever and won’t be tossed aside and end up in a landfill.

Burners Without Borders is throwing its support behind the Coastal Heritage Society of Louisiana. If you have been following the Oilpocalypse story at all, you’ll know that Kindra Arnesen is one of the most furious angels in this whole dealio, blowing lids off coverups and using every available microphone and rally to alert the American people that this thing is so far from over, it may not have even begun. Her own health issues are well-documented in the media too; the breaking news, however, is that her brother is in the hospital — after trying to tough out the Gulf Blue Plague like self-sufficient Cajuns are wont to do, he submitted to the need for IV fluids and critical care. Doctors on the Gulf Coast, see, they don’t want to treat patients who utter the words “oil spill” or “BP.” They don’t want to spend the rest of their lives testifying in court, lose their jobs, and/or end up getting Matt Simmonsed. Anyway.

watch Kindra’s first public speech (and she hasn’t slowed down):
watch?v=jkYJDI8pK9Y

Kindra and her homegirls in Plaquemines Parish got together the Coastal Heritage Society of Louisiana as a way to alleviate the pressure caused by the Oilpocalyse. Their ancestral homeland, crops, income stream, and way of life have been destroyed, their health is seriously compromised, and these women dropped everything and transformed their living rooms into clearinghouses in order to facilitate the needs of their threatened community. They need medicine — natural healers and clinical herbalists out there? it’s time to rally — and they also need food (gift cards are lighter to mail than cans o’ beans) and toys for the kids this holiday season. It’s not really that big of a deal to organize some sort of effort in this direction, is it? Or maybe calling up the churches or Rotary Clubs in your area to see if they’d like to help? … We leave it up to you. Burners Without Borders IS you.

mayday. m'aidez

In this age of being careful not to toot one’s own horn, I still think maybe I should point out this writer (Summer Burkes) will be on the radio this Thursday Dec. 16 at 2pm. I’m not a scientist, a geologist, an oil-industry executive, or even a longtime New Orleans resident. I’m just an art freak who was there, trying to help, settling into my new Ninth Ward paradise and rolling with Matter of Trust on behalf of the Lower Ninth Ward Village and Burners Without Borders in the days after the Oilpocalypse began. I saw a lot of stuff they still don’t mention on the news, and I know people who have seen even more, and if you haven’t been following the Gulf debacle because it’s truly too horrific to keep up with, then here’s your chance to hear a sum-up.

checkin' the water for oil, testin' hair boom on behalf of Matter of Trust, and gettin' carpet-bombed with a faceful of Corexit, after which I went home to the Ninth Ward and laid on the couch for 5 days, unable to open my eyes, with irregular heartbeat, numb extremities, gut-wrenching cramps, bleeding out my ears, falling in and out of painful consciousness, and Toxicant-Induced-Loss-of-Tolerance hallucinations. Corexit: It's like LSD, except instead of awakening, it makes ya sleep with the fishes

Why should you listen to me? No reason, really, except I’ve been following this story closely, ever since the first of 4 or 5 times I got carpet-bombed with Corexit by my own federal government … I’ve also metaphorically been beating up bullies my whole life and getting my ass in trouble because of my big mouth. I used to write the lead A&E column for the San Francisco Bay Guardian, too, so I’m familiar with how journalism works (or is supposed to work), even if I mostly used my journalistic training on music, art, and spectacle. I’ve only got an hour to try to encapsulate my Gulf experience for the concerned citizens out there in radioland, so I hope I don’t choke completely.

Here’s the link about the show, and you listen here. It’s for the Progressive Radio Network, but I don’t consider myself a progressive or anything else besides an anti-bullshitter. The Gangster Party runs everything anyway, and we’re slowly learning to stop all this Democrap / Republican’t infighting and ignore the ego-driven, fear-based jingoism and to look for the men behind the curtain. The men behind the Gulf Coast murder-curtain are some scary, scary folks. Can you feel it? I can feel it. Anyways. Tune in, if you can figure out how to listen to the radio on the Internets.

xo
Summer.

me standin' in my Lower Ninth Ward house, which I used my life savings to pay for in cash, and worked on really hard for a year and a half. I decided to abandon ship, and postpone the idea of fixing it up, until they stopped spraying Corexit, which they HAVE NOT, because the OCEAN FLOOR IS STILL LEAKING, plus the rumors of synthetic-genomics bio-engineered oil-eating microbes which may catastrophically alter life on Earth, starting with the ocean. Whatever the reasons they

photos by Craig Morse and Wick Sakit, respectively. Thanks fellas!

Phoenix Rising from the Gulf - your best bet at a hard-science update on the reason this ain't over. If you like Cajun food and music ... well, ... it's time to prevent the Elves from having to leave Middle Earth, if ya know whum sayin'