Finding Your People - Part 2 (2020) | with Anne and Ric
Zoom Call Crafts Club is one of the innovations that Anne and Ric brought to 2020. In this episode, you’ll learn about the ways Ric and Anne have designed community around the barriers a pandemic and social distancing bring.
Highlights:
Hear about how they’ve kept in touch with friends virtually
Reflect on the current events related to racial injustice and police brutality
Anne reads her poetry
Learn about a project they’re working on for greeting cards to isolated people
Listen to PART ONE to hear how they began their work together and made connections initially, pre-pandemic.
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“Um, well, my poetry is very inspirational and very creative. I’ve been writing lots of poetry about what’s been going on in the pandemic right now.” —Anne
Katie B: Anne and Ric are cohosts of this next episode. This is part two, if you’d like to go back to listen to the first part recorded one year ago you can go back and do that. This is documentation of life during a pandemic. What does it look like to build community, design community, and connect with other artists in your neighborhood when there are social distancing rules and everything is virtual? So you’ll notice how some things change and some things stay the same. Anne also reads her poetry in this episode, so there’s lots packed in here. I hope you get a lot out of hearing from these two. They have so much wisdom to share around building community and making connections.
(1:01 – 4:40)
Ric: OK so we are rolling now, today is Tuesday August 18th 2020, my name is Ric James and I’m a community connector with Starfire
Anne: I’m Anne Elizabeth Gearhardt I’m almost 23 tomorrow. I am a poety and I’m also an artist
Ric: Indeed you are. Happy birthday to you! We are on Anne’s back porch right now, nice covered screened in pation and if you listen closely you might hear rain falling
Anne: And thunder
Ric: In spite of the rain it’s a beautiful day, and thank you Anne for sitting down for this interview today.
Anne: You’re welcome!
Ric: So we have been working one on one in the Starfire community connecting program for a couple years now. And as many people know if you’re listening to this we are in the middle of a global pandemic, which is kind of a big deal! It’s an interesting time to be alive, it’s also a scary time because we have a lot of anxiety and uncertainty about the future, but we have already discussed this, Anne, you and I, about how the pandemic is affecting things around the world. But the Starfire mission - to help create a more inclusive future – our mission isn’t changing, but our methods are changing. So today we just wanted to talk to you about what we’ve been doing to help you maintain your connections and friendships and help kind of deepen and strengthen the relationships in your community, and tell us about some of the people we’ve met together, some of the friends you’ve made, and how you’ve stayed connected during the pandemic.
Anne: Well I haven’t talked to my friends in a while because of what happened with the pandemic. They have businesses still shut down, I’ve been connecting with Maria and Trace from Luckman’s coffee shop
Ric: Yes Maria and Trace have been great friends to us as we’ve set up our unofficial headquarters, which we haven’t been able to go to since the pandemic, but our regular visits there definitely started to form a bond and a real friendship with those two. Maria recently joined your zoom call crafts club, correct?
Anne: That’s correct!
Ric: Let’s not get too far ahead, tell me about the zoom call crafts club
(4:40 – 11:55)
Anne: Well the Zoom Crafts Club is when you can get together and make your own personal art, all together, but you can do it online by zoom. And you can make other things on your own.
Ric: Yeah, this has been a really interesting experience for us to explore together because before the pandemic, one of our things to do together was about once a month at your local branch of the library they had try it out Tuesday. A librarian there named John would host a crafts event and with a small group of people we would create something there. And once the pandemic shut things down a lot of their locations and their various programs they offer, you and I were looking for a way to continue making arts and crafts projects with the people that you met in the community, specifically Sherry Clink, who we met at the library. She has been a regular member and contributor to your zoom call crafts club. Tell us about Sherry.
Anne: She’s very fun, and very creative, and a great friend to have. Yeah, she’s a wonderful woman.
Ric: She really is, I found that when you and I came up with this idea together after we did a zoom call, we said well what if we did a zoom call where you bring whatever art supplies you want, so while we’re on the zoom call you can be drawing or sketching or painting. In your case Anne because you’re an artist and a poet you were also writing poetry, reading some of your poetry during the zoom call, and we were able to draft Sherry into that call right away. And to her credit she is a great creative thinker because she was enjoying our zoom call craft club right away, but she also had a suggestion for us to join in with this art class we did together where we did a vision board workshop, do you remember that?
Anne: Yeah
Ric: What did you think about that?
Anne: I think it was really fun! I already made my vision board, and it was really fun just to get extra creative
Ric: Exactly, I thought that was an interesting experience because if you’ll recall that was 2 weeks a row we were on a zoom call with a large group – 35 or 40 people. Most of them were just the audience and then there was the instructor. The first week she told us about a vision board and then the next week we got to talk about what we were working on with our vision board, and that was all Sherry’s idea. She brought that suggestion to the zoom call crafts club. So she’s not just a contributor in the zoom call crafts club, which I sometimes call the ZCC, wait its 3 Z’s, ZCCC, so we’ve done a couple of these virtual events together with Sherry and I think that’s done a great deal to help you and Sherry deepen and strengthen a friendship we started at the library late last year before this pandemic. So who is the newest member of the ZCCC?
Anne: Um that would be Maria
Ric: Correct, our favorite barista at Luckman Coffee on Beechmont. And in all fairness to Trace, maybe we should say Maria and Trace are tied for first. They have been so good to us for so long, you can tell every time we walk in there they really care about you. Didn’t you go there once with your mom so they could meet?
