Happy Winter Solstice season and New Year!
In celebration of the blessed lull between the Solstice, the several high religious winter holidays, and the noise of the New Year ringing in, this week we try to slow down, to root in place, and to get still.
With that in mind, enjoy this moment revisiting a soulful conversation of earlier this year with Mary Jo Hoffman. Mary Jo and her writer/chef husband Steve lost their home to a fire in early October. Refusing all help – all they asked of their friends, family, followers: support their books and all books – and this moment seemed a perfect time to do just this!
In this season, we hold a moment of stillness to notice and honor our places, our selves, and our many companions in time and space.
More than a decade ago, Mary Jo Hoffman determined to take on a daily practice, in part to add an act of creativity to her life, as a commitment and discipline for one year. She decided her practice would be taking a still life photograph of some found object from nature, from her immediate environment against a white background. By way of accountability, Mary Jo shared the fact of each day’s accomplishment and commitment met on Instagram.
Now 12.5 years later, Mary Jo is still at work and at play paying attention to the world around her through this daily practice, and her new book: Still, The Art of Noticing, celebrates the process and the produce of this practice through words and a collection of the images now numbering in the 1000s.
In honor of the Winter Solstice season, the longest nights and the shortest days of the year here in the Northern Hemisphere, a planetary season of reflection around where we have been and where we are headed, I am so pleased to relisten to Mary Jo's conversation with Cultivating Place.
From my seat, the act of being still and the art of noticing are perfect intentions for any season.
Enjoy!
All images courtesy of Mary Jo Hoffman, all rights reserved.
You can follow Mary Jo Hoffman and her daily practice on line at:
And on Instagram:
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JOIN US again next week, when we ring in the new year with guest Host Ben Futa in energetic conversation with Bo Dennis of Dandy Ram Farm in Monroe Maine! This is one to start your New Year off with enthusiasm! That’s next week, right here, listen in.
Cultivating Place is made possible in part by listeners like you and by generous support from
supporting initiatives that empower women and help preserve the planet through the intersection of environmental advocacy, social justice, and creativity.
Thinking out loud this week:
To get still, to practice the art of noticing.
I honestly think this is one of the great gifts of Mary Jo’s work, and for me one of the greatest gifts of the garden. The daily practice of tending to our plants and our places offers this same invitation to be still and to notice the incredible tapestry of life all around us. In all of its dynamic shifting cyclical flow.
Here’s another one of my take aways from this conversation – the idea Mary Jo mentions of Placefulness as an antidote to anxiety of our modern lives.
AND HOW THIS is yet another another gift to each of us from our garden practices – the garden sometimes insistently, sometimes loudly, sometimes colorfully, sometimes harshly, sometimes playfully is always reminding us we are right here, right now.
And one of the places I am – which is in many ways thanks to all of you! – is that I am now a very full fledged plurality – The Cultivating Place Foundation – a California State and IRS recognized 501c3 non profit for the public benefit.
I am thrilled that CP has this new layer of codified recognition and stability in taking care of itself for the long run. Look for ways to contribute in the New Year! I promise I will provide pathways haha….
Coming into the close of this calendar year, we met our full matching grant from the Catto Shaw Foundation; we invited, trained and on-boarded two excellent new guest hosts – YAY ABRA AND BEN!; working with Myriam & Khoa of EmEn Films, we recorded our first six Cultivating Place Live-Dialogues to Grow By interviews.
The public communal events around these interviews helped to raise up and support more than 50 gardeners/growers in this world, and we have between three and six more in the works for early 2025.
The audio portions of these will be continuing to roll out in 2025, and the video documentary series is slated to begin airing in 2026…. Make sure to check out the video report we produced for the Catto Shaw Foundation (it's a 30 minute summary of the work this year).
And thank you for listening – for being her with me. AND STAY TUNED, gardeners.
I am so excited – despite so much else – to work on growing the future with you!
WAYS TO SUPPORT CULTIVATING PLACE
Cultivating Place is a co-production of North State Public Radio, a service of Cap Radio, licensed to Chico State Enterprises. Cultivating place is made possible in part listeners just like you through the support button at the top right-hand corner of every page at Cultivating Place.com.
The CP team includes producer and engineer Matt Fidler, with weekly tech and web support from Angel Huracha, and this summer we're joined by communications intern Sheila Stern. We’re based on the traditional and present homelands of the Mechoopda Indian Tribe of the Chico Rancheria. Original theme music is by Ma Muse, accompanied by Joe Craven and Sam Bevan.
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