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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
I believe gun violence has hit home too many times. Here are those that have impacted me the most.
ReplyDeleteDamycal Bolton. December 2, 1996- October 11, 2015. My moms best friends, youngest son. We grew up over there, he used to let me play him on the Xbox. We attended the same high school and he looked out for me. As soon as I woke up my mom calmly said “Doodie was shot last night and he died”. My mom didn’t let me go to his funeral. I saw his mom numb, I didn’t cry for her.
Johntel Crocker. July 28, 1991-September 22, 2013. My moms best friends, middle son. He always acted as if he was our big brother. My mom woke me up as she was rushing out of the house, “I’m going over Drea’s, Pudd was killed last night!”. My whole family went to the funeral. His mom was devastated, I wanted to help so I didn’t cry.
Keith Bledsoe. September 30, 2000-June 26, 2018. A good friend I’ve had since middle school. He called me Willow Smith and I always ended our conversations telling him to be safe. My cousin called me that morning but something in me knew it wasn’t good to answer. I texted her when I woke up and she said “I was just going to tell you that Kb was shot”. I didn’t get to make it to the candle light vigil or the funeral. I cried so hard my chest hurt.
Kieara Green. February 24th, 1996-July 1, 2014. My cousin. It didn’t hit me until this year that my she is really gone. I found out through Facebook. I kept seeing people saying pray for her and I had to see the news to know what happened. Me and two other cousins had payed for a church trip that our parents wouldn’t let us miss so we didn’t get to attend the funeral. I didn’t cry because I had to be strong for the family. This year when it hit me, I couldn’t stop crying.
Mikel Willis. August 27, 1998-February 7, 2018. A friend so close, we considered him our cousin. He was so goofy, he looked out for me. I was in class and read my cousins tweet, I texted her immediately and she says “They’re saying Mikel got shot”. I walked up to the casket and his body was colorless, and his face was swollen. I had to be strong for my cousin and his mom, I tried my hardest to hold back tears.
What a litany, Jada. It is devastating. Your writing is devastating. I am so so sorry. And I agree with you about gun violence. And I know saying I am so so sorry doesn't cut it any more.
DeleteWould you consider finding a way to share this with more people?
I too have seen gun violence affect families. My best friend's brother was killed at 19 when we were both still in high school. It is important to remember those we lost to these tragic events.
DeleteWhat a powerful piece. More people need to hear this!
DeleteYour story is powerful and heartbreaking, Jada. As do others in this string of comments, I hope you can find many ways to share this. Your telling stories of the people you have lost honors them while also causing others to hear you and to see you as someone who should not have so many stories like this to tell.
DeleteBut truly, you have one story. It is yours and these are all parts of it. I hope you can find other/many ways to tell your story...because we need to hear it.
Last year, I didn’t have hardly any friends. I was very antisocial and never went out. I had no idea what I was missing, I couldn’t understand why people thought college was so fun. But now that I do have friends and go out I can see exactly what I didn’t have. I can’t imagine my life without the sweet sweet pals that I love and appreciate so much.
ReplyDeleteI had no clue that one person could bring so many of my best friends in my life. I met my boyfriend on accident, drunkenly trying to get to State street one Friday night. I needed help across the railroad tracks so I grabbed the first man I saw by the waist and held on until we got there. Everyone was going to State because UK beat FL in football, which was a big deal considering it was a UK frat party. Since he helped me get where I needed to be I was like ‘Hey add me on snap, maybe we’ll go out sometime’.I wasn’t looking for someone that night because I was fine on my own, so I thought, but luckily I met G. From our first date a week later I knew he was special. Not only is he special, but every single person he has introduced me to has become a close friend to me. And they are all just as special.
I have never come into such a tight friend group and been accepted like this. They took me into their family as if I had always been a part of it. They love me and care for me as if they have known me my whole life. I’ve never had this many friends or real friends at least.
Looking back I don’t know how I did it last year without this support, love, and friendship. It is truly something spectacular. I don’t know how I got so lucky to have become friends with these amazing people, which I would have never met if I hadn’t needed help to State Street.
That railroad track on September 8th is what brought me people that I want in my life forever. If UK didn’t beat FL I wouldn’t have met my closest friends. I believe in UK football.
wow actually a happy one from me shocker I know
Ha!
DeleteYou can do happiness, Paige :)
This is a wonderful story. It's wonderful to find something or someone when you aren't looking.
DeleteIt’s crazy how something completely unexpected can turn into something great
DeleteYou trusted a stranger to help you to State Street and through that your world opened up. There is so much good in this story, for sure. That said, it may also be a story about how beneficial it can be to trust strangers from time to time.
