26 August 2019
New semester starts today. I love teaching so much, but being the performing introvert that I am, those brand new student faces are always an experience.
Make art about how it feels to walk into a room of people you’re meeting for the first time.
23 April 2019
Make art inspired by this:
“A child’s wisdom is wisdom still.”-Jewish proverb
11 February 2019
A weekend busy with work, but I managed to finish the prep for all five of the classes I’m teaching this semester. I also got meal prep done for the week, and got a jump on a project not due for a couple of weeks. Feeling all kinds of adult-prepared right now 🙂
Make art about being ready.
10 October 2017
Make art inspired by this quote:
When born you inherit what’s burning.~Liam Rector
20 September 2017
My son’s 29th birthday is today. He has, since we met, proven to be one of my best friends, a wise, funny, compassionate, loving child who grew into a wise, funny, compassionate, loving man. He has been and remains one of my greatest teachers.
Make art about your teachers.
30 July 2017
Was asked by another young person to teach him about cooking and food preservation. Blows up my heart to pass the old wisdom on ❤
Make art about preserving and teaching old wisdom.
31 July 2017
Woke up hearing music this morning, a tenor singing down the hall, song woven through the fabric of my waking air
Make art about who you hear singing in the distance.
3 May 2017
Every day I sling the door open to my classroom, and enter, looking across the room at those amazing students, and greet them with”Good morning, you beautiful creatures!”
I hadn’t thought much about it, until apparently I missed a day greeting them this way, and I heard about it 🙂 “You didn’t call us beautiful creatures!”
And they are–so beautiful–these young creatures striving, focusing, questioning, and reaching, always reaching, even when they’re not sure yet what it is they’re reaching for. Some stumble, and fall. Some create the wind itself as they move from place to place. Others are much too hard on themselves, harder than we old people could be, harder even than the unbelievable media and family and societal pressure they carry on their young shoulders every day. They are creatures of grace, and incredible endurance, surviving, thriving even. in the mess we’ve left them.
They are dreamfog and summer storm and mountain clay and stardust. They are every road to everywhere, every path woven of hope and young hunger.
They are miraculous, these creatures, these wind dancers and fireaters, carrying their huge hearts out openly before them in their hands, offering them like gifts, like the gifts that they are. ❤
They’re funny, and they’re compassionate, and they’re curious, and wise, so much wiser than they’re given credit for, than they give themselves credit for, and I learn from them every time we’re together in those rooms. Every day they teach me, so I never forget what it is to dream.
Tonight, we shared a meal, and I listened to presentations for projects ranging from the environmental and natural–water quality, animal rescue, waste conversion for fuel–to a cross-section of the humane–programs for kids in poverty, kids with disabilities, for educating kids in technology, free financial services for students and for the poor, projects to help the hungry.
Tonight, I saw the future, y’all 🙂 and no matter how hard it seems right now, that future? It is indeed filled with beautiful, beautiful, beautiful creatures.
Make art about young people, about what we owe them, about what we can learn from them.
Overslept, so it’s late, but it’s here.
Make art about having to explain something, about providing an explanation, about the image below.
The moon does not fight. It attacks no one. It does not worry. It does not try to crush others. It keeps to its course, but by its very nature, it gently influences. What other body could pull an entire ocean from shore to shore? The moon is faithful to its nature and its power is never diminished. -Ming-Dao Deng
Mary Carroll-Hackett: Poetry and Prose 
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