Christina’s Blog

Nosing around in my website, I am surprised to realize I have been blogging since 2011—that was a fast fifteen years! I love much about this path—especially the wisdom so many of you share in response. I look forward to continuing this outreach and dialogue as I jump over the broom today from 79 to 80! And because I am still actively supporting my books, especially The Beekeeper's Question, it is also time to expand my outreach and dialogue onto ...

Remember the Reader's Zoom this Saturday April 11!  CLICK HERE to copy zoom link or to sign in on Saturday morning. Dialogue and discussion with Colleen O'Brien, author of Baited, a thriller based in Glacier National Park. We will talk about Nature and Place as characters in our stories. Starts @ 9:00 AM/Pacific US time—you can do the math. And on April 16, 2026, I turn 29,220 days old. You can do the math. It means I was conceived on ...

Next READERS' ZOOM on APRIL 11, 9:00 AM Pacific.  See details at end of post. The Body knows where it belongs. There seems some configuration in nature between the dropped fawn and the grassy knoll that receives it, between the river and the salmon that returns from the sea, between the bee and flower and darkened geometry of the hive. And even in my human blinders, I have experienced this for myself. I was born in Deaconess Hospital in Great ...

Fibrillation is an irregular heart rhythm that originates in the muscle's upper chambers (the atria). Symptoms include fatigue (√), heart palpitations (√), trouble breathing (√), and dizziness (√). Pretty much describes my year so far—exhausting, heartbreaking, breathtaking, and dizzying horror at the regime. People experience A-fib as a sensation in which there is no "resting" pulse. Their heart is beating 100-175 beats a minute. The upper and lower chambers of the heart are out of synch, as though the muscle ...

We have work to do to save what we most value in our world.  Well, we try. Keep trying. Keep reaching for each other. Managing our griefs. Across America people are activated. We will not stop. And we invite those who are wondering/wavering to join in. For decades of my life Minneapolis was my home. I know these streets, this weather, and the kind of people Minnesotans are. My family that still lives there is on the streets. Again. After ...

NEWS for BEEKEEPER'S QUESTION READERS: Next Zoom call, January 17, 9:00 Pacific, etc. ZOOM LINK--CLICK HERE. Focusing on words from home: the importance of letters, pocket books, and the military press.  Now also available, CLICK HERE FOR November's interview with Alyssa Keene, narrator of the audio edition. The celebratory days are waning: Solstice, Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa. Here in the North, it's raining or snowing and the still imperceptible "return of the light" inches forward one more minute of sunrise at ...

In these tumultuous weeks of autumn, 2025, I have been thinking about the generations in my novel, The Beekeeper's Question. The impact and uncertainty of a faraway war rocks the community of Pigeon River, Montana in 1942-43. The young are swept into the situation, into the pressures of living through. Chapter 2 ends with a scene in the Philadelphia train station where Franklin Cooper is leaving for deployment and Maire, his bride, is standing on the platform among other women ...

October 22 is the anniversary of my father's departure from this life in 2018. The phrase is a fitting explanation of what happened that afternoon in the rehab center next to the local hospital. He'd been enduring a month in kidney failure after 98 years of a good life. Despite the pain and indignities of his final weeks, we had some good times. We played Quiddler, a word-making card game, that is a family staple. He watched football games and ...

Mid-October 2025: Before going into the storyline that I've been noodling on the past few weeks, I want to acknowledge the huge hingepoint we are in: Portland and Chicago under siege by the US president, Gaza in tenuous ceasefire and hostage release, Ukraine shouldering into another season of war. None of this goes away. All of this breaks our hearts one way and another. Pause. Breathe. Keep an open heart. In Chapter One of my book, Storycatcher, I write, "Life ...

The audio version of The Beekeeper's Question is ready for your ears! It went live on Audible September 8, and there is a one-week sale—so order now. The book is also available on thirty-four other audio distribution channels—Barnes & Noble, Chirpy, Spotify—wherever you like to download audio books—you can find it. In the next couple of days, I'll be make arrangements with Kingfisher Books in Coupeville, WA so you can order through an independent bookstore—but because of the shortness of the ...

