20 April 2017
“No one has ever become poor by giving.” -Anne Frank
Make art about the benefits of giving.
21 April 2017
Lots of company above this morning for our walk.
Make art about maintaining balance, about regaining balance, about seeking balance.
17 April 2017
16 April 2017
“He fought because he actually felt safer fighting than running.”
– Richard Adams
It’s hard to empathize with the combative life attitude until we look below the surface and see it’s a protective mechanism, meant to combat the anxiety produced from a world perceived as hostile. The need to fight is really just a signal of deep fear.
Make art about the fear driving combative people, or about understanding and forgiving them.
15 April 2017
At some point every semester, I challenge my students to look everyone they meet in the eye, even the strangers they pass, to turn while standing in line and speak to the person behind them, in front of them, to make acknowledging other human beings around them a habit.
One of my current students asked me, sadness softening her young face, why other people won’t, don’t, look at each other, much less look each other in the eyes as they pass. We’re afraid, I told her, of revealing ourselves, of being seen.
Make art about seeing each other, about taking the risk of being seen.
14 April 2017
Make art about service, about how the self is found in service to others.
SOME SPECIAL CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS LOVE!
HEARTWOOD BROADSIDE SERIES CONTEST
The brand spanking new issue of HeartWood comes out tomorrow! Thrilled to share amazing work from some amazing writers! 
And our second annual Broadside Competition is under way! Submit poetry, flash fiction, or micro memoir! Submit now! And share the call!
Partnering with West Virginia letterpress company Base Camp Printing, the winning entry (poetry or flash prose) will be featured on a limited-edition letterpress broadside with an original image inspired by the text.
Contest Judge: MAGGIE ANDERSON is the author of five books of poems most recently Dear All, (Four Way Books, 2017) and five edited or co-edited volumes of poetry. She was the founding director of the Wick Poetry Center and founder and editor of the Wick Poetry Series of the Kent State University Press. Anderson was also the Director of the Northeast Ohio MFA in creative writing from 2006-2009 and is the recipient of two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts as well as grants from the Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania Councils on the Arts. Maggie Anderson is Professor Emerita in English of Kent State University and currently lives in Asheville, NC.
13 April 2017
Make art about vision, about what you see, or are unable to see.
11 April 2017
One of the greatest gifts I’ve received in this life was a single statement. A wise and caring man said to me, “You know, you have a right to peace of mind.”
The simplicity of what he said stunned me in that moment. It also revealed to me how I, for too many reasons to list, more often than not, stood in my own way toward achieving that peace.
Had a wonderful and heartbreaking conversation with my students last night about just this thing, about what keeps them from ‘peace of mind.’ Worries and expectations, the fears they hold for the future, their own and the future of our planet. We talked about articulating these barriers, and about releasing them.
Make art about peace of mind.
8 April 2017
First Birthday party today for my grandson!
Make art about the miracles of family.
9 April 2017
Tilling in the summer garden today.
Make art about breaking ground.
10 April 2017
A friend of mine lost ten family members in the recent tragic events in Syria.
Make art about extreme loss, or extreme grief.
Mary Carroll-Hackett: Poetry and Prose 
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