WHSH 2013 has come to an offi­cial close! We’re pass­ing around feed­back forms today, and there’s also an online form to fill out. Share your thoughts on daily dynam­ics on the job, food, evening activ­i­ties, and more! Lots of real changes result from this feed­back every year, so do it now while it’s fresh in yr mind! This year, we’re invit­ing peo­ple to nom­i­nate folks to join the core orga­nizer group for the 5th anniver­sary year (2014) — feel free to nom­i­nate your­self!  If you didn’t get to fill out a form in per­son, please go to this quick sur­vey and give your feed­back today!

Crews are work­ing and stay­ing hard, and look­ing real good, this morn­ing. Pho­tos from the past few days at the end of this post!

• Acces­si­bil­ity Crew is trans­form­ing the mud-slush food-line path around the kitchen into a smooth, rol­lable walk­way and also build­ing a rol­lable trail to the health­care SEB.
• Chain­saw Crew is fol­low­ing behind grounds crew and saw­ing up dead and inva­sive trees, after a major teach-in on chain­saw use and safety for the crew members.
• Child­care Crew has two 3-year olds this year! When last seen, they were search­ing the chicken coops for eggs.
• Gar­den Crew has — in addi­tion to copi­ous weed­ing, plant­ing, and har­vest­ing — built the first in a series of raised gar­den beds which are gen­er­ally ergonomic plus wheel­chair accessible.
• Grounds Crew has cleared two new camp­grounds and expanded a third. There are a lot of machetes.
• Health­care Crew is happy to report zero fatal­i­ties, as well as a great week so far offer­ing mas­sage, acupunc­ture, herbal potions, and triage for first aid concerns.

• Kitchen Crew is rolling out 3 out­ra­geously deli­cious meals a day, plus snacks and bev­er­ages. A vast major­ity of their ingre­di­ents are locally-sourced.
• Office Crew has been coor­di­nat­ing reg­is­tra­tion, trans­porta­tion, fundrais­ing, track­ing income/expense, and keep­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions rolling.
• Paint­ing Crew printed a ton of t-shirts, patches, and posters with the 2013 WHSH logo and they are now prep­ping to paint a mural on the side of the tool shed. The mural will include at least one cut­tle­fish, as per the inten­tion of IDA res­i­dents that the mural include cephalopods.
• Plumb­ing Crew is actu­ally build­ing a wood-fire-powered hot tub. Hence their motto, “Plumb­ing: We’re Not Kidding.”
• Refuse and Reuse Crew has reclaimed an entire area of the front barn for bike shop expan­sion, and they are build­ing a Recy­cling Palace.
• Spe­cial Projects Crew is fix­ing up a bunch of light­ing and oth­er­wise fill­ing in where needed.
• Struc­tural Crew is build­ing pic­nic tables and benches out of locally har­vested cedar and build­ing a new Super Effi­cient Build­ing (SEB) behind the front house, for the future use of health­care and pink arm­band (conflict/crisis team) dur­ing gatherings.
• Win­dows Crew has cleaned, repaired, insu­lated, and is now dec­o­rat­ing all com­mon space windows.

There’s a bunch of events com­ing together around the coun­try to help fundraiser for this year’s Work Hard Stay Hard. Check back here for more events details soon! P.S. Can you help with orga­niz­ing a ben­e­fit party? Email workhard­stay­hard at gmail dot com!

Chat­tanooga:: Fri­day, Sep­tem­ber 6th: 25 W. Main St :: 10PM-12PM
Come dance to the music of DJ Chad Porter and Dj Money$ign, dressed as the best Goth ver­sion of your­self! There will be a drag show with local per­form­ers, a kiss­ing booth, and a raf­fle where we will be giv­ing away lots of good­ies. The ben­e­fit will be held at a local gay bar called Chuck’s at 25 W. Main in down­town Chat­tanooga. Dance party starts at 10pm and Drag Show starts at 12am. Please come out and sup­port Work Hard and our extended com­mu­nity in Chattanooga!

Brook­lyn :: IDA GIVE A FUCK:: Sun­day, Sep­tem­ber 8 :: 3–11:30PM
Tran­sCen­tral Sta­tion (Want more info — address, etc? See this event page)
A Kinky Brunch and Play Party hap­pen­ing THIS WEEKEND! Bagels, Mimosas Belini’s, Raf­fle Prizes Sexy Con­sen­sual Party Games! Can you think of a bet­ter way to spend a Sun­day After­noon? All pro­ceeds go to Idyll Dandy Arts
Slid­ing scale entry fee of $10-$20 will be donated in full to IDA.

