Greetings, newsletter constituents!

It’s been another whirlwind month over here in my second Princeton summer (often too hot, always too humid) with a number of new and continuing activities. I know that I said last year that summer 2022 was going to be a ‘summer of bliss’ (so-called as my first summer break in graduate school), but I’m starting to think that this summer might be the real deal. Here’s what I’ve been up to:

Project Week

The title is misleading, as my partner and I began on May 29th and formally concluded June 25th. It did feel incredibly satisfying to finally get rid of items we’d been holding onto since last fall when my former boss, Emma, moved from Princeton to Colorado. In the same run to Goodwill, we dropped off household items from our apartment and clothes from our friends Josh and Bethany, whom we had helped move out of their apartment the few days prior. The idea behind Project Week was to go through the various spaces in our apartment and ask of each item, ‘What is this, and can we move it away from us forever?’ In reality, it mostly involved reorganising our kitchen and moving the furniture around more times than I felt sanguine about at the time. Despite my aching muscles, I’m quite pleased with the results.

Calling All Magnificent People, aka “C.A.M.P.”

While there were times I felt like I was having flashbacks to summers spent at church camp (and not in a good way), the workshops were fun and informative, and I got to meet many of the folks behind Witch, Please Productions as well as friends and colleagues of the WPP team. From Hannah McGregor, I learned the two embroidery stitches that I will be using for all future embroidery projects—that is, until I run out of snarky sentences to embroider onto pillowcases, handkerchiefs, and T-shirts. From Naomi Westwater, I learned some of the history of tarot and how to use tarot as a tool for meditation and self-reflection. I enjoyed Naomi’s workshop so much, I even bought my first tarot deck when I got home (still waiting for it to arrive in the mail).

Sports. It’s Sports.

In the fashion of many queer folk, I have taken up rugby. Don’t ask me how the game works or what the rules are—I just show up to practice at the local athletic club (where the culture is, admittedly, somewhat disappointingly straight and cis) once a week, try to follow instructions, and conceal the fact that I haven’t yet obtained a mouth guard (where does one even go to obtain a mouth guard??). In the handful of weeks that I’ve been showing up, I have become painfully aware that ten years training as a dancer and one season of high school cross country did not prepare me for team sports.

I also recently bought a bike. Since our apartment building is right next to the Delaware-Raritan Canal path, it just made sense to spend time on it in a way that would be physically easier than walking and almost as convenient. I’m still working on my mounts and dismounts—the trail intersects roads, and drivers in New Jersey are not to be trusted to slow down, use their turn signals, or be courteous to cyclists and pedestrians—but I’ve been out a grand total of twice and haven’t fallen off yet.

Looking at Stuff and Listening to Stuff

I had the great distinction during C.A.M.P. of adding Hannah McGregor to the assortment of people in my life yelling at me to finish Nona the Ninth, the third book in the Locked Tomb series. (I promise I will, someday—it’s just that the worldbuilding is so fascinatingly complex, I know I’m going to be angry when I finish that Alecto the Ninth isn’t out yet.) Instead of picking Nona back up again now that I have a reprieve from the assigned reading of the academic year, I devoured The Space Between Worlds and A Deadly Education, two novels about women of colour who begin to wonder if their positions and peculiar skill sets might just be enough to save not only them but the people they care about. I’m currently reading The Last Graduate (sequel to A Deadly Education) and am excited to see what El and her fellow students come up with next.

With my current work schedule, I also have a lot of hours each week to listen to podcasts, so in addition to EsGAYpe From Reality, Witch, Please, Material Girls, and Gender Playground, I’ve picked up the engaging, funny, and often deeply upsetting Maintenance Phase—where I am continuously reminded by cohosts Aubrey Gordon and Michael Hobbes that ‘history should make you feel weird.’

That’s mostly it, folks! Tune in next month to hear about my attempts to organise my vinyl collection, use up the many food items I’ve inherited in the post-graduation exodus (please send along your recipes for what to do with ground venison), not complain too much about working at the farm without Emma, plan logistics for this year’s garlic festival, mourn my partner in punning’s move to another state, and adjust to being the only student worker in the entire Cataloguing Office.

Jack Kamps

Jack Kamps (’16) has been paid to do many things, such as teach preschoolers, pastor youths, schlep things in warehouses, bake pastries, design curriculum, serve coffee, maintain gardens, and fix computers. Jack is currently a student at Princeton Theological Seminary—though they tend to spend more time working at a few local farms, plotting a future cheesecake business with their spouse, and listening to/talking about the latest Material Girls episode than doing their homework.