In fact, I was just stung yesterday while purchasing some local honey from Anita at Beverly Bees. Even though the bees have clearly identified me as an unwanted guest at their party, I am fascinated by them: their industrious nature, their loyalty to the Queen, their frenetic tempo of life. I couldn’t resist a peek at the hives, perched on top of Anita’s roof. I climbed up the ladder like a Peeping Tom to get a good look, and sure enough, PING! I felt the familiar burn on the top of my head. Stung again! I resolve in the future to respect the bees’ privacy and leave beekeeping to the professionals.

One sting was a small price to pay, honestly, for the chance to chat with an expert like Anita and taste delicious honey. Beverly Bees makes honey that is hyper-local and completely treatment free. That means no pesticides, chemicals, essential oils, or antibiotics are used, and the unprocessed, raw honey retains its vitamins and enzymes. PLUS, the batches of honey are never mixed. Bees forage within a three mile radius, and as Anita writes on her blog: “Since good honey is like fine wine, micro batch honey allows you to taste the different flavors of honey from different floral sources.”

I picked up two jars from her Beverly hives: one from spring blossoms and one from summer.

See more gorgeous photos (like the one above) and read more about Anita’s honey and her sustainable practices here:

Honey! Honey! Honey!

-Marta B.

I always sneak a peek to see how a book ends when I’m midway through.

It’s usually somewhere around a hundred or two hundred pages in (depending on the total length of the novel). At that point, I simply can’t seem to sate curiosity fast enough.  I get greedy for the denouement and I need to know the next twist right now.

Sorry George, I had to skip to the end to see if there would be any Starks of Winterfell remaining.

I especially find myself doing this with popular fiction – The Time Traveler’s wife (his feet freeze off and he can no longer run), The Adventures of Kavalier and Klay (Joe is gay), The Great Gatsby (Gatsby is framed and murdered).

Ann Patchett saved me the trouble in Bel Canto – there’s the spoiler on page 13 “It was the unspoken belief of everyone… that they were all as good as dead, when in fact it was the terrorists who would not survive the ordeal.”

For me – finding out the ending doesn’t spoil the book – rushing through it does.

Rush is the enemy of Savor.  Rushing will ruin a good book.  It’s hard to savor a work of fiction if you’re worried about the prospect of the protagonist’s relationship, or life.  It’s hard to savor anything if you just can’t wait to find out what happens next.

I don’t want to be surprised – I want to enjoy what I’m reading.  I want to soak in the words, and savor the commas.  Yes, the commas.  Trying to figure out the main plot can lead me to ignore subtleties, wordplay, and the bittersweet sting of romantic rejection which usually comes in the form of ellipses.

Of course, there are also books where the action is slow, intentionally so.  When I truly want to savor a book – I pick up one of those and I slow down and feel, taste, and see the imagery of the author. These are vacation reads, but not beach reads.  There aren’t any cliff hangers at the end of the each chapter.

Here are my three recommendations for “slow-reads.”

One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek – Annie Dillard

Gilead - Marilynne Robinson

What’s on your list of summer reads?  What books do you really savor?

-Beth Melillo

The dramatic cliffs are remnants of Cape Anne’s granite industry, which thrived from the 1840′s through the 1920′s, according to the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation.

A short walk around the quarry and down a scrub brush lined path brings you to the rocky coast.

Create your own unique granite sculptures!

We couldn’t resist a quick stop for sandcastle building at another favorite place nearby, Good Harbor Beach!

-Marta B.

I’ve heard this sentence more times than I can count from people, usually older adults.

When I was growing up and it was time to eat out, there were only two options in my family.  Chinese Buffet.  or Mexican food.  I’m not entirely proud of this – but my favorite restaurant to go to as a teenager with my friends was TGIFriday’s.

It wasn’t until I was in college that I started tasting other ethnic cuisines: Thai, Ethiopian, Japanese Sushi, and Indian food.

My first encounter with Indian food was Chicken Tikka Masala (isn’t everyone’s?), and I wasn’t hooked – until I tasted the garlic naan. I was lured in by this combination of soft, yet spicy bread, in such an interesting shape.

