Creating posters can help change the world
This past Sunday afternoon, my 11-year-old daughter and her friend took some babysitting money, went to Dollar General to buy art supplies, came home and created six beautiful, inspirational posters.
Each picture conveyed a positive message surrounded by lovely, colorful artwork. The girls wanted to hang these posters around our neighborhood to encourage others to dream, inspire, believe, have faith in ourselves and to know we are people of value who don't need makeup to be beautiful.
They walked around one block (Ford, Center, Dietz, and Walnut streets) and placed their posters on telephone poles. Not wanting to diminish their efforts, yet being realistic enough to know what might happen, I told them how proud I was of their attempt to encourage others, but the posters might not stay up for the week. Emily and Hunter were happy that their messages might brighten the days of some people traveling the neighborhood, and we left it at that.
I have to say, however, that even I was surprised at how quickly the posters disappeared. By Monday, one of the posters had a missing cat announcement scrawled on the bottom, and by Tuesday, all six were gone.
I am willing to believe that a couple may have fallen because of the rain, but some were simply nowhere to be found.
It is a sad day when missing animal posters remain on poles for several months, but positive messages of self-acceptance and encouragement drawn with youthful optimism are either defiled or ripped down. These posters were not going to be left up indefinitely, and no one expected them to last for weeks, but all of them gone within two days?
Thank you, Emily and Hunter, for being thoughtful and trying to "be the change you want to see in this world." You two are even more inspiring than your posters!
Robin English
Oneonta
