Kopkind Colony

On the shortest day, and the longest night, in a period of transition as the cosmic clock turns, we wish you all some beauty, hope and reflection, even amidst what can seem, what often is, a forbidding landscape. The American artist Charles Burchfield, who spent most of his life working in Western New York, was a remarkable observer, an exuberant lover of the small changes, secrets and outright wonders of the natural world. He also wrote short verses, kept journals and otherwise recorded things seen and felt. In one entry from the start of 1915 which he titled ‘Winter Solstice’, he wrote, “I can nearly always, if I can a field, find some dandelions in December. Once I found them on New Years Day. I think of December as a leafless landscape, white sunlight, misty distances, & dandelions hugging the lichen-like turf.” In his paintings and watercolors of spring and early summer these once-sleepy dandelions arise in splendrous poofs, ready to float and spread fresh seeds, new life. (Oh so much more desirable in his pictures, and in imagination, than in one’s garden!)

This winter, this season, in 2025, may we all imagine possibilities worthy of nature, and find a way to be the face of love and hope in the world.

Kopkind’s annual newsletter, ‘Sniffing the Zeitgeist’, is on its way, soon to arrive in the physical mailboxes of many of you. It recounts some scenes from our summer sessions, quotes some thoughts for the future from a number of Kopkind alums — ‘campers’ and guests — as well as from some liberationist heroes in the never-finished work of making a better world.

At the close of this year and the beginning of another, here’s one fitting for the season and all time, from James Baldwin: ‘I can’t be a pessimist because I am alive. To be a pessimist means that you have agreed that human life is an academic matter. So, I am forced to be an optimist.’ May we choose this kind of optimism and act on it going forward.

From all at Kopkind, may you find joy in this holiday season! We thank you for your support and friendship, and welcome contributions. Kopkind is a 501(c)(3) educational and cultural project; all contributions are tax-exempt to the full extent allowable by law. The newsletter is accompanied by a return envelope for anyone who may wish to make a year-end donation by check. For online gifts, press the Donate button at the top of this site.

A red sun at night, meteorologists say, signals high pressure and pleasant days ahead. ‘Red sky at night a sailor’s delight’ and all that. That red sun from the vista where Kopkind convenes signifies pressure, for sure; as for pleasant weather, sociopolitically speaking, that’s something that people have always had to imagine and strive to realize.

Kopkind’s summer project turned 25 this year. Twenty-five years of bringing together left journalists, activists and filmmakers, and providing a space for people to ‘dream, dream big’, as one of our participants once said; to analyze the contemporary situation, learn together, think together, imagine paths forward and strategies to get there. And, along the way, to breathe, to recharge. To take pleasure in the good that life, nature, art and camaraderie have to offer. To remember history, its numberless named and unnamed people who have always had to fight, who faced times far harder than ours and sought to make a world fit to live in.

At Kopkind we’re grateful to everyone who has contributed to this project over the years with their time, their ideas, their donations, their words and images, knowledge and experience, their force of personality and generosity of spirit, their physical labor, their challenging questions, their social memory, their ability to create moments of profound collective insight and joy. We all will need such gifts — and spaces to share them and more — going forward. It’s not going to be an easy time. It never has been easy. And the pressures aren’t just national and global; they’re on us individually and organizationally.

So here comes the money part. Whether Giving Tuesday or Giving Anyday, this project needs you. Please help Kopkind continue to help the organizers, the writers, the mediamakers and sensemakers, the researchers, the artists, the thinkers and doers, defenders and troublemakers, workers all, as we strive with others for that better day. Thank you, with urgency and commitment.

In this, Kopkind’s 25th year, whether you can give $25 or $250 or $2500 or anything in between, please hit the Donate button in the top bar here; or, if you wish to write a check, please make it payable to Kopkind and send c/o JoAnn Wypijewski, 356 East 13th Street #11, New York, NY 10003. All gifts to Kopkind are tax deductible to the full exent allowable by law.

We leave you here with one more picture because, when words aren’t fully adequate, nature reminds us that even as night bears down, there will be light.