I hope your long weekend is starting off well. It's about to be very hot again here in Los Angeles!!! We will try to manage it by spending our time in the backyard in the early mornings and then have a low-key mid-day at home.
I would first like to thank you for letting us take a part in your 2021 analogue journey. We are now shipping MD 2021 artifacts and are taking pre-orders for Jibun and TN 2021 notebooks. This is my 10th time around the "planner season" and it has been wonderful to have the opportunity to be able to picture your familiar faces as I acknowledge each order via email. In my mind, I see not only faces but often hear voices and flashbacks of conversations I have exchanged when I see your name on the orders. And I know our team members feel the same as they wrap and prepare each order. It's an intimate and very human process for us. So thank you. What is a little different this year is that we are physically staffing only one team member at a time at the studio to minimize the health risk of the team. So even though we are shipping every day of the week and all team members are giving hands in ways we can by delegating some of the physical tasks to be done from our own homes, the process of fulfilling orders is requiring a little longer than usual. Combined with some unpredictable service delays via USPS, this season will surely ask to stretch both our imagination and patience in all of us. Please know that we are doing everything to meet the volume of the orders as gracefully as possible without compromising how we do things at Baum-kuchen.
Grace, patience, and stillness was the overwhelming energy I felt when our family ventured out to Humboldt State Park for our camping trip in Redwoods. Redwood trees, some of which are two thousand years old and well over 300 feet tall, tower the ancient forest in the area of Humboldt State Park. Experiencing these trees in person made us feel so small in the most positive way, it humbled us. I felt the strong connection to these trees because of where our name "Baum-kuchen" comes from. Baum-kuchen is a German word for a cake that resembles a tree trunk. Understanding in my heart that these trees have stood in one spot so patiently and so gracefully over so many years despite the visual evidence of distress and struggles on the tree trunks has put the current world situation in perspective. Just as living tree rings continue to grow and layer over the previous year's growth, we will continue to build upon what each year brings to our tree. One day at a time.
And that is what I like to remind myself as we dive into a new school year and prepare for 2021 with a new planner. Embracing what is happening, the current layer of the tree I am living today, and welcoming the possible next year's growth with our past and current history as a sturdy and visible foundation. I hope Trina's story about her family's back to school tradition warms your heart. I appreciate her sharing how she evaluated her family's annual ritual and distilled to what is most important to her and her boys. Also, it's so relaxing and mesmerizing to watch Emil paint in his new "paint with me" video. I'm inspired to spend a little more time on my watercolor page (instead of brush here and there on a page as I usually do) after watching his video.
Next week, our family leaves LA to spend a week camping in the Colorado Plateau where beautiful golden canyons are carved into the earth. We have never been to that part of our country as a family so we have no idea what to expect, and I will make sure to take a lot of notes to share with you.
Wishing much grace, patience, and stillness to you and your family,
-wakako
always work in progress...
somewhere between Redwoods and Colorado Plateau // September 4th, 2020
p.s. a photo was taken at Black Sand Beach nearby Humboldt. With a rock art of the BK logo by Frido:)
**This is from our BK Love Letter for September 2020. If you would like to see the entire love letter we sent to our community, you can browse it via this link.
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