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May 10, 2013
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Riding my bike home from school along green, green Emma Rd, speeding past our swollen and muddy French Broad River, I feel, as author and illustrator William Steig puts it, “thoroughly akin to it all.”  I’m breathing hard, the trees are breathing hard, the cars are breathing hard, the garbage truck with emphysema is breathing hard.  We are all stomata, open pores and permeable membranes engaged in oxygen exchange together.  For a span of 2 seconds, I feel simultaneously vanished and everywhere, nothing and everything.  For those two seconds, I get it.   And the getting it is worth everything.  

Riding my bike home from school along green, green Emma Rd, speeding past our swollen and muddy French Broad River, I feel, as author and illustrator William Steig puts it, “thoroughly akin to it all.”  I’m breathing hard, the trees are breathing hard, the cars are breathing hard, the garbage truck with emphysema is breathing hard.  We are all stomata, open pores and permeable membranes engaged in oxygen exchange together.  For a span of 2 seconds, I feel simultaneously vanished and everywhere, nothing and everything.  For those two seconds, I get it.   And the getting it is worth everything.  

Photo
April 14, 2013
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          The spirit just moved me to run, so I did.  One and a half unpainful miles on the middle school track— and that was enough.  It reminded me of the first and second time I ever ran for fun, of my own volition, 13 years ago.             The first time, I was in Acadia National Park, Maine.  An avid cyclist who never ran a voluntary minute in her life, I was moved (certainly by the spirit) to get off my bike at a trailhead, leave it leaning on a moss-covered rock, and tiptoe into the September honey-lit fir forest.  Near that creek, under those trees, surrounded by whatever crackling magic was in the coastal air that day, I found myself euphoric and my feet running.  Running! In borrowed purple Birkenstock Bostons with no socks!  That running felt more like flying than anything I’ve ever experienced.  In fact, I kind of think I was.             The second time, I had just moved back to Charleston, SC from Maine and was living with my parents for a few months while job hunting.  I had initially been excited about biking there, but thrumming traffic and a constant ocean “breeze” that was as relentless as Van Gogh’s Mistral made me all but hate it.  This November day, that damn eternal headwind had beaten my spirit into the asphalt.  I leaned my newly retired bike against mom and dad’s fence and started running for the track at the police station.  It was utterly unlike flying.  In fact, it was almost as awful as riding into a constant 30mph headwind, but not quite.  I had to run with my eyes closed so I wouldn’t see how slowly the scenery was changing.             To someone accustomed to seeing 30 beautiful miles whiz by in an hour, running a 15 minute mile was a kind of torture.  Over time, I came to appreciate and hone the different form of moving meditation that kind of shift requires.  I developed a breathing cadence (that to this very day my body trips right into when I break into a jog) and a gaze that allowed my vision to blur enough to send me inside my breath rather than into mild depression for having gone only as far as the head of the neighborhood.  I thrive on a habit, whether it’s making my coffee a VERY specific way at the same time every morning, doing the same 3 things before I fall asleep at night, or wishing the same thing every time I see someone in a movie smoking.  Running became a delicious (however injurious) habit.             Fast-forward 13 years and I’m essentially in the same place I was that November day, somewhat worn out, although less by wind and more by life, striking out on my two feet, only a thin rubber sole between me and the road.  A lot has changed:  add a husband, a daughter, and a full-time job, subtract a father (and kind of a mother, too, really) and multiply by 30 pounds.  But the road remains the same, and so does the human instinct to set out on it.  Instead of listening to Miles Davis on an old tape-player I held in my sweaty hand, I’ll listen to the sound of my ever-ticking, ever-slowing, broken-wide-open heart.  I bet I’ll also hear Dad whistling, or hollering, “Maggie!  Oh, Maggiebabe.  I wish I could run like that.”

          The spirit just moved me to run, so I did.  One and a half unpainful miles on the middle school track— and that was enough.  It reminded me of the first and second time I ever ran for fun, of my own volition, 13 years ago.  

          The first time, I was in Acadia National Park, Maine.  An avid cyclist who never ran a voluntary minute in her life, I was moved (certainly by the spirit) to get off my bike at a trailhead, leave it leaning on a moss-covered rock, and tiptoe into the September honey-lit fir forest.  Near that creek, under those trees, surrounded by whatever crackling magic was in the coastal air that day, I found myself euphoric and my feet running.  Running! In borrowed purple Birkenstock Bostons with no socks!  That running felt more like flying than anything I’ve ever experienced.  In fact, I kind of think I was.  