I've been traveling in eastern Minnesota and western Wisconsin: a friend's daughter's wedding, family visits on both sides, book club presentations, bookstore stops. It is high summer. We put five hundred miles on my sister's loaned car, most of it back country highways, verdant green farmlands, crops growing, landscapes familiar from my youth spent here over 60-70 years ago. And also, hints that this is not the America of my childhood. I have been collecting random thoughts to serve as ...

For eight weeks this spring/early summer, my local writing sister, Jeanne Guy, and I hosted the "Once Upon a Time Writing Café." Wednesday mornings, one-hour, complete drop-in invitation at a popular coffee shop. Our goal was to offer a space where people could come together, get a coffee, and follow a writing prompt for 30 minutes. We closed with fifteen minutes of informal "How was that for you?" People were invited to share anything they wanted about their experience—not the ...

Saturday May 24, 9:00 AM Pacific there is a Zoom call for readers of THE BEEKEEPER'S QUESTION, on the role of bees and Celtic Shamanism is the story.  Everyone welcome--some spoilers likely to occur, but come to the honey pot for an interesting conversation. Here’s the link: Saturday, May 24, 9:00 AM Pacific. If you have any trouble, contact: christina@christinabaldwin.com. Thank you to UK artist Dorrie Joy for permission to share this lovely imagine of a Melissae/ priestess to ...

The next reader’s zoom call is May 24, 9:00 AM Pacific. Link at the end of the blog. The first photograph of me, I am three months old, lying on a baby blanket in my baptismal dress on the lawn at my grandparents’ house. July, Montana, the buzz of bees pollinating raspberries and garden vegetables. My little body is stretched over summer-warmed grass. I do not remember this in the comb of memory, but my body knows. Whatever ceremony has ...

It's a marvelous sign when readers of The Beekeeper’s Question so identify with characters they want to become like them. For several months now I have had the honor of conversing with book club members, both in person and on zoom—mostly women in their 60’s/70’s—inspired by the character “Doc,” as a role model of practical older woman wisdom. For those who haven’t yet read the book, Doc is Jereldene Jesperson, a seventy-something, unmarried country physician serving the rural community of ...

Life is full of challenges. We grow by baby steps, facing risks, being supported by older/bigger/wiser folks around us. We learn to handle stress, expand our capacities, discover our resilience. And all this prepares us when challenge becomes trauma. Trauma is injury or emotional distress caused by events that overwhelm our ability to cope. Abuse, assault, battle, betrayal, drastic injury or illness: we do not wish traumatic events upon ourselves or each other, but they happen. We are triggered into ...

Every day is an empty basket.  We fill the unfolding hours with interactions, tasks, work, play, pleasure, purpose; also with concern, anxiety, outrage, grief, and the effort to keep going on. Sometimes I feel like Little Red Riding Hood, making my way through the forest carrying the simple gifts of my life, avoiding the wolf (that characterization of fear European settlers brought to these shores).  Not really a girl, I am the grandmother in this story—but I will not be ...

I have written several blog posts about the hit-and-run-killing of Mika Westwolf by a white woman with apparent ties to white supremacy. For background on this story see the posts, Because It's All Still Happening, and Request for Allyship. It took 23 months for this case to come to the court, but finally, the family and the defendant had their day for sentencing Feb. 7, 2024. The article below is from the Missoulian, written by  Sam  Wilson/Nora Mabie, photos by ...

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Second reader’s ZOOM, for folks who have finished my novel: The Beekeeper’s Question. Live conversation was held on January 11, with a special treat: Baldwin cousins, including men now 80s/90s who worked in honey harvesting, and our matriarch cousin, 95-years-old, with family memories from that era.  In a long-ago writer’s group of mixed genre projects, I asked a friend who was novelizing her family history why she was writing fiction instead of memoir. Her answer, “Because with fiction I can ...

