‘Taking Stock’ and Creative Returns

This Journal was essentially an exercise launched during the pandemic, and as a marketing tool for my third book.  After my return to Seattle in 2022 and 2023, I wrote a few additional posts. In the interim, my writing (other than some third-party articles) has been based on Substack, at Resurgence: A Journey.

Today, on Substack, I explain the rebirth of this site:

When last heard from in Scottsdale, I was visiting friends, meeting up with my daughter, and avoiding the implications of a tariff-based world. I turned down the volume from CNN and MSNBC, in favor of rant-avoidance, Taliesin West, the cliff dwellings at Tonto, and the inscriptions at El Morro, and expected to write another entry from exile after time at Zuni Pueblo.

Then, in Pinetop, Arizona, I received news of the death of a close family friend who had inspired me for many years. As such occurrences often do, I diverted to something more basic—developing physical and digital portfolios of a cross-section of what I’ve seen.

That means printing, framing, assembling, web development, and becoming best friends with Mariah, the print manager at the closest Office Depot. To what end?

There’s no need to answer that question in Santa Fe because so many self-declared Georgia O’Keeffes are purposeful creatives without bounds. But I would term it “taking stock,” and not in the way the news cycle, including on Substack, has us focused daily.

During my year-plus with Substack, I’ve seen it as an excellent outlet for many, encouraging people like you and me to write outside the normal sphere of pitch, edit, and repeat. Lately, it has championed podcasting and live video as a respite for those who are part of reshaping the media landscape.

Mary Trump, Alexander Vindman, Jim Acosta, Chris Cuomo, Adam Kinzinger, and more—can we all be Heather Cox Richardson?

I think not. Instead, we need silence and stillness, especially when contemplating loss, which Pico Iyer’s reportage well describes.

So I took a self-indulgent exile from an exile—over a week of peripatetic quiet in the Sangre de Cristo foothills—and took stock.

The results are as follows:

1. I have assembled something called the Southwest Portfolio of 14 framed photos.
2. The Portfolio is in a presentation binder, both of reduced originals for sit-downs, and as a leave-behind, lower-resolution booklet.
3. Finally, (it took four years), the website I developed while living overseas is reborn. Sustaining Place was originally the home of my third book. After my recent stock-taking and exile, it is up to date as a visual statement of the Southwest Portfolio, an ongoing project with film Leica cameras (the Leica Analog Portfolio), and much more.

If you are inclined, take a peek—and let me know how you take stock, well beyond market indices, and what you find.

More on the inscriptions at El Morro shortly, another way of tangibly recording places we have been.