The questions of HONY

One of my daily addictions these days, along with millions of other people around the world is "Humans of New York" (fondly known among fans as HONY) the photography and interview project of Brandon Stanton. Brandon is a genius at capturing people both visually and through their words. You can view his work on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/humansofnewyork or his blog at http://www.humansofnewyork.com/. Brandon also has a top selling book of his photographs interviews available everywhere. 

Brandon has developed a series of stock questions that he has found help unlock the interesting stories of people's lives. Among them are:

"What was the happiest moment of your life?"
"What was the saddest moment of your life?"
"What was the most frightened you've ever been?"
"What's your greatest struggle right now?"
and finally "If you could give one piece of advice to a large group of people what would it be?"

Spending time reading the life stories that Brandon elicits, has gotten me to thinking about my own answers to those questions. I woke up this morning about 4:30 AM and spent the next ninety minutes thinking about those questions. Here's what I concluded:

"What was the happiest moment of your life?"

The summer of 2009 when I got to paint a mural for my college. Everything about my life was good, my parents were still alive, my husband and I were happy and healthy, and I got to spent an entire summer rediscovering the art that I loved so much (and getting paid!). It had been years since I'd done any painting, but it all came back to me, and I created something of beauty that will endure for years and be appreciated by many. 

"What was the saddest moment of your life?"

March 2012 when my mother and my dog Rosie died exactly one week apart. My mother was 89, had severe dementia and she frequently expressed the wish to die, so there was some sense of relief but still of course sadness, then when our beautiful, young dog suddenly became very ill two days later and died exactly a week after my mom the sadness simply overwhelmed me for weeks. 

"What was the most frightened you've ever been?" 

This is actually a toss up between two things. The first was in May 1982 on a Tuesday morning when I was told I had melanoma and that I had to report to the emergency room for surgery within two hours. The trauma of the diagnosis and immediate surgery was multiplied by the emergency room setting, where while I was being operated on with a local anesthesia an older woman in cardiac arrest was brought in to the cot next to mine, and I was totally aware of the doctors' unsuccessful efforts to revive her; she was declared dead and removed all while I was still being operated on. I was never more aware of my own mortality.

The second was probably a more sustained terror. In May 1980 in fear of my life, I had to move out of my apartment in the middle of the night (with the full cooperation of my landlords) to escape an alcoholic boyfriend who had suddenly turned violent. For several weeks I lived in fear that he would find my new apartment. He never did and life settled down.

"What's your greatest struggle right now?"

This is the easiest answer: making the changes in diet and activity to get a handle on my diabetes and improve my health so that I can look forward to enjoying the rest of my life and actually do all the things I've been planning for my retirement. 

and finally "If you could give one piece of advice to a large group of people what would it be?"

It's the same advice I give myself every single day: Each day is a gift, even the most difficult days. Do not pray for the day to end, do not wish your life away. Pray instead for the strength, patience and wisdom to live fully in each moment." 

 So now, even though its unlikely I'll be going to New York City any time soon, or even less likely encountering Brandon Stanton, I have my answers ready!

One Single Impression -- Shift in Time

the past is within,
beyond memory,
embedded in every cell,
every muscle fiber,
kinetic response.
playing a waltz,
riding a bike,
painting a portrait--
perfectly;
the vision flows
through fingertips
to brush, to canvas,
without conscious knowledge,
after years of dormancy,
skill returns
hesitant at first,
then bursting forth,
tying past and present
moments of creativity
into one
existing outside
of time.

©sgreerpitt
Saturday October 31, 2009



For the thoughts of other poets on the prompt "shift in time" see One Single Impression.

Photograph/painting of Brandi Bee by ©sgreerpitt 2009.