          The second time, I had just moved back to Charleston, SC from Maine and was living with my parents for a few months while job hunting.  I had initially been excited about biking there, but thrumming traffic and a constant ocean “breeze” that was as relentless as Van Gogh’s Mistral made me all but hate it.  This November day, that damn eternal headwind had beaten my spirit into the asphalt.  I leaned my newly retired bike against mom and dad’s fence and started running for the track at the police station.  It was utterly unlike flying.  In fact, it was almost as awful as riding into a constant 30mph headwind, but not quite.  I had to run with my eyes closed so I wouldn’t see how slowly the scenery was changing.  

          To someone accustomed to seeing 30 beautiful miles whiz by in an hour, running a 15 minute mile was a kind of torture.  Over time, I came to appreciate and hone the different form of moving meditation that kind of shift requires.  I developed a breathing cadence (that to this very day my body trips right into when I break into a jog) and a gaze that allowed my vision to blur enough to send me inside my breath rather than into mild depression for having gone only as far as the head of the neighborhood.  I thrive on a habit, whether it’s making my coffee a VERY specific way at the same time every morning, doing the same 3 things before I fall asleep at night, or wishing the same thing every time I see someone in a movie smoking.  Running became a delicious (however injurious) habit.  

          Fast-forward 13 years and I’m essentially in the same place I was that November day, somewhat worn out, although less by wind and more by life, striking out on my two feet, only a thin rubber sole between me and the road.  A lot has changed:  add a husband, a daughter, and a full-time job, subtract a father (and kind of a mother, too, really) and multiply by 30 pounds.  But the road remains the same, and so does the human instinct to set out on it.  Instead of listening to Miles Davis on an old tape-player I held in my sweaty hand, I’ll listen to the sound of my ever-ticking, ever-slowing, broken-wide-open heart.  I bet I’ll also hear Dad whistling, or hollering, “Maggie!  Oh, Maggiebabe.  I wish I could run like that.”

Photo
November 09, 2011
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For the Love of a Turban Squash and the Studio Stroll.                       Twice yearly in Asheville, a grand event called the Studio Stroll happens.  For two days (and really this event begins the day before, on Friday, when collectors and devoted locals pop in to see their favorite artists’ studios before the throngs set in at 10 the next morning) thousands (!) of people get out of their cars and prowl the studios of the 150 or so artists working in the district.  It is amazing, really.  Amazing that for two days, a working neighborhood magically becomes (by a good 3 days of thorough scrubbing and artistic red-carpet rolling) a buzzing, mobbed shopping mall of completely handmade, one-of-a-kind objets d’art.                       The other special thing about the studio stroll, to me, is that you get to see artworks in the space where they were created.   You know how you get a whole new sense of someone when you see inside their home for the first time?  Well, it’s the same for a work of art or craft.  To see the space in which a painting was created gives me so many more layers of understanding into the piece, not to mention the painter.  I treasure this suitcase full of knowing, of seeing deeply into the heart of a thing.                     And this doesn’t even begin to describe the thrill, for me as an artist, to get to have unmediated and immediate feedback about the work I do from people of all stripes— from collectors to curious lookers.  Talk about insight!  Even more than that, I cherish knowing the folks who for whatever reason fall in love with a painting I’ve made and take it home.  I could write a hundred thankyou notes and send up a hundred grateful smoke signals to these beloved people and I still wouldn’t feel satisfied that I have conveyed how important they and their decision to buy my work are to me.                       Although I’m far less involved in the Stroll than I used to be (in the time before parenthood known in my house as “P.J.”), I still get a charge the week before the big event.  It’s like nesting, but for artists.  I put all other chores/obligations/everything aside for a week and just paint.  It is the most delicious week of the whole year for me.  Something about the energy of the event, the anticipation of folks coming all the way from wherever to see our work, offers a sparkly, starry elixir that makes these two weeks my most creative and productive of the whole year.                       So here’s a smoke signal to the god of that special relationship between people who make art and people who like to look at art:  I am so grateful, grateful, grateful…

For the Love of a Turban Squash and the Studio Stroll.  

