Lost

Retirement is not going the way I intended. I feel lost, often sad, and fighting through a fog much of the time.

I am not writing novels or poetry, not doing new research, not getting articles published, not blogging regularly,  not painting dozens of paintings, nor drawing every day (not even every month). I'm not even cleaning my house every week, not planting a big garden, not walking every day, not doing yoga regularly, and instead of losing weight I have gained 20 pounds. I'm not volunteering at a dozen worthy causes - or even one. I'm not even sitting and reading all the serious non-fiction books that I bought over the last 20 years with the idea that someday I'd find the time to get to them. But I've played lots of Candy Crush Jelly, spent lots of hours on Facebook, and watched a lot of hours of Netflix and Hulu. Sure I like doing those things, but they're not productive, not what I promised myself to do with retirement.

Every time I start to write about this I end up stopping before I get very far. It feels like whining, and I hate whining. And again, I almost stopped and tossed this post out too. I have so much to be grateful for, so many things that many of the people living here in my community, my county do not have, and I am indeed grateful for them. I practice gratitude every day for all my many blessings. But I still feel lost, and often very alone.

I do not regret retiring - the last several years of my job were so stressful and I was anxious all the time. The stress and the anxiety are gone, but they've left this huge open space in my life that I that struggle with daily. There are many days, maybe even most days when I don't want to get out of bed at all. I feel tired in the morning - even after being on nighttime oxygen for two months. I do get up every morning for one simple reason, no one else will remember to feed my outdoor kitty, Jake. John's good about feeding the dogs and the indoor cats, but he doesn't remember about Jake, and I know Jake depends on me. Some days other things help motivate me, but I feel sad that some days the only thing getting me out of bed is this one little orange and white cat that would go hungry without me.

I haven't spoken or written about this to anyone. As I write this, I have to keep stopping and browsing elsewhere on the internet because it is so difficult to think about, much less write about. Yet the fact that I am writing, despite having to walk away and do other things to deal with the intensity, says to me that I'm a little better at this moment than I was during the past winter.

Sometimes the obstacles to the life I think I should be living in retirement seem insurmountable. The days when I feel like I've done the most worthwhile things - when I've been physically active, taken care of my house and garden, done things out in the world where I'm with people, or am artistically creative, are also the days that I find myself in the most pain at the end of the day. This past ten days I did a number of things (either with my husband or alone) that make my heart sing - attending outdoor music events, going to the farmers market, being with and talking to people, planting a rose bush, caring for my tomato plants. But by the end of each of those active days, I could bearly walk, just picking up my feet for one more step, much less getting up and down the steps to my home was overwhelming. I fell into bed in exhaustion not even feeling up to my usual evening reading before sleep. It's like the words of Shannon McNally's song Banshee Moan: "well you're damned if you do/damned if you don't/trouble if you will/double if you won't/so you watch you say/watch what you do/" (we heard Shannon McNally on Thursday night in Whitesburg at the Levitt AMP concert). Now that really feels like whining. I know so many people who have so much more pain than I do, people who've actually had to have surgery on their backs, hips, and/or knees.

Then there's the problem of friends, or rather the lack of them. My yoga teacher suggested to me a month or so ago that I should get together a group of friends for a morning yoga class. Only I don't have any friends to ask to do a weekday morning yoga class with me.  I do have two best friends that I talk to often and can tell just about anything (except this, I haven't talked about all this with anyone) but one is in Nevada and the other is in Oregon.  I love them and they love me, but they aren't here, I can't ask them to join me in a yoga class as much as they might like to do so. We can't just go to a movie together or out for coffee - and with the time difference and their busy lives I can't even just pick up a phone and know they'll be there.  My husband is wonderful, there are lots of things we like to do together, and we talk all the time. But one person can't be your whole world - it's too hard on them - and my husband is sad and lonely too. There are many people here locally that I like and admire, most of whom I think like me too. But there's no one that I feel like I can call to do things with or just sit around and hang out.

