“The worker must have bread, but she must have roses too.” This century-old labor slogan bears repeating today. Beauty, pleasure, celebration—the “roses” of life—are not extras; they’re just as essential as food and shelter to our well-being.

To start meeting everyone’s needs for both bread and roses, it’s important to insist that governments and businesses make the appropriate changes. But it’s also crucial to embrace, create and share the bread-and-roses paradigm in our individual lives, here and now. Even in a world in which resources can seem scarce, commitment, openness and ingenuity can reveal some amazing roses.

Local artist Andres San Millan is a great example. Awhile back he decided it was time to expand beyond his previous artistic parameters and do what he’d always wanted to do: create a really large sculpture. He knew that moving forward with his dream was a vital part of his life’s work—but he didn’t have the financial resources to purchase materials for such a large piece.

The way San Millan responded to that seeming obstacle can inspire all of us who seek more of the roses in life. He used Hudson River driftwood to create a work infused with such grace, meaning and power that it’s clear this artist and this medium were destined to work together.

The 13-foot sculpture, Man, on exhibit in front of Taste Budd’s Cafe in Red Hook, is a dynamic archetypal figure that carries the same energy as the driftwood of which it’s made. San Millan, who has a deep affinity for Native American culture, says, “I wanted Man to reflect those cultures, the way they flow without resisting the rhythms of nature. That’s the same reason the earth goes around the sun: nothing impedes it, so it just keeps going with the flow. Driftwood does that too.”

And that same energy powered San Millan’s creative process. Instead of resisting the circumstances with which we’re faced, he says, we can know that “we have everything we need. It’s all here.” When I stand looking at Man, I know in my bones that’s true.

My family and I attended the installation of Man, looking for something interesting to do on a frigid January day. What we experienced went way beyond interesting. The power and beauty of the piece fed our souls deeply, reminding us that art is as vital as bread.

Our culture tends to pressure us to starve the right sides of our brains. San Millan says, “The right side of the brain is spiritual, empathic, creative, wild, spontaneous. It’s alive and it has needs. We absolutely need to nourish it because it’s part of us.”

To spend time with Man, on exhibit through December, visit Taste Budd’s Cafe, 40 West Market Street, Red Hook. For more on Andres San Millan (who also cofounded the Cocoon Theatre in Rhinebeck with his wife, Marguerite), visit figureartscape.com or email andres@figureartscape.com.

Sherill Hatch blogs at fulljoy.us, offers life coaching, and facilitates the support group Stone Soup: Living Sustainably on a Shoestring.

by Sherill Hatch 

“The worker must have bread, but she must have roses too.” This labor slogan is overdue for a revival. Let’s spread the word that we’re all entitled—yes, entitled—to have our basic needs met, and more. We need beauty, pleasure, rest, and love. Bread and roses.

It can be hard to hear a call for “roses too” against the background of loud cultural arguments about the “bread” category. Is just any bread good enough, or must the wheat for the bread be grown in healthy soil? If “the worker” came from another country, what is she entitled to? And is access to health care really a basic need?

With so much confusion over bread, it’s no wonder the roses get lost. To move toward a culture that embraces both, we need to live that way ourselves, creating real-life examples of this paradigm. Among our region’s abundant examples are the holistic health care venues in Stone Ridge, Kingston, Woodstock, and Phoenicia. On a monthly or quarterly basis, holistic practitioners and administrative volunteers gather in a community space to provide healing sessions in a wide variety of modalities. Donations and exchanges are welcomed, but no one is turned away.

The Rondout Valley Holistic Health Community hosts Community Holistic Healthcare Days in Stone Ridge; clinics in the other locations are operated by the organization Health Care is a Human Right, under the auspices of Family of Woodstock. These groups go farther than saying that health care is as vital as bread—they demonstrate it.

What’s more, they go beyond the basics. The RVHHC’s vision statement affirms they’ll create “a healing environment of compassion, caring, and beauty.” Nancy Eos, a physician on their organizing council, says, “In our Health Care Days we embody the vibrant health that every client can create for themselves. Every time the healing teams get together, our energies begin to vibrate, to hum together in resonance, and that humming crescendos throughout the event. Then magical things start happening.”

As a client at both organizations’ venues, I’ve experienced that magic. I made several visits as I healed from cancer and treatment, as well as from an unrelated surgery the same year. Every time, simply walking into the environment created by the volunteers was like entering my vision of a future world. There were beauty, music, a warm and joyful welcome, and opportunities to take part in fun mini healing sessions while waiting on line...It felt like a party!

Though I barely had money for the gas to get there, the volunteers handed me excellent health care—both the bread and the roses—as if on a silver platter. As though I were absolutely entitled to it. Something deep inside me relaxed and tears came, as I felt a sense of my own worthiness mirrored by others.

This is the kind of health care we need, and our region is taking the lead. What a powerful answer to the call for bread and roses.

Rondout Valley Holistic Health Community www.rvhhc.org info@rvhhc.org Health Care is a Human Right healthcareisahumanright.com hchrny@gmail.com 845-481-3186 Sherill Hatch blogs at fulljoy.us, offers life coaching, and facilitates the support group Stone Soup: Living Sustainably on a Shoestring.