Firestorms raged in the West. Then the rainstorms came our way.

Thunder shook the hills. Floods and mudslides carried away familiar ground while landslides blocked the road. Trees that had stood for decades were no match. The pond spilled over its banks like an ocean. The work of tending this place became heavier than ever.

We closed the shop doors because the land demanded attention now.

In the middle of it all, I understood that recovery would come slowly. Not the tidy kind, but the kind that grows from necessity, resilience, and the old truth that Paris was not built in a day.

So began the process: thinking and planning. First the business. Then cleanup. Writing. Product photographs. The final quarter of the year.

And still the questions lingered.

What in the world had happened?

The thunder was so loud. The rain came down in sheets. The pristine beauty of this land disappeared beneath mud and rubble. For a time, it felt like a wasteland.

My thoughts turned to T. S. Eliot, always something of a riddle. He was writing while storms of another sort swept through Britain and Europe. In The Waste Land he wrote:

London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down . . .

Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.

Shantih shantih shantih.

Eliot’s notes gloss these words simply: Give. Sympathize. Self-restraint. Then comes the blessing for peace.

For me, they serve as reminders that kindness matters most when life has been overturned. Long after the storm has passed, people are still sorting through the wreckage, rebuilding homes, reclaiming fields, and trying to put their lives back together.

While reading, I realized that Eliot and Russell Wright were contemporaries. Each, in his own way, was responding to a world shaped by uncertainty and change.

Wright designed for real homes, real seasons, and real lives. He created A Gathering Storm, a title that feels unexpectedly relevant today. It is also worth remembering that Bean Brown, one of the original American Modern glazes, became difficult to produce during the war years as materials were redirected to support military production.

In later years, Wright also became involved in efforts to support traditional craft industries abroad, helping artisans find wider markets for their work.

Beauty, for Wright, seems never to have been a luxury. It was a necessity.

American Modern was never about perfect sets or matching pieces.

It was about living.

It was about finding beauty in ordinary days, mixing colors when pieces went missing, and creating harmony even when the cupboard wasn’t full.

Bean Brown beside Cedar Green. Chartreuse against Black Chutney. Nutmeg warming a table with Avocado.

These colors were never meant to match perfectly. They were meant to complement one another and find their place in everyday life. Warm, natural, and quietly nurturing.

This autumn, after the storms, that philosophy feels more meaningful than ever.

The damage will be repaired. The roads will open. The mud will wash away. Fallen trees will become firewood, and new growth will emerge where the old forest broke.

In the meantime, we gather.

Around tables. Around neighbors. Around family.

We share what we have. We help where we can. We remember that beauty still has a place among the practical work of recovery.

And perhaps that is what survives every storm.

Not perfection.

Not certainty.

But the simple decision to begin again.

NOTES

Walter Coppedge, Revisiting the W aste Land: What the Thunder Is Sa ying, 30 NAT. RES. J. 471 (1990). Available at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/nrj/vol30/iss3/1

Obituary https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1976/12/23/98375482.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0