Heavenly Helpers

Inspired by what we find ourselves needing most.

Saints preserve us! Or something like that. We’re fairly certain that heavenly help is readily there for everyone, regardless of creed, belief group, background. After all, look up anyone in a Lives of the Saints book and with notable exception, he or she started out ordinary – and then for assorted reasons, most often driven by conviction, faith, or some other ethical engine, opted to change directions, help others, make faith-leaps, take risks, give/love selflessly, and be transformed, and later on…people started to talk about them, remember what happened, and trace miracles and marvels back to the story.

So…we found some of our favorites, and made our own renditions, because in a way, that’s what saints did anyway.

The Music of a Most Touching Thank You

Please, more cartoons! Amy’s simple, home-made thank you card.

Sometime last year, John and I hosted my old college friend (hence, but maybe not that obviously so, Jersey girl) Amy Berridge for an extended weekend.  Amy always brings stories and her (now) well-travelled mandolin.  And denim, fleece, toys for Lulu, an appetite, and pure down-home-ness.

Amy is an amazing writer, who set off to Canada after college (a place probably not chosen by accident, since her favorites songwriters Joni Mitchell and Neil Young hail from the place) for a graduate degree, and maybe more importantly, some focused mandolin home-schooling and musical roots steeping.

I have enjoyed so much good music over the years with Amy.  She is just one of those magical people.  Mostly off grid.  But tuned in.  Aware of her place on Earth.   A student and a true believer. A fan and a participant.  An prarie-economist  as well, who often speaks of prepping for the “revolution.” Jokingly, guns and goats and guitars. Survival. But then she laughs and tosses all that aside and moves back into moment, and we go deep into whatever we are listening to (or playing).

She has the most amazing ear, and the most amazing heart.  A few days after she left us, we received a  package which held three things: a simple pasted-on cartoon card, a CD of mix-tape-type tunes, along with her famous, super-enjoyable “liner notes”… some songs that reminded her of our visit.  

The gift: Amy’s liner notes

This isn’t the first gift of music and time and place I have received from Amy.  It is just the one that represents this last trip.  Always anticipated, her gifts of music and prose and joy and wonder are more than just received and read: they are well played and preserved (like any good piece of correspondence that defines a time and a place would be).  They are a travelogue of our friendship, in a way.

To get off “autopilot” when sifting through mail by way of receiving this kind of “gift” of a thank you from a friend is like a return to life.  Time to pause, and read and enjoy and care again.  And revisit a weekend, and mark it for keeps with music and interpretation and memory….

I’d probably post this on Amy’s social media outlets if she had them, but she is decidedly staying off all of that.  She prefers an email. Or a phone call. Or an actual visit!  So, we will get planning some real time together soon. And wishing the same to all of our friends.

Xo,

Patti

P.S. Here is one of Amy’s picks, Django’s Minor Swing (and if you like this, Django Reinhardt on Pandora should make you happy too):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpmOTGungnA

WAXING POETIC HEROS: Granite Mountain Hotshots

When we first saw the news about the devastating Yarnell Hill Fire in Arizona at the end of June, we were horrified/amazed/overwhelmed/etc., but it was still ‘just’ a news story – the ‘just’ in here is important, as is its fleetingly appropriate use… Arizona isn’t that far from Waxing Poetic HQ, after all, and California is an equally flammable place in terms of native foliage/dry seasons/high winds. We are neighbors, and friends.

When we learned from one of our longest employees that a friend of hers from high school, Sean Misner of Santa Ynez, was one of the 19 brave members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots (the semi-official name of the inter-agency firefighting crew deployed to the scene) gave his life to stop the fire (and save the lives of countless others – humans, wildlife, pets, and passing strangers all alike…), it stopped being only a ‘story,’ or a ‘tragedy,’ but became, in an admittedly protracted way, familiar.

Nothing is ever ‘just’ a news item. No one is ever ‘just’ by themselves – and yet sometimes, too often maybe, we forget. Life is precious, fragile, and sometimes far too short. One might make the last part of that assertion is certainly the case for the firefighters who passed away in the Yarnell inferno, but we’d beg them to consider another possibility: that the heroes lost on that day weren’t lost so much as given, of their own will + selflessness, to the cause of life for everyone else.

