Concentrated Creativity Retreat
offers uninterrupted time to work in beautiful settings for inspiration and contemplation. We provide the place and time for you to do the creative work you want.
Questions? Contact us at concentratedcreativityccr@gmail.com
or through our reservation page.

Event Organizers

Joan Bailey

Joan Bailey writes about food, farming, and farmers markets along with a little bit of travel for good measure. Her work can be found at The Japan Times, Modern Farmer, Civil Eats, and Permaculture Magazine. You can find out more about her at JoanDBailey.com



Writing samples:

       Eat Local Kobe Brings Local Food to City Tables
     Six years ago, Hiroaki Koizumi began taking a census of Kobe farmers. Part of a team of consultants hired by the city to promote Kobe agriculture, Koizumi’s assignment was to find farms within the city limits. He was astonished at his expanding list of growers and producers and equally astonished to realize how difficult it was to purchase their food. 
 
“There were all these farms in the city, but they had no community representation,” Koizumi said. “Japan has a big infrastructure for food, but the vegetables in local supermarkets are from far away. The current vegetable transport system is not working for young or organic farmers.” ​
                              See the full article here

                                            *****

  Sip Tea in the Clouds at Mount Oyama's Teahouse Sekison
     On the eastern edge of the Tanzawa Range in Kanagawa Prefecture, Mount Oyama rises over the plain below to gaze east toward Enoshima Island, Kamakura, and the Boso Peninsula. It is tall enough for clouds to snag on its peak and give the mountain its other name, Amefuri Yama, or the rainy mountain. The tall cedars, cherries, chestnuts, and oaks that cover its broad face shelter deer, wild boar, and countless birds. It’s easy to see why a god would settle here.

                            See the full article here

Linda A Gould

Linda Gould has a degree in journalism and environmental science. She has worked in public relations, news and marketing, and writing was always a key element of her work. Recently, however, she has branched into fiction. Gould is the author of The Diamond Tree, a story about empowerment. She is currently working on a book of Japanese ghost stories.
Writing samples:

                    Female Ghost in the Moonlight
      I saw her before I heard her. She glowed in the moonlight. Or rather, the moonlight glowed through her. Emaciated, she glided along the sand that I had just trudged through, grasping at her baby, pressing it against her dry breasts. But there was no movement. It was simply a small lump that had once been hungry, but would never eat again.
     Agony, torment, grief, fear. I realized too late that this woman was not of this world, but was still haunted by such worldly emotions. The agony of starvation. The torment of being too poor to feed her baby. The grief of that child’s death. Fear that nothing would ever change. 
             See the rest of this story and others at
                  Facebook: Japanese Ghost Stories

                                             *****

                  From Lump of Clay to Divine Art (excerpt)
     "Art will never be able to exist without nature." 
Pierre Bonnard, French painter and printmaker, 1867-1947

     The process of making pottery, one of the oldest human inventions, is the archetype of Bonnard’s quote. It is closer to nature than any other art form. Earth, the bedrock of our planet, is the foundation of each piece of pottery. Water, the substance in which life develops and feeds, is mixed with the earth to create a malleable material which the potter molds into shape. Air, an invisible force in nature that can both destroy and nourish, is first pounded out of the clay to prevent imperfections in the finished piece and explosions in the kiln, but then becomes an integral part of the process as the various stages of the natural drying process determine when potters can carve, decorate and glaze their work. Finally, fire, the element that advanced humanity, develops the piece of pottery in terms of variability, color, texture and nuance. Like in nature, the potter can regulate and manage the fire to some degree, but this element of nature also contains moments of unpredictability that can manifest in pottery pieces of divine beauty or unmitigated failure.