                    Twice yearly in Asheville, a grand event called the Studio Stroll happens.  For two days (and really this event begins the day before, on Friday, when collectors and devoted locals pop in to see their favorite artists’ studios before the throngs set in at 10 the next morning) thousands (!) of people get out of their cars and prowl the studios of the 150 or so artists working in the district.  It is amazing, really.  Amazing that for two days, a working neighborhood magically becomes (by a good 3 days of thorough scrubbing and artistic red-carpet rolling) a buzzing, mobbed shopping mall of completely handmade, one-of-a-kind objets d’art.  

                    The other special thing about the studio stroll, to me, is that you get to see artworks in the space where they were created.   You know how you get a whole new sense of someone when you see inside their home for the first time?  Well, it’s the same for a work of art or craft.  To see the space in which a painting was created gives me so many more layers of understanding into the piece, not to mention the painter.  I treasure this suitcase full of knowing, of seeing deeply into the heart of a thing.

                    And this doesn’t even begin to describe the thrill, for me as an artist, to get to have unmediated and immediate feedback about the work I do from people of all stripes— from collectors to curious lookers.  Talk about insight!  Even more than that, I cherish knowing the folks who for whatever reason fall in love with a painting I’ve made and take it home.  I could write a hundred thankyou notes and send up a hundred grateful smoke signals to these beloved people and I still wouldn’t feel satisfied that I have conveyed how important they and their decision to buy my work are to me.  

                    Although I’m far less involved in the Stroll than I used to be (in the time before parenthood known in my house as “P.J.”), I still get a charge the week before the big event.  It’s like nesting, but for artists.  I put all other chores/obligations/everything aside for a week and just paint.  It is the most delicious week of the whole year for me.  Something about the energy of the event, the anticipation of folks coming all the way from wherever to see our work, offers a sparkly, starry elixir that makes these two weeks my most creative and productive of the whole year.  

                    So here’s a smoke signal to the god of that special relationship between people who make art and people who like to look at art:  I am so grateful, grateful, grateful…

Photo
October 30, 2011
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  Love. Part 2.                     Back a few posts ago, I shared a photo of a watercolor in progress and told the beginning of the story that inspired it.   I’ll finish that story today and share the finished work.  But to recap…Two Weddings and a Pregnancy, AKA “Love.”                     …So two sets of far-flung dear friends arrive in town for the wedding of one of the couples.  The first couple, the one who’s not getting married until NEXT summer, brought this load of glorious homegrown veggies and laid them out on our table.  And the second couple, the couple whose very homegrown wedding was only days away, well, they brought magic right straight into my own kitchen…                       The secret that I haven’t told you yet is that the Wednesday before their wedding, these dear friends who have been trying harder than anyone I’ve ever known to try anything, our beloved friends who were about to cause the universe to hiccup by marrying, found out via an email (and a subsequent phonecall for further confirmation) while sitting at our kitchen table that they were finally, at long last, pregnant.                        And just yesterday, my sweet friend says she’s beginning her 15th week, that a little, thriving person in there is growing fingernails and hiccuping, just like her big sister, Universe.                        This painting is dedicated to all of them.  And to love.

 

Love. Part 2.

                    Back a few posts ago, I shared a photo of a watercolor in progress and told the beginning of the story that inspired it.   I’ll finish that story today and share the finished work.  But to recap…Two Weddings and a Pregnancy, AKA “Love.”

                    …So two sets of far-flung dear friends arrive in town for the wedding of one of the couples.  The first couple, the one who’s not getting married until NEXT summer, brought this load of glorious homegrown veggies and laid them out on our table.  And the second couple, the couple whose very homegrown wedding was only days away, well, they brought magic right straight into my own kitchen…  

                    The secret that I haven’t told you yet is that the Wednesday before their wedding, these dear friends who have been trying harder than anyone I’ve ever known to try anything, our beloved friends who were about to cause the universe to hiccup by marrying, found out via an email (and a subsequent phonecall for further confirmation) while sitting at our kitchen table that they were finally, at long last, pregnant.  

                     And just yesterday, my sweet friend says she’s beginning her 15th week, that a little, thriving person in there is growing fingernails and hiccuping, just like her big sister, Universe.  

                     This painting is dedicated to all of them.  And to love.

Photo
October 12, 2011
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Who do you miss? For the next 19 days, I’d love to have your help building a shrine.  It’s all set up on my porch— pumpkins, sticks, sage, candles, goldenrod, buzzing bees, and little stone skulls.  Now, it needs spirits to honor.  I’ve gathered river stones and am painting them for our sorely-missed beloveds.  Please come by and inscribe their name on a stone for the altar.  (If you’re out of town and can’t make it over, just tell me the name and I’ll make a stone for them.)   On Nov. 1, drop by with your sweet one’s favorite treat— you know they’ll be happy to share.  

