Maureen O’Hara Pesta is an artist, teacher and writer and former proprietor of small-town newspapers who earlier in her career was a window designer for famous department stores in New York City.

Abigail Pesta is a magazine writer and author.

John Pesta (who died in 2023) was an English professor, publisher of small-town newspapers with Maureen, short-story writer and novelist who once wrestled a lion.

Jesse Pesta is a journalist and photographer.

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Maybe you’re familiar with “fine words butter no parsnips,” which is an old-fashioned way of saying talk is cheap. Or maybe you’re not. But it sounds silly so we thought it would make a good name for this project, which we started as a way to trick ourselves into doing creative things instead of just talking about doing them.

Just for fun here’s the original page from when we launched in 2004, which amazingly still works and which we liked for reasons that may be obvious.

The site has has come and gone with the ebb and flow of life. This version was created in 2025 to make the art bigger. Jpegs were tiny on the internet in 2004, my friends.

Here’s a word about John “Dad” Pesta. Back in 2006 he decided to write a mystery, “Safely Buried,” chapter by chapter and publish it here on this site, one chapter a week, as a way to force himself to get it done. He did, and it transformed the last 15 years of his life. You can read more about that here. Godspeed, John Pesta!

The bottom line is we created this thing to entertain ourselves and we hope you like it too. If you do, please tell a friend. Or at least join our mailing list below to get an email when new things appear or whenever we remember to send an email.