As my colleagues and I prepared this issue, I was struck by the gentle Quaker exhortation, “Mind the light,” included within the text—and referenced in the title— of Deborah Kelly Kloepfer’s essay “Minding the Light.” Though I’m not a Quaker, “Mind the light” seems to me excellent counsel—and a potent reminder to look for compassion, empathy, and the many forms of positive creativity in ourselves and harbored within most of our fellow human beings.

To me, positive creativity means not only celebrations of sunshine and sweet breezes, though I welcome salutes to both. Especially in the context of our magazine, I view positive creativity as well-rendered written, visual, and aural art that reflects and examines aspects of our existence, raises challenging questions, pokes fun in thought-provoking ways, and generally stimulates both mind and spirit. The arts have the power to do all these things in ways that resound unpredictably. As Emily Dickinson wrote, “The poet lights the light and fades away. But the light goes on and on.”

This issue of Persimmon Tree is filled with positive creativity—including fiction that deals with some of the darker aspects of life, and nonfiction that reflects the courage and curiosity that are among the better angels of human nature. Publisher Jean Zorn introduces varied and moving Short Takes contributions on “Legacies.” Music Editor Gena Raps reports on joining 96-year-old composer Thea Musgrave for the recent London production of Musgrave’s opera Mary, Queen of Scots. Art Editor Greta Berman introduces us to the multi-faceted creativity of Betti Franceschi. And Poetry Editor Cynthia Hogue presents examples of the sometimes harrowing but always compassionate poetry of Naomi Shihab Nye. You’ll also find in these pages, “The Creative Life,” a new section we plan to publish each spring, in which contributors deal with various aspects of, and challenges associated with, artistic creation.

Finally, in the Forum members of the Persimmon Tree community describe, with eloquence and haunting detail, their experiences surviving climate disasters, each contribution a testament to resilience, determination, and concern for our beleaguered planet. Climate change is only one of the challenges the human community is currently facing, of course. This seems an era of growing intolerance and political and social upheaval, leaving many in despair. So I leave you with the words of poet Gwendolyn Brooks, who wrote in her “Speech to the Young”:

From Seed to Tree to Fruit: A Daughter’s Memoir of Grief and Healing

by Rebecca Williams Mlynarczyk

    For young Becky Williams, a transplanted Northerner living in the segregated South of the 1950s, childhood was cut short when her father, a researcher at Oak Ridge and a beloved biology professor at the University of Alabama, suffered a psychotic break. He died three months later at Bryce Hospital in Tuscaloosa, the state mental institution. In this heartfelt memoir, Mlynarczyk searches through family scrapbooks, old letters, and her own childhood memories in a quest to understand her father’s mental illness and sudden death. Readers who revisit the past alongside her will see what can be gained by looking back on our loved ones in all their complexity. If we are fortunate, we experience healing as we learn to love them in new and unexpected ways. “This remembrance is a poignant love letter to the father Mlynarczyk has spent a lifetime grieving.” — Kirkus “Haunted by her father’s psychic crisis and his early and unexpected death, Mlynarczyk brings us on a poignant journey, exploring her father’s violent breakdown and coming to terms with a past weighted with fear and silence.” — Julia Miele Rodas, author of Autistic Disturbances “This memoir exemplifies the healing power of writing as a path through pain.” — Mindy Lewis, author of Life Inside: A Memoir “From Seed to Tree to Fruit does what good memoirs must do: explain the present by helping us to understand the past.” — Wendy Ryden, co-author of Reading, Writing, and the Rhetorics of Whiteness Available from Amazon, Bookshop, and Barnes and Noble.

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