Who do you miss?

For the next 19 days, I’d love to have your help building a shrine.

 It’s all set up on my porch— pumpkins, sticks, sage, candles, goldenrod, buzzing bees, and little stone skulls.  Now, it needs spirits to honor.

 I’ve gathered river stones and am painting them for our sorely-missed beloveds.  Please come by and inscribe their name on a stone for the altar.  (If you’re out of town and can’t make it over, just tell me the name and I’ll make a stone for them.)  

On Nov. 1, drop by with your sweet one’s favorite treat— you know they’ll be happy to share.  

Photoset
October 11, 2011
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Apple picking was everything I’ve spent the last 30-odd years of life cracking it up to be:  completely awesome.

Array bright pink, red, golden, and rust colored apples on green-leafed branches against a deep cobalt blue sky. Add happy toddlers toting red apple baskets and fresh-fried pumpkin donuts.  Mix in a hayride with friends.  Devour whole with crisp October air and a salty sprinkle of nostalgia.  Pure greatness.  My girl and I loved every single (bite) bit.

Juniper ate 2 and a half apples straight off the tree.

I was unprepared, however, for the emotional experience I would have walking from a darkened apple-shed into the blazing brightness at the mouth of the orchard.  Two days prior I’d finished reading The Cider House Rules by John Irving.  The characters are still alive in me; I’m still a little sore from the story’s sting.  I LOVED that book and its people, and so to walk into the Sky Top Orchard for the first time was like walking straight into Homer Wells himself.  I guess the last time I had that feeling was when I walked into a coat closet in my parents’ house having just finished The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe.  With every cell of my being, I expected to find snow at the back of that closet.  

I can’t wait for Juniper to get to experience a book spell.  Well, actually, I’m pretty sure she already does, on an hourly basis.  This morning, she was Little Bear, with hiccups.

Photoset
October 02, 2011
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Love. Part 1.  

Love your family, love your friends, love your vegetables.  Just love.  

Love is a tattoo on a friend’s back (I wish I had a picture of it; I would include it here.)  In fact, that tattooed friend grew the vegetables that are enshrined here on our table.  In fact, she lovingly picked these vegetables from her garden the morning she flew here from Boston.  She wrapped each of those fat, firm marvels in a newspaper and packed them in a bag which she then deemed her carry-on.  (The tomatoes, which weren’t ripe then but became so, were the most delicious I’ve ever had— and I wouldn’t just say that, because I have had the great good fortune to have eaten many, many damn excellent tomatoes.  They were firm yet juicy, red as true as you’ve ever seen it, and tasted of sweat, iron, acid and stardust.  Brass clashed and reverberated with each bite.  My definition of a Good Tomato has forever been altered.)

Sarah and Meera arrived, laden of course with vegetables, a few days early for the wedding of our dear friends Pan and Mel, and exactly one year before their own wedding.  That was a week that will live in my memory forever.  As if a wedding (swoon! a wedding!) weren’t enough, you get descended upon by friends and the air in your home crackles with sacred passage magic.  Everything you do— everything you eat, say, clean, prepare— is charged with “I’ve got to get this right, because time is about to tesseract, the universe is about to alter herself slightly, to support these two beloved people.”  Right, you’ve felt that too?

So sarah unloads this canvas bag of veggie bounty on our table, and with the vegetables we get our friends (!!!) for a whole week, and our other friends are getting married on a mountaintop, and Juniper is blessedly asleep.   God was among us.  

…to be continued.  For now, to the studio to finish that painting.

