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Created January 6, 2020
Community? Engagements? Arts? Well, for starters this is a class taught at Transylvania University in Lexington, KY by professors Kremena Todorova and Kurt Gohde. The goal of this class is to form a relationship with the community by engaging in artistic projects with the community. The outcome of this will manifest itself in many ways, some recognizable and others not so much.
CETA 2020: Our first 2 emojis (of hundreds)
Created January 6, 2020
Individual Tasks
Collect addresses, make & write thank-you cards, design pronoun buttons--Anna Davis
Blog Manager--Paige Wessling
Recorder/archivist for This I Believe essays--Sarah Metcalfe
Social Media--Lydia Baggett & Garrett LeVan
Photographic Inventory (3 people)--Yousef Alsdudi, Sarah Bennett, & Faith Boles
Space, raw material, & tool inventory manager AND order enforcer--Emily Neat
Quality Control & Class Ethicist--Alex Toney
Software Design Team (3 people)--Shelby Barker, Emily Cecil, & Abby Pearson
Fabrication Team (3 people)--Brooklyn Greer, Will Hemingway, & Marissa Price
Finishing Team (4 people)--Nannie Baze, Emon Daneshmand, Ally Frederick, & Madison Phillips
Additional photographic documentation--Kremena and Kurt
Working with production design at Kre8Now Makerspace--Kurt and Kremena
Publicity for the class--Kremena and Kurt
Securing materials needed--Kurt and Kremena
Articles of Interest (optional)
Blog Archive
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2019
(27)
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February
(8)
- Class Notes 2/19/19- Meeting with Jim Zilliak at t...
- Class Notes 2/13/19- Meeting with Merlene Davis at...
- This I Believe #7
- This I Believe #6
- Class Notes 2/11/19- Meeting with Rich Schein at t...
- Questions & Comments for our conversation with Mer...
- This I Believe #5
- Questions for our conversation with Rich Schein on...
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February
(8)
Organized religion isn’t for me. Before you start trying to convert me, I’m not an atheist non-believer, I believe in many things and the auspicious workings of the universe. What I mean to say is, not only have I been repeatedly told that I don’t have a place in this religion or that, but I’ve grown to realized that I’m not one of the ‘chosen people’ for whom organized religion is organized.
ReplyDeleteI should love organized religion. I should be attending services any time I can. It’s in my personality type inventory for the MBTI and Enneagram typology. I love organization—I was down walls and cabinets once a week as part of my Obsessive-Compulsive tendencies inherited from my mother. Instead, I find my self interested more in educating myself about the organizations of religions in search of deeper meaning behind their exclusion of people like me.
I grew up in the old time religion. Fire and brimstone illuminated the Sundays of my youth, I was fed by many faithful hands at church gatherings, and I watched many a body cleanse themselves of the ways of the world in Eastern Kentucky streams. I don’t feel uneasy in the crimson pews of a baptist church. The issue I have with them is their issue with me.
I believe in a cosmic force. Call it God, Allah, or Ahura Mazda. It’s all the same to me. I don’t believe any specific religion has the ‘truth.’ I know that’s a hot-button issue many will want to question me for, and I invite them to do so. However, I believe many religions believe in the same force that I do in a unique way that’s organized for people like them.
I’m sorry, but I don’t believe the Christian God made a rainbow for only white, heterosexual (cis-male) American Protestants, and I believe that it’s foolish to think that. So, when I wear a rainbow as a sign of my belief in the union of LGBTQ+ individuals striving to organize and take care care of one another in a way that organized religion has not, please do not tell me that it’s God’s Promise. I promise, it’s not.
I relate to a lot of this. I definitely agree with you, Heath.
DeleteI love this
DeleteAgreed!
DeleteSo clearly stated.... by saying "I’m not one of the ‘chosen people’ for whom organized religion is organized," you are simply and effectively questioning the organization of any religion that excludes.