One Single Impression -- Fog

Walking the dog

stepping out
into private space,
a deep well
of damp white;
morning fog
blankets the world
in stillness,
letting through small sounds:
dripping moisture
on phantom leaves,
the soft thud
of a cat landing
out of sight,
the rustling of birds
grounded by fog,
soft canine panting,
and the beating
of my heart.

sgreerpitt
Saturday September 19, 2009


To read other poems on the prompt "fog" check out One Single Impression between Sunday 9/20/09 and Saturday 9/26/09.

Photo was taken this morning (9/19/09) on my way to Rosh Hashanah services, just off US 23 just south of the Virginia/Kentucky border.

Southeast Whitesburg Mural--40 signed, sealed...

and delivered.

Armed with four box fans, three extension cords, two containers of spray varnish (Lascaux UV Protection semi-matte at $25 a can!), and one respirator with new filters, I sealed the mural.

The actual work of spraying the varnish probably took less than one hour. But I stopped several times to let the fans do their work of clearing the room, and to take a break from the respirator which blocked all the odor and toxins! Afterwards I let all the fans run with the building doors wide open for more than two hours.

After the varnish dried, I uncovered the plaque to make sure everything looked right -- and discovered that I needed to do some tiny touch ups with green paint around the plaque. That completed I took final photographs of the whole thing with the plaque, but I won't release those until after the official dedication on September 23. Instead here's a final photo taken after I covered the plaque back up with some nice black poster board I picked up at Walmart on the way into campus today. Since the plaque is black, this gives you a pretty good sense of what the final effect will be.

Southeast Whitesburg Mural--39 Glories of morning

I believe that I am finished painting the mural. The End!

It was a lovely, quiet Saturday on campus. Midway College, a private college in central Kentucky, offers a bachelors degree program on our campus on Friday evening and all day Saturday, but their students and teachers were in another building. My friend Angela Hunsucker was around -- during the semester when Midway classes are held Angela pulls the Saturday maintenance assignment. But mostly I was on my own, with my music and my muse.

Completed a dozen or more little things that needed to be done: repaired some ragged edges along the bottom, making a clean even bottom edge all the way across the painting (required using about eight different hues to do this); painted in a half-dozen or so books that had been left blank previously, and added titles to some of the books; filled in ragged margins between people in several places; provided writing students with pens, paper, books and notebooks and added little details of writing, etc; added detail to the respiratory machine -- but decided not to add anything to the x-ray machine (I might change my mind about that later).

The big task was to finish the irises and add the morning glory vines and flowers. I think that this worked well, and did what I hoped it would to help integrate the plaque area with the mural.

After I finished, I sat down and took a photo from a different angle then usual. Here it is the finished (I think!) mural:



All that's left to do now is spray the entire surface with a semi-matte varnish next weekend when everyone is out of the building.

Southeast Whitesburg Mural--38 Ducks and flowers

This was such a different kind of painting day. All the people are done, every single one of them. So today I painted ducks and flowers.

The woman (Penny Ritter) whose vision inspired our college campus used to sit across the road from the old Coca-Cola bottling plant, watching the ducks and dreaming of a day when there would be college students feeding the ducks. So below the plaque (carefully protected behind painters tape and cardboard) I have placed a mother duck and two ducklings.


Then I needed to deal with all the rest of the empty space created by having to place the plaque in from the edge of the wall by some ten inches. I decided to use several types of blue/purple flowers, since the Kentucky Community and Technical College System (KCTCS) colors are a deep blue and gold. Violets do grow in places on the lawn that surrounds the college, although the photos I used for inspiration come from my own yard.

The irises are one of the first things you see in the spring when you approach the administration building and the Belinda Mason Building -- although they actually belong to Dr. Kathleen Caizzi who lives next door to the college. There are more irises to be painted. Some that are a white edged in very deep purple-blue. Also, the only flowers that I have any experience painting are irises; although all my iris painting experience is with water colors which work very differently from acrylics.

Later this week I will be adding morning glory vines and deep blue flowers climbing up the side of the plaque and across the top. Unfortunately, all the construction and renovations over the past eight years have obliterated the morning glories that used to exist on campus. So I have borrowed several photos off the web to provide a guide for how to portray these lovely flowers.

