On Black Friday and in the holiday season ahead, please help make the world a better place by supporting independent bookstores, artists, musicians, craftspeople, local farms, & small businesses -- rather than big, non-ethical, tax-avoiding corporations (like Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Walmart, Disney, Mattel, etc....and even, alas, the Waterstones book chain. Go here for the worst offenders.)

And please recommend some good online & offline shops, including your own (don't be shy), in the comments. I'll start us off here:

For Art, Craftwork, and Jewelry from the magical hills of Dartmoor: Virginia Lee, David Wyatt, Danielle Barlow, Angharad Barlow of Atelier Bee, Rima Staines & Tom Hirons of Hedgespoken, Miriam Boy Hackney of Silver & Moor (who made our wedding rings), Jason of England (who made our anniversary rings), Linda Limeux of Wood & Rush, Yuli Somme of Bellacouche, Suzi Crockford, Eleanor Ludgate, Lunar Hine, and Alexandra Dawe.

Plus visit the Artisan Gallery here in Chagford (which carries local arts, and is also the home of Leaf Leather), check out the online artisan shop Gifts from Dartmoor, and then head north to Exmoor to see exquisitely magical things at Number Seven Dulverton.

More mythical, magical jewelry: Parrish Relics, Hannah Willow, Alchemy From the Hedge, Bauble Yaga's Hut, and Lioness.

More artwork (paintings, cards, prints, etc.) with mythic or naturalist themes: Jeanie Tomanek's EveryWoman Art and EasyBeast Designs, Kathleen Jennings, Jackie Morris, Catherine Hyde, Hannah Willow, Greta Ward, Rick Berry, Angela Harding, Karen Davis, Flora McLachlan, David Hollington, Jessica Roux, Julianna Swaney, Julia Jeffrey, Rovina Cai, Hazel Ang, Amy Bogard, Susan Sorrel Hill, Xine Ann's Artsy Craftsy (classic fairy tale prints). Plus Lynn Hardaker when her Etsy shop fills again.

Sculpture and glass with mythic or naturalist themes: Beckie Kravetz, Rossi Studios, Sophie Ryder, Ellen Jewett, Tamsin Abbott, and (if you've got very deep pockets) Adrian Arleo and Tricia Cline.

Fabric arts, critters, dolls, and masks: Mister Finch, Celestine & the Hare, MossMea, The Pale Rook, Anna Brahms, Friedericy Dolls, Claire Smith, BK Mask Studio, and Mythical Designs. Plus The Fernie Brae gallery in Portland, Oregon carries work by Wendy Froud, Chandra Cerchione Peltier and others.

Ceramics and homeware of various kinds: Lush Designs, Guy Veryzer, William Morris Tiles, and Hannah Nunn.

Photography: Stu Jenks, Juliette Mills, Rachel Lauren, and Ashley Lebedev.

I could go on listing artists I love all day, but I must get back to work on my manuscript-in-progress...so if I haven't yet listed you here, or any other artist whose work you'd like to recommend, please do so in the comments below.

For those who have kindly asked: No, I  don't have an online shop for my own art this year -- I haven't had the spare time and funds to cover the expense of running one (printing costs, office help, etc.). But if you'd like to support the creation of a Bumblehill Shop for 2018, perhaps you'd consider becoming a Bumblehill Patron? Funds raised through my Patreon page are precisely for these sorts of endeavors.

Prayer for the Great Family
by Gary Snyder (after a Mohawk prayer)

Gratitude to Mother Earth, sailing through night and day —
and to her soil: rich, rare, and sweet
in our minds so be it

Gratitude to Plants, the sun-facing light changing leaf
and fine-root hairs; standing still through wind
and rain; their dance is in the flowing spiral grain
in our minds so be it

Gratitude to Air, bearing the soaring Swift and the silent
Owl at dawn. Breath of our song
clear spirit breeze
in our minds so be it

Gratitude to Wild Beings, our brothers teaching secrets,
freedoms, and ways; who share with us their milk;
self-complete, brave, and aware
in our minds so be it

Gratitude to Water: clouds, lakes, rivers, glaciers;
holding or releasing; streaming through all
our bodies salty seas
in our minds so be it

Gratitude to the Sun: blinding pulsing light through
trunks of trees, through mists, warming caves where
bears and snakes sleep — he who wakes us –
in our minds so be it

Gratitude to the Great Sky
who holds billions of stars — and goes yet beyond that –
beyond all powers, and thoughts
and yet is within us –
Grandfather Space.
The Mind is his Wife,
so be it.