PHILLY :: Gar­den Party for Ida ::Thurs­day, Sep­tem­ber 12 :: 6:30-10PM
Gar­den Party Ben­e­fit for IDA and Work Hard Stay Hard!
4419 Bal­ti­more Ave The Dream­boat back­yard (3rd floor in case of rain)
SLIDING SCALE $5-$500 (no one turned away)

Come join us in the dream­boat back­yard for a mag­i­cal evening of spec­tac­u­lar per­for­mances, home­made treats, refresh­ing bev­er­ages and some sweet com­pany to raise funds for WorkHard­Stay­Hard, a week long work party to improve the infra­struc­ture of Idyll Dandy Arts (IDA), an inten­tional queer com­mu­nity in the hol­lows of Tennessee.

Spe­cial Musi­cal Guests!
– Beth Blum
– Chenda Cope (Old Timey Bal­lads)
– Pretty Good Year (Tori Amos Accor­dion & Vio­lin Cover Band)

2013 Logo by Annie Danger!

Work Hard 2013 — our fourth year! — runs Sep­tem­ber 14th-22nd! Reg­is­ter Today!

Check out the updated list of 2013 Crews: includ­ing QPOC Space Devel­op­ment, Mobil­ity Acces­si­bil­ity Improve­ments, Gar­den­ing, Grounds, Health­care, Kitchen, Painters, Plumb­ing, Struc­tural Crew, Win­dows, Child­care, Bike Mechanix, and so much more!

It will take $13,000 to pull off the work we have planned this year. We can coor­di­nate up to 100 par­tic­i­pants, and we’re ask­ing all par­tic­i­pants to raise $150 each in order to fund this work as a gift to IDA. But IDA’s com­mu­nity tends towards the very low-income, and many par­tic­i­pants have tons of love and energy to give but are able not able to raise the money to travel to IDA, miss a week of work, and con­tribute to the cost of mate­ri­als… so we need your help! Each year we have raised the funds to pull this off through a com­bi­na­tion of par­tic­i­pant dona­tions, ben­e­fit events, and this online fundrais­ing — we need to meet or exceed this goal of $3,000 in dona­tions from friends and allies that can’t make it to the work gath­er­ing, or don’t live in a city with a ben­e­fit party, but have some funds to kick down for strength­en­ing and sus­tain­ing IDA. (Updat­ing to say: Hooray! Thanks to all who donated to our suc­cess­ful online fundraiser!)

With excite­ment and fan­fare, we write to announce Work Hard 2013 for Sep­tem­ber 14th-22nd! Reg­is­ter!

Tell your friends and grab your work gloves, its time to plan a trip to Ten­nessee and pitch in with this year’s efforts to build a love­lier IDA and some sturdy queer com­mu­nity; we’re gonna dig some soil and cook up some inspiration.

Work Hard stays com­mit­ted to improv­ing our annual love let­ter to Ida, and this year promises to be more deli­cious, more orga­nized, and more wel­com­ing than ever. Con­sider bring­ing your inher­ently skilled self to share your knowl­edge, and absolutely you will find a range of skills and ways to learn. This year’s projects are on the design and approval track, but rest assured that they will be as thrilling and beau­ti­ful as 2012’s tri­umphs, such as:

• Bike Crew fixed an entire fleet of Ida com­mu­nity bikes and built a shop to fix’um’in
• Plumbers remod­eled the bath­room in stun­ning cedar, Gar­den remod­eled the veg­gies with 5 trucks of horse-shit
• QPOC crew designed guide­lines for includ­ing and return­ing more Queers of Color at WHSH, ‘Palooza, and at Ida all times.
• The kitchen crew to made a full, deli­cious meal for *every* food need known to humankind… 3 times daily!!!
• Party patrol gave us story-time local his­tory night, an all-out awe­some wrap party, and dreamy wake up calls by strolling musicians
• Chain­saw crew kept knock­ing down big dif­fi­cult trees with incred­i­ble accu­racy and safety

Oh. My. Gaw.…! All those com­plete babes who go sweat their asses off in the woods every fall got all dolled-up and took pho­tos of that sexy mess! I want one!

What!?!? They’re June-to-June and avail­able for only $15?! And they ben­e­fit Work Hard, so my pur­chase of this hot stack of paper goes to make sure peo­ple can do it again? And again.….

We are end­lessly amazed at queer skills and com­mu­nity gen­eros­ity. We are going to Work Hard for Ida, again. Check out this year’s Crews and Reg­is­tra­tion form!

If you’ve ever been able to attend a pre­vi­ous WHSH, please con­sider fill­ing out an ANONYMOUS SURVEY about your expe­ri­ence. The orga­niz­ers are a rotat­ing team of folks who want to pull together a fan­tas­tic event that ful­fills many needs and desires. Please give us some direction!