When I was teaching I felt so busy all the time between work and home life that I didn't make any real effort to "make friends" the way I did when I was single. Almost everyone I know is so connected to this region, they all have families, their children and grandchildren, parents, cousins, aunts, and uncles, and this fills up their lives as it should. There was a colleague who retired when I did that I think of as a friend, and we said we'd have lunch often and stay in touch.  I've tried three or four times in the first six months of retirement to get together for lunch, and every time she had things she had to do with her family, so I gave up.

Boy, this really feels like whining. I'm not saying "poor me, nobody likes me."  I'm saying that I didn't make much of an effort for the first 20 years I lived here to be an active friend to the people around me, and now that I have the time most of the people that I know have their own lives and families, and I'm clueless as to how to become more connected to others.  This is why I spend so much time on Facebook - at least that way I feel a little bit connected to other people and a little less isolated. But it's a catch 22 because time spent at the computer is not spent trying to be out in the world where people are.

So I go on struggling, feeling lost and sad. It feels a little like the identity crisis of my early twenties. I got started on this today because of reading something that someone I know shared on Facebook:

"Living in this skin is hard and painful, most of the time, because I never volunteered to take this on. The daily sacrifice of heart over mind, the forever ongoing task of explaining this and that, and why I don’t want to look like this and be like that but still here I am and if this is the body I’ve been given, I’m sure as hell gonna make it work."  ~Charlotte Eriksson

I'd never heard of Charlotte Eriksson before this morning, so of course, I googled her (disclaimer I didn't actually use "Google" but rather a search engine called Ecosia that plants trees for so many searches). I read some bits and pieces of Eriksson's work and thought - yes! But I also thought this is how young people feel who are just starting out, trying to find themselves. How can I be feeling all this at sixty-seven, I'm not supposed to be having an identity crisis at my age, yet here I am.

This is what linguist Deborah Tannen called "troubles talk" that thing that women (and many men too) do when they just want to let something out. I'm not looking for someone to give me solutions, I'm just finally getting it out there, talking about it for the first time, putting some light on the darker thoughts that have been going around my brain for the past year. Maybe to feel a little more connected.

I have ideas, know the things I should be doing. So I will go on trying to find a way.

Giving myself a C+ on Retirement

2017-12-27

I wake up in the middle of the night and start thinking about things, things that seem important to me and that I wish I could write down – instead of just thinking around in circles about them – but to get up and go to the computer would probably disrupt the dogs and that would mean that John’s sleep would be disrupted so I just lie there and think and think and think. Then I wake up in the morning and I can’t remember anything that I thought about.  I suspect that those thoughts I have in the middle of the night are not as deep or relevant or worthy as I imagine them to be at 3 AM.

I am not doing as well with retirement as I am telling everyone. I tell everyone that I love retirement – and that is true, but it is not the whole story. I think I’ve been suffering from some depression – especially since the weather turned colder and I haven’t wanted to go outside as much.

 I have no desire to go back to work. Retiring was absolutely the right decision. I do not miss the anxiety, fear, and stress that were a part of my work life for the past three or four years. After B__ A___ retired as president of the college, things just went to hell-in-a-handbasket. But truthfully things had started going downhill even before that. The budgetary situation and the enrollment declines made things iffy. I never knew for certain that I would have enough students to make a full-load, and I was always anxious about what would happen if I didn’t. It always worked out, but not necessarily easily – often with a great deal of extra work for me. The lack of proper leadership on assessment was always a stressor.

My personal situation with my weight and my health (rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes 2, asthma) needed more time and attention than I had to give while teaching full-time (and often overloads). It’s very hard to be properly active when your work requires 10 hours a day at a computer. Even when it didn’t require 10 hours a day, the stress was such that instead of getting up and doing something active when I took a break I just slid into Facebook and online games. I am so happy to be rid of the stress and anxiety. 

My life feels so much more peaceful and calm. During the last four years, it felt like I was angry all the time. Fear makes me react with anger. I didn’t like the person that I was becoming: someone who was hateful and suspicious and fearful and angry.

Most of that is gone, just a few anxieties now about money, but nothing really bad. I had a moment of sheer panic this morning when it seemed that my husband’s health insurance had not been properly processed for 2018. But things seem to have worked out and the knot in my stomach went away pretty quickly. Anxiety and tension are no longer my default setting like it was for the last few years. I feel so much more relaxed and comfortable and actually happy most of the time. It shows up in the photos that people have taken of me in the last six months – I’m smiling like an idiot in all of them, because well – life is pretty good on a personal level. I also find myself singing – something I did all the time when I was younger but hadn’t done in years. Of course, on a not so personal level, on the level of my community, my state, my country, my planet life is shit and getting shittier with each passing day. But that is a post for a different day.

