Enquirer, February 2025
Wibbly wobbly, timey wimey...stuff. Plus Mag Pie, 2025 Workshops, & Beet Greens,
Time’s Course
“Like a clock wound up once slowly unwinding.” WILLIAM KENTRIDGE
I spent January retreating from the world of man-made concrete and calendars. I nestled into nature's synchronistic and repeating rhythms of tides, sunrises, and sets.
A rare snowstorm, followed by an even rarer week of freezing weather, hit the southeast coast, unexpectedly re-orienting my time scale. Imagine a metronome slowly, slowly winding down.
Up north, where I live most of the year, snowplows, de-icing solutions, snowblowers, and Zoom have meant the death of snow days. As a child, I went as long as 10 or 14 days without power, school, or a way out of the quarter-mile lane blasted shut by wind, snow, and ice. Now, we shrug at snow days. Work and school, commitments of all kinds, continue apace.
One of my ongoing prayers is, "Lord, give me peace, give me space, let me breathe." Here was the answer to prayer. How slowly time creeps when there is no place to go and nothing to do.
This thick time leaves its mark. At first, it was rejoicing. Here, at last, was everything I desired: long hours to think deeply.
Soon enough, my rising and dipping thoughts grew stale.
I went looking for other, more acrobatic ideas. Some ideas charmed, others repulsed, and some were chunky and noisy. Soon enough, all thought grew tiresome.
Dispossessed from the land of ideas, I headed to the theater of air and frost. The wind and tides washed over and through me. Nature, in its rawest state, the forest dark, sand and surf in angry collision begetting collision. Moon and sun, day into night and back again. All that blooms and bruises, alive and on the move. Nature's rawness writing me into existence. This is the season of the unseen but felt: wind, freeze and thaw, gravity, time.
I hoped a crystal clarity of thinking would blossom once the weeds of noise were cleared. Instead, I found my mind a room without windows or doors. I was unmade, with no exit to the wildness of destruction and creation.
The mind is contained, but the body—ah, the body—is nature's creature. I took the body out into nature, a watchmaker's shop of unsynchronized clocks. Here, the careful dissection of thought matters not. There is no beginning and end. Yes, even here, the leg bone connects to the hip bone, but where are the beginning and the end of the quandary of egg-tadpole-frog?
At night, star clouds, more ancient than any God, show me the width and depth of time's vacuum. Unmoored, lost, and adrift, this wheel of many parts turns again. I am undone by its improbable beauty, magnificent cacophony, and the way a heartbeat measures out our time "like a clock wound up once slowly unwinding."
Xo
Felicia
Get Lucky
Mag Pie, a free digital quarterly magazine’s latest issue just dropped. It’s full of wit and whimsy. And a luck-filled playlist by Mag Pie’s resident DJ, Andy Meyer. Shameless self-promotion, I’m delighted to be part of this publication with an essay titled Ordinary Chance. I’m especially delighted to have five of my watercolors included.
Thanks and congratulations to Emily Stowe, founding editor, for putting out her 28th edition. That’s seven years of love and dedication to creating a platform for creative souls to publish their work and readers to find unique perspectives.
NEW! Workshops
NEW, NEW, NEW: Save the Date: Saturday, April 26th, 1-4
Creating Deep Time
Celebrate Earth Day with the EarthWhispers Abbey at The Hearst Center for the Arts.
In an age of bewilderment when we're encouraged to be "in the moment," this workshop helps us stretch our moments, making them thicker with meaning and purpose.
Calling all wild minds for a three-hour workshop to honor our connections to each other and this patch of earth using journal and photography prompts.
If you enjoy journaling and using your cell phone camera to create resonating moments, this workshop is for you. Together, we improve your creativity with more spontaneity.
Join the EarthWhispers Abbey sisters, Sue Schuerman and Felecia Babb, for this three-hour retreat. The pair will provide prompts to help you see the world differently. Using The Hearst Center garden and galleries as sources to nourish and refresh your creative spirit in the company of other wild minds.
This class involves:
Photography and writing prompt
Sharing your creative work
Commenting and inspiring each other
Creating an online gallery that will be published as part of The Enquirer, FeliciBabb-Cass's weekly newsletter, distributed to over 300 subscribers.
Join us on Saturday, April 26, from 1 to 4 pm. in the Hearst Center Gardens. Call The Hearst at 319.273.8641 to pre-register.
Watercolor 1 & 2 at Hawkeye Community College
Beginning Watercolor 1
Watercolor 1: Pre-registration required
Would you like to paint in watercolor but don't know where to start? Discover unique watercolor techniques to make your work fresh, easy, and fun. With Felicia's guidance, you'll learn how to use paints, develop your creative style, and make interesting textures with household supplies. Even if you've never picked up a paintbrush, this class will help you create beautiful works of art. Explore color mixing, application techniques, and fun watercolor effects. Tuition includes materials to be used in class.
Classes run on Wednesdays from March 26 to April 9, from 6 to 8:30. Note the change of location: They will be at the Cedar Falls Center.
Pre-registration required. Click here, or call 319-296-4290
Watercolor 2: Pre-registration required
Take your watercolor painting skills to the next level! In this class, you will become better acquainted with watercolors, explore fun tools and techniques, and create finished paintings. Discover advanced texture techniques, expanded brush techniques, and how to get a good edge with your brush. Tuition includes materials to be used in class.
