A Letter from the Editor

Dear reader,

Autumn is finally in the air in my home of Richmond, Virginia. It rolled in last weekend upon a front of cool temperatures, which I spent hiking with friends out in Shenandoah National Park. It was the perfect way to spend a Saturday in October, climbing mountains and drinking beers at a nearby brewery. It was an extremely windy day on the mountain. The trees spat out a hiss as ceaseless gusts of heavy wind passed through the many miles of tanned leaves and cragged branches above our heads. Our car even swerved a few times on the way up from such heavy gusts of wind. And all throughout the day, many of those bellows of wind carried a distinct smell of burning campfire wood––perhaps the most exquisitely sentimental and wistful aroma of autumn. Indeed, there is no better time of the year to enjoy a good bonfire than in the autumn.

At the time of writing, Halloween is just around the corner. I’m in the process of making plans for my favorite holiday of all––Thanksgiving––and even looking ahead to Christmas. We really do pack a lot in at this time of year. It’s amazing that we find time to appreciate this season of the year at all. The same is true for our small but mighty publication. A lot is taking shape as we continue working on this project of ours. After months of work, things are finally coming to fruition. So, I am delighted to announce that as of this month, Art Grove will now be seeking original writing submissions from our community. We hope to continue doing this each month as a means of engaging our readers with our monthly themes so as to make this whole platform a learning experience for everyone involved. 


To achieve this, we’ve begun posing reflective questions that are relevant to the month’s theme. For the November 2023 issue, we crafted the stories contained herein around the following questions:

We got to speak with some extremely interesting and talented people, and even received our very first original writing submission! These have all been published as original stories in the newsletter. I am so excited to see what our readers have to say about our coverage of this issue’s selection of featured artists and hope it generates some thought-provoking discussions.


Art Grove Newsletter also celebrates its fifth issue this month! Quite honestly, I am pleasantly surprised to see us having gotten this far. There are so many ideas that my collaborator, Creative Director Betsy Podsiadlo, and I have been conjuring up from the stories we have published since the beginning of this project. Some of these we plan to roll out very soon, most likely after the New Year. 

My uncle, Michael Finley (right), testing the turkey with my father (left) on Thanksgiving Day 2022. We were extremely lucky enough to get to share one last Thanksgiving meal together that year.

It has been a pleasure and a fascination to embark on this journey, though I must say that it has been a lot of work. I’m looking forward to a break at Thanksgiving. Things have been difficult in my and Betsy’s private lives this month, which although stressful have thankfully not negatively impacted Art Grove. If anything, they have provided us with a lot of perspective to approach this issue with. At the time of publishing, Betsy is on a business trip in Hong Kong. And just as we were finishing last month’s issue, on the evening of Friday, September 29, 2023, my uncle, Michael Finley, succumbed to his extremely aggressive metastatic cancer. He lived to be 59 (born in 1968) and left behind three incredible children and a wife who are all very strong and capable people in their own right. 


I don’t think it would be right or appropriate for me to write a whole article about my Uncle for Art Grove at this time. The wound may still be too fresh for me and many others. His obituary, though beautifully written, could never possibly capture all the many, many details that made Mike Finley the beloved man he was. More time is needed for Mike’s loved ones to process these memories before they are shared out to the world for a stupid Letter from the Editor that likely nobody will read. I will mention, however, that Thanksgiving is among the most fond and recurring memories I have of Mike from many visits to his family’s home in Ohio over the years. Thanksgiving in Ohio was one of the recurring ways I grew to know the real Mike Finley, and from them came to almost associate him as somewhat of a symbol or mascot for the holiday itself. That is because I believe Mike lived every day like it was Thanksgiving. And though I am utterly devastated to see his untimely passing, I can at least bear the realization that his passing presents to me, and perhaps many others, a reminder to live every day like it is Thanksgiving.