Book Announce: The next Zoom call for readers who have finished reading The Beekeeper’s Question is January 11, 2025. One hour: 9:00 AM Pacific (10/mtn/11/central/12/east—US zones). Click here to get zoom link. Casual discussion on plot and background/backstories, how then and now are connected— whatever interests the group that shows up. The following is a poem by Donna Ashworth, with commentary by me.  HAPPY NEW YEAR When I say ‘happy new year’, I’m not for a moment, expecting this ...

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Thinking we could all use some beauty and light--I am sharing some of my sunset photos--taken from the edge of our neighborhood-- and Jan Richardson's Solstice poem. She is such a generous poet, sending words of comfort, companionship, and wisdom into the world. (I have adjusted the line breaks to fit in this blog format.)   All throughout these months as the shadows have lengthened, this blessing has been gathering itself, making ready, preparing for this night. It has ...

It’s 2:00 AM November 9, 2024 and I wake with moon slanting through window blinds. I’ve been dreaming in a montage of campaign videos of Kamala interacting with the American people—hugging, listening, standing at the lectern. Surely, I am looking at the next President of the United States. It takes several seconds for my mind to catch up to post-election reality. A wave of grief washes through me. I ease out of bed to the far corner of the house ...

Morning. The trees receive the touch of sun and birds that have huddled in their branches after Monday’s windstorm, and Tuesday’s humanstorm, shake their feathers and head to the feeder. I watch over the rim of my laptop, out my living room window. Take a ragged breath. Nature is wordless, but people are chattering—wildly trying to make story, to find a way to fit what just happened into the narrative we thought we were living. The turn we thought we ...

I promised to write some of the interesting things I discovered while working on my historical novel, The Beekeeper’s Question. In any project like this, what gets woven into the narrative is only a fraction of what the writer discovers. Discovery was (and remains) an amazing aspect of writing in general, and particularly writing a story like this. The Beekeeper’s Question takes place in a particular moment of time, five years before I was born. As the characters evolved, they ...

Hello Peeps--writing this on October 1 (Happy 100th Birthday Jimmy Carter) to let you know that a few glitches with Amazon have required the print book to be taken down and reloaded. My publisher is working on this and the issue will be resolved in the next few days. Do not worry: the ebook is still on sale, and the print book will soon be reloaded. and the first book signing in Langley, WA is October 18, 4-5:30 at 301 ...

Welcome to this blog community and readership. May you find respite and thoughtfulness and a sense of traveling among known and unknown companions, trusting there are many of similar mind and heart journeying through life’s complexities. This moment, amid all else that is happening, I am celebrating the release of the historical novel I’ve been working on for twelve years. In 2012, I had an idea for a story about a beekeeper’s family living in Montana during World War II ...

The last morning of August. This is the view across our front yard, looking at the neighborhood, Puget Sound water, foothills and bare mountains, clouds pinkening from a cast of eastern sunrise. I am writing on the deck porch with a cup of tea: everything still. A geranium is reading over my shoulder. I claim an hour of pause before the world tumbles in with news, polls, predictions, unrelenting requests for attention, donations, activism—you know. What is happening in the ...

I say, “I’m going to Minneapolis to attend my sixtieth—” She says, “Birthday? That’s great. Someone throwing you a party?” I say, “No, my sixtieth high school reunion.” I watch her do the math. She says, “Wow, you don’t look that old!” I say, “Thank you.”  I guess that's what you say. June 3rd, 2024, sixty years to the day of graduation from Wayzata High School, 1964. Fifty remaining classmates from a class of about 150, crowd into a conference ...

I am both surprised and not surprised at how many white friends and acquaintances have avoided seeing the acclaimed movie, Killers of the Flower Moon.  They report some variation of— “I don’t want to watch the violence, it makes me too uncomfortable…”  And I encourage them with some variation of—“Maybe it’s our turn to be uncomfortable, to witness the real history we are standing in. Maybe we need to educate ourselves so we can have a different conversation, because it’s ...

