The 2020 Summer Updates
Are you a Covid-19 Victory Gardener this season? A garden is a fine occupation, education and distraction—something I need in this anxious era. But, knocking on wood, we are still healthy. My wife, Taylor, is getting ready for another year teaching First Grade, virtually, and I have been busy with design work, and grappling, like most people, with the anxieties of our time: a raging pandemic, ongoing demonstrations against Police brutality (many of them happening in my neighborhood), and a strange type of cynical leadership from our President. None of it feels good, but then, sometimes feeling discomfort is how change occurs, how views change, how feelings are allowed to manifest and move on.
Visiting a goat farm this summer in Hillsboro, Oregon.
Despite the challenges and the anxieties, this studio—J. Wirtheim Design—has been surviving. While all of my events this year are canceled, this website and my Etsy shop have been doing well. In fact, the Garden Sign project has really taken off. Signs are popular all over the USA. From Seattle to Miami, from Minnesota to Arizona, we have been shipping hundreds of signs all over the country from this little spot right here Portland, Oregon. So, in order to accommodate the increase in mail packing and the inventory needed to be on-hand, we moved operations to a larger space on the ground floor of the same building here in the Eastside Industrial District of Portland. And I grew the team to include both Sam and Maggie, old friends and married couple, to run the online shop. Meanwhile, I’m doing more illustration for clients including a couple of books covers, and more signs and posters for the VGoT, because these days were made for the VGoT.
Today, I’m interested in more progress for ordinary Americans. I’d like to see people eating better, growing more, cooperating more, reading more and being more active in general. Yes, to be in-touch with what we consume, but to be a good citizen as well—that’s real victory! I believe being a better citizen means wearing a face mask around others to prevent the spread of viruses. I have been looking up issues about disease, politics and racism. And in fact, I got into some reading on systemic racism and heard some new perspectives. I’m working on practicing radical empathy, and really, radical love. Its the only way to confront the hate that has been allowed to grow. Let’s keep planting, growing and learning, while imagining the Victory Garden of Tomorrow.