Below you can see first the area around the plaque -- safely hidden and protected from paint splatters by the cardboard. [After the official unveiling September 23, I will take photos for my blog that show the plaque in place]. This is what I worked on today, filling in all the blank white spaces, which included the drive in front of the administration building, the blouse, arms and computer of Pricie Young at bottom right, and the ducks and flowers. Below that is an overview of the whole thing -- almost finished!

Southeast Whitesburg Mural--37 Really the last people!

Last week on Tuesday, my first day of teaching classes, two of my former students Mark White and Phillip Bentley dropped into my office "to annoy me" (their words). They got down to business -- please, they asked could they be in the mural?

Since I was trying to figure out what to do with a blank space, I said yes immediately. They gamely accompanied me and my camera outside and posed for photos despite cat-calls and ribbing from their pals.

Although I sketched them in that very day, I haven't had time for painting until yesterday (Monday August 24).

So Mark and Phillip, here you are!



If your computer screen resolution is 1152 by 864 (or close) you are actually seeing the figures of Mark and Phillip at their actual size in the mural -- pretty small.

Southeast Whitesburg Mural--36 The last faces

Today I finished the very last faces in the main bottom area of the mural. Today's new faces were Nate Thompson (bottom right), Sharon Johnson (top left) and Tyler Watts (top right). I also gave Brandi some hair (bottom left).

This was the first time I've painted when all the students were on campus, coming and going from class. I deliberately put on big headphones (rather than just ear buds) so that people could see I was listening to music, and that cut down on the number of people asking me questions and talking to me. It was still a little weird to have a constant audience of dozens of students who were clearly observing me and talking about the portraits on the wall. Glad I didn't have that big an audience all summer.

There is one group of small figures to be added above these, but these are the last of the main faces/figures for the mural.

Looking back on it, I would have packed the faces/figures more closely in the first part of the mural. Especially if I had any idea that I would be besieged by student requests to be painting in the mural. It never occurred to me that students would come by and actually ask to be included. Of course if I had done that I would not be any where near as far along, and as much as I love this, it is becoming clear to me that it would be very hard to spend more than one or two days a week painting and still teach all my classes.

Southeast Whitesburg Mural--35 The home stretch

It was quiet at the college today although I was not entirely alone. Our counselor Ron Brunty was buzzing about posting information and maps to help students find their way tomorrow -- the first day of classes. He caught me in the act of belting out Beatles songs at the top of my lungs while I painted.

The plaque was installed this past Wednesday, but our maintenance staff needed to re-plaster around it, and that had to dry. At the end of the day Friday I was able to cover the new plaster with gesso. And finally today, I was back to painting.

The two lovely people to the right are Pricie Young at the bottom, and Mitchum Whitaker just above her. Pricie got her ten year service award this year. She handles student records, does registration, order supplies for everyone, and many, many other tasks without which the rest of us could not do our jobs. She does it all with that brilliant smile! Pricie earned her associates degree at Southeast in business while working full-time and being a wife and mother to a beautiful daughter.

Mitch is the third Excellence in Sociology award winner I've featured in the mural. Once upon a time in a former life Mitch worked for UPS. Now he fills all his teachers with joy from his inquiring mind and lively humor. During the past spring term not only was Mitch in my Appalachian studies class where he helped to keep the discussions hopping, but we were also fellow students in creative writing. Particularly adept at humorous prose Mitch entertained us all with his readings. Mitch balances school and family with a job driving a school bus for the Letcher County Schools.

To the left you can see the whole area that I am working on, which is just to the right of the plaque.

Below is the panoramic view. The plaque was installed much further from the wall than I had hoped, leaving less room for students. I also have to do something with the blank area (currently painted green) to the left of the plaque and below it. I had already planned to paint a mother duck and her ducklings in the area below the plaque. After some discussion with Eugene Mead the campus administrator, I think I will put a simple flowering vine in the space to the left of the plaque, just something to set it off without distracting from the plaque or the students to the right of it. The white area above and slightly to the right of the plaque will feature another small outdoor grouping of students seated on a marble bench.