Anne: Yeah, we did.
Ric: Yeah, so our most recent crafts club meeting we were joined by Maria, and so now our group is up to four members and we have extended the invitation also to Trace at Luckman, so hopefully he will be able to join us soon and then I won’t be the only dude in the club anymore. But moving forward with the zoom call crafts club, what do you see there? What would you like to do as a group with Sherry and Maria?
Anne: Well I’ve been making lots of fun, creative bookmarks lately.
Ric: Bookmarks?
Anne: Yes.
Anne: And also poetry, and I want to combine them all together so I can talk about what has been going on with this pandemic and what’s happened to George Floyd.I don’t mean to get to overwhelmed about this story about George Floyd, but Derek Chauvin, he’s the one who killed him.
Ric: The officer?
Anne: The officer, yeah.
Anne: When Derek Chauvin did that to George Floyd I actually felt bad about what happened and I was scared the whole time and it made me feel angry about it and that’s how other people have been feeling about what happened, and yeah
Ric: I agree with you and I’m glad you feel free to speak your mind, as you should. You’re in your own home and you are entitled to your feelings, and during this interview you should speak freely as you see fit. And I agree with you, with George Floyd, murdered in cold blood, I know that most police officers are good, but there is a problem in this country and that is an extreme incident that has a lot of us taking a closer look at the racial inequalities in this country, you know systematic racism. And so you have a voice and you should be heard, and I think this is something, this is a theme I hear recurring every day, and that is basically you have a voice and you should own it and be proud of it and speak your mind. Tell us, if you don’t mind, just a little bit about your poetry, what it means to you, maybe what you’ve been working on lately.
(11:55 – 14:20)
Anne: Well my poetry is very inspirational and very creative, I’ve been writing a lot about the pandemic, what’s going on in the world right now.
Ric: Do you have any recent poems or something you’ve written that you’d like to share?
Anne: I do actually, I have one poem. Just for now.
Ric: Would you like to read it?
Anne: Yeah of course! Before I read it, this poem is for everybody who is listening to this recording right now. This poem is very very inspirational it’s for all of you guys. Okay, Poem of the Day:
You are beautiful just like you.
That is you are
just like in life.
am your voice,
I am a woman, has a
Heart
just like you,
if I was you,
always right on your voice.
So that poem is all about who you are in life
Ric: You know it’s interesting to me because there is this theme of self empowerment that runs through your poetry and it’s very strong, very positive recurring theme in your poetry and I’m really impressed by that and it flows very naturally from you, that’s why I thought it was interesting that our new friend Sherry suggested the vision board workshop for the three of us because I think even though you met her not too long ago she already saw that this was something that might resonate with you. Because that was a similar kind of self empowerment exercise and self visualization, to actually put down in pictures and words your thoughts that you wanted to manifest in your future and so I thought that was interesting that Sherry could already see even though you’re friendship is pretty new that this was something that would resonate with you and I feel like you both really enjoyed that.
(14:20 – 20:04)
Ric: There was one other thing that I wanted to mention because the zoom call crafts club that we started with Sherry and our newest member Maria was part of a conversation recently where the four of us were talking about bringing our energies together to create something for the community, and I thought it was interesting that basically you and Sherry came up with this idea that you could contribute poetry and the three of us, now four of us, with Maria joining and hopefully the group will include Trace, also very soon, who is a great artist, he used to draw with us now and then at the coffee shop. We are talking about as a group creating some sort of greeting cards or post cards that we would design together and then incorporate your poetry and to send these cards to local people who are feeling isolated right now because of the pandemic. We could send them to say senior citizens in retirement communities
Anne: We can also make some for my Kroger where I work
Ric: Mmhmm
Anne: Because I think my Kroger always needs something to brighten their day
Ric: Right
Anne: Whether they’re working at Kroger
Ric: That’s also a great idea that they would be something you could share with your coworkers. Once again Sherry Clink showed her great imagination and great creativity and just her intuition. She has already found a local group who does organize cards of encouragement and things like that for the local senior centers and retirement communities and things like that. So she’s already kind of taken that idea and ran with it and reported back with it. So with Sherry’s help we already have an organization we can work with, and we’re really at the beginning of this, we aren’t really sure how it’s going to go and where it’s going to take us, but I think it’s a great idea because you have written some great poetry and now we’ve started this zoom call crafts club to create art together and stay in touch with friends, to deepen and strengthen those friendships and now to create something together to give back to our community that are feeling isolated because of the pandemic. It’s very – I feel like it’s very uplifting and it’s very positive and I’m glad to be a part of this experience with you because we’ve found a way to take these sad circumstances but create something positive for people in the community with your art and poetry, it’s pretty amazing.
Anne: Thanks!
Ric: So I want to hear some more from you, though, just any more thoughts you’d like to share today.
Anne: Um I think I have everything for now
Ric: Did you have any more poetry that you’d like to read for our listeners while we’re recording? I don’t want to pressure you do read anything if you don’t feel prepared. Just thought I’d make that offer if you wanted to.
Anne: I think I have a perfect poetry to read.
Ric: Go ahead whenever you’re ready.
Anne:
I have the
Right to have a style
I need a
Voice is my head
I am confident
It has a lyrics
Poetry
Is peaceful
Very
Poetry says
Something
About
Lyrics
As a poem in life
I can change
The very I am beautiful
Every