Of Sean Misner, his friend and our Waxing Poetic comrade told us this:

He was kind. He was brave. He played football with her brother. He was always smiling. He liked to make people laugh. He made people’s days on a regular basis. He was the brightspot in her doldrums-of-summer summer job, as well as the bright spot in probably everyone’s job that summer at Los Olivos Grocery.

We also heard this:

He loved his wife, fiercely and deeply. He loved his job. He loved his family, his life, and his particular chances. He had found his own ‘worthy vocation’ in being a firefighter, and never once wanted to do anything else thereafter.

For Information about the Yarnell Emergency Fire Fund, please visit  The United Way of Yavapai County.

BEE BRAVE

Early scetches of the Bee Brave Pendant

(inspired by Baroque-ness but also process…bees are also process…) Bees and Baroque…what might they have in common? Hmmm…artistry, intricate elements, an almost compulsive attention to detail, and somehow tying all the output together, a sense of order. Caused by many many tiny actions, and tiny pieces, and tiny particulars. Like anything good, and frequently, like anything unsung. And so we’d like to take the occasion to celebrate a hybrid of the two: a reminder that regardless of scale or size, change happens beautifully, and with great care.

Bee Brave Pendant sketches showing details of the intricate design

Change is brave. And lovely. And made from and with many elements—many little buzzing parts, many threads, many origin points, and some unknowns. Interwoven threads of metal made into a stronger, more malleable ribbon ­—a method of storytelling predicated on diversity? Yes. Quite.

Finished Bee Brave Pendant

And the glimmering? Oh yes. Look, ‘Baroque Pearls,’ the kind that we’re using here, are known for their singularities. They don’t conform to any one set of standards.

They happen, like all pearls, by accident (an oyster taken off guard, a grain of sand or something, a period of time and BOOM: a pearl) – but this kind of incident is distinct – it doesn't follow a pattern, although they evoke all sorts of sources, like any of us – made from an array of backstories and becauses and utterly, utterly beautiful in our intricacies. Like bees and honey and sweetness and magic. It’s all interrelated.

Shop our Bee Brave Collection.

Fresh and Local: Farmer’s Market Poetry in the Making

Sometimes, a trip to the farmer’s market results in organic veggies, and sometimes, one is sidetracked by something random and strange, and lovely (the sidetracked one in this case is our own Jessica, a creative always on the lookout for an odd diversion).

Here, a street poet interprets one of her Waxing Poetic necklaces, rendering a poem, on the spot, like some sort of open framework jazz…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qd3zTILIys

Little Couragies

St. Theresa of Liseux, known to Catholic girls like the Pagliei sisters and many others by her nickname/defacto moniker of “The Little Flower,” was a petite, shy girl in 19th century France whose faith, devotion, and small-scale-but-not-small-beliefwise-fortitude transcended her own expectations and changed…all manner of things.

And so we were inspired, by her and by others, to make these – little reminders, little objects, little indicators of something greater or more complicated than we might know or understand, but that we believe (or are willing to believe) might change things. And they will. And with heart and good faith and good…luck (of a certain stripe).

Shop Waxing Poetic Charms.

Local Happenings: I Maddonari Festival

If you are in Santa Barbara and looking for something to do this weekend, I Maddonari is an Italian street painting festival up at the Santa Barbara Mission. Madonnari, or street painters, transform the Mission plaza using pastels on pavement to create 150 vibrant and colorful, large scale images. The festival benefits the Children's Creative Project, a nonprofit arts education program of the Santa Barbara County Education Office.

Festival is the 25, 26, and 27^th, and hours are 10-6 daily. Admission is free! There are Italian food booths and music out on the grass… a lovely way to enjoy our beautiful town and see a ton of talent!

Here’s an example of a of the progression through the weekend of a past chalk art painting:

Working with my Sister: in a word, Magic.

“My name is Chris Cornell, and I’m here to induct my hometown heroes, Heart.” That’s how the Soundgarden front man started his Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame induction speech (televised this past weekend).

Cornell continued by saying, “Let us now praise sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson.” before mentioning the rest of the original band. “Together these people made magic.”

Yes they did. And still do, after over 30 years of playing together - and even after breaking up for a while.