Southeast Whitesburg Mural--34 Fun Outside

Today I recruited several students to come outside and pose on the lawn. I provided a beach towel to protect them from the wet, and they provided me with smiles and enthusiasm. I particularly want to mention the very game young man on the right, named Jordan. This was Jordan's very first day as a Southeast student. He had just signed up for his freshman classes and was waiting to see the financial aid director when I approached him. Confronted by this unfamiliar (and also strange) dumpy middle aged lady in paint spattered overalls, he cheerfully left the building to pose. I predict that Jordan has a great college career ahead of him!

So here we are. I have completed everything that I can until the plaque is installed (I hope soon). Every inch of the mural has been filled in except for the area on the bottom left where the plaque will go. So now I wait.

Southeast Whitesburg Mural--33 Three - two - one

Three figures, two ducks and one river.

The standing figures are Mitch Caudill, our stalwart library assistant and Sabrina Mullins who works in the business office.

Mitch started working part-time in the library as a students more than a decade ago, and got elevated to full-time library assistant. He has on occasion (once for a whole year, another time for one six months) run the entire library himself, when we were unable to find a professional librarian. [We've had six different librarians in the 13 years that I've been here. Hopefully our current librarian, Evelyn Hensley, is with us for many years to come.] Mitch is one of the few other people on our campus who is a rabid "LOST" fan like myself, so when new episodes are playing, we have to do the post-episode analysis.

Sabrina is one of the smiling faces who works on the front line with the students everyday (in addition to being a student herself). Just this last week, Sabrina introduced me to her daughter who will be starting as a student herself this fall.

The seated figure on the left is Paula Potter, one of my students from Appalachian Studies last spring. Paula's been a round a lot this summer working for the Adult Education Program whose offices are right behind the wall on which I am painting. Paula was game enough to go sit outside on the very wet grass (I gave her a bag to sit on, but still) and pose for me. Now I need to find two other students to fill out the grouping.

I put two pretty male mallards swimming in the river, and finished up the river itself. See the detail on the mallards below:


As soon as I find two more students willing to sit on the ground for me, I can finish the small white areas on the right. Then all I have to do is wait for the plaque to be installed, so that I can plan the rest of the remaining space on the lower left.

Southeast Whitesburg Mural--32 Time for Ducks

"Redirecting" is what the tab on Internet Explorer said when I clicked on "new post" and it occurred to me that is what I did today. I redirected my attention to a different part of the mural: the middle ground between the buildings and the people.

Moreover, it was time for ducks. The powers that be want ducks. I like ducks. Turns out I'm not as good at painting ducks as I am at painting people, but that's okay.

I'm also not as good a lettering (especially, tiny free hand lettering)! But the signs okay. It's readable, and its the right color and size. By the way, the stone work holding the sign was built well before I came to southeast by Jerry Hensley (featured in a previous post) and others.

By the way that's me hiding behind that tree, feeding that duck. I actually have taken a total of fourteen credit hours at Southeast (college algebra, trig, calculus, creative writing, web page design and several short business courses), so I sort of count as a student.

Southeast Whitesburg Mural--31 A stopping point

Today's painting marks a temporary stopping point. I finished off the last grouping of students that I had sketched in. Now I must wait to see where the plaque is placed before continuing on this area of the painting.

Also I have to stop work for several days. Tomorrow begins our in-service meetings that mark the beginning of a new academic year. The first day's sessions will be on our "main" campus in town of Cumberland in Harlan County. Then Wednesday and Thursday in-service sessions will move to the Harlan campus of the college. We have two other campuses, both in Bell County -- one in Pineville and the other in Middlesboro. According to Google maps, it is 85 miles from the Whitesburg campus in the northeast of our service area to the Middlesboro campus in the southwest of our service area. Which is why aside from the in-service sessions, we hold most of our meetings using interactive television or Internet conferencing.