We humans are not as complex as we often think of ourselves to be, even though we come up with bizarre holidays such as Thanksgiving. At the end of it all, there are three things that every human needs, regardless of their physical and spiritual attributes. These are, of course, food, water, and shelter. Without these things, we cannot survive or more easily appreciate what we already have. But there’s often a fourth need that gets disregarded by cold researchers and naturalists, and that is the need for a community. Social Darwinists would like for us all to believe that we only need the first three of these four crucial resources… that we must slaughter the competition and dare not even dream of sharing our spoils with them. And for the most part, the society we have built around ourselves reflects this attitude. But for some reason, for one day a year, we all toss that notion aside. And that is why I have such a soft spot for Thanksgiving, but more importantly, it is why I have such a soft spot for those visits to Ohio. It reminds us that what ultimately motivates us all to live our lives is a desire to be remembered, but that can only be achieved through our actions toward those we have the capacity to love.

When I think of how I want to be remembered, I hope it will be even half as good as Mike will be. On the day of his funeral, I think the entire town of Kent, OH came out to pay their respects. That’s because Mike was the kind of person we hear about when we talk of “the nicest people”... the kind that nobody has a bad thing to say about. The kind that volunteers to coach his kids’ sports teams… the kind that gives up his Sunday morning to teach compassion to Catholic students… the kind that always says “I love you” before saying goodbye… the kind that dispenses and teaches love and occasionally uses words to do so. At the end of it all, Mike was a man who understood the importance of being faithful and encouraging to the people around him. Mike recognized the importance of nurturing a community, not only for his own health and happiness but for the good of everyone and everything it could ever touch. 

I had a grandmother who succumbed to progressive multiple sclerosis in 2021 for whom I did a reading at her funeral service. Ecclesiastes 3. The same one my father read at Mike’s funeral. It’s one of those uniquely Catholic verses in that every Catholic knows half of it and is surprised to learn it goes on past the parts of it they are used to hearing the lector read. It’s the verse about how for all things there is a season. A time to live and die… to collect stones and scatter them… to change your car’s oil and not to… and so on. It’s a meme of a verse for Catholics because of the monotony that ensues when the lector gets up to read it during a mass. But if Catholics were allowed to read just a few words further, they’d read some of the most chilling, penetrating, and surprising words ever bound in blessed leather.


“I also said to myself, ‘As for humans, God tests them so that they may see that they are like the animals. Surely the fate of human beings is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath; humans have no advantage over animals. Everything is meaningless. All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return. Who knows if the human spirit rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth?’ So I saw that there is nothing better for a person than to enjoy their work, because that is their lot. For who can bring them to see what will happen after them?”


We might think we only fear death, but that is truly the fear of being forgotten masquerading as some other fear. But Thanksgiving and this silly verse that was written hundreds of years ago both give pause to that notion of universal cosmic unimportance, if only for a little while. That’s what makes Thanksgiving so amazing. It defies everything we are told about what it means to be a human. It reminds us to not only love one another but to also love the life that we get to experience the joy of other people through. It reminds us to support each other and to help our fellow humans not for a reward but because tomorrow it could be you. That is why I encourage you all to spend this month thinking about ways to improve and celebrate your community. 


In times like these, when it can feel like the whole world might fall apart at any given moment, it’s no coincidence that they almost always align with times in which people also feel extremely lonely and isolated. That is why it is important to hold onto those we love and give all of ourselves to them at all times. That is why it is important to be able to depend on and trust in somebody else, as well as be somebody that another person can depend on and trust in. Because the solution is simple though daunting in scope: every day could feel like Thanksgiving if every person learned to root for and encourage one another. While I am aware that the “Thanksgiving Story” is not truly the hunky-dory narrative we were spoonfed as children, over time it is clear that history and tradition have diverged as far as the holiday goes. Because when I think of Thanksgiving (and I believe many others will say the same as I do) I do not think of Plymouth Rock… I think of my family, my friends, my neighbors, my coworkers, and my collaborators. I think of how all of these people make my life worth living, and how the spirit of their kindness is always there to see me through a challenge. 


Tootle-oo, and a Happy Thanksgiving to you all,

     Tom Jakob, Managing Editor