My friend Wendy introduced me to the term Craftivism. Her usual choice of creativity is fiber-based, as in the quilted piece above. She created this one while living in Minneapolis in 2020, and she apologized for not sending me something more recent. “Still plenty to be broken-hearted about,” was my response, grateful for this example of bringing beauty into the broken world. She and her daughter Eva, who still lives in the Twin Cities, have spread the gentle joy of their fiber arts, with an exhilarating anonymity, whenever they felt the need to both create and to share. Craftivism allows us to feel emotional connections floating out--and returning, in equally mysterious ways.

Many people gathered in the streets again this weekend, signaling readiness to stand against tyranny in honor of the 250th anniversary of Paul Revere’s famous ride. My friend Kathryn created t-shirts for our writer’s group that we can wear with pride at rallies wherever we live (this is the back of mine).

Arts Activism is highlighted at Abbetuck.org, with a wide-ranging supply of ideas that people might Create to Liberate, which Wendy offered as helpful options to stay engaged when rallies aren’t an option. Creative approaches to the multi-pronged crises of the day recognize the arts as a path into freedom.  One way I’ve been staying connected with far-flung friends is to reinvigorate my appreciation of our country’s postal service, especially important for us rural folks. Combining two interests, my love of wildlife photographs (made by others) and my commitment to our Earth joined hands with a little old-fashioned cutting and pasting of a recycled calendar into a viable envelope with a critter collage inside for Earth Day.

Library staff will sometimes request old calendars for youth craft projects, so you can give some consideration to where you might find second lives for yours, or for old cards that don’t need to go directly from store to landfill as soon as they’ve been opened. And how about your far-flung friends—especially the older ones? Who might appreciate a bit of real mail, a card crafted with childlike humility from our years when everything we did wasn’t so unbearably serious, or “precious” as some writing instructors tease. Flexing creative muscles gives our courage some conditioning as we let go of limitations and fears of uncertainty. My card was sent off to a new resident at an assisted living facility who remembers me from those long-ago days when I wrote holiday poems on birch bark collected off the forest floor. What a treat for me to sniff again the eastern woodlands with their child-sized forests of ground-pine and ground-cedar, the horse-hoof fungus that served as canvas for many primitive, painted mountainscapes. What magic always awaits when imagination sparks from memory, and connections live anew through art’s playfulness, into the unknowable future.