I have not had the energy for public writing these days: I write my morning pages and have been doing 500 words a day as part of the April version of NaNoWriMo. The latter is meant to be memoir but mostly I find myself ranting about the state of the world and wondering how much cash I should be hiding under the mattress. Then, in the midst of looking for dopamine hits amongst my Insta feed, there is this: Michael Sheen, all wild hair and Welsh intonation, performing “Do not go gentle into that good night” by Dylan Thomas. Happy National Poetry Month! Stop, take a breath or two and just let the words flow over you.
All posts by witchyrichy@gmail.com
A Voice From the Classroom
A very short post to encourage you to read Jen Orr’s blog post about life in her classroom right now. She calls it venting; I call it an authentic cry for help from a seasoned professional. If she and her students are struggling, I am scared to think what less experienced are educators are feeling.
Grass & Water
I spent a lovely long weekend with friends, playing games, listening to live music and sharing stories. I didn’t make any art but I did save lots of videos and pattern ideas. My friends live on a lake and I was inspired by the blues and greens. I made three version yesterday: two watercolors (one watery, one dry) and one acrylic using a printing block and stencil I made out of foam. I like that one the best and am finding myself drawn to printing.
Making Art
I have been experimenting with watercolor and colored pencils over the past few days, drawing designs and flowers. Today, I tried out an idea I had seen a couple different places on social media: stained glass painting. I used watercolor to fill in the sections created by the tape. Before I pulled it up, I designed to outline each section with a black marker.
Most of the examples just kept the white spaces white but I thought they were too wide so experimented with filling them in. The black spots were made with the eraser ends of whiteboard markers.
One of the ideas behind the #100DayProject is to choose one thing and experiment with it. This idea of taping and painting and embellishing appeals to me. There are lots of possibilities: thinner or even thicker tape, different designs in the margins, perhaps a background besides just the white paper. I could use stamps, make doodles or write quotes over the shapes. Or cut out the shades and reassemble them.
I am calling it, “I Don’t Hate This.”
A Child Died
I first learned about Nex Benedict’s horrific story from V Spehar of Under the Desk News, one of my main source for news these days. If you haven’t heard the story, Nex, a non-binary 16-year-old student at Owasso High School, who was following state law in Oklahoma and using the bathroom associated with their gender at birth, was assaulted on February 7 in the high school bathroom by three older girls. Early reports suggested Benedict could not walk on their own and was taken to the emergency room by the family. The next day, they were back in the ER, where they died on February 8. The story was reported by local news at the time.
The story has been covered by LGBTQ+ news outlets and organizations in the past couple days and is just now unfolding in the mainstream press (remember, they died February 8!); the police and school district have issued statements with the latter directly contradicting the stories about Benedict’s injuries. Public Radio Tulsa seems to have the most complete story so far and shows respect for Nex’s non-binary orientation, something their own family admits to struggling with as they come under fire for using her deadname as part of a Go Fund Me. The initial report of the detath described Nex as a teenage girl without naming them, but subsequent coverage has leaned towards using they/them pronouns with KJHR directly addressing the issue.
This story will continue to unfold, and there will be further investigations, allegations and denials. But, here’s the essence of the story as I see it:
A child died. That death was at least helped along by other children. And those children may have felt empowered in their actions by the hateful rhetoric of Oklahoma’s leaders. A child, trying to live their best life as they understood it, died, potentially because adults used their power to dehumanize and degrade them. A child died.