Brass (or Gold) Rings

We’re writing this blog post a whole business week after the actual muraling (don't blame us, we're new to this whole blogging thing), so we don’t totally remember everything that happened. But here’s what we do remember:

1. Apparently Yana takes the snack schedule very seriously (residual trauma from the intense Mock Trial snack schedule) and so Amelia has to bring “food” next time.
2. The school field is a great place for a picnic, although random joggers will judge you. Some backstory: we’ve been planning to have a picnic at the school for the past two years, but we never actually got around to doing it. Until now. Pro tip: a rigorous snack schedule + being at the school until 10pm are the secret ingredients to making a school picnic. 
3. The school is a great place for a photoshoot (see below)
4. After 20 hours of work, we’re finally almost done with sketching out the mural on the wall, which is nice. Plus it actually looks surprisingly decent, which is also very nice. Now all we have to do is add final touches to the pencil drawing, buy all the paint/brushes, paint the entire 21-foot-long mural, and fix all our (inevitably numerous) mistakes. Easy. Looking back, all of the seemingly tedious steps were actually pretty crucial. Without them we’d be even further behind. 
5. A side-note: We also have to paint the huge rock in front of our school this summer (a strange tradition in which ~selected~ members of the graduating class paint a giant rock; that’s us this year!) so that might also make its appearance on the blog.

Another side-note: this week I (Amelia) started working as a waitress at Traditions, a senior center at our town. So far, it’s been surprisingly fun; there’s really something satisfying about doing a job right. Plus the seniors are really funny and kind and they tell me stories about their old life, which is always interesting and sometimes sad to hear about. Anyways, before I started working, I went to an orientation during which I learned that the staff at Traditions follows a program called “the brass ring.” I didn’t know this, but the brass ring is the part on the carousels that kids try and reach for (I guess I haven't been on the right kind of carousels). The whole “brass ring” metaphor is basically “we have to let the seniors try and reach for their brass ring aka what they want, whether that be a glass of water or to travel one last time.” Hearing about this program reminded me of the last scene in Catcher in the Rye where Holden is watching Phoebe on the carousel and decides that he has to let her try and reach for the ring, even though it’s potentially dangerous for her. 

Catcher Quote of the day:“Then the carousel started, and I watched her go round and round...All the kids tried to grab for the gold ring, and so was old Phoebe, and I was sort of afraid she's fall off the goddamn horse, but I didn't say or do anything. The thing with kids is, if they want to grab for the gold ring, you have to let them do it, and not say anything. If they fall off, they fall off, but it is bad to say anything to them.”


 I guess we all have our own rings to grab...

The hundreds of photos Yana took of Amelia:

The one photo Amelia took of Yana: