Come home soon.
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“Under the Lilacs” by Jackie Mantey // Original image info: Russell Lee, 1941, “Old brown stonehouses, Chicago.”
One watercolor painting = two cool new things 💧💧
Over the weekend I made a last-minute trip back to Ohio for two things: 1) The impromptu Columbus Alive farewell gathering and 2) my nieces’ dance recital. My visit was a surprise for all but about three people I saw that weekend, and man, I gotta make more surprise visits because the reaction was amazing. I felt so loved! Thank you guys. <3
I’m bummed Columbus Alive newspaper closed. That job validated to me that I am a writer. It gave me so many experiences, discoveries, and friends. Alive’s end is a loss for a community I once loved and I hope the professionals still there find a way to fill the hole left in its wake.
My top two Alive experiences came at the beginning and end of my time writing for it:
2) Seeing Nina West perform while covering Drauma for the paper early in my tenure and returning to the newsroom with a mission: Convince everyone we should write about her AMAP because baby was a S-T-A-R. Shelley was more than game. Covering drag and affirming it as an Arts subject area and creative pillar in the city was a big deal to us 12 years ago, especially under the ownership at the time.
1) Getting to know Alix Reese was an honor and writing about her changed my understanding of writing. I always felt insecure about my extreme disinterest in chasing down a lead or ASKING THE HARD QUESTIONS™. In journalism school I once had to go cover a fire at a movie theater and I thought the whole time, “I’m in the way. I really hate this.” I wasn’t cut out for hard news. I do not have the right kind of emotional stamina for it.
But I recognized with Alix’s feature that what I brought to the table was important too. My emotional stamina is built for a different kind of writing, and the storytelling it generates can be just as valuable as the hard-nosed journalists getting the scoop.
A newspaper needs both.
Alix’s feature showed me that when I put my own understanding of life into a piece of writing — particularly about a story as powerful and moving as hers — I can do something meaningful. It’s less obviously important than breaking news, but it still mattered.
So did every version of Alive and its many contributors.
Farewell, friend.
This guy is from Augustus Sherman’s collection of Ellis Island portraits. The photo is dated 1906. He’s listed simply as “Romanian shepherd.”
I looked up the May Day celebrations and rituals of Romania (nearly every country’s got some), and this apotropaic one charmed me:
“The entries to the animals’ shelters are adorned with green branches. All branches are left in place until the wheat harvest when they are used in the fire which will bake the first bread from the new wheat.”
To be clear, the fire is to bake the bread.
Definitely only the bread.
Definitely not the sad American co-ed’s bad boyfriend dressed in a bear suit.
ONLY. THE. BREAD.
A new collection of art mugs has arrived straight from my brain to your lips! YUM!
* (of cool, not coffee)
I had food poisoning the day before my birthday, so I’m just now catching up on life and everyone’s super kind greetings from March 15, usually the best day ever (just ask this little party animal circa 1988).
THANK YOU! It was, shall we say, not a great day this year, BUT, I’m grateful for it all the same.
I think the rest of my 36th year is going to be awesome.
Here are a few reasons why:
Fingers crossed I won’t be sick for that one this year too. 
The journals your mother warned you about!
I have some new artwork published in the latest issue of indie journal Lover’s Eye Press.
Check it out and stay a while. Read the lovely literary entries, explore the other artwork, and listen to the great podcast interview with featured artist E. Hughes.
xoxo
The Rosa Collection is a series of spiral-bound notebooks with printed front and back cover collage designs I made, inspired by the 1799 botanical etchings of Mary Lawrance.
These soft-touch cover notebooks are hard to resist.
Spiral notebook with printed front and back cover of a collage design by Jackie Mantey. Flower etching: Mary Lawrance, 1799, “Rosa Damascena.”
Spiral notebook with printed front and back cover of a collage design by Jackie Mantey. Flower etching: Mary Lawrance, 1799, “Rosa Lutea-Bicolor.”
Spiral notebook with printed front and back cover of a collage design by Jackie Mantey. Flower etching: Mary Lawrance, 1799, “Rosa Centifolia.”
Spiral notebook with printed front and back cover of a collage design by Jackie Mantey. Flower etching: Mary Lawrance, 1799, “White Provincialis.”
Spiral notebook with printed front and back cover of a collage design by Jackie Mantey. Flower etching: Mary Lawrance, 1799, “Rosa Sulphuria.”
And, of course, I got to know Tina Turner better. 😉 This quote from the documentary TINA is my favorite of the year:
Look at what I have done in this lifetime with this body. I’m a girl from a cotton field that pulled myself above what was not taught to me.
— Tina Turner
I hope you have the very best new year. (“Simply the best,” perhaps?)
Stay strong.
Keep pulling yourself above what was not taught to you.
We’re almost home.
