Benji

Grit and spit and curses may not win, but we need them all the same. I've given my life to the struggle, and it's given me back tenfold -- heartbreak, hellfire, and humility.

Crystal

I'm a seeker, creative, connected with the earth and the cosmos; a college dropout, a rainbow sister, a believer in positive thinking. The world is mysterious, and the many western and eastern philosophies I've read encourage in me, at least, an openness to wonder. Everyone sees a bit of puzzle, and even if they disagree on what it means, it's worthwhile to listen. But not to get attached to the thoughts, for they can only ever be illusions, and only useful when we can let them go.

Let them go!

Nathalie

An eco-evo-devo biologist by training, with an affection for Wolbachia and a penchant for fieldwork, that led me eventually to a second PhD in ethnographic fieldwork.

I make a great person to talk about reproduction with.

Toni likes their grandmother's cooking, and a good book.

i walk the hoop. the old plants are my guides; in tending them, i am slowly becoming like a plant myself, wild in the high places, weaving the earth of stars and stone, breath and blood. i walk for those that come after; and to inhabit the dying visions of those that walked before, before the flame and steel cut us off.

Blakkat

Indymedia geek, FOSS hacker, rebel art noise enthusiast, wobbly witch. There's more to me than meets the eye.

Being biracial in the coding community has its ups and downs. But strangely its among pagans that I find it hardest: all the assumptions about spirituality and race that make whiteness invisible. Pisses me off.

What if the whole world's in code? What if magic allows us to drop one layer down out our existing subroutines and change the parameters that stitch the fabric of the world? Just a little, here and there... with a little help from our friends.

i am crow caws nightly, a man of many tribes. my mother's ojibwe and wendat mostly, my father is warm springs, siletz, thus wasco and paiute and tututni and takelma.

i carry medicine, it carries me. i give thanks for those that rise in the morning to greet the new day as a gift from great spirit, from earth and life and everyone around.

j(A)de: God, I love Velvet. She's like the best kind of softness and ferocity all at once ... and I don't just mean in bed! (laughing) You can rely on her to look past people's words and to their hearts and their bodies, and that's exactly what we need so much of the time. Fuck knows I need it.

Nelt: I wasn't sure at first. It was a bit complicated... it was like she wouldn't just engage with what I was saying, had this eerie way of looking through me and talking about things that seemed off point but were... well, they weren't, really. Now, geez. Now I get it, I think.

j(A)de: Mary's a bit of a mystery to me. I'm not sure how to pin her down... I mean, I like the way she takes the boys down a notch, brilliantly sometimes, and is always returning our attention to the ways that history is important, and has been written by the winners... but I can't quite get a sense of who she is under all the academy-speak. 'Course, maybe that's why I don't hang with "doctors" much. Seems like all the good juice in their lives went to their heads, and got stuck there.

Nelt: Well, fair enough, but you gotta remember how hard it can be in the Academy, for women especially. I mean, it's like a permanent pissing contest in there sometimes, and I mean that literally: inherently biased towards men for no good reason.

Jax: Not to be arch, but there's sommat to be said for the life of the mind, comrades. Hail Mary, anyday. Even, maybe especially, when she knocks me down a peg or three.

Velvet: Jax presents snappily: unselfconsciously cool, a beret and a cigarette and heartfelt polemic come naturally, a sort of 60s transplant in the best of ways. I like how much he cares about his ideas. Obviously, it can get a bit much... but then he's cute when he blushes.

Night Crow: What I like most about him is his openness. Clearly, he's thought long and hard and carries a pretty elaborate Marxist analysis; but he's curious about other points of view, and serious about exploring how they can make sense even when he can't link them to his own ideas. Rare, and worthwhile.