Photo
September 25, 2011
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          September has been quite a month!  In fact, August AND September were quite a month.             Our first Winnecour Birthday Month was big, splashy, colorful, joyful, and full of food.  Josh and I made some decisions about birthdays this year, some of which we’ll stick by, others we’ll drop before next year.  One decision we’ll continue:  since all 3 of our birthdays happen within 30 days, we’re going to decorate the house once the first week of August and leave it party-fied until the 2nd week of September.  The dining “room” was festooned with homemade banners of all stripe (and dot and color), and the guest room/office/storage room stayed a wreck to keep the spare table handy for quick birthday dinner party set-up.             One decision we may or may not drop is that our way of celebrating birthdays is to throw a dinner party.  Now, we love hosting a dinner party and will do so at the drop of a hat; it’s our friends’ stamina we’re worried about.  All 3 of our birthdays just so happen to fall on the same day of the week (strange, no?), so for 3 wednesdays in 5 weeks, a knot of devoted friends trucked over for a birthday dinner.  They swore they didn’t mind, but jeez.  Perhaps we’ll mix it up a bit next year:  brunch for Josh’s birthday, tea for mine, dinner for Junipers?             Juniper’s 2nd birthday dinner was my favorite for several reasons, one because it was the last of the 3 and I’d had tons of practice getting the rhythm right, and another because it was just plain beautiful.  And we wore crowns.  Homemade crowns with inscriptions— magic spells— on the inside, so the wearer of the crown could experience some of the special powers the crown could imbue.  Papa Lewis wore his crown fabulously.             Birthday dinner hinged around a Rainbow Plate (very much inspired by my friend Jean who threw her 6 year old a “Rainbow Fairy Princess Unicorn Party” a couple weeks prior.  Plus meatloaf which the toddler tucked into with gusto.)  We sang the birthday song over a mountain of berries stuck with 3 rainbow candles.  And we finally figured out— actually Josh figured out— that if we want Juniper to head for bed without acting her age, we would have to let her escort each guest to the door.   Our home was our own by 8pm, Juniper sleeping away by 8:30.  That is our kind of party.  Next day during naptime, the banners came down, the office/guest room got put back together, and ho-hum regularness was re-established in tiny, cramped chez Winnecour.   Some firsts…           This was the first birthday (well, no, the second) I truly LOVED.  No strife, no angst, no feelings of “…that’s all?  it’s over now?”   (Liza and Nia, Andy and Trent, thanks for the first.)           This was the first time I felt Josh’s birthday was appropriately celebrated.  Although he hates a big fuss over his day, I think he secretly likes a little jazz.  And that’s exactly what he got, finally.           And Juniper’s birthday, well…  I never knew birthdays were as much (if not more) for the parents as the children.  It’s a day for us to honor all the wonder and magic that got us where we are. It’s a sparkling, candle-illuminated vantage point from which we can pause and regard all that lies behind us and a little of what lies ahead, for our children as well as for our family.   It’s a day devoted stictly to marvel:  marvel at that little person you made— are making; marvel at what you did to get her here; marvel that the hard work, little by little, just keeps getting easier; marvel that you’re blessed enough to get to spend your days with this precious little person, this precious little family.   Happy Birthday, everyone.  YOU are a marvel.  

          September has been quite a month!  In fact, August AND September were quite a month.  

          Our first Winnecour Birthday Month was big, splashy, colorful, joyful, and full of food.  Josh and I made some decisions about birthdays this year, some of which we’ll stick by, others we’ll drop before next year.  One decision we’ll continue:  since all 3 of our birthdays happen within 30 days, we’re going to decorate the house once the first week of August and leave it party-fied until the 2nd week of September.  The dining “room” was festooned with homemade banners of all stripe (and dot and color), and the guest room/office/storage room stayed a wreck to keep the spare table handy for quick birthday dinner party set-up.  

          One decision we may or may not drop is that our way of celebrating birthdays is to throw a dinner party.  Now, we love hosting a dinner party and will do so at the drop of a hat; it’s our friends’ stamina we’re worried about.  All 3 of our birthdays just so happen to fall on the same day of the week (strange, no?), so for 3 wednesdays in 5 weeks, a knot of devoted friends trucked over for a birthday dinner.  They swore they didn’t mind, but jeez.  Perhaps we’ll mix it up a bit next year:  brunch for Josh’s birthday, tea for mine, dinner for Junipers?  

          Juniper’s 2nd birthday dinner was my favorite for several reasons, one because it was the last of the 3 and I’d had tons of practice getting the rhythm right, and another because it was just plain beautiful.  And we wore crowns.  Homemade crowns with inscriptions— magic spells— on the inside, so the wearer of the crown could experience some of the special powers the crown could imbue.  Papa Lewis wore his crown fabulously.  

