Last Friday I avoided most social media, spending the day on self care and allowing myself to indulge in my sorrow at the end of the Obama Administration.
I did, though, manage to read about the 100 Day Project that started on January 21: Where Dreams and Darkness Meet. I knew in an instant that I wanted to participate, and I knew just as fast what I wanted to do:
Postcard Project Redux! My plan: every day for 100 days I will make a postcard and send it out into the world. Would you like one? Sign up here. I promise not to share your info! (And if you really love getting postcards, be sure to check out my friend Cara aka January One’s upcoming postcard project!)
With news of the new president’s desire to defund the arts and humanities (which Snopes reports as making up .006 of 2016’s federal spending–way to “make America great”), I want to send my own bits of art into the world. I’m pretty sure my focus will be on creating images to marry with facts (regular ol’ facts, not alternative facts) related to the many ways in which this administration has promised to isolate, ravage, and dumb down my country while at the same time taking away basic rights from so many groups.
Am I angry? You bet. But I’m using my anger to enact what Ghandi advised:
“If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. … We need not wait to see what others do.”
I attended the Sister Rally of the Women’s March on Washington in Hartford, CT, and I left it feeling even more motivated to continue the work I’ve been doing since the election (phone calls, letters, and emails to elected officials, sharing action information, teaching students how to write phone scripts and emails to their elected officials, etc.) and to aim to do even more. This project is one little doing even more.
I hope you’ll sign up and let me share a little bit of where dreams and darkness meet for me!
I adore the post card I got from you during your last post card project–I have it framed in my office. So I’m off to sign up for this one, too. You’re such an inspiration!
Signed up, I loved the one you sent me last time!
Your postcards are a prized pieces of art in my home!
LOVE your approach, Beverly! What a wonderful response. XO
I just signed up too because I loved the last card you sent me. If you include pm or include your return address on the card, I’d love to send you some handspun yarn or something else Ohio-y! –Jan
Thank you for sharing what you are doing. It helps.
I love that Ghandi quote. I will have to put it up to remind me of myself.