Apr 23, 2023·edited Apr 23, 2023Liked by Pádraig Ó Tuama
Every weekday morning, my son and I turn onto Wonderwood Drive.
On our right side sits his school—a majestic lot, ancient oaks sagging with Spanish Moss, and plenty of places for the children to climb. Hand-painted signs bearing the school's golden rules line the perimeter: "Everyone Belongs," "Be Kind," and "Always Tell the Truth."
On our left side sits a strip club—an unkempt parking lot boasting blistered asphalt and a giant sign that reads "The Gentleman's Club: Where the Girls Are."
A tension buzzes in the space between these two worlds. A crossing guard (that looks an awful lot like Santa Claus) holds his stop sign, guiding backpacked siblings across the intersection.
I live in Saint Paul, Minnesota. In the summer of 2020, some of the more destructive incidents during the unrest that followed the murder of George Floyd occurred very close to my home. On a corner of the area’s busiest street, six blocks away, a small local business with an apartment above it was completely burned out. Directly across the street from it, another small business that also has an apartment on the upper floor was quickly boarded up, and spray painted on the plywood were the words, “People Live Here.”
It was a gut wrenching sight to drive by every day, this utterly helpless plea for forbearance, like the blood of a lamb on the doorposts, a desperate plea that the home would be spared from the chaos and destruction churning through the neighborhood.
Apr 23, 2023·edited Apr 23, 2023Liked by Pádraig Ó Tuama
We live next to a town in New Hampshire where Robert Frost had a home and wrote poems. At this time of year in the foothills of the White Mountains in spring when the cold weather gives way, so do the roads to buckling. All over the region signs start appearing saying Frost Heaves. We often laugh at the language of this particular sign and its possible double meaning because driving these roads can make one a bit nauseated and imagining a warning to take them slow from Robert Frost, or Frost empathizing, or the author of the sign creating poetic commentary, is hilarious....
It’s funny. Your post made me think of an exercise I do with my students. I’m an acting teacher. When they’re working on a monologue I have them explore the three modes of rhetoric- logos first, heady and internal, then pathos, direct appeal to another outside themselves, and finally ethos, declarative directed at the universe. They practice and see where the language feels best in their bodies in the context of each. It’s beautiful, I think, to imagine language having a place it lives most fully whether our bodies or a public sign.
I am a dancer, currently in residence at a prison for three weeks as a teaching artist. Infusing creativity into this carceral environment has been both liberating and heartbreaking. Throughout the prison are littered signs of rules, threats, and "do nots." There is one pasted above a barred window that says, "Do NOT sit on the windowsill. If you are found sitting on the window sill you will be written up." I find it so reflective of the U.S. prison system that the deeply human, whimsical act of sitting on the windowsill to gaze outside should be banned with such harsh language. When I look at this environment of threat, control and mistrust, I feel hopeless that rehabilitation and healing can truly occur.
Five years ago, I was completing the Coast to Coast walk. Somewhere in the Lake District, the clouds were hanging low. I was desperate to locate a way marker. Not one to be found for some nerve-pinching time.
When I arrived in the town below, where I was spending the night, I asked a group of locals why there were so few sign posts. They said the lack of signage was intentional.
“If there was one marked path, every one would walk it, creating erosion and damaging the hill. But this way, everyone finds their own way, keeping the hill healthy for all the hill walkers and the hill itself”.
It was June 3rd of 2020 when a dear friend, Elizabeth Salaam, an artist-writer-creator, posted a collage she created onto her Instagram. In it, she, the artist, a black woman, is holding up a sign, a red sign, arms emphatically straight, eyes looking straight at us, directly into the camera, the sign offering permission, maybe even encouragement, in neon type lettering, sort of resembling a child’s handwriting, or someone writing with a lot of feeling, “Crying is okay here.”
The collage contains candles throughout, the kind you might find at a vigil. It contains an image of a young black boy, somewhat high up in the collage, looking up and to the left, with 4 candles behind him, that almost make it look like he is wearing a regal headdress, or, perhaps, has an illuminated halo.. towards the bottom right of the collage is a young black girl, wearing a PUMA sweatshirt, looking down. Candles everywhere.
March 13th 2020 is the day Breonna Taylor, a 26 year young black woman, medical worker in Louisville, Kentucky was gunned down in her home and killed by police, completely innocent, not accused of anything at all. Other than living in the USA while being black, it seems.
May 25, 2020 is the day George Floyd a 46 year old black man was killed by police in NYC when cops responded to a call that accused him of using a counterfeit $20 bill. George Floyd was handcuffed, pinned to the ground and a police officer knelt on his neck for 9 minutes and 29 seconds, despite Floyd’s cries, pleas, “I can’t breathe” - killing him.