DeleteI can genuinely and honestly say I did nothing wrong this time. In the past yes I’m sure I have done things to piss you off or that you didn’t like. But this time I really did nothing wrong.
ReplyDeleteIt was out of my control.
You wanted to go somewhere that I couldn’t afford. I politely declined, stating that it was because I couldn’t afford it at this time. Things are tight for me right now. I’m broke and my boyfriend is broke. I can’t ask my parents for any more money because they already spend way too much on me.
But you couldn’t get it through your head. Evidently being broke was not a valid reason to decline an invitation. You refused to talk to more for three days because I was too broke to go out.
That's really messed up.
You were supposed to be my best friend. We’ve been through a whole lot together and never went more than a few hours without talking to one another. But for some reason me being too poor to was enough reason to not talk to me? That's not what a best friend does.
I remember last year when you were too poor to go out. Did I condemn you when you declined? No, I either waited until you had enough money to do it or we did something else.
I don’t understand how a person that was in such a similar circumstance only months ago can act like this. You aren’t even paying for any of this yourself, you are using someone else's daddy money.
Despite not doing anything wrong I apologized. I don’t know why I did because I saw nothing wrong with what I said. But regardless I apologized. When I was trying to apologize you told me that I “fucking penny pinch for Juul pods and alcohol” well sorry to break it to you but that’s called addiction and I’m working on it. But anyway, I proceeded to keep my cool and continue apologizing even though it should have been you doing that. Now you talk to me like it never happened. How does someone do that? I believe in being the bigger person even when you don't feel like you need to be.
This sounds painful and I'm sorry your very valid reason was met with such an awful response-- especially from someone close to you.
DeletePeople tend to not care about others’ situation but expect people to respect theirs. I know how you feel, it sucks.
DeleteIt is hard to apologize when you feel wronged but it is often a way for me to feel I am making myself vulnerable. I believe we connect to people through shared vulnerability.
DeleteAdditionally I have spent considerable time considering the Islamic practice of making 70 excuses for the actions of someone who wrongs you. It is a helpful practice for me...
https://www.thoughtco.com/70-excuses-2004271
I lost my faith slowly and all at once when I was 19. I had been having panic attacks on and off for a week. I couldn’t figure out why, until one day I stared at myself in the mirror and thought the words, “I don’t believe God exists.” My firm belief in the existence of a God had been slowly falling apart over the past few years, but I refused to even think about my crumbling faith until the thought appeared. It was like a trapdoor had opened up beneath me. I was falling through nothing, and then I was staring at my crying face in the mirror again.
ReplyDeleteI couldn’t tell anyone. I didn’t know how to tell anyone. When you’re raised Baptist in the Bible Belt, you either believe in God or you’re going to hell. I couldn’t break my family’s heart like that. So I’ve been keeping quiet for the past three years.
Maybe they already suspect I’ve stepped away from Christianity. Maybe they think it’s a phase because I’m a busy college student who prefers to sleep in on Sundays than go to church. Maybe they’ll find this blog and read my posts (if you are, please don’t worry about me). I know someday I’ll have to break the news to them. They might be relieved to know I’m not an atheist, just an agnostic, but one who cannot stand to be associated with the church any longer. I wonder if they’ll understand why I don’t want to be called a Christian any more. I don’t want that label, not after learning about its long history of colonization, its history of intolerance, its history of being used to control and oppress people.
I think a lot of Christians would agree that there’s nothing Christian about those three things. Still, I cannot ignore the pain the church has caused for centuries, the pain it continues to cause to this day. I believe in loving my neighbor. I believe in creating communities that support each other. I believe there are Christians who actually get what Jesus was talking about exist. But I can no longer believe in the Christian church.
As someone who was raised an atheist, I can't imagine what it must be like to exist with only two options: believing in god or going to hell. I also can't begin to imagine all the individual and communal violence perpetrated by Christians through time.
DeleteI hear you, Megan. I totally do.
I’m going through the same type of experience, the straying away and feeling the need to keep quiet. It sucks when it’s engraved and expected of you and you have no say so.
DeleteI relate to this. My grandfather was a presbyterian minister who baptized me in his church, however, I have been questioning my faith for a long time.
DeleteI was raised in a church and occasionally (but only rarely) think about not sharing that with my own children. The thoughts come with a question of whether or not they would be more compassionate or more just toward others if they, too, were raised in a church.
DeleteThis is what is important to me: an ability to see how we can leave the world better than we found it and the will to act on that. From my point of view, organized religion is one path toward compassion. It is not the only path.
There are good days. There are bad days. There are days where I feel nothing at all. I wish these days were good or where I felt nothing.
ReplyDeleteI’ve been told everything I say is rude or offends people. I’ve been told that attitude comes with every word I say, so I stay silent. My silence comes off as rude or disrespectful so I am forced to speak. It’s a cycle, I can’t win for losing.
Everything I want, everything I have tried for has not worked out in my favor. Nothing is going right and day by day, another thing goes opposite of my wishes. Why keep trying or hoping for the best when all I receive is the worst?
I try too hard to please and keep friends that I never stopped to question if they’d rather me just let them go. I never stopped to ask myself if I should let them go. If it would be beneficial to me to let our friendship follow the path it’s on and slowly but surely break off. I can never tell if they’re struggling like I am or if they just don’t care. I get confused with those who should stay and those I need to let go so I tend to push them all away.
In my brain, there are constant battles that I can’t seem to win. I’ve been taught that everything that goes wrong in my life, I have to take accountability for. It was my fault. All of it. So when that clashes with my mental illness, my mental wins.
My nights are getting longer, my days are getting shorter, my work is overwhelming, and I can’t seem to catch a break. I believe it’s getting bad again. I tried momma, I tried.
Those last three sentences are heartbreaking. Trying to determine who we should keep in our lives and dealing with work and stress is all so difficult, and I hope it gets better for you soon!
DeleteYou are not accountable for everything. I am sorry you are made to feel this way.
DeleteI really like your writing, Jada.
Your words are, as Marissa said, heartbreaking.
DeleteThe conversion of your entire essay into a message shared directly with your momma (in the last 2 sentences) is powerful and creates an ending that is like a punch in the gut.
(please forgive the violence metaphor..I don't have an equally clear metaphor without the violence to make the point)
I cut a cricket open and wondered why it was softer to a scalpel than to the bottom of my shoe which experience had taught me made crickets crunch.
ReplyDeleteI cut a worm open and pinned down its flesh. The skin pulled back against the pins. It tugged like a dress shirt tugs against its own buttons when stretched too tight across a stomach too full after too many years of too much beer.
I cut a frog open too. I tried not to squash the organs while removing them as if there were a chance I would put them back in. I knew this chance was as great as the chance of my reassembling the parts of an alarm clock I dismantled one morning when I no longer could quiet it with the small button marked “cancel.” I suspect my parents let me cut open crickets, worms, and frogs to encourage the kind of fascination that might lead me from sixth grade science class to medical school.
I was, of course, given the option to remove myself from these learning experiences. Though the option was surely extended as a measure of decency and understanding that some people are not comfortable pressing knives through flesh, I expected it was equally important to avoid the visceral reactions that caused children to vomit. As a child there were two smells that made me vomit. One was the smell from inside a metal 25-gallon barrel full of milk, opened after sitting tightly-closed and curdling in the sun for several days. The other was the smell of vomit first spilt from a child’s insides onto a grade-school floor and then covered with oil-impregnated green powder. The green powder, kept in a large brown bag, was scooped out by hand and cast on the vomit with the same gesture used when throwing a frog back into its pond.
