Also, our friend Vera Brosgol is visiting the bakery this week to do some sketching and spend some time with us. In case that name sounds familiar, she also happens to be a bestselling children’s book author and illustrator. If you have any young folks who love her books on hand, bring them by on Thursday and I’ll see if she can sign something for you :)
In baker news, as usual, I’ve been thinking, a lot. Almost anyone I know has already heard me ramble at length about the importance of supporting small, local businesses and farmers. Not only is it the morally superior choice, and the community building choice, but as I often express, the dollars you spend at local businesses are more likely to stay in your city’s economy. As soon as that dollar ends up at a wal-mart, amazon, or starbucks, it’s gone from us forever. It will never be spent at the modesto farmers market by your local barista, or invested in a local wheat farm by your bread baker. Those dollars go straight into the oligarchy, and unfortunately more and more, those dollars evade paying their fair share of taxes, and try to fund elections for politicians that peel our civil rights away from us. I know my strawberry farmer, local cafe, bookshop, and bakery would never do something like that with my transitory twenty dollars. This, is something we easily acknowledge and understand.
The other thing about small businesses that isn’t mentioned enough, is how they make communities safer. I was thinking about this as I walk around downtown often, and have wandered around with my kids so much for the last ten years, that even they are recognized as regulars. When people ask me if I feel safe as my teenager has enjoyed the freedom of wandering our neighborhood. Sure, on H street they know her at the Pho restaurant that makes us soup when we are sick, and at Lucille’s where I send her to pick up a quick iced coffee for mom. On 13th street the Mo Pride center volunteers provide care and needed social time for modesto lgbtq youth. They know us at the Churchkey bar, where we’ve split a few years worth of monthly burgers and a shirley temple. The librarians know us, and the farmers market vendors, especially Patty who let her help sell strawberries when she was 10 years old, and Stephanie who remembers that she loves molasses crinkle cookies. At Penny and Preservation coffee, everyone knows that she likes an iced mocha, at the bead shop Holly has made bracelets with Sophie since she was 5 years old. The State Theatre where she works, Intermission where we drop off focaccia and play cards over drinks and popcorn. The boba shop where they know our order. The Queen Bean where Sam and Ruhi have watched Sophie grow up and she can read poems at open mic night. At Bookish ahse can go to chess club and Most Poetry Small businesses are not just “community” in the sense of a place to gather and bump into our friends, but a watchful angels eye over the youth in our community.
Our kids need safe spaces to be, and the independence to enjoy them. Being a regular at small businesses with my kid has meant more than I thought it would, it’s meant creating a tiny world full of safe, friendly and kind people that watch over them as they meet friends for thai tea, drink coffee while studying, express themselves creatively, enjoy the arts, borrow books and grab snacks at the market. Maybe I live in a bubble, but it’s a very nice utopia inside of here. I sure hope you join us in this fairy tale village that is, magical downtown Modesto. Let’s protect our precious community by giving it everything we’ve got.
What are you reading, eating, cooking, walking, listening to and watching? Reply to this email and let me know if you like! Otherwise we can talk all about it on any given Thursday. All the best -Bonnie