Indian food is famously complicated – there’s SO much more than just Curry.  There are multiple steps, each taking fifteen or more minutes, huge ingredient lists and secret spice mixes you have to figure out.   And it’s fairly difficult to replicate the flavors at home – at least for a cook like me – who is more into thirty minute meals.   I wouldn’t even have attempted to cook any Indian food, if it wasn’t for my half-Indian husband, who loves the spice combinations of coriander, cumin, chili, tumeric, and so on.

What I make falls far short of restaurant Indian food, although I do try fairly often, usually using this book.

When I have time, I attempt the longer recipes in the book like Peas Pilau.  And when I don’t, well then I make the Chickpea Curry pictured below. It’s still tasty, and here is the recipe written out on another blog.

Eventually I stop trying to approximate recipes, and start asking for a leisurely escape to the local Indian food restaurant in Salem - Passage to India.  Or the equally delightful Beverly based Anmol.

And if that doesn’t work… there’s always take-out.

I recommend trying some Channa Masala, the Saag Paneer, and of course, garlic naan, as soon as you can. Or you could always try to whip up your own.

Summer is too short, so start early. Pack a picnic lunch, throw on a light jacket, and hit the beach. It might not be swimming weather, but you can enjoy watching the waves, flying kites, playing soccer, and building sandcastles. My favorites North Shore beaches are Singing Beach in Manchester, Good Harbor Beach in Gloucester, Devereux Beach in Marblehead, and Crane Beach in Ipswich.

Ice cream!

Longer, sunnier days make me want to eat ice cream. Captain Dusty’s is a favorite, and so are Treadwell’s, Orange Leaf, and pints of Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia.

Time!

My second child is due in July, and I am fully expecting complete and total vaporization of my leisure time. And that is all the more reason to enjoy it now. Sure, life with a toddler can be hectic, but I can still make it to yoga class, read a good book in the evenings, and write the occasional blog post. I even found the time to get my hair cut this week. When bundle of joy number two arrives, I foresee a lot less time pursuing hobbies, and a lot more time catching up on sleep.

-Marta B.

How could I savor this?

This month our theme is Savor – fitting for the season of spring, which comes on the heels of long dark days and barren trees.  Now, it is easy to throw open a window, smell the sea, and take time to stand underneath the neighbor’s flowering trees. I can once again spend several hours at the park without freezing, watching the tide, birds, and boats.  Dusk creeps up slowly; already sunset isn’t until 7:50pm.

I hear the word “Savor” and I think of sweet spring days, and also decadent desserts – Mark Bittman’s recent video with French Chef Jean Georges about the invention and creation of the Molton Chocolate cake for example.

Molton Chocolate Cake

Savor invites imagination of not just any dessert, but the extraordinary – sweets that are rich, beyond normalacy ( such  as the family sugar cookie I wrote about here).  When I truly savor something edible I am sated after only a few bites – I cherish the experience as much as the taste – the presentation has everything to do with it.

Coffee from the Atomic Cafe

Nature, Dessert, what else do I savor?  I savor sleeping in, eating long breakfasts with my family on Saturday mornings with pancakes, fruit, eggs, coffee.  I savor time to read long long books, like my current read George RR Martin’s Storm of Swords, and books that contain rich imagery and tangled relationships like Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead.

The things I savor are extraordinary, out of my normal routine, but also transient.  These experiences and things, they don’t last long.  They are the first few months of a baby’s life, my honeymoon, the perfect sunset.

They are spring time blossoms – here one week, and gone two weekends later.  The blooms are replaced by sturdier leaves.

They are experiences, tastes, smells that are anything but normal.  They can’t be had on command, every morning, or ever meal.

BUT, is there a way to savor the sticky dull class?  How can we redeem the humdrum, the ordinary?  Or should we accept that some things will always be second-rate,  in order that others might stand out in our minds as truly sublime?

This month we’ll be exploring the things we Savor, the things we think you should savor – books, recipes, sunsets, and much more.  Won’t you join us on our blog, or on facebook?

He’s not scared of running out into the mud when the tide recedes and we’re squelching through the beach at Forest River Park.  He climbs on the big rocks wherever we go.