In 1662 a freshly dead Mrs. Catharina Geisslerin of Germany was cut open somewhat like a frog but also in search of frogs believed to be alive inside her intestinal tract. Years earlier, she mistakenly swallowed tadpoles with a youthful gulp of pond water. They became frogs inside her. They hopped about madly when she drank milk and the churning inside looked like a belly full of water at a rolling boil even through a Sunday blouse. By 1642, she was vomiting full-grown frogs for an audience of doctors and professors of anatomy. It took almost 300 years for the next “Human Aquarium” to expel frogs from his insides out. I believe frogs found respite in the stomachs of Catharina Geisslerin and Mac Norton because they feared the scalpels of sixth graders.
Marissa
ReplyDeleteVertical wooden beams-- the empty shell of what once was, the bones of a structure that once housed a family in eastern Kentucky, were almost all that remained when flames devoured my home around 1 a.m. on July 6th, 2012. I had turned 14 a single day shy of a month prior. Yard, basketball hoop at the edge of the asphalt driveway, and childhood swingset on a concrete slab at the base of my downhill backyard all stood perfectly intact. Most of the objects inside the home either turned to ash or drowned in water, though some things survived. And my family and I survived, thanks to a doorbell-- yes, our doorbell emitting a continuous, loud buzz (not a smoke alarm, which probably didn’t have working batteries at the time) is what informed my family of the fire. It saved our lives.
Years later, when I lived with my father and three of my younger siblings, we moved to a home just around the corner from my childhood one. From my new bedroom window, I could see that hollow wooden structure until they finally knocked it down.
. . .
Photos of us-- and by us, I mean me and a boy I loved-- and some miscellaneous gifts were almost all that remained when our friendship was reduced to ash years after the previous story. They say where there’s smoke, there’s fire, and an ash-gray cloud had been suffocating me for months with the knowledge that he had been acting distant and some friendships just don’t last forever. I stubbornly tried to believe I was only imagining things, but in the end, I was right, and the foundation collapsed. In the months that followed, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to breathe.
Years later, I remember the grief I felt, but it feels so distant compared to the minimal amount I feel now. Grief never truly ends, but now I can look at those pictures and objects without feeling like I’m running out of air. From where I stand, I can remember how we were before it all fell apart.
I believe in the remnants of our past.
What a beautiful reflection, Marissa. I love how you connect the two stories and I love the images you use to write about them.
DeleteSo much of this is beautiful, Marissa. I especially like the phrase "feeling like I'm running out of air" as a simple and powerful way to share the visceral feeling with us.
DeleteBecause even if I didn't relate to your narrative, I know the feeling of running out of air while standing still.
Additionally--connecting the idea of running out of air to the tale of a house fire while you slept....this is a powerful pairing, for sure
I believe that words have the power to hurt…
ReplyDeleteSticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me. That’s what my mother used to tell me whenever I was being “too sensitive.” But I know and you know that this is not true.
The first time I remember being called a name was my sixth grade year. I was walking towards my locker and the boy I liked was standing in front of it. When I asked him if he could scoot over he called me fat and ugly. I was devastated. When I approached my mom, my wonderful sweet, sometimes very critical mother told me “well you do have a belly sweetie.” Those words sliced through my heart. They came to define me. Middle school was rough and I could forgive the stupid boys but I would never forget those words.
In high school I had grown a little taller and leaned out. My soccer team got a coach that emphasized conditioning and diet. I wasn’t skinny by societies standards but I wasn’t that dreaded word, fat. Then one day that same soccer coach told me I could benefit from dropping ten pounds. I looked around at my teammates, he hadn’t told any of them that, and I was envious of their tiny frames. They didn’t have to condition twice as hard and still fall short of the goal. They didn't have to alter their diets significantly to maintain a steady weight. And then came the voices, the ones in my head. They told me that all of my friends were beautiful and if I skipped a meal here and there I could be beautiful too. But then it snowballed and I was skipping multiple meals and surviving on flavorless goldfish and water alone. I lost ten pounds relatively quickly. When I told my coach he looked at me and said, “Let’s see if you can loose ten more.” Did he know what those words did to me?
