I’m on the floating condo (my sailor sweetie’s sailboat) today catching up with the internet after a weekend of mainland markets. The YouTube algorithm recommended this video about Marguerite Wildenhein and I’m now enthralled with this woman’s legacy, I resonate deeply with her life and philosophy. I can see my life emulating hers in some ways. Do you have complimentary videos to recommend? Please comment below!
I had so many other synchronistic moments this past weekend vending at the farmers markets. Talking with a younger artist visitor to my Everett Farmer’s Market booth, his enthusiasm for nature and yearning for a life path to incorporate it more fully, I suddenly remembered a fateful meeting I had while vending at farmer’s markets in my then-home Portland OR when I was younger and looking for the next direction my life would take. Gosh, it’s been almost 11 years ago now since I came home here to the Salish Sea!
Anyhow, talking to the younger artist yesterday, I remembered a conversation I had years ago with a middle-aged woman in my booth who was looking over all my nature prints and notecards and emphatically exclaiming over and over that I just HAD to go to the San Juan islands, my artwork resonated with her experiences there. Truth be told, this happened several times with several different booth visitors in the 5 years I lived in Portland, but that particular woman left the strongest impression. I wish I remembered more details about her! In my life’s story, she was a harbinger of the future to come, just as perhaps I have been for the young artist who visited with me yesterday.
Other important-feeling visitors/harbingers of the future-to-come this weekend were a group of regenerative permaculture-principle farmers. We traded stories, artwork and plant starts; and I caught a glimpse of a possible future coming into being. That’s all I can definitely say for now. I’ll have to let the vision percolate a bit and reveal more as time goes on!
I also met a woman named Hope, who purchased my Hope image in sticker form. I jokingly shared with her that I never had kids but if I had had a daughter I daydreamed of naming her Hope to match my last name (if you say “Hope Bliss” out loud you’ll understand my humor). The woman named Hope standing in front of me shared that her given last name was Foley. Her parents had my sense of humor! She also shared that her grandmother liked to remind her that she stopped the parents from giving Hope the middle name of Leslie. Ha!