The last face I did today belongs to Brandi White Gentry, who like Johnny King has been a recipient of the Excellence in Sociology award given every spring. Brandi has overcome a lot of physical and mental obstacles to obtain an education. She is one of the most cheerful people I've ever met. She sincerely looks for the good in everyone, even those who cause her pain. She is not only very smart, but very curious about the world, and most of all she is persistent!


Below is an overview of the wall to date.

Southeast Whitesburg Mural--30 Working on Sunday

Today I wanted to feature a couple of faces -- faces of friends and colleagues who also happen to be graduates of the college. First up is Debby Young. Debby came to Southeast about 11 years ago, to handle the financial transactions of our campus. She deals both with accounts receivable and accounts payable. In addition to her full-time job with the college, Debby is a wife and mother of two lovely young women, who have grown up over the past decade. During her time at Southeast she has completed an Associates degree from the college, and then by combining various forms of distance learning and some travel has completed first a bachelors degree and then a masters degree both in business. She now teaches several business courses for the college. Whew! I get tired just thinking of all the things Debby does.

The smiling guy to the left is Jerry Hensley. Jerry is one of the hardest working men I've ever met, and is never without his hat! It's not unusual to find him at the college on the weekend finishing up some project that was not completed during the week. Jerry's wife and kids must be very tolerant of his commitment to the college. Jerry has the most seniority of our Whitesburg maintenance staff, and has been with the college many more years than I have. Jerry completed his associates degree at the college and took courses from both me and my husband John.

The next two weeks promise to be very busy with things other than painting, and I wanted to get finished with all the people currently sketched in before I had to stop for a day or two. So I took advantage of the empty campus today to put in another five hours of painting, and got five more faces completed today (including Jerry's). See below:

Southeast Whitesburg Mural--29 Me and my peeps

Do young people still use "peeps" for people or friends? I'm probably woefully out of date with my slang. Got one of the nice folks in Adult Education to take this picture of me standing among the portraits on the wall. Gives you a better idea of the scale of it all.

Moving forward with "all due deliberate speed," in the last couple of days I've been trying to so a smaller number of faces at once, but completely finish more figures. Here's today's work area, and below it an overview of the entire wall.



I will soon have to stop painting people -- to wait for the powers that be to install the stone plaque on the left hand side. [Currently TPTB are saying that they can't get to the task until August 10]. I'm fearful of painting too close, I don't want the workmen to destroy anything I've already painted, and there's been some debate on exactly where the plaque will sit. I may have two more feet of space to paint or only six inches more, beyond where I've sketched in faces. While I wait for that, there's lots I need to do, to fill in the middle ground with smaller figures feeding ducks. The folks behind this insist that there have to be students feeding ducks!!

Southeast Whitesburg Mural--28 Back in the groove

A good day today. Color everywhere. I like a day when I both do some good face work and fill in large areas with bright color.

The sweet face to the right belongs to Lora Cummings, who I had the pleasure of teaching in two different classes last spring, and joining as a fellow student in creative writing. Lora is a married mom, who has an awesome singing voice, and surprised herself (but not our instructor) by being quite adept at rhyming verse.

Below is an overview of the area that I worked on today. Several faces were completed, and a lot of clothing was filled in, once I figured out what colors to use.

The two young men in the middle of today's work are Physical Therapy Assistant students taking turns working on techniques. Physical Therapy Assistant is our oldest allied health program on the Whitesburg campus.

Southeast Whitesburg Mural--27 Antidote for the Blahs

This evening I'm very grateful that I've made the commitment to take photos everyday I work and post them. Now that I look at the photo I realize that I did good work today, and actually accomplished quite a lot.

