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Revealed Class Discussion at The Met - 05/05/10

Who am I without Christ? No one. With out him, I am just meaningless traits. He is my peace + my hope. The cross with the heart represents my relationship with Christ. The cross is made from a butterfly bush, representing new birth + life. The broken glass represents my imperfections; the human part of me. I love Christ, but I still screw up. The nails represent the pain of life. Just because I have hope doesn't mean my life is all rainbows + unicorns - its hard and will never not be hard, but now it's not bleak. Without Christ, my "spirit self" wouldn't even be worth a picture.

This I Believe Revealed Gallery Showing at EG Library - 06/10

September by Liz Doucette �September is the best month in Newport.� Many who live here agree. That�s not to say we don�t love July and August � summer!! � in all its crowded, event-filled glory. Of course we love summer. And we love our visitors, each and every one, traffic included. Okay, I�m exaggerating (and I can�t speak for anyone but myself). Let�s just say Newport relies on summer. Newport works hard in summer. Busy is good. Then, ahhhh, September. It�s still summer, weather-wise. The water is warm for swimming. It�s clear and breezy for sailing. Fish are biting. I might even find a parking space. Doesn�t everyone, everywhere, love September? Except perhaps the kids heading back to school? Something ends, but something else begins. Don�t we all, at every age, regard September as time to get back to � something? This year, my husband and I sent our younger child to college. We�ve just joined that very lonely-sounding demographic: Empty Nesters. But it�s not so empty. Sure, we miss the kids, but they�re doing fine � thank goodness � and there are definite upsides. We�re managing two schedules, not four; so there�s more time to do what we want. More time means more bike rides. And September afternoons, whose warm orange light lingers �til 7pm, are ideal. My husband and I go in different directions, as we go at different paces, then meet back home for dinner. Around Ocean Drive is my usual route: bumpy in spots, but less traffic in September. So, one afternoon verging on evening a few weeks back, I rode my bike out that way, and when I got to Brenton Point, it was just so darn beautiful that I stopped, parked my bike, wandered out onto the stone jetty, and watched: water, a few boats, imminent sunset. As I turned to go, a couple approached over the rocks, slippery in spots. And I heard myself say, like the mother I�ll always be: �Be careful.� Glancing back as I hopped on my bike � to make sure they were safe, I suppose � I s

This I Believe Revealed Part of Jamestown Exhibit - 05/10

Creative Kids by R. James Stahl The week of my Bar Mitzvah, a bomb-making prank (my idea) took my left eye. Until that moment, I was seeing the world as a typical 13-year-old boy sees it. Then, a second later, I wasn�t. The required soul-searching over what to place in Scott�s box revealed that what I believe, and the career I made of it, very likely began in that moment. I published writers, some of them famous now, when they still had curfews. They would mail me their folded thoughts about growing up, the trials of school, the death of a pet, the birth of a little brother. Most submissions I had to reject, but published or not each one received a personal response from my talented staff or from me. From our little Main Street office in East Greenwich, we published the best submissions in a magazine that we shipped all across the world. My experience taught me to believe in the practical value of listening to young people�s thinking. Publishing young writers sent a message of hope to creative kids who felt their talents were trivial or unwanted. Their creativity mattered to me. Even the briefest submissions could floor me. One 8th grader, for instance, wrote a poem called �Religion.� �On the sixth day,� it said, �He got up/and sprayed people /from an aerosol can /and then /God threw away /the exhausted container.� Such provocation -- in seven lines! Is creating humanity as casual as spraying air freshener in a guest room? Or does that �exhausted container� mean that the creative act fatigues even all-powerful God? Is God still omnipotent if he or she suffers fatigue? In hundreds of classrooms that read this poem, discussions took off -- all of them launched by the words of one creative teen! Publishing kids, I saw that the brightest ones teach their peers and their teachers. That�s why I believe in urging more teen involvement in our civic and volunteer organizations, in our schools, places of worship, and government. We need the brightest ideas from

Revealed Presentation at The Met - 02/26/10

The box could not hold it all, so I brought a box of my own: a Hercules Gunpowder Box, a fitting repository for my spirit. The plants are from my garden, my solace, my center, my place to connect to the bounty and wonder of the Universe. I filled my box with old wounds, many half-healed. Even as I stand under the lights, my back aches from the car crash. I question myself and my right to be here. I question my creative fire. But on top of it all is a small wooden box, carved by my brother out of a single chunk of cedar. He carved it for me when I was young and full of boundless rage � some of it directed at him. He carved it with love, as an act of contrition that I did not come to fully understand until years after he had died. It is the most precious thing I own, this box. It represents hope and compassion for the wounded parts of me. ~Stephen R.