May 2026 Update

Celebrating in Malden

We haven't been hosting as many events ourselves thanks to the construction, and at this point we expect we'll miss our usual yearly Solstice Party (though the Quarterly Planning Meeting is still on for June).

However, maybe you'll run into a MALT member at one of these events in Malden!

Co-op life continues

While our outward social calendar remains on hiatus, we're still celebrating birthdays, cooking together, getting ready for incorporation - everything needed to keep a co-op running. This past month has seen at least a few ingredients from our own garden, plus trying out new recipes like pan-blackened salmon.

Keeping up with gardening in this season is a perpetual challenge, especially with how much rain we're getting. You can see the Black Swallowwort getting pulled in the above photo... want to learn how to extract it? Come on by some Saturday afternoon and we'll work on it!

Community space means community challenges

One of the goals with our major renovation project has been to expand as an event space while still staying livable as a residential space. We want to be able to host events with dozens of people, without degrading quality of life for people who live here and have in-community needs like cooking, movie watching, meetings, and more.

Making the space available means making decisions about physical layouts, equipment to purchase, and above all processes to expect of ourselves and our guests. Here's a glimpse of some ideas we're still workshopping:

• A code of conduct for how guests should behave in our space
• Policies around COVID testing and making safety gear available
• Our standards and policies for booking the space
• Sound design, including minimizing noise to our neighbors
• Changing to keycode- or app-based locks, for easier shared access
• Converting one of our spaces to a permanent guest bedroom
• Bulletin board for community messages
• How we can incorporate a small, rotating queer art gallery
• Physical/digital overlap, like an online event calendar or group chat

If you have any thoughts or ideas, we'd love to hear them. But otherwise, that's it for this month - Happy Pride, and remember to put on sunscreen!