Last July I attended a concert at the Yellow Barn Studio featuring Jenny Wilson—a jazz musician and contemporary abstract painter living in Chevy Chase, Maryland. I’d had a complicated summer navigating matters of work, home, and heart, and was looking for a little respite. It was a warm day, not too hot—surprising for July in the Mid-Atlantic …

In the disembodied world of clicks, swipes, VR and AI, it can feel like an act of rebellion to create, converse, move, think, even dream offline – the practice of iconoclasts and grumpy contrarians. This shouldn’t be. We are born embodied animals designed for motion, save death, sleep, and cases of extreme disability. There is great satisfaction in the physicality and presence of hands-on, tactile creativity. There is also power.

We had no choice but to remove the red oak tree that had stood proudly in the backyard for fifty or so years. A springtime lightning strike snaked down the trunk, leaving an open zipper of woody core and jagged shards of bark. For six months my husband and I stood at our kitchen window, coffee in hand, observing the slow progression of death: the oak’s branches turned brown and brittle, the waxy, pointed leaves curled into little cups. On more than one occasion I sobbed over the demise of the great and gentle giant.