          Birthday dinner hinged around a Rainbow Plate (very much inspired by my friend Jean who threw her 6 year old a “Rainbow Fairy Princess Unicorn Party” a couple weeks prior.  Plus meatloaf which the toddler tucked into with gusto.)  We sang the birthday song over a mountain of berries stuck with 3 rainbow candles.  And we finally figured out— actually Josh figured out— that if we want Juniper to head for bed without acting her age, we would have to let her escort each guest to the door.   Our home was our own by 8pm, Juniper sleeping away by 8:30.  That is our kind of party.  Next day during naptime, the banners came down, the office/guest room got put back together, and ho-hum regularness was re-established in tiny, cramped chez Winnecour.  

Some firsts…

          This was the first birthday (well, no, the second) I truly LOVED.  No strife, no angst, no feelings of “…that’s all?  it’s over now?”   (Liza and Nia, Andy and Trent, thanks for the first.)

          This was the first time I felt Josh’s birthday was appropriately celebrated.  Although he hates a big fuss over his day, I think he secretly likes a little jazz.  And that’s exactly what he got, finally.

          And Juniper’s birthday, well…  I never knew birthdays were as much (if not more) for the parents as the children.  It’s a day for us to honor all the wonder and magic that got us where we are. It’s a sparkling, candle-illuminated vantage point from which we can pause and regard all that lies behind us and a little of what lies ahead, for our children as well as for our family.   It’s a day devoted stictly to marvel:  marvel at that little person you made— are making; marvel at what you did to get her here; marvel that the hard work, little by little, just keeps getting easier; marvel that you’re blessed enough to get to spend your days with this precious little person, this precious little family.  

Happy Birthday, everyone.  YOU are a marvel.  

Photoset
August 12, 2011
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We celebrated my husband Josh’s 40th birthday on the 10th.  In his words, “it was the best birthday I’ve had since I was 6 and we went to see Star Wars 1 in the theater.”  OK, I feel pretty awesome about our little home-brewed celebrations ranking up there with Star Wars.  That said, I can’t really take any credit: Josh has a daughter now, and pretty much everything’s better with a daughter.  

The event culminating a day of low-keyed fun was a little dinner party we had with some of our nearest and dearest friends who are more like family, really, than friends, and Josh’s dad.  It was that loveliest of dinner parties where the food was effortlessly good— ‘cause how can you go wrong with salad and steak— and we didn’t care what the house looked like when folks arrived.  It’s my favorite kind of party to prep for, and its ease allowed me to take a portrait of the veggies I was about to roast.  I stopped in my tracks when I saw them arrayed in their hot-colored glory, and then as I was taking the picture I realized they were also a portrait of my sweet Josh.  

Josh is a Leo extraordinaire.  He is passionately passionate.  He is gung-ho, all-in, quietly smoldering, fearless, and ready to eat the world in one bite.  He loves life to the hilt.  Although his friends would describe him as laid-back and easy-going, and he is, it’s because he’s contentedly watching the world that is his oyster.  There is always a full river at flood stage just on the other side of that calm.  He is absolutely red, orange, and gold (with a few candy-stripes here and there for fun.)  I love him the most.

Photo
July 23, 2011
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Born with a silver (plated) spoon and christened in beet juice:  welcome to the (cyber) world, Edible Palette!  Thanks, cyber world, for hosting me and my new blog baby. Because nothing kicks off something big (big for me, not you!) like poetry, a poem: Irreverent Baking I should be upstairs with the others, drumming up ways to heal the world, save the animals, pray for water in a far-off continent, devote the remainder of my days to a catalog of restorations. But this morning, it was the matter of scones that drew my gaze, and my feet remained planted in the kitchen. One must never ignore the instinct to create, is what I told myself, and soon the counter was stained with flour, my hands sticky with dough, the house inked with the smell of blueberry possibility, and I knew I was not wrong. This was my prayer, my act of healing, my offering, my song. - Maya Stein

Born with a silver (plated) spoon and christened in beet juice:  welcome to the (cyber) world, Edible Palette!  Thanks, cyber world, for hosting me and my new blog baby. Because nothing kicks off something big (big for me, not you!) like poetry, a poem:

Irreverent Baking


I should be upstairs with the others, drumming up ways

to heal the world, save the animals, pray for water

in a far-off continent, devote the remainder of my days

to a catalog of restorations. But this morning, it was the matter

of scones that drew my gaze, and my feet remained

planted in the kitchen. One must never ignore the instinct

to create, is what I told myself, and soon the counter was stained

with flour, my hands sticky with dough, the house inked

with the smell of blueberry possibility, and I knew I was not wrong.

This was my prayer, my act of healing, my offering, my song.


- Maya Stein