To which I add:

Gratitude for the things that will help us get through the long winter ahead: warmth and light, friendship and art, good talk, good music, good books, good dreams, good single malt whiskey (hey, whatever it takes). Gratitude for the storms that shake us, and the sweet calm after.

Gratitude for it all.

The poem above is from Turtle Island by Gary Snyder (New Directions, 1974); it first appeared on Myth & Moor in the winter of 2014. The poem in the picture captions is from Orpheus by Don Paterson (Faber, 2006). All rights reserved by the authors. The photograph of me and Tilly was taken by Ellen Kushner. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

From "Looking for the Spark," an essay on the writing life by novelist Joanna Trollope:

"I have a couple of tattered little quotations that lie about my desk and that become only more valuable to me as time goes on. One is from the English critic Phillip Toynbee: 'The definition of moral progress is the realization that other human beings are fully as human as oneself.' Quite.

"The other is something from Trollope -- the real Trollope. It comes from his autobiography, that peculiar, cantankerous book, published posthumously, which did his reputation such acute damage because the late Victorians could not bear his refusal to be high-minded about his art. He said many remarkable things in this book  -- including the accurate observation that 'nobody gets closer to a reader than a novelist, not even his mother' -- but my own particular favorite is on the subject of the novelist's central preoccupation. Trollope was not so much concerned, he said, with the landscape of the grand passions (was he thinking of Tolstoy, whom he much admired and who admired him in return?) as with something else, something less glamorous perhaps, but just as intense and certainly more universal: 'My task,' he wrote, 'is to chronicle those little daily lacerations upon the spirit.'

"I feel a thrill of recognition every time I read that, or even think about it. Yes. Yes. Speaking absolutely personally, that is what the writer's life is all about, for me. The point of it is to emphasize that we are none of us immune from longing, or disappointment (much under-rated, in my view, as a force of distress), or frustration, or idiotic hope or bad behavior. What fiction does, in this difficult world, is reassure us that we are not alone, nor are we (most of us) lost causes.

"There is a theory -- Puritan in origin, no doubt -- that suffering strengthens and elevates us in a way that joy can never somehow do. I'm not so sure about that. Isn't it just that we have, on the whole, so much more suffering than joy that we have resolved, out of our great surviving instinct, to insist that something worthwhile must be made of it? And isn't fiction a handrail, of a kind, which we can all grasp while we blunder around in the dark?"

Indeed it is. At least, it is for me.

Words: The passage above is from "Looking for the Spark" by Joanna Trollope, published in The Writing Life, edited by Marie Arana (Public Affairs, 2003). The poem in the picture captions is from In Broken Country by David Wagoner (Little, Brown & Co., 1979). All rights reserved by the authors.

Pictures: Dartmoor ponies met on the path to the village Commons during a morning walk with Tilly.

When life, art, or a particular work-in-progress seem overwheming, confusing, or especially difficult, I take comfort in these words from Rainer Maria Rilke's wise little book, Letters to a Young Poet:

"If you trust in nature, in what is simple in nature, in the small things that hardly anyone sees and that can so suddenly become huge, immeasurable; if you have this love for what is humble and try very simply, as someone who serves, to win the confidence of what seems poor: then everything will become easier for you, more coherent and somehow more reconciling. Not in your conscious mind perhaps, which stays behind, astonished, but in your innermost awareness, awakeness, and knowledge."

Trust. Simplify. Value the small things. Live fully in the natural world.

Whether it's a life problem I am wrestling with, or a story that will not take shape, or a painting that won't properly cohere, these are -- for me -- the things that help me move forward again, almost always.

Once again, with the news of the world pressing in, I'd like to begin the week with music that shines a light in the dark -- and the toe-tapping, spirit-lifting music of Laura Cortese fits the bill. Cortese was born San Francisco, studied music in Boston, and now peforms solo and in a variety of musical collaborations -- my favorite of which is her all-women folk & roots band, Laura Cortese and the Dance Cards.

Above: "Stockholm," from the band's fine new abum, California Calling. The video was shot on tour in Scandinavia.

Below: "Women of the Ages," with lyrics adapted from the poetry of John Beaton. The video was made to raise funds for Rosie's Place, Boston, the oldest women's shelter in the United States.

Above: "Into the the Dark," an old favorite from the album of the same name (2013).

Below: "The Low Hum," from the new album, California Calling.

And one more:

"Skipping Stone," from California Calling. The video features the Rose City Raindrops (a synchronized swimming group) in the Willamette River of Oregon.

Photographs: Dawn over the River Dart here in Devon.