DeleteWith some degree of caution, of course...just as you did through the mediation of Snapchat
Kremena
ReplyDeleteMarch 3, 2019
I was always glad I didn’t get my paternal grandmother’s full name: Kalushka. Even as a child, I knew her name was old-fashioned, like a too-heavy fur coat long-forgotten in a bag of moth balls. I did get my grandmother’s initial letter. According to family legend, my parents went back and forth between Katia and Kremena. I used to wish they had chosen Katia, the Bulgarian equivalent of Kate. It sounds so much softer than Kremena.
I don’t remember when my father began calling me “slontche,” Bulgarian for “little elephant.” It must have been before I turned 3 because when I was 3, my parents divorced. My mother scolded my father for eroding my confidence. My father switched to calling me “little giraffe.” The name didn’t stick.
Mostly, my family called me Kremi, Krem or Kremche. My uncle liked to call me Kremon—an off-shoot of Cremona, the town in Italy where Stradivari made his first violin. Only my mother referred to me by my full name. She called me Kremena to convey displeasure.
I became glad to be Kremena and not Katia when I got to college. When my non-Bulgarian-speaking friends asked what my name meant, I told them. It derives from the Bulgarian word for “flint stone.” This caused torrents of laughter. “Flint stone” had but a single reference for foreigners: the Flintstones. So my non-Bulgarian college friends called me Flintstonka. I embraced the sharp edges my new name signaled.
I became Kremena full time in the US. The only people who call me something else are Chad and Daniel, the two brothers who built our deck 4 years ago. They call me Krem. For them it is shorter and easier to remember. For me it’s a diminutive which, coming from them, makes my heart melt.
Occasionally, someone asks if they can call me K. I say absolutely not. I believe in Kremena.
I love this, Kremena! And I like that you tell your reaction to being called certain nicknames by certain people
DeleteI believe in Kremena too! :)
DeleteI have heard this story a few times and never until now did I realize by some measures your being a Flintstone makes me a Rubble.
DeleteAccording to Wikipedia, that may explain my New Jersey accent
I didn’t know eyes could lose the ability to see black thread on black fabric until you couldn’t finish the vest you were making at my request. I wanted so badly to wear one with your black brocade. You, thankfully, enjoyed the idea of your grandson in a vest of fabric first found for lining jewelry boxes.
ReplyDeleteI didn’t know fingers could lose the ability to feel the puncture of a needle, that they need thimbles to protect them when nerves no longer do. I watched you stitch your own finger into the quilt you were assembling. You were more troubled by the blood staining the fabric than by the pain of a needle pulling thread through your fingertip.
I didn’t know tongues could lose the ability to taste the difference between sugar and powdered dishwasher detergent. Three decades before the Tidepod challenge, you stirred a spoonful of Tide into morning coffee. It took a few swallows for you to notice the difference. And it wasn’t the taste that gave it away, but the soap bubbles forming at the edge of your cup.
I know now what I never knew while you were whistling in your kitchen: aging bodies and minds betray you in embarrassing ways:
My feet hurt at the end of a long day.
My back aches if I spend too long sleeping.
My body begs me to stop eating an ever-growing list of foods that now includes fish and tomatoes and vinegar and salt and chocolate,
and I am only half as old as you were the day you died.
Back then I knew so few of the ways life challenged you. Now I believe I will never match your grace.
I really love this one, Kurt
DeleteThis is really powerful, it made me think of my own mammaw.
Delete
ReplyDeleteMy mother’s father is having surgery early tomorrow morning. The doctors think he has cancer, and they are going to try to tumor they discovered a few weeks ago. My mother remains hopeful, but no one knows if it is too late yet.
Papa is a strong man. He goes to the gym everyday and practices yoga. He eats healthy and goes on walks. His quiet and unshakeable faith is comforting. He gives the best bear hugs and he always tells me and my sister and my dad and my mom that he loves us. There’s never been a doubt in my mind that he doesn’t.
My mother only adores two men in this world: my dad, and her dad. She is in Georgia now with him and the rest of her family. I rarely get to see her in this light, playing the part of a daughter who loves her father. We’ve lived over eight hours away from her parents for the majority of my life. I’ve seen her be my mother more than I’ve seen her be a daughter. It’s easy to forget that she was a daughter first.
I know she is worried, that she is trying to maintain the same faith that she learned from her father. But if I am anything like her, and we are far more alike than many people realize, I know she’s doing her best to ignore the dread, the feeling that the unthinkable could happen soon. The fear that she will have to learn how to live with one less parent in her life. I wish I could be there for her, because I believe there’s nothing worse than wondering whether or not you still have time left with someone you love more than anything. Nothing, except maybe one thing.