During the day, I was down and discouraged -- the blahs. I didn't feel like I had really painted even though I spent nearly five hours working at the wall. Those five hours were spent planning where each of fifteen students would go, and sketching them in. I was particularly discouraged, because I spent a great deal of time on one pair of radiography students, drawing in more details than I usually do (including a big x-ray machine), and then realized that I had located them far too low down in the painting. I had to haul out the brand new erasers I bought just yesterday (handy!) and erase a huge area, then start over a foot higher up and to the right.

Then I mixed a new batch of my dioxazine purple/burnt umber/unbleached titanium shadow hue, and painted in all the shadows for all fifteen faces. Only after I did that, did I realize that some of the people in the foreground, especially their faces were noticeably smaller than other foreground faces elsewhere in the mural. I felt discouraged, worn down. However, looking at the photo of what I did now, I can see that while true this is not a fatal flaw. Yet another reminder that perfection is not necessary. As I believe John Kerry once said, I'm not going to let "the perfect be the enemy of the good."

Southeast Whitesburg Mural--26 a special student

The face I added today (bottom left of the photo to the right, in the peach colored shirt), belongs to a former student, Johnny King.

John came to college after retirement and the death of his wife. He completed his associates degree at Southeast, and then transferred to the University of Virginia's College at Wise, just 30 miles away. He graduated from UVA Wise this past spring, after coming back to Southeast to pick up Spanish. While he was at Southeast John earned a number of academic awards, including the award I give for excellence in Sociology. John was one of those students whose quest for knowledge engaged me in learning many new things as well.

Note: I also fleshed out Mr. Skeleton (metaphorically). Yes, I know there aren't enough ribs, but I'm an artist not an allied health student.

Slowly but surely, students march across the wall, and the blank space shrinks.

Southeast Whitesburg Mural--25 Not always satisfied

Several people today asked me how much time the mural represented. Good question! This is the twenty-fifth day that I've worked directly on the mural. The least amount of time I've spent working was four hours, the most was seven hours. The average has been about five hours, not including time spent in my office preparing photos and printing them out. So twenty-five days times five hours a day, is 125 hours. And I'm about four-sixths done. Not too shabby.

Sometimes one of the faces comes out really nicely, and other times, there's something seriously off about a face. The picture on the right illustrates both. The face at the top is one that I'm tickled with. It's not that this face looks just like the original photo (it's not suppose to), but it is attractive, and realistic. The face at the bottom, is actually more reminiscent of its model, but it is distorted.

I spent some time playing with Corel Paint this evening, and believe that I can fix this face with some very small changes: a) the chin, especially on the viewers left is too long and broad, and needs to be brought in, b)in putting in the young woman's make-up, I lost too much of the shading above the eyes, and that needs to be added back in, c) the bottom portion of the models nose is longer and the shaft above it shorter, and d) the teeth need some shading. The graphic to the left shows some of the changes I plan; I am not yet fully adept at using Corel Paint and the Genius tablet and pen that Southeast provided to all of us who teach on-line classes.


To the right is the overview of all that I did today: six new faces sketched in, three completed in detail, two with the color roughed in but no fine details (eyes & lips). (By the way, you can always click on the photos and see everything larger).

Southeast Whitesburg Mural--24 moving ahead

Today was one of my most productive painting days. I completed six faces--the most I've done in one day--and provided clothing to several of them. Did a little more work on Mr. Skeleton.

Today was also a productive planning day. I've been finding new photographs, from my own files, from students and other faculty, that will fit into the mural. This is rather like working on a free form jigsaw puzzle. I need to find poses that will fit well, leaving the least amount of empty space. While I have a general plan for where each student should go, the specifics of exactly how to fit in each person can only be decided as I reach that place in the mural.

Among the many visitors who stopped by today to chat, was a former student J. Paul, whose face was the first I painted in the mural. When I saw him, I wanted to take his picture so I could redo his portrait. When he was a student here he had a super short buzz cut. He has since let his hair grow -- turns out he has the gorgeous dark wavy hair. He looks so much better. But he was in a hurry to get to a meeting. I might still change the painting anyway!

Here's an overview of all the students so far: