Some Kids from Bar Harbor

Some kids from Bar Harbor

Practically every year since I began painting the portraits 8 years ago I’ve been invited into a school in Bar Harbor, Maine, to talk with elementary students about them. It’s always a good experience because the teachers always do a great job preparing the students for my visit.

This year each 5th grader had spent lots of time on the website selecting one portrait to write about. And before I left, they gave me all their letters, comments and poems. In one class, before I spoke, the teacher told me that one girl, Annie, had written a letter & poem she wanted to share with me. So, she read to all of us what she had written.

She began by saying that she liked all of the portraits but five were particularly meaningful to her:

Samantha Smith, Helen Keller, Doris Haddock (Granny D), Harriet Tubman, and Jeannette Rankin.
Annie said, “I liked these paintings for all the same reason. The reason was that these people that you painted went beyond what anybody thought they could do to help change things in our world. They changed the way that we look at things now. I am glad that you gave them these tributes. I hope someday I can help the world like they did.”

And then Annie read her poem.

Courage

Sometimes,
It’s hard to make a good decision.
People around you
All doing wrong,
It’s hard to make a right.
It’s hard to speak up.

Sometimes,
It’s easy to make a bad decision.
One that’s not best for you,
Or anyone else.

It’s easy to take a wrong path,
To a bad place.
You would never want to be in.
People around you,
all doing wrong.
It’s easy to follow them.
It’s easier.

People are given the choice
To speak up and say
What they think is right.
Some take a chance,
Some don’t.
But they want to.

They think that they can’t,
But they can.

They just have to have the courage.

Annie’s poem beautifully sums up the entire intent of this project. It’s all about choices.
About courage. Everything from confronting a bully who is berating a classmate to committing civil disobedience to challenge a bad law. We have those choices nearly every day. And she understood a further intent --- that I am not painting extraordinary people to be idolized, but, rather, ordinary people, people like all of us, who make choices to do the right thing. People who are role models. Not saints. Flawed, everyday people who act with courage. That’s what helps the world become a better place: courage. And the survival of our democracy depends on all of us making the choice for courage.

When I got home, I read all of the other letter and poems. All of them were interesting and heartfelt --- not at all like normal school assignments.

A girl named Grace was inspired by the young 1930s Latina labor organizer, Emma Tenayuca, from San Antonio. She asked why Emma was called “La Pasionaria” by her fellow workers. It means she was the passionate one, the one with the courage to not accept their poor pay and terrible working conditions and insist that they be changed, that her people be treated fairly. Grace also asked a very important question: “…the people whom she stood up for kept her story alive when others tried to erase it. Why did they try to erase it?” The answer was true then and is true now. People with power and a status quo to protect do not want us to remember the people who changed things by challenging authority and resisting injustice. They don’t want us to have those role models. They don’t want us to remember that we always have the power to change our conditions if we can summon the courage to organize and confront. They don’t want us to be inspired by heroes. They want us to worship celebrities. And, as I said about Annie’s poem, this project is all about remembering. The great Czech writer Milan Kundera once said, “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”

Another girl, Valerie, wrote: “A painting that was really eye opening to me and inspired me was the painting of Rosa Parks. I had never heard of her before, but as soon as I read about her, I was so inspired. Her story about how she refused to give up her seat to a white man made me realize something that I never thought I would ever think about. I thought about how glad I am to be darker colored skinned. Her story made me realize that I am a very beautiful person inside and out. I might be different on the outside, but wasn’t that the way god wanted us to be…”

Valerie’s letter needs no comment from me.

One more girl, who didn’t identify herself, wrote an exquisite little poem for Sandy O.
Sandy O is a singer songwriter who makes up, with Pat Humphries, the duo called emma’s revolution. ( Both of their portraits are in this series.) Sandy and Pat travel all over the world singing about peace, about social and economic and environmental justice. (By the way, Sandy and Pat will be singing at the University of Maine in Orono at the Hope Festival on April 24, 2010.)
This is the poem:

Sandy

melodies

justice

sing

loudly

O