He would run a whole block down the road, staring at dump trucks, and flatbed trucks, and excavators – garbage trucks barrelling down the road at forty miles an hour, but he stops at the crosswalk. thank goodness.

He’s independent, strong, and tough, resilient and happy.  I’m grateful for that – that’s the toddler I wanted.  I’ll take the small temper tantrums, the headbutt (or two) that bloodied my lip one day, if he’ll get up when he falls, no whining, no crying.

It’s only in the last two or three months that he’s begun to show some fear.  He will back away from brindled dogs curling their lips at him – but now even sweet white pups will send him back to mama, to stand next to her legs and watch with pursed lips.

As we walked to the Derby lighthouse the other day he stuck to the stones in the middle.  When I lifted him up to show him the edge of Derby wharf, the steep drop down into the water, he clung to me tightly.

He hates to be lifted onto my shoulders now – although he still loves to be swung from his two little arms, back and forth, back and forth.

Being completely fearless is for fools – and I’m glad he’s started to learn this.  It is good to learn what is dangerous and to fear it.  But even as he learns to make smart decisions based on knowledge, I’m learning how much to let him try on his own first too.  I want him to have that knowledge he needs to make smart decisions, and sometimes that means a bruised head.

Jeff Bowie is a jewelry artist living in Salem with her husband and two teenage sons (“they help me do all the heavy lifting at craft shows”). Her unique, signature pieces composed of tiny mechanical watch parts, caught my eye at a recent opening at the Scarlett Letter Press. First, I was drawn to the “Steampunk” look– I’ve always liked that kind of Industrial-Revolution-meets-fantasy type aesthetic. Secondly, I loved the idea of deconstructing, and re-constructing into something beautiful and different. As a counselor, I particular liked the metaphor in her heart-shaped pendants: of looking at the “inner-workings” of the heart.

I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Jeff in her studio and talk more about her work and motivations as a jewelry artist.

Steampunk heart pendants

Steampunk circle pendants

Steampunk rectangular pendant

A little about Jeff’s background and history:

Someone once told Jeff: “While you make pretty jewelry and you are a good jewelry smith, what you really do best is build communities. You introduce people.” Judging from all the work she has done in the Salem arts community, I don’t doubt it.

Born “Jennifer”, her older sister, who was a toddler at the time, called her “Jeffiner” — soon everyone was calling her “Jeff” for short!

Originally from Western New York, Jeff got her degree in art history from the University of Rochester and then moved to Massachusetts to work for “corporate America” at a think tank in Cambridge. “At age 26 I was making more money than anyone else in my family.” She started taking continuing education classes in metal smithing to help her “get out” the stress of her job, and finally decided to quit and study metal smithing full time at Mass Art. After graduating, she moved to Waltham and started the jewelry school, Metal Werx in 1998, now a 501(c)3 non-profit. In 2000, she moved to Salem for her husband’s “other woman”–a 32 ft sailboat. “She was the love of his life, I was merely the mother of his children!”

In July 2002, she was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis and decided to step away from Metal Werx, to focus on her own jewelry making. While she was living in Salem, however, she noticed a need for a place where local artists could sell their craft. She decided to open The Picklepot, where she and other local artists could display and sell their work. She also collaborated with local artists and officials to create the Salem Arts Association, of which she is still a board member. After running the award-winning art gallery and shop for 7 years, she decided to focus again on her own jewelry smithing, and gave the store to her husband, David Bowie, who now runs it as a spice and kitchen gadget shop. You can also find Jeff’s jewelry for sale there and on her online shop.

She currently works from her own studio in her garage, and sells at multiple craft fairs and shows in the area. Her work is also featured in many galleries in Salem.

Jeff in her studio

About her process:

“The devil is in the details,” Jeff told me. “You have to be a little OCD to be a jewelry designer–exactitude is required in your design, process, and everything you do–it is inherent in jewelry work. I build sculpture the size of a thimble.” First Jeff specialty orders the pendant and earring shapes from another jewelry artist (If she made them herself, they would be of sterling silver and gold, and way too expensive for the average person to buy) Then she paints the insides of the forms black to hold the various watch parts: Each form gets a hand-picked selection of gears, cogs, and various other watch pieces, including some signature “Steampunk” shapes: moonfaces, moon dials, date or time wheels cut in half. Some of the parts she orders online and the rest she disassembles herself. “I reuse everything– if I can scavenge them in any shape or form, I will.”