It took me seeking out therapy to confront the trauma those words inflicted but I feel much better now. All of the body positive women around me have helped me to own the skin I am in. I am so much more than my weight on a scale. I am kind, smart, and important (shoutout to The Help love that movie). However, my heart breaks every time I hear one of my beautiful friends call herself fat or ugly. Do they know how damaging those words are both to herself and to me. If they are fat and ugly what does that make me? Those two words are wielded carelessly and I am tired of it. Words matter and they can hurt.
I did the same thing with skipping meals and it didn't make me happier or feel better about myself like I thought it would.
DeleteI have a This I Believe essay typed out that’s relative to this one. Words definitely do stick and can damage a person.
DeleteYou are kind, smart, and beautiful. How dare people tell you otherwise?! I am appalled. And I hope you keep reminding yourself and your friends that you are kind and smart and beautiful.
DeleteKremena
ReplyDeleteFebruary 17, 2019
We met during a two-day orientation for international students. I had arrived from a formerly socialist country now pursuing democracy. He was from a Meditteranean island, the son of an Egyptian father and an American-born mother. His name was Basem: the one who smiles.
He was a first-year student. I was a senior. I instantly noticed his long, dark, curly hair. My hair was long, too, but wavy and blond. During our first fall, he was studying Physics and taking the mandatory first-year writing class while I was finishing my English major, tutoring a section of the first-year writing class, and learning about feminism. I loved his big smile.
We both enjoyed seeing our elongated shadows ahead of us as our first Michigan winter gave way to a tentative spring. We started dating in May, despite my recent graduation, despite the fact that he was 4 years younger and slightly shorter than me. We liked being non-traditional.
What was traditional was the way he treated me. Despite what I knew about feminism, I let him speak down to me and call me names. Though I told him I would not settle for spending my life barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, I found it impossible to break up with his big smile.
We broke up 9 months later, half-way through my first year in graduate school. Twenty-one years later, a woman with a Romanian name emailed to ask if I would call Basem as a surprise on his birthday. She introduced herself as Basem’s girlfriend. She was contacting people who were special to him, their names sent to her by Basem’s younger brother. I agreed to call my ex-boyfriend because I was curious. I was also flattered to be remembered as someone special.
Because of the time difference between Kentucky and Portugal, I was the last of the people contacted to phone Basem. His voice rang with delight on catching up after 21 years. He told me about his life in Lisbon, the reason he moved there, and why his phone had a California number. He asked me about my art projects, my teaching life, and my travels: information Facebook delivered to him over the years. He assured me he had time to talk. I told him I promised his girlfriend not to exceed 15 minutes of conversation.
I didn’t tell him I had to feed my kids before heading to a community potluck. I didn’t tell him that what I really wanted to know about was how he treats his Romanian girlfriend.
I believe dating Basem made me a vigilant woman. I watch for people who are disrespectful of others. At times, I keep my distance. At times, I fight them tenaciously. Most of the time I take the path of resistance. I believe I must in order to make up for the years I didn’t know how to speak for myself.
In high school my best friend attempted suicide.
ReplyDeleteShe called me her “person,” but I hadn’t seen Grey’s Anatomy yet, so I stuck with “best friend.”
One day we got in an argument. It’s what happens when you do your best to be there for someone constantly and consistently but you’re both trying to pretend a friendship is a suitable substitute for professional therapy. Turns out hanging onto the knives she’d given me that she used to cut her wrists and thighs was only a very temporary solution.
Anyway, the day of that argument she stopped responding to texts. Pretty weird. A little concerned, but not too out of the ordinary.
But wait! I got a text from her phone: “This is her mother, we’re at the hospital.”
High school was a lot of firsts, including that day and asking my father to drive me to the hospital because her stomach was getting pumped.
It was a strange feeling, sitting in that hospital room. Somehow I missed the “What to say when your best friend is as white as the cold and sterile hospital walls, looking as half dead as she feels: For Dummies” in my senior year AP English reading list. The things it’s not like: sitting at a funeral; any other time I’ve ever been in a hospital; sadness, happiness, or any kind of comprehension. We shared beds at countless sleepovers but that hospital bed is the one for which I am most thankful, because it means we didn’t have to bury her.