I relate to this one all too well
DeleteMy father's two brothers died within a week of one another. It caused me to see him as a brother, just as you are seeing your mother in her role of daughter now. I wanted to be with him and support him however I could and all the while imagined losing a generation of family created a hole that may not easily repair.
DeleteAnd I wondered how to support a man who always seemed to be supporting me. Your words are powerful, Megan, and find their way into this experience that many share--even if without talking about it
Marissa
ReplyDeleteThe first song I ever learned to play on piano was Mary Had a Little Lamb. I was really little.
Several years later, I experimented playing Coming Home by Skylar Grey on a tiny old keyboard of my dad’s he no longer used.
I stacked cardboard boxes on top of each other in the corner of my room and put the tiny keyboard on top of them as a makeshift piano stand. I called it my Piano Corner. I would sit there in the floor in front of the boxes with YouTube tutorials for specific songs, taking notes on sheets of paper and memorizing how to play more hits from my middle and high school days-- Skyscraper by Demi Lovato, A Thousand Years by Christina Perri, Price Tag by Jessie J.
A few years later, I was given a full-size keyboard and it, too, was given its own corner in my new room. I continued to sit in the floor for hours with YouTube tutorials and notes of how to play more songs-- Begin Again by Taylor Swift, Let it Go from Frozen, Pompeii by Bastille.
I loved to try and learn the accompaniment rather than the melody so I could sing along. I don’t know that I’m very good at singing, but, nonetheless, I’ve always really loved it, and it took awhile, but I eventually realized it didn’t matter if I sounded bad to other people if I still liked how I sound. There was just always something about singing a song I loved with my fingers pressing down keys that helped me cope with difficult situations-- the loss of my childhood home by fire, my parents’ divorce, etc.
But in the last year of high school, I played less, and when I got to college, I basically stopped playing completely. I brought my keyboard with me when I moved into Forrer, and I think I only played it once the whole school year-- the chords of Make Me Cry by Noah Cyrus and Labrinth. This continued throughout my sophomore year. It can be partially attributed to lack of time, but also, having a roommate didn’t help. I generally don’t sing solo in front of people, and I lost the adapter I used to use to connect my earbuds to my keyboard so no one else had to hear me play if I was learning something new or if they needed to study.
Now I live in Hazelrigg and have no roommate. The same keyboard I brought with me to Forrer resides on its stand-- not in a corner, but against a wall in my room with a small piano bench. I still almost never play, which I think is more attributed to lack of time, but I love knowing my keyboard is still there. Over a break from school several months ago, I played piano at my mom’s place back home-- Perfect by Ed Sheeran. And there was one point last semester where I turned on my keyboard and googled the chords to State of Grace by Taylor Swift and sang it alone in my room. Some things really just don’t change. I still get the same feeling I always did when I played piano and sang along.
I believe in playing piano, and I believe it may one day make more of a comeback in my life.
And since writing this essay over a week ago reminded me to play, I believe in some ways, it already has.
I love the connection you have w the piano. Reminds me of how I feel about the cello.
DeleteI didn't realize you played piano too, Marissa! Reading your essay, I was reminded of my own relationship with the piano. I didn't play nearly as much during high school and most of college, but I started playing again this year and I've remembered how much I love it.
DeleteYour story is full of images, Marissa. I feel like I can see your chronology of keyboards, living in corners and by living in them, creating spaces where you can find yourself.
DeleteIt makes sense that sometimes we need these spaces more than other times in our lives. I hope you are always able to have this kind of space and don't forget what it feels like to be there.
You are such a god storyteller, Marissa. I have never played the piano (or any other musical instrument). Still, I could understand your special relationship with the piano as I read your essay.
Delete
ReplyDeleteI believe in being kind.
When I go into a restaurant or store I always smile at the workers. If they do me a service I say please and thank you. I have seen so many instances where common courtesy is not even extended to these workers. If you are out somewhere be kind to the workers.
One of my favorite parts of my day is interacting with the staff around school. I believe I have some of the best conversations with the people that don’t always get thanked. Whether that be talking to Mr.Lee in Shearer or with Ms.Tina in the Raf, we are always smiling. Be sure to thank those who don’t always get appreciated.
Being kind to your friends is important too. Sometimes a joke may go too far or you may have excluded someone from plans. Think about how that would make you feel and apologize to your friend. There are times when we forget that are friends may need some extra kindness, it’s good to be mindful of these times.
I thought about the phrase “Just be Kind” when I was driving back home last weekend. There is a movement around my town where people have placed multi-colored signs in their yard with this phrase. I believe that it is amazing that three words can be so powerful.
I believe in being kind.
i agree
DeleteIn a world where people too rarely interact with those who do the work to support us, even the smile you share can be very meaningful.
Deletei am so glad you smile and say hello AND that you let me know about the "Just Be Kind" movement. Apparently it started in Central Indiana and has spread worldwide!
I believe that addiction is bad and sad and everything in between…
ReplyDeleteI was 8 the first time I saw someone take a drug. We were in the bathroom and my sister sprinkled something white on the counter. She rolled up a dollar bill and inhaled deeply. She then whispered to me that I needed to keep it a secret from mom and dad. At the time I didn’t know that she had been taking drugs for years and that this wasn’t just a phase. Ecstacy, cocaine, and crystal meth became her life. The drugs ruined my sisters life but they managed to poison the rest of us too. She compromised my safety every time she picked me up high. She compromised our relationship every time she missed an event because she lost time in her blackouts. She dropped out of college, barely held down a job with my father, and got evicted from 16 different houses. She is just now, at 31, getting her life back on track.
Just recently I lost a friend to an overdose. I hadn’t spoken to her in years and had only kept up with her through Facebook. I would never have thought something was amiss till I saw someone express their devastation over her loss. She leaves behind a mother and a father, two sisters, two brother in laws, and hundreds of friends. I have watched the posts pour in with pictures of her. She was loved and now she is no more. When I saw this it made me think of my sister. She was around the same age as Ashley. Had my sister not gotten help, this could have been her.
I am glad my sister is still alive today but I grieve for those who are still stuck in the cycle and those who are affected.
I am so sorry to hear about your sister's struggles and your friend, Ally.
DeleteThere is so great a stigma on drug addiction and due to that, experiences with it are often kept secret which does everyone a disservice. All communities are stronger when those within it are healthy. I am glad your sister was able to get help and that you have found healthy ways to think about your past with her.
I generally don’t like keeping flowers inside my apartment because they remind me of funerals. Except peonies. Funeral flowers are roses and lilies and daisies.
ReplyDeleteBut peonies I will buy myself just because, on any given Tuesday afternoon, which is kind of ridiculous actually. They shrivel up in a couple weeks, and I should probably use that money elsewhere anyway.
I guess I’ve never really tried to explain why I love my apartment so much —my all-white bedding, my decorative pillows that certainly don’t match but coordinate in the best way, my vintage emerald-colored marble bedside tables, my books stacked on the mantle with the prettiest and favorite titles the most visible (Gucci Mane’s autobiography always lives on the top of the stack). All my favorite things acquired over years and many consignment shops.
So many things are built for function, for frugality. And that’s completely rational. But can we talk about making our spaces beautiful for the hell of it? I cannot control how ugly and hateful the world is but I can control the microcosm that is my home and the clothes I put on my body.
And you can bet your bottom dollar I will sit and tweak the arrangement of the glass and plate and silverware on a table until it’s just right and then take ten photos until I get the one.
It’s so hard to try to answer why I have these unnecessary, time-consuming habits of making my atmosphere a little prettier, but then again, do I even need to answer why? I was given two mostly-functioning eyes (and a pair of contacts to compensate), and I will not let them grow weary of blank beige walls and artificial flowers and unnecessary clutter. Frankly, they deserve better.
I believe in aesthetics, in beauty for the sake of beauty.
There is a very real function to aesthetics which are too often and too easily overlooked as something that is frivolous.
DeletePeople experiencing homelessness who find shelter in spaces abandoned by others sometimes arrange their sheltering spaces aesthetically. Derelict youth, too, who find comfort in occupying abandoned or overlooked environments create that comfort by decorating (sometimes with spraypaint).
What you do with peonies (which repel me due to their attraction for ants) and emerald-color marble tables (maybe they are malachite) is what we all do--you are just more able to realize it than others. Because of this, I imagine your are better at making your space one that works for yourself.
Check out the Bowerbird....if you want a (super cool) example in the animal kingdom.
Aesthetics matters to me as well. What I live near matters, not just who I live near.
DeleteI believe in the importance of smiling. Growing up as a Muslim, I was always taught that smiling is an important act of charity and it should always be done. It was something Prophet Mohammad(pbuh) said a number of times. However, I never understood the importance of this simple act until I grew older.
ReplyDeleteWhen I first started thinking about the idea of always trying to smile and constantly having to portray this happy attitude, it never really made sense. I questioned what I was doing and thought of things like; Was I doing it because I actually wanted to? Why do I have to be the one to always smile? Why do I have this pressure on me to make everyone around me feel comfortable? Unfortunately, the answer to these questions meant that I had to come to terms that although I was born in this country and English is my native language, I will always be considered an ‘outsider’. Being a female in America today is tough enough. Wearing a hijab and making yourself stand out makes that even tougher.
