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  Issue 10: Hearth

As we celebrate this milestone—having created ten beautiful, rich issues of this magazine, bursting with our love of the creative process—we are also celebrating this tenth issue as one of our most complex issues yet, packed with stunning artwork, creative writing, poetry, and local news.

We began pondering the theme for this issue in autumn, and as the days grew shorter, we asked ourselves: where do we go when the dark and cold arrives? Like animals, we realized, we go home—burrowing in, warming ourselves next to the glow of our home’s hearth. This imagery piqued our interest, so we decided to bring a question to our readers: what does home mean to you? And our readers responded. We filled this issue with creative work from artists and writers across the Peninsula that evoked the idea of home, of hibernating the cold days away, and of finding solace in winter, in darkness, and in difficult times. 

As we slip into this cocoon of winter, folding the past year into an accordion of memories and beginning to dream of what is to come, we’re finding ourselves in need of a little hibernation time. Strait Up is going to be taking a pause in 2024, to let the nutrients of what we’ve created soak back into the soil. We will not be making any new issues and will put subscriptions on hold. Our lives are growing and changing and there are rumblings of new artistic and journalistic ventures building in Jefferson County, if you know where to listen. 

In our capitalistic society, taking a break goes against our instincts. We are inundated with the importance of a singular forward growth trajectory in which any other outcome is considered “failure.” Yet, outside this limited framework we know anything, especially art, has value even if it doesn’t last. We have chosen a format—print—that is inherently ephemeral. So we are trying to learn from winter’s recurring lesson—acknowledging that everything which grew in the warm rays of easy days, regardless of size and wonder, will come to rest at winter’s feet. We do not scoff at a late season dahlia, who took so long to bloom and will be swept away with the first frost. While some things are lost permanently to winter, for most the essence of a thing lives on, having grown in Summer, retaining that growth in dormancy, and building upon it when the light returns. 

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