My problem is that I’m still spending a lot of time killing time on Facebook and with computer games, and not doing all the creative things that I’ve waited years to be able to do. Yes, I did one painting – which I’m less than satisfied with, so I can’t seem to move on to a new painting. Also while the weather was still nice (in late September and October) I started doing ink sketches outdoors. But I really haven’t done any writing: a smattering of letters, little journaling, fewer blog posts, no poetry, I’ve not touched the novels, nor started any short stories, and as for the academic writing, it sits languishing unattended. You can’t be a writer if you don’t write. This is my beginning on that. I have to stop waiting until I have something really significant to say and just start writing. I may never have anything significant to say, but not writing gives is like having soul constipation. I need to write to keep the spirit flowing.

Another area where my retirement is not going the way I had hoped is with exercise and activity, diet and other healthy behaviors. I was doing much better with exercise and activity, moving more, walking more, and taking yoga class – until cold weather started. I can’t even get myself to get in the car and go to the gym to walk on the track when the outside temperature never gets about 25 degrees all day. Not sure what that is about because I can make myself go outdoors to take the trash, recycling or garbage out. Of course, sitting in a car waiting for it to warm up is a little different. My eating behavior is not the worst it’s ever been, but it is far from the best I can do.

At this point, I would give myself a C+ or maybe B- on retirement activity. I know this is really weird – people don’t earn grades on life. But I’m this achievement-oriented person and I somehow feel I owe the world more than I’m giving it. That I owe myself more than I’m doing. There are so many people that need to retire but cannot afford to do so. I feel like having had a career that allowed me to save adequately for retirement means that I have responsibilities to the universe to do more with my retirement than wash dishes, feed the animals, do housework and grocery shopping, pay bills, play Candy Crush Jelly on Facebook and watch Netflix. But so far I’m having trouble getting a handle on how to do that.

My plan is to write my way out of this. Writing has always worked in the past, so here’s hoping it will help me now. 

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!

A January of Small Stones 09

empty hallway,

two small boys,

rosy cheeks,

sparkling eyes,

huge grins,

kick their legs

against the bench,

heads together

playing games.

January 9, 2014

sgreerpitt

Comic Books

As a child I did not own comic books.  Money was very short, and reserved for more serious things like food and mortgage. There were many books in our lives selected each week at the public library, books my mother read out loud, books we read ourselves, but no comic books. 

Most of the other children in our working class neighborhood did have comic books and whenever I was in their homes (which was often) I would greedily examine their comics page by page over and over. 

There was a specific type of comic book that I loved. They were called "Classics Illustrated Junior" which rendered classic fairy tales from the brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Anderson and other sources into picture formats. 

I did not crave these comics for their stories.  We had beautifully bound volumes of the classic fairy tales on our shelves and my mother read from them frequently. By the second grade I was reading from them myself. It was the illustrations in the comics that enraptured me. The maidens with their lovely flowing hair and gowns.  I wanted to draw just like that. 

Much of my early art practice involved painstakingly copying the pictures of princesses from the pages of Classics Illustrated Junior.  Later I went on to invent my own princesses. 

Indigo Bunting - Woven Dreams "Blue"

Indigo Bunting

More elusive than happiness,
more rare than desire,
seconds on a fence
engraved forever
in memory only,
Passerina cyanea,
bluest bluebird of all.

sgreerpitt
Sunday February 10, 2013
Photos by others http://www.pbase.com/dadas115/indigo_bunting


for more creativity on the theme of "Blue" check out Woven Dreams http://wovendreamsprompts.wordpress.com/2013/02/10/woven-dreams-prompt-1-blue/

redbud time in the mountains

There is a brief window of about one week in mid-April each spring where all the roads of eastern Kentucky are outlined in redbud. This year, as several times in the past, I was lucky to have the chance to drive the by-ways of eastern Kentucky during that magic moment. Thursday afternoon I left my home at the far southeast of the state, and headed north and west through the mountains toward Lexington and the bluegrass.

