Tina Porter Archives | The ManifestStation

An Airstream and a Dream: An Invitation

January 17, 2019

By Tina Porter

When I can’t give money, I try to find ways to give something else—like amplification.

Fresher Together and Chef Fresh’s Airstream and a Dream campaign are one of my current obsessions. From the GoFundMe campaign page, here is the best description of what Fresh’s dream is:

Fresher Together is a collaborative food project for healing, economic development, training and retreat. I look forward to sharing more info about this new project very soon including the launch of the website. Fresher Together Farms will focus on mushrooms, culinary and medicinal herbs, and foundational flavorful alliums and other produce items and aromatics (i.e. garlic, shallots, onions, leeks, ginger, etc). This farm plans to be a chance for economic development and skill training and development for those in community that need it most. The farm will not only grow food but develop value added products that also allow an opportunity for culinary and product training in addition to farming. We look forward to drastically minimizing waste by not only offering fresh and dried products, but also drinks, tea blends, sauces, and other items.

But here’s what you may not know about Chef Fresh: they are a self-described math and science nerd who graduated from Northwestern with a degree in biomedical engineering, but always knew food was what was pulling them forward. (BTW: Fresh uses both she/her and they/them pronouns so understand that I am using all here on purpose.) Continue Reading…

Guest Posts, depression

This is not the end

July 8, 2018

By Tina Porter

In the Fall of 2014, when I knew the job I had held in a place I’d been working for 10 years was ending (though not yet officially), I did what anyone would do: I went on a trip with my mother and sister to Northern New Mexico.

Actually, this story starts much earlier. Does it start in April of that year when I am offered a demotion or no job at all and I take the demotion because we are in the process of closing on a condo for our daughters to live in while they attend Indiana University in Bloomington? Or a year earlier, when it is obvious I am struggling while juggling different roles and different requirements from different stakeholders?

Or does it start in 2009, when I take the promotion I think I want and that I am kind of good at, as it is defined in 2009 and three weeks later I am diagnosed with Lupus? Or does it start in 2008 when my father dies? Or in 1986 when I am a young woman at odds with her understanding of herself, or in 1976, when I am a teenager who doesn’t fit in and finds the options available unsatisfactory but I don’t know how to ask my mother or anyone for help? Continue Reading…

Guest Posts, depression, Mental Health

Couched

May 4, 2018

By Tina Porter

It was way too early for a knock on the door, but there it was; and there I was, in my red terrycloth bathrobe. I hadn’t seen the two women come up the walkway, but here they were, looking back at me through the big window of the front door.

“Hi,” I said as I slowly opened the door, clamping one hand on the two frayed lapels of my robe while running the other hand over my just-out-of-bed hair.

“We’re sorry to bother you,” said the lady in the front, who had an officiousness that took me off guard as she stood there in clothes almost as worn as my robe. “Is that couch available? Would you care if we took it?” She pointed over her shoulder, to the chocolate-brown, ultra-padded, ultra-suede, three-cushioned couch sitting on the curb, between our mailbox and the garbage bins.

“Oh, no,” I said. “You don’t want it,” I shook my head and pinched up my face. “It’s so … gross.”

“I have a steam cleaner,” she said while the woman behind her looked over her shoulder at the couch, trying to hide the look in her eyes that betrayed she agreed more with me than with her friend.

“I’m not going to say no,” I said, after taking a deep breath, “because it is obviously out there for the garbage man. But ….” and I trailed off, mimicking repulsion with my face and with a shudder that ran through my body. Continue Reading…