In the aftermath of these killings, streets filled with protestors, fires blazed.
The pandemic - one in which all were not in the same boat, certain communities disproportionately becoming seriously ill, and dying - raged on.
Within all this, Beth’s sign was a much needed one. “Crying is okay here.”
While in Scotland on a trip to see my sister curl, my husband, some friends and I were staying at a farm B&B and were trying to follow directions to find it. It was twilight, darkening to night. As we turned over unfamiliar roads, we all became a little nervous, questioning whether we were on the right track. The road turned to a lane and the lane to a dirt track between fields and small woods. Just as we neared another turn we came upon a sign nailed to a tree. "Do not lose heart," it said. We found the farm a little further on. What a gift it was. I have kept that sign in my head and always think of it in moments of indecision.
Easter Day was lovely here in eastern Missouri so Jim and I took ourselves to the deep, lowland woods to walk. the trail took us down under the old trees just beginning to blush with green, over a winding creek past masses of Spring Beauties and other early wildflowers. As the trial dropped down to ford the creek we past a tree beside the trail with a small yellow card nailed to it. On it were hand written the words "The world would not be the same without you in it". I stopped for a long moment to take this message in, this regard from the forest. "And you" I whispered back. If we knew the way the forests and we need each other, perhaps we would save them, and so ourselves.
Apr 23, 2023·edited Apr 23, 2023Liked by Pádraig Ó Tuama
I ride my bike a lot… minus winter. On lots of country roads. For years I’ve been intrigued and perplexed by one specific sign… “school bus stop ahead.”
Where is ahead? There’s never an obvious place nor have I ever “found” the school bus. This keeps me mind churning for miles… with the ultimate question of what does this sign really mean?
When I see the road sign "Soft Shoulder" I take a deep breath and relax, allowing my own shoulders to go soft, releasing whatever tension I am carrying. While the sign itself is a warning, my response is one of welcome.
Every weekday morning, my son and I turn onto Wonderwood Drive.
On our right side sits his school—a majestic lot, ancient oaks sagging with Spanish Moss, and plenty of places for the children to climb. Hand-painted signs bearing the school's golden rules line the perimeter: "Everyone Belongs," "Be Kind," and "Always Tell the Truth."
On our left side sits a strip club—an unkempt parking lot boasting blistered asphalt and a giant sign that reads "The Gentleman's Club: Where the Girls Are."
A tension buzzes in the space between these two worlds. A crossing guard (that looks an awful lot like Santa Claus) holds his stop sign, guiding backpacked siblings across the intersection.
I live in Saint Paul, Minnesota. In the summer of 2020, some of the more destructive incidents during the unrest that followed the murder of George Floyd occurred very close to my home. On a corner of the area’s busiest street, six blocks away, a small local business with an apartment above it was completely burned out. Directly across the street from it, another small business that also has an apartment on the upper floor was quickly boarded up, and spray painted on the plywood were the words, “People Live Here.”
It was a gut wrenching sight to drive by every day, this utterly helpless plea for forbearance, like the blood of a lamb on the doorposts, a desperate plea that the home would be spared from the chaos and destruction churning through the neighborhood.
We live next to a town in New Hampshire where Robert Frost had a home and wrote poems. At this time of year in the foothills of the White Mountains in spring when the cold weather gives way, so do the roads to buckling. All over the region signs start appearing saying Frost Heaves. We often laugh at the language of this particular sign and its possible double meaning because driving these roads can make one a bit nauseated and imagining a warning to take them slow from Robert Frost, or Frost empathizing, or the author of the sign creating poetic commentary, is hilarious....
„Wherever you go, go with all of your heart.“
I have seen this many years ago written on a board of a Yoga retreat center in Thailand.
It sounds so easy to do
but then there are obstacles, conditioning as well as other people
who can make it difficult to follow that path.
Nevertheless, this is my personal ‚mantra‘ and I will not give up in trying to do exactly that. ❤️
It’s funny. Your post made me think of an exercise I do with my students. I’m an acting teacher. When they’re working on a monologue I have them explore the three modes of rhetoric- logos first, heady and internal, then pathos, direct appeal to another outside themselves, and finally ethos, declarative directed at the universe. They practice and see where the language feels best in their bodies in the context of each. It’s beautiful, I think, to imagine language having a place it lives most fully whether our bodies or a public sign.
I am a dancer, currently in residence at a prison for three weeks as a teaching artist. Infusing creativity into this carceral environment has been both liberating and heartbreaking. Throughout the prison are littered signs of rules, threats, and "do nots." There is one pasted above a barred window that says, "Do NOT sit on the windowsill. If you are found sitting on the window sill you will be written up." I find it so reflective of the U.S. prison system that the deeply human, whimsical act of sitting on the windowsill to gaze outside should be banned with such harsh language. When I look at this environment of threat, control and mistrust, I feel hopeless that rehabilitation and healing can truly occur.
