Though I’ve been running relatively consistently for the past couple of years— lured by the freedom from gym memberships and class schedules and indoor spaces—I’ve only just committed to an actual running schedule. My goal is to train for a half-marathon, which seems straightforward enough, but I’m also responding to a deeper impulse, thrumming with each footfall and gasp for breath: if not now, then when? Robin Coste Lewis’s poem 43, published in a recent issue of The New Yorker, echoes this sentiment perfectly.
I am catching up
to the day
accepting
that the Sun cares
and does not care,
that with or without me
it will spin and burn.
That I should
spin and burn
too.
This year’s inaugural issue embodies this beautiful urgency in myriad ways. Visionary apiarist Michael Thiele of Apis Arborea is in the business of restoring the habitats and natural hives of our essential honey bees, and Evan Wiig explores the local fight to ease restrictions on urban agriculture so that more farmers can engage in the life-sustaining practice of growing our food. On up the food chain are the restaurant owners devoted to sourcing their food locally and paying livable wages in a county where 52.4% of residents spend 30% or more of their income on rent, according to the recent Portrait of Sonoma County. The Eat feature captures their struggle to survive two years into a pandemic that has radically altered our social and commercial lives.
From compost to cobblers, this issue reminds me of the imperative to keep alive the components of our ecosystems—soil, pollinators, footwear, even our own microbiomes. To that end, I’m thrilled to introduce Made Local’s newest Locavore columnist Sheila Shupe, whose Confessions of a Germophile takes readers on a deliciously bacterial culinary journey.
As I head into my third year at the helm of this magazine, I am ever-grateful for you readers and fellow supporters of our local economy. Here’s to all of us finding ways to keep spinning, keep burning.
Jess D. Taylor EDITOR