🍂 November Newsletter

Cozy season is upon us; demand for free tea is at an all-time high. Join us for a month of layering up, slowing down, and savoring the sun.

Today's newsletter topics:

📚 Tea Stand Library
🌱 Unfurl Collab
⛰️ Tea Retreat Recap

(there's also a special surprise hidden in this newsletter...)

Here's our November calendar:

RSVP for upcoming events:

📚 Natural Library (RSVP)
Nov 7 – East Village – 1pm

🫖 Tea Talk on "Ritual" (RSVP)
Nov 12 – Bushwick – 7pm

⛩️ Popup with Unfurl (RSVP)
Nov 16 – Greenpoint – 11am

Volunteer opportunities:

🇵🇷 Senior Day at Loisaida
Nov 7 – East Village – 10:30am

📚 Natural Library
Nov 7 – East Village – 1pm

🥬 Distro with Riders4Rights
Nov 8 – BedStuy – 10:30am

📚 Introducing The Tea Stand Library!

We're launching a free book-borrowing program!

Through "The Tea Stand Library," anybody can borrow a book from our small, curated selection of titles which have shaped this project and our values.

Here's a list of the books we're offering through The Tea Stand Library:

• All About Love – bell hooks (link)
• A People’s History of the United States – Howard Zinn (link)
• A Psalm for the Wild-Built – Becky Chambers (link)
• Humankind – Rutger Bregman (link)
• The Dispossessed – Ursula K. Le Guin (link)
• The Moon That Turns You Back – Hala Alyan (link)
• Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet – Thich Nhat Hanh (link)

If you'd like to borrow one of the above books, fill out this form!

You can pick up the books from my apartment in Bushwick or we can coordinate a handoff at an upcoming event (like our Natural Library event, more on that below).

You can borrow a book for one month at a time and you are free to annotate as you please :)

Reading has been an important part of The Tea Stand since the beginning.

First and foremost is A Psalm for the Wild Built, a novella which follows a non-binary tea monk as they travel a solarpunk society and serve free tea to strangers in search of meaning and connection. This book alone has provided a world of inspiration and validation.

Then there's authors like Ursula K. Le Guin and Thich Nhat Hanh, who have profoundly shaped my understanding of anarchism and mindfulness, respectively (but also synergistically!). They have helped me understand how to resist our evil systems through radical imagination and radical acceptance.

Outside of my own reading, books have played a central role in many of our event series, like Silent Sanctuary and tea.haus (both of which are on hiatus btw... if that's sad news to you, lmk.). Not to mention our collabs with local book initiatives like Long Distance Reads and the Nonbinarian Book Bike!

To celebrate the launch of The Tea Stand Library, we're hosting an event called "Natural Library" in partnership with the Green Oasis Community Garden in East Village!

At Natural Library, we'll be offering free tea and free books to borrow and browse in a beautiful garden environment. If you're looking for a new book to read – especially in urban ecology or radical history genres – this is the place to find it!

We'll have all of the (currently available) books of The Tea Stand Library available for borrowing alongside some books provided by Green Oasis.

And in addition to free self-serve tea, I'll be leading two gongfucha sessions (aka tea ceremonies) in the garden's gazebo at 2pm and 4pm (FCFS).

You can RSVP for Natural Library here (free with suggested $5-10 donation).

The Tea Stand Library webpage is live here; we'll keep it updated as we add more titles. You can always find it on the Docs section of our website.

A warm thank you to Helen Sweeney of BedStuy Strong for providing the majority of the books for The Tea Stand Library and for helping curate the selection. This wouldn't be possible without Helen!

And thank you to all those who suggested we start something like this over the past few years. It took a while but the stars have finally aligned.

One last thing: we're not actively seeking book donations at this point, but if you have an extra copy of a title already included or want to suggest the addition of a new title, send us an email!

🌱 Community brew session with Unfurl

Last week, we announced a tea donation drive in collaboration with Unfurl, an online tea community with roots in NYC.

While signups through Unfurl's form just closed, we are always ready to receive tea donations with open hands. If you have any tea you'd like to share, feel free to bring it to an upcoming event or reply to this email for our mailing address!

For those unaware, all of the tea we serve is donated by our neighbors & supporters! We are grateful to be a part of this circular economy of tea :)

After all the donations have been received, we'll be co-hosting a culmination event with Unfurl in McGolrick Park on Nov 16.

Together, we'll brew some of the donated teas and hangout in the beautiful Greenpoint park. This will be a great opportunity to brew gongfu and see what teas our neighbors have been enjoying as of late.

This collaboration event with Unfurl is free and you can RSVP here.

If you're interested in learning more about Unfurl, you can visit their website here. They host AMA sessions with prominent voices in the tea world, manage a global teahouse database, and organize a "Sip & Share" program for folks to exchange tea with a stranger.

Thank you to Katelyn and M of Unfurl for putting so much energy into organizing this tea donation to support The Tea Stand 🧡

⛰️ Tea in the Adirondack mountains

In last month's newsletter, we announced our first-ever Tea Retreat: a weekend getaway at my family's off-grid yurt retreat in upstate NY. The idea was to spend some time outside of the city, sip lots of tea, and connect with nature.

So, a group of four friends & supporters of The Tea Stand hopped in my (family's) car and we drove up to the Adirondacks, about five hours north of NYC. Upon arrival, we started a fire in the wood-burning stove, fired up the grill and the tea kettle, and settled into the natural pace of simple living.

It didn't take long to feel a world away from the busyness of Brooklyn :)

Over the next couple days, we went on a beautiful hike, brewed heaps of tea leaves (gongfu style, western style, tea jar style), and spent plenty of time reading and journaling by the mesmerizing fire. We paid a visit to the equally legendary Hudson River and Stewart's Shop.

It was such a special weekend. It felt like the perfect balance of group activities and solo time, all the while immersed in the natural beauty of the Adirondack region of New York, an area well worth a visit if you ever have the opportunity!

If you're looking for a reason to visit the ADKs – and especially if you don't have a car – we can provide a couple:

• The next Tea Retreat will (hopefully) take place in May 2026. We already have a shortlist of folks interested; reply to this email to be added!
• Once a year, my family hosts communal building sessions at the retreat. Next year, in early October, we'll be raising a third yurt! To stay in the loop, you can follow the IG page here (my dad runs it).

This Tea Retreat was the first "crossover" between The Tea Stand and Dacks Yurt Collective, but it won't be the last. I hope to continue sharing this place with more and more people.

Soon, we'll be welcoming visitors to the retreat more broadly, in addition to offering it as a venue for retreats, workshops, artist residencies, and the like. Please get in touch if you're interested in getting involved in any way :)

That's all for now! Thanks to...

Devika, Grayson, Juno, and Joey for donating tea.

Joellene for becoming a member.

You, for reading! Hope to see you at one of our November events (calendar here).

Keep Steeping,
Miles 🍵