The nature of the redbud phenomenon makes it hard to photograph. The mountain roads are narrow, with few places to pull safely off the road, and the redbud--which by the way is not red but rather light purple--presses in tightly on the narrow margins on the steep hillsides. Redbud is a forest margin tree, an understory tree, much like dogwood which blooms about a week or two later.

So one goes barrelling along the highway, rounding curves to have the breath snatched away by intense borders of purple, that pass before one can even consider stopping.
Thursday was also a day of clouds and rain, which made the colors richer and more vibrant, but added even more obstacles to photography. So I will have to settle for a National Park Service photo. Imagine twenty or thirty of these trees crowded together in a long line framing a double lane winding mountain road, deep within the V of the mountains. And then imagine that being repeated over and over again, for 80 miles. It's just part of the miracle of early spring in Appalachia.

The day long workshop (on Friday) that I attended on this trip, dealt with the Open Textbook movement. One of the things we learned about in the workshop is the Creative Commons licensing alternative to copyright. You will see me beginning to explore and use the creative commons license rather than copyright in my blog -- seems a lot friendlier in the blogging. The key is allowing use for non-commercial purposes as long as the user gives attribution with every use.

The redbud photo is a public domain photo by the National Park Service, and can be found on Wikipedia.
The photo of
dogwood by sgreerpitt is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://sunflowerroots.blogspot.com.

starting the new year right

It is said that what you do on New Year's Day is what you will be doing for the rest of the year. So with that in mind I decided that I ought to spend part of the day working on a painting that I'd been thinking about for months.

One of the things that I did with the money I got for painting the mural was purchase an easel from Dick Blick. Lack of an easel has always been one of the obstacles standing between me and painting. But even though I got the easel in August, I hadn't done any painting since I finished the mural Labor Day Weekend. There always seemed like there was something else that was more urgent.

It's hard to remember that some things that aren't urgent are actually more important than the urgent things. Urgency often comes from other people, while importance comes from within us.

I have a lovely little snap shot of my husband John snoozing with Rosie dog and felt that it would make a good painting. So I started this at about noon, and what you see is about three hours worth of work. I have quite a bit more work to do on Rosie dog and John needs his glasses (yes he was sleeping with them on) and his watch.

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.

Southeast Whitesburg Mural--41 The Big Reveal

Today was the day, the big 20th anniversary celebration and the unveiling of the plaques, the naming of the buildings, the thanking of the donors, and the honoring of the honorees.

Although it was not in the program, the college's president Dr. W. Bruce Ayers asked me to come up and speak. I've known the man for 13 years, and know he likes to do things like that so I'd given at least a few minutes this morning to think about what I might like to say to people, but mostly I spoke what came to me in the moment. I don't entirely remember what I said, but it evidently hit just the right tone, because people kept commenting on it.

There were lots of great moments as people spoke with great emotion about their passion for the college. Our campus exists because a group of dedicated and visionary local people managed to raise a million dollars in donations and pledges in less than one week. Penny Ritter Combs one of stalwarts of this visionary group described clambering up on strip-jobs to get donations from coal companies during that week. The plaque below is a special tribute Penny and her parents Judge James M and Atha Caudill who not only dreamed of a college, but who have continued to work for twenty years to make that dream an on-going reality.



My favorite moment in the ceremony came when a former student of mine, Melanie Watts sang the song "Anyway." Melanie has an extraordinary voice, pure and rich, but she clearly felt this song deeply which made her performance deeply moving. I'd never heard it before, but I can tell you before this day is out I'm going to have a copy of Martina McBride's performance of "Anyway" on my iPod! [The link is to YOUTube video of the McBride performing the song]. The key refrain and guiding idea of the song comes from a poem often attributed to Mother Teresa (because it was inscribed on a wall of Mother Teresa's children's home in Calcutta), but is actually credited to Kent M. Keith and called The Paradoxical Commandments.

So here is the whole thing, finished, with the plaque in place:



The top photo, while taken with my camera was shot by my colleague Ron Brunty, so I could be in the shot. The other photos are by me.

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.