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Almost every spring for the past 13 years, our grandson, Jaden, and then his little sister Sasha, have come to Whidbey Island for Spring Break. These SoCal kids have trudged into the weather, rain or shine, behind their “Nature Grannies” and whatever corgi romped alongside. We have memories of driftwood forts, seal patrol, local hikes, hours of UNO and board games, planting garden peas, baking cookies, learning chores, being introduced to the Marvel universe, and circles at the dining table ...

It’s Monday. We are heading into another week of predictable disasters: politics, war, devastation in the natural world. A list of sorrows runs rusty as dried blood onto my journal pages and rivers into daily conversations, along with the ever-present question— “what can I/we do about any of this?” I’m home alone a few hours— laundry, vacuuming, drifting in a state of dis/courage/ment. I will not stay here—but it seems a necessary emotional state to admit is in me. And ...

I get up before dawn (easy to do this time of year in the North). I turn on my prayer chimes—two small speakers that electronically emit the soothing tones of singing bowls. I breathe. I recite The Seven Whispers which have centered my days for over two decades.  There is tea in a cup, one small lamp. I raise the blinds. My journal is in my lap. My laptop is on the side table. I choose muse or news. As ...

I have spent the past six years of my life studying the six years that preceded my life, which means I have been writing and reading about World War Two. A decade ago, with story ideas jelling in my mind, I tried to pull the narrative forward into my lived experience but the war—that war—WW2—would not let me go. I was conceived in August 1945 in the days between Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the formal surrender of Japan while the ...

A woman reaches out through a friend of a friend. She wants to write her story. She needs to talk to a writer. I am retired. I don’t teach anymore. I’ve got a manuscript in New York, a six-year project I just revised, again. It's hot there. People wilt in the city and flee to the country. My agent says nobody cares about writing in August. Every day I choose between discouragement and belief in my work. I say yes--to ...

Several years ago, as I entered this dynamic decade, I wrote a blog called, “Seventy: The Road to Somewhere.” That musing is now archived on the PeerSpirit website and I am miles down the road still aiming for “somewhere.” Hopefully not yet the final somewhere, but the legacy somewhere that comes before my personal exit from the NeverEnding Story. At age seventy, as we transitioned out of a twenty-five year dedication to The Circle Way, and handed over our resources ...

I don’t remember when I first met the Cooper family, central characters of the novel I just sent to my New York agent, but I remember how: their dog introduced me. The germinating moment for my ten-year novel project occurred when my corgi Glory died in 2010. I missed her constant watchfulness over me and others. Glory was a public dog, often present in the circle trainings, writing classes, and wilderness work we were doing at the time. After she ...

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” Jalal ad-Din Mohammad Rumi, BIPOC “If you are trying to transform a brutalized society into one where people can live in dignity and hope, you begin with the empowering of the most powerless. You build from the ground up. You begin by stopping the torture and killing of the unprotected, by feeding the hungry so that they have the energy to think about what they ...

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It is 1956-57, and I am in fifth grade at Beacon Heights Elementary, a blond brick school building poised over highway 55 at the edge of Minneapolis, Minnesota. The playground runs alongside and out back. We have already learned that in case the Russians drop an atomic bomb we are not to look down this highway toward the Foshay Tower, which at 32 floors is the tallest building between Chicago and Seattle. We are so proud. Little kids, all of ...

July 15-23, 2019: Ann and I took a 2200-mile road trip around western Montana that held so many layers of significance it is taking weeks to let the heart and soul of our experiences weave into meaning-making. There are moments in this trip I am not ready to share; moments I will probably never have words for, moments that will be transformed into later stories that can only emerge from the perspective of long time. Here is one moment around ...

My father died. Leo Baldwin was good at living, amazing at aging, determined to continue contributing up to his last days. He remained cheerful and present even while suffering the pain, indignities, and procedures of his final trip through the medical system. He was 98 years old and had never had an illness that he didn’t fully recover from with a little Tylenol and determination. It took him (and me, and us, and his community) a month to admit that ...