“There are two things people can’t throw away: a broken mechanical watch and an old key. I am the place where people can drop these off guilt-free. Often I will come home and find a plastic bag full of old watches dropped through my mail slot. I’ve become the place where old watches go to die and become reborn.”

Filling the forms

Bracelet forms

Hardening the resin using ultraviolet light

Why use watch parts?

“I’ve always been a little goth, but not in the Marilyn Manson type. In terms of my art, my taste and visuals have always been more Edwardian, 1880′s, Industrial Revolution.” Watches became part of her work almost 4 years ago. “I just wanted to play with them. I liked the form, shape and Edwardian aesthetic. I didn’t realize there was a word for it until later. I was building these pieces before I even knew what Steampunk was.”

What is Steampunk exactly?

“Steampunk is the world the way it would be if Jules Verne and H.G. Wells had been right about the future. We were promised a world where the wheels would turn, the gears would shift, we would see the inner workings of our world. There would be a satisfaction both physically and viscerally in the world. Instead, we get plastic circuits made in China. If you drop your phone, and it breaks open, how many of us could identify a single working part? The technology that drives our world today is invisible, unfathomable, and inaccessible. Steampunk is a nostalgia for the world we were promised but never given.”

The difference between a battery– or quartz– operated watch (left) and a mechanical watch (right). Jeff only works with mechanical watches because they contain the gears and tiny moving parts–no battery required. Which one do you like more?

Can you tell me anything else about your work?

[My work has a Steampunk aesthetic] but I am not trying to make a political statement. I draw pictures with watch parts and I have fun doing it. That there is a community out there that likes it is an added bonus. I make things that are pretty and shiny and make people smile. I believe we were all magpies in a former life.

“Time in a bottle”

How has your MS impacted your jewelry-making?

“The biggest impact has been on my gross motor skills, and thankfully my jewelry-making involves very little gross motor skills–just fine motor skills”

Jeff told me that when she was first diagnosed, it was difficult. She had known for a while that something was wrong, but didn’t know what it was. She turned to her craft to help her process all her emotions. Ultimately she created two pieces that helped her reconcile her feelings with what was going on with her body, and to accept all parts of herself “cracks and all”. “These helped me to accept things the way they were.”

“Self Portrait with Scars and Spare Parts”

“Gifts of the Garden: Digging myself out of deep karmic debt one vegetable at a time”

What are your thoughts about the Salem arts community:

“I’ve always said that if you put two artists in a room, you’ll get three opinions! But in general, we like each other, and we work together. The Salem arts community has been very good to me. In Salem there are places to see art in the most unexpected locations. The Salem arts community is doing well because we live in a community that supports music and the arts–they want to see the arts here. Of course the economy has impacted the arts, but in Salem, we have built things where things didn’t exist. We are working with the Chamber of Commerce to keep on raising the bar.”

Any final thoughts or advice to aspiring artists?

“Don’t strive to be famous, don’t strive to be rich, strive to be good at what you do. Be mercilessly good at what you do. Be good in the ways that only you can be.”

And this quote from Franz Kafka: “Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.” 

You can find more information about Jeff’s work and where to buy it at her online shop.

– Madelene

I like to think that I can judge if a new acquaintance is smart, loyal, honest, and responsible, or if they are the opposite — unreliable, immature, selfish, unstable, or dishonest. And in order to live my life, I have to believe this. I have to trust people. I have to maintain the illusion that people can be assessed and that they behave in predictable ways.

Every day, I place my health and happiness in the hands of others: my daycare providers, coworkers, friends, and family. I do it because I know and trust them. And I’ve had good luck so far. I have never been betrayed by a jealous friend, sabotaged by an ambitious co-worker, or left stranded by a flaky babysitter. And I like to believe that it is because I know how to choose my associations wisely.

