Good news in this season of darkness — First Draft is back. Pendleton Center for the Arts director Roberta Lavadour and savvy Blue Mountain Community College intern Joy Holmes have made it happen. This week they hosted the first Zoom session of The First Draft Writers’ Series.

Not only did they feature an Oregon Book Award winner, they made sure it was David Wolman and Julian Smith’s prize-winning “Aloha Rodeo: Three Hawaiian Cowboys, the World’s Greatest Rodeo, and a Hidden History of the American West.”

I was fascinated by this story of three “paniolos” who swept the competition at the Cheyenne Rodeo in 1908, but even more by how these unexpected (and apparently not too welcome) contestants became such good cowboys. Imagine roping wild longhorn bulls and persuading them downhill through dense forests filled with massive thorns and camouflaged bullock pits to the sea, and then swimming them out to a waiting ship and anticipatory sharks.

Twenty thousand longhorns, in Hawaii? For me, that’s where the story got really interesting. But I won’t spoil the book for you. You can find it at the Pendleton Public Library or order copies for your own buckaroos to find under the tree.

The next First Draft Zoom meeting is set for Jan. 21 at 7 p.m. Just email Roberta (director@pendletonarts.org) to get the link. Joy has prompts for open mic participants, too. This session will feature Don Colburn. A longtime reporter for the Washington Post and Oregonian, he came to poetry later in life and has been winning awards ever since. He was on the plane that Sully landed on the Hudson River, and the poem he wrote about that is only one of many you will love.

I’m grateful to Roberta and Joy for bringing First Draft to us in this ongoing pandemic, and I appreciated Brigit Farley’s recent East Oregonian column paying tribute to Roberta and her colleagues at Pendleton Center for the Arts — not only for the programs we all know from the past, but for the steps they are taking now. She mentioned the online landscape photography contest and “date nights” that bring local restaurant dinners to a socially isolated couple in that lovely setting.

Then came Roberta’s email offering even more ideas. In the Art Pal program, families interested in crafts can get a package of tools and materials delivered to their curb, and an hour a week for four weeks to meet via Zoom with an Art Pal to go through a series of age-appropriate projects. It’s free — email Roberta before Jan. 1 to get on the list.

And there was a photo of three new work stations, benches made by Jeff Blackwood that look out over the Umatilla River, where a socially isolated maker — when the pandemic abates, three makers — can create jewelry, small scale leather goods, etc., at a dedicated work space. Adults and teens can apply on the PCA website by Jan. 1. Again, there’s no charge.

We’re been fortunate to have the guidance and encouragement of Pendleton Center for the Arts during this difficult year. The mental stress of this year of isolation and worry has made us realize that “Art Saves Lives” is more than a slogan on a bumper sticker.

Across the country, people have been taking online classes in writing, painting, sculpting, quilting, knitting, music. Remember how, when the pandemic set in, flour disappeared from our grocery shelves as people turned to baking and bread making? I suspect there is now even more sourdough in Oregon than when sourdough was the provenance of sheepherders and ranchers.

Although we may not think of ourselves as artists, we are all creators. To me, creation is a bit of a mystery: we go deep inside ourselves and return with something that didn’t exist before. A carving, a story, a child. Did we make it, or was it a gift that came though us?

Winter Solstice is a dark time, a time for going within — “the belly of winter,” a friend calls it. We contemplate loss—it has been a year of loss for all of us — as we wait for light. Maybe the creative spirit is just that: the human need to reach for light.