Five years ago, I was completing the Coast to Coast walk. Somewhere in the Lake District, the clouds were hanging low. I was desperate to locate a way marker. Not one to be found for some nerve-pinching time.
When I arrived in the town below, where I was spending the night, I asked a group of locals why there were so few sign posts. They said the lack of signage was intentional.
“If there was one marked path, every one would walk it, creating erosion and damaging the hill. But this way, everyone finds their own way, keeping the hill healthy for all the hill walkers and the hill itself”.
“Crying is okay here.”
It was June 3rd of 2020 when a dear friend, Elizabeth Salaam, an artist-writer-creator, posted a collage she created onto her Instagram. In it, she, the artist, a black woman, is holding up a sign, a red sign, arms emphatically straight, eyes looking straight at us, directly into the camera, the sign offering permission, maybe even encouragement, in neon type lettering, sort of resembling a child’s handwriting, or someone writing with a lot of feeling, “Crying is okay here.”
The collage contains candles throughout, the kind you might find at a vigil. It contains an image of a young black boy, somewhat high up in the collage, looking up and to the left, with 4 candles behind him, that almost make it look like he is wearing a regal headdress, or, perhaps, has an illuminated halo.. towards the bottom right of the collage is a young black girl, wearing a PUMA sweatshirt, looking down. Candles everywhere.
March 13th 2020 is the day Breonna Taylor, a 26 year young black woman, medical worker in Louisville, Kentucky was gunned down in her home and killed by police, completely innocent, not accused of anything at all. Other than living in the USA while being black, it seems.
May 25, 2020 is the day George Floyd a 46 year old black man was killed by police in NYC when cops responded to a call that accused him of using a counterfeit $20 bill. George Floyd was handcuffed, pinned to the ground and a police officer knelt on his neck for 9 minutes and 29 seconds, despite Floyd’s cries, pleas, “I can’t breathe” - killing him.
In the aftermath of these killings, streets filled with protestors, fires blazed.
The pandemic - one in which all were not in the same boat, certain communities disproportionately becoming seriously ill, and dying - raged on.
Within all this, Beth’s sign was a much needed one. “Crying is okay here.”
https://www.instagram.com/p/CA9zXBkjX_g/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=
A well-intentioned plea spray-painted on rocks near an informal trailhead: Take Out What You Leave Behind.
My husband and I saw this head-scratcher two decades ago and it has been a part of our household vernacular ever since.
While in Scotland on a trip to see my sister curl, my husband, some friends and I were staying at a farm B&B and were trying to follow directions to find it. It was twilight, darkening to night. As we turned over unfamiliar roads, we all became a little nervous, questioning whether we were on the right track. The road turned to a lane and the lane to a dirt track between fields and small woods. Just as we neared another turn we came upon a sign nailed to a tree. "Do not lose heart," it said. We found the farm a little further on. What a gift it was. I have kept that sign in my head and always think of it in moments of indecision.
Easter Day was lovely here in eastern Missouri so Jim and I took ourselves to the deep, lowland woods to walk. the trail took us down under the old trees just beginning to blush with green, over a winding creek past masses of Spring Beauties and other early wildflowers. As the trial dropped down to ford the creek we past a tree beside the trail with a small yellow card nailed to it. On it were hand written the words "The world would not be the same without you in it". I stopped for a long moment to take this message in, this regard from the forest. "And you" I whispered back. If we knew the way the forests and we need each other, perhaps we would save them, and so ourselves.
I much prefer “No Outlet” to “Dead End”
Just saying.
Whenever we returned to my family’s home in Nashua, Montana I was struck again by the speed limit sign on Highway 2…
“whatever is safe and prudent”
You could do 110, but you’d best be highly aware of slow moving farm equipment that you share the road with.
#wideopenspaces
Sign by a river in Colombia, South America:
Please don’t take rocks from the river. She needs them.
3 mile walk on a dirt road to get there. Prescience involved here in anticipating the crawl of humanity lurking in the future!
Regards--Celia
I ride my bike a lot… minus winter. On lots of country roads. For years I’ve been intrigued and perplexed by one specific sign… “school bus stop ahead.”
Where is ahead? There’s never an obvious place nor have I ever “found” the school bus. This keeps me mind churning for miles… with the ultimate question of what does this sign really mean?
Seriously… this is a 30 year conundrum!
When I see the road sign "Soft Shoulder" I take a deep breath and relax, allowing my own shoulders to go soft, releasing whatever tension I am carrying. While the sign itself is a warning, my response is one of welcome.