Art Awards, Americanism, and Arnold

Art Awards, Americanism, and Arnold

by RasmeniaNo Comments
The art award was a big deal. The level of fanfare was off the charts. If you were one of the lucky winners, you’d have some fantastic swag to prove your artistic bona fides, including a Certificate of Recognition, a placement ribbon, and an American flag pin. Yeah, just like the one politicians tack on to their lapels to prove how patriotic they are.Most importantly, it meant getting your picture in the local newspaper.My family did the usual thing. They snapped Polaroids of me proudly displaying my masterpiece. My image was stuck on the fridge, mailed off to relatives, and forever immortalized on a plastic photo mug that sits on a shelf next to my desk as I write this.The theme that year in the Americanism Fine Arts Contest sponsored by the PTA in Mill Village, Pennsylvania was, “Look Out Your Window…”.When I looked out my window, I apparently saw my dog, a spider, and a barn. Or maybe the...
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I Feel So Different

I Feel So Different

by RasmeniaNo Comments
People crowd the street, most of them women with flecks of silver in their hair and lines on their face etching a map back to who they used to be: young women full of joy and anguish. Weird, creative girls trying to survive the constant pressure of what parents, friends, schools, and institutions said they couldn’t and shouldn’t do. Lonely girls who want to scream and dance and smash convention and patriarchy but feel powerless to do so.The music in the street gets louder and one woman in the crowd, a grandmother in leather and Doc Martens, pounds on her heart with her fist, eyes closed, oblivious to all those around her as she sings along with Sinéad:I'll remember it And Dublin in a rainstorm And sitting in the long grass in summer Keeping warm I'll remember it Every restless night We were so young then We thought that everything We could possibly do was right Then we moved Stolen...
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