Classes run on Wednesdays, April 16-30, from 6 to 8:30. Note the change of location: the class will be at the Cedar Falls Center.
Pre-registration required. Click here, or call 319-296-4290
Save the Date: EarthWhispers Abbey,
Writing Workshops at Shalom Spirituality Center
Shalom Spirituality Center offers a sacred space and a peaceful environment for all who seek to deepen their relationship with God, self, others, and creation. The center is atop a beautiful hill near the Mississippi River in Dubuque, Iowa.
Each of these workshops will be half-day, giving you time to explore
Investigating Your Square Patch of Earth
Saturday, July 19th.
This course digs deep into a single natural landscape of significance to each participant. You might choose to investigate the woods near home, a long-ago lake or coastal place from childhood, or somewhere you've never been but fascinates because of its profound or precarious ecological position. Participants meditate and journal on this place, digging into why its colors, textures, and scents deserve close observation and consideration. This is an opportunity to peel back the layers—of personal observation, embodied memory, and the acquired knowledge of wildly varied (and sometimes imperiled) flora and fauna—that make our hearts wild for wild places. Sue and Felecia will lead participants through writing prompts that serve as launch pads for imagination and heart-felt connections to place.
This workshop pushes participants beyond the exterior of a landscape that calls to them. They will learn to show rather than tell how the landscape calls to their souls, why it matters to them, and why it should matter to the larger world.
Rooted and Reaching
Sunday, October 5th
Rooted and Reaching explores our relationship with the natural world through trees. Trees have much to give and teach us. Participants explore the cooperative relationship between us and trees. We reflect on how trees impact our physical and emotional well-being. This session incorporates meditative practices and creative opportunities to explore how trees physically and emotionally affect you.
Other Workshops
Spark Your Creativity
I write and post painting prompts, studio ideas, and creative finds most weeks. To subscribe to this free newsletter, click here.
Are you a fast or slow creator? Here's some inspiration to try both. A fabulous draw-along workshop by Helen C. Stark’s Time Forager’s Club. It’s all FREE. Give it a click.
February Recipe: Beet Greens
We’ve had almost no snow or precipitation for ages. My winter snowstorm in South Carolina was almost the only snow I’ve seen this winter. Everything is brown and gray, which makes me long for dark, vivid green and red.
At the local market, I found fresh new beets with vibrant, dark green tops still attached. Two meals for the price of one! And a painting topic to boot! I was overjoyed. I brought the beets home, chopped the tops off, and immediately made a bunch of beet greens, a recipe inspired by Love and Lemons.
Simple from beginning to fork in about 5 minutes, delicious and stunning on the plate.
Ingredients
1 bunch beet greens
1 teaspoon olive oil
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons apricots or golden raisins
Lemon wedge, for squeezing
1 tablespoon chopped walnuts or pistachios
Instructions
Separate the stems from the beet greens. Finely chop the stems and coarsely chop the leaves.
Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the garlic and the beet stems and cook, stirring, for 1 minute. Add the beet greens, a few pinches of salt, and several grinds of pepper. Sauté, tossing, until just wilted.
Turn off the heat, add the raisins, and squeeze with lemon juice. Toss to combine. Transfer to a platter, top with the walnuts, and season to taste with more salt and pepper.
Enquirer Notes of Interest: Time
Little gems I collected this month about art, literature, and nature. Many of these come from your ideas and suggestions. Drop me a note if you find or notice something that amazes and delights.
This month’s focus is making time thick. Author Robert Henri in, The Art Spirit, says “There are moments in our lives, there are moments in a day, when we seem to see beyond the usual — become clairvoyant. We reach then into reality. Such are the moments of our greatest happiness. Such are the moments of our greatest wisdom.”
Time Captured
Emily Stowe, Managing and visual arts editor of North American Review, along with her wickedly talented husband, Kent, made a video commemorating the 60th anniversary of the NAR being housed in Iowa. I’m delighted by this snippet of captured time for three reasons. The quality of the artistic achievement of the both the film and work is exceptional. When I travel, people get Iowa mixed up with Ohio and Idaho. So I love this visual way to say, “Here we are! We’re not shabby, you should visit us.” And my work is included, so this film is a lovely way to remember a highlight of 2024.
The Iowa Arts Council, through a grant, made it possible to feature 18 different Iowa artists in the issue and also a gallery show of the original works at the Hearst Center for the Arts in Cedar Falls, which was on exhibit from September 26-November 27th.
Shameless self-promotion, my work, Slumming on Park Ave., featured in this film is on sale at Gilmore’s Pub.
Refusal of Time
I spent this week watching and re-watching this interview with South African artist William Kentridge . 'The Refusal of Time.' Such a thought-provoking piece about coherence and disorder and how artists bend and remake time. It's well worth the 25-minute watch.
Time’s Serendipity
I chanced on the work of T. De Los Reyes’, poet, author and essayist, 20-year project to collect poems and her reaction to them. Her reactions are honest, funny, and wistful. The best thing about her collection is her website’s Random Poem feature. You click the button, and up pops a random poem with her marginalia comments. The quixotic and synchronistic nature of these time capsules is enchanting.
We made it through January! Onward
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