Once I began trying to smile at all times regardless of the situation, I realized a few things. First, smiling eases the tension between two strangers. It has a way of creating comfort in an uncomfortable situation. I also noticed the power of people smiling back. When people smile back, it makes me forget that I am the “outsider” and I feel like I fit in society again, regardless of my gender and religion. So finally, it hit me! I realized why smiling is considered to be an act of charity. It can be very powerful and create community. When I smile, I show non-Muslims a different side of the stereotypical Muslim. I also may be helping someone who is having a bad day. I know when people smile back it makes me happy, so I can only hope that initiating a smile will do the same. I believe in smiling and I try to do it as much as possible.
The simple idea of smiling as an act of charity--combined with the realization that this charitable act benefits you as well--is beautiful.
DeleteI so like the idea of sharing a smile as the start of community as well...brilliant.
You have a beautiful smile, Hannah. Thank you for extending it to all of us: it is a gift, for sure.
DeleteI met Ben when I was 20-years-old. It was the middle of my junior year and I was struggling. I was maintaining pretty average grades, but a two-year bout with anxiety and depression had left me exhausted. What energy remained was lost due to my poor stress control through eating disorders.
ReplyDeleteIt was November and he was about to have a birthday. We started chatting on Grindr, but my insecurities with myself and my sexuality wouldn’t allow me the small joy of meeting him for coffee. It was his persistence until March and a reassuring friend which finally convinced me to give him a chance.
In true gay fashion, we went on one magical date, then it was official.
Our first year was tough, and we broke up briefly the Valentine’s Day of my 21st year. We had quickly started a business together, moved in together, and the growing pains were hard to manage. We reconciled a couple of months later, and continued our journey.
From 22-23 we lived in New York. We were working with Christine from Time, Inc. in an effort to start a book project spinoff of our publication. Unfortunately, the publishing market crashed and so did our dreams. We moved home, disheartened and frustrated, and took a summer to cool off.
Two years of great times followed. Unfortunately, a new kind of growing pains emerged. In those five years, we had grown; grown up but in ways that didn’t fully mesh. At 25 we went our separate ways. I realized both publishing and Ben, weren’t the thing I wanted to spend my life committed to.
Today we have remained close, and three years later we are still best friends. I learned that not all relationships are lost, just changed. Like the First Law of Conservation, energy is not created nor destroyed; Energy changes. While people and emotions may change, I believe it’s in our power to change our relationships with them.
You write this from a place that sounds/feels so authentic and comfortable with the change you have been through with Ben. I wonder how many people are ever able to reconcile a changed relationship so well?
DeleteAlso...too bad the book didn't happen before the publishing market crashed.
I'm in a similar place of transition with a relationship right now. It took me a while to accept that things were changing, but I'm learning the same thing you did. Being able to accept the change while reconciling a relationship is difficult, but it's also brought me relief.
DeleteI believe in believing people when they speak about their traumas.
ReplyDeleteI was raised understanding that poor people were poor because they’re lazy, that people who react differently to stress are just whiny, that people who have a sad story just want attention.
In Beloved, the characters dealing with trauma revisit the same memories over and over, tell the same stories over and over. When my wife tells me the same stories over and over about her ex-husband, when she tells me that his violence and evil and hatred was real, when my stepdaughter stands with us and nods and repeats stories that she too has told before, I take it not as soliciting pity, but as desperate reaches for exorcism.
When I was in high school I tried over and over to tell people about what was happening to me. I tried to explain that when my mother pinned my face against the floor while my father beat me it wasn’t normal, it wasn’t “spanking” like they called it. I never could prove that was where my bruises were coming from. I never could persuade a teacher to believe me; rarely did even my friends.
The trauma of not being believed is almost harsher than the original horror. I have repaired my relationship with my parents--I think they’ve really changed--but I still have to say, over and over, what happened to me. Because I need to be believed.
Your response to the repeated stories of others is to understand it as a reach for exorcism (so true).
DeleteThen you say you tell your story over and over because you need to be believed.
And I wonder if knowing your story is believed by another is a form of exorcism? It would be an exorcism found not by casting anyone or anything out but by knowing you have welcomed someone in....perhaps it isn't as simple as casting out vs welcoming in but a necessary combination of both.
You say your relationship with your parents is now repaired. You are so much more generous than I could be, than I am. I am embarrassed for parents who fail to love and support their children. Unlike your parents, you are a caring, loving parent. I will focus on remembering that, not what your parents did to you.
Delete