The shocking events of the last week have left me questioning my ability to read and trust people. The bombings at the Boston Marathon and the subsequent violence killed four people and injured nearly 200 others. The loss and injustice is overwhelming. When the reports first started rolling in with the names of the accused young men, Tamerlin and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a flurry of former classmates, teachers, and coaches stepped forward to be interviewed. And over and over again, I heard expressions of complete shock and disbelief, particularly as it related to the 19 year-old Dzhokhar. People called him a normal kid, extroverted, an athlete, well adjusted, popular, easygoing, and a leader.

How could you attend school for four years with a cold-blooded killer and never suspect a thing? I would know it; I would sense it somehow; I would be able to see it…wouldn’t I?

In recent years, the perpetrators of violent public shootings have been characterized in the media as men with a long history of antisocial and unstable or mentally ill behavior. These men fit a certain profile that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev doesn’t. And that scares me. It is terrifying to know that people with tremendous capability for violence exist in the world, but for me, it is even more frightening to consider the possibility that there might not be any obvious warning signs.

I anticipate finding out more in the coming days that explains how, in such a short amount of time, the high school kid that everyone thought they knew transformed into something quite different: a murderer or even a terrorist. Already snippets of information are popping up here and there that may eventually piece together a cohesive, comprehensible story.

In the meantime, all I can do is continue to take the risk, trust my instincts, believe in people, and hope for the best.

from s.fawn.deviney.
via photosandspace.wordpress.com

Let me tell you that I WANT to be spontaneous, I WANT to be inhibition-less.

I ENVY people who strike up conversations in bars with perfect strangers.  Actually, even those who find themselves in strange bars in the first place.

Although I consider myself a creative person, a person who likes varied experiences – you won’t find me doing kareoke anytime soon, skydiving, or down at the local tattoo parlor.

Actually, I thought hard about getting a tattoo this month (and for the last six months.  Loyal readers – I would NOT get a tattoo just to write a blog post. Probably.)  I did a little research. Asked some friends about it.  Drew some pictures of birds, thought about words and images I like. Looked at some pictures of tattoos online…

And there-in lies the problem.  RISK involves a little bit of impetuousness, and when it comes right down to it – my first reaction to any suggestion is to collect anecdotal experience from friends, and google the damn question to death.

Which isn’t to say I’ve never done anything scary, without repercussions, or hard.

Here’s one of the riskiest things I’ve ever done.

In May 2010 I quit my job.  No second job in the works – I had vague ideas of writing, vaguer ideas of volunteering or switching careers, plans to get married, travel, move across the country… etc. I was unhappy at my job, and nothing had really panned out for about six to twelve months prior to that in my job hunting.  I was pretty fed up.

So I quit.  It was risky, AND, I’m pretty much still feeling the aftershocks right now.  Yep, I got married.  Yep, I started writing a whole lot more (hello blog).  Yep, I travelled. But a couple unforeseen twists happened (hello baby), and then I (and my new husband) were scrambling to dig out from under this problem of joblessness, homelessness, directionlessness.  Sometimes we feel like we set ourselves back five years because of those risks we took two-and-a-half years ago.

Volcano climbing when I was 4 months pregnant. Slightly risky.

So, we had to take some new risks, like grad school – and getting serious about changing careers.  We’re still waiting to see the results from that.

This experience has taught me (and continues to teach me)  that there are numerous ways to measure risk.

- Is the risk going to be short and intense, or long and drawn out? (Tattoos vs. Starting a new Business)

- Is this risk going to effect just you, or others as well? (Running a marathon vs. Switching Careers)

- Is it going to be low risk, or righ risk? (Moving to Beverly, MA. vs. Moving to Europe.)

- Is this risk health or unhealthy? (Taking a rock-climbing class, taking up smoking.)

As cliched as it might be, I think that taking a Risk is Necessary for Growth.  Like a good training regimen for athletes who want to improve, Risk is a training program for Change.   And as has been said before, Change is the only Constant.

I’m not really a Risk Taker in the conventional sense of word, but I’m willing to try new things.  And maybe that’s always the first step.

I’m okay with that.

What about you?  What are some of the biggest risks you’ve taken?  Do you think risks are necessary?

-Beth Melillo.