Upon seeing the sisters (who also happen to be mothers) accept their award and rock out together, I was reminded:
a) how special it is to even HAVE a sister
b) how lucky we are to work together, and how meaningful our professional journey has been
c) how I can never take that for granted

Ann and Nancy could have made music with anyone I suppose, but they would not have made Heart. The fact that they are sisters brings an intangible synergy that makes the music that much better.

Heart. It truly is magic.

We are born to our parents, and may have spouses, but it has been said that the people with whom we really share life’s journey are our brothers and sisters. Working with Lizanne has given me the opportunity to deepen my bond to her. Sometimes, our work relationship is so easy, I can’t believe it. And sometimes, it is so challenging, I want to retreat.

But it is always my sister that I come back to. She is a rock, a guiding light, a force of nature, a confidant, a protector, a mother. And as we work together, side-by-side, and come together to make decisions from our individual perspectives, our business grows, and we move deeper and deeper into sisterhood. At the end of the day, I think “How wondrous it is to be doing something remarkable with my sister. How magical.”

There are many phenomena in business, but this one has held true for Waxing Poetic:  whenever we consider each other, our business benefits. We, the sisters, should always drive that point home… this true core of our business: our connectedness. When we are operating from a place of family, of love, of togetherness, we move mountains. When there is mutual trust, respect and love, and a shared vision, great things happen.

I am inextricably bound to my sister. And maybe that is the greatest lesson that working with her has given me: it is GOOD to be bound by love, all of us, even if it sometimes challenges us. We can’t deny it, we can’t walk away. Unconditional love. It makes us look in the mirror, summon up what we got, and rise to the occasion. And somehow, one of the things that makes the magic in the end.

Here with some real heart: Heart performing Crazy on You at the 2013 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame awards.

Thanks to my sister Lizanne, and all the sisters out there that inspire and bring heart to what they do.

Xo,

Patti

Waxing Poetic Muse of the Moment: Patti Smith

Style and Substance and Stubbornness and STRAIGHT UP ROCK AND ROLL (and poems, always poems, and performance, and love, and all of that, and an uncanny and uncommon capacity to forgive and transform herself, her friends, her fans, her language of origin, her history, her loves, her family, the very definition of family, her place in the world both as a would-be-art-student kicking around Fort Greene Brooklyn during the rough-n-tumble years when one would go to classes at Pratt and then scurry away but Patti? OH NO SHE DID NOT.

Instead she and best friend/soul mate/collaborator/and true love (an unusual kind of love but a lasting brave transformative one ) Robert Mapplethorpe stuck it out in a leaking, all-but-condemned building where they made shrines to Love and classical poets, drew until their hands hurt, told stories, wrote music, made mischief and set things in motion for the eventual flights elsewhere (but never too far from each other, and certainly not too far from love).

Patti sometimes talks a little before her concerts (because so what if yes she’s a mama and been married and loved and lost and is well over the age she broke everyone’s hearts first with HORSES – life changing, ever so, and onward: she’s still performing and kicking to dust any rueful remarks that after a certain age, you really just shouldn’t…).

One of our friends saw her last year and reported back this: that Patti said something to the effect of she got into music because it was a way to connect further to love (and to the world! and to revolution! and all that wonder!) in a way that words could only do to a point –

because all the poems in the world are lonely little boats
waiting to be launched without a sea
of feeling or an ocean
of possibility and both of those things require
movement,
performance,
transformation
and the righteous backing of a most excellent band of fellow curious comrades…

and maybe too, maybe (we hope so, and in JUST KIDS she says as much…), the ‘magical’ inclusion of some self-invented style (a white shirt, skinny black pants, stompable boots, a wry smile…). So earnest it might be read as a sneer but listen a little more (turn up GLORIA on Spotify or whatever form you can find it right now) and just…be wowed with all this wonder. Patti was, and is. Also, she’s from Jersey (like the Pagliei sisters and a whole slew of our friends/fans at WP), and she’s tough, and gorgeous, and brilliant (and everything we hope to someday be.. as much as she has pulled off).

And humble. And how.  Here is a little gift for the tried-n-true, and new, Patti Smith fans: http://channel.louisiana.dk/video/patti-smith-advice-young

Xo WP