Life is really hard—so hard that sometimes people cannot do it anymore. I believe in telling people you’re thankful they’re alive and that you love them, just on any given Thursday, without warning and without necessary cause. It doesn’t matter if suicide or depression or anxiety or an eating disorder have even been in the equation or not. I believe you cannot take a single moment for granted, yours or anyone else’s. And that sometimes starting to grieve and heal from something that happened over four years ago is the best you can do. And that’s okay.
<3 <3 <3
DeleteThough it may have only been a temporary solution to one situation, hanging onto the knives she gave you, likely caused a permanent change in your awareness that people need to support one another.
DeleteI don’t like horses. It’s ironic that I live in a state that is known for its amazing horses. I’ve been around these animals my entire life, but I have never once liked them. my best friend growing up was a “horse girl”, so I always had to see them.
ReplyDeleteI didn’t always dislike horses. It started when I asked my mammaw a question when I was seven years old. I saw a photograph of my uncle Freddy and Bruce when they were toddlers. I heard stories about Bruce, but I never had the chance to meet him. I asked my mammaw what happened to him.
Freddy and Bruce were only a year apart in age. It was the early seventies when Bruce passed. He was only eleven, Freddy was just a year behind them. A man in town was giving the kids free rides on his horse. Bruce tried to ride the horse, but was bucked off. He survived falling, but hit his head really hard.
They didn’t know he had a brain aneurysm until it was too late. Freddy was pushing him on a swing at school a couple of months later when he suddenly died. His death has remained with my family for decades.
When my mammaw finished her story about Bruce I didn’t want to ever see a horse again. Every time I saw a horse I thought about the pain my family has to live through because of one.
I believe that I don’t have to like horses.
I am with you, Emily Cecil. I know horses are beautiful animals, but personally I find them too big and intimidating, plus what a cliche they are here in Kentucky :)
DeleteYour telling this story as support for your statement that you don't have to like horses is certainly persuasive. I would be convinced even if you stepped it up to saying that you actively dislike horses (though that causes you to appear close-minded whereas your phrasing--that you "don't have to like horses"--simply establishes the possibility that horse affection is not a requirement).
DeleteI believe in trying new things.
ReplyDeleteThere was a time when I was seventeen that I went to Germany and tried hardly any new things except beer ketchup and sauerkraut and liked the first two. I liked to ride the trains there too. Mainly I spent the day on facebook messaging girls I liked at home and trying to plan a summer of sexual variety but this was not trying new things nor was it a plan to. It was wasteful and meanspirited and closed off.
I believe in trying new experiences that open us up more deeply to ourselves and to other people and even some experiences that close us off, because there are reasons to know what can happen to us if we walk too long on the railroad tracks. There are people in this world who walk their whole lives off the tracks or on the tracks and never notice the tracks’ presence or try anything on either side but I have walked both and will tell you there is merit in each.
I have not ever robbed a bank or flown an airplane. These are basic childhood wishes unfulfilled. I hope I get a good chance at robbing a bank or flying an airplane or visiting space without going to prison. Or perhaps even a short stint in prison would be worthwhile. If it gave me time to work out some and read.
I do not know how to properly sum up this belief but basically I think life is very interesting and that sometimes I have been too stupid to see so. And that I wish to be developing always new interests and habits and modes of amusement.
If one can see prison as an opportunity to work out some and to read, it seems that robbing a bank would be a reasonable Tuesday afternoon adventure.
DeleteI suspect there are other things you can also imagine with prison, things that cause you to abandon the childhood dream of bank robbery.
Still, there is much value in noticing and vocalizing the prison-afforded-luxuries (if it is fair to use the word in this context) of time to work out and read. These luxuries can be appreciated as a theoretical construct for oneself without seeing prison as a luxury for anyone.
This, I know, is what your essay is about--the desirable ability to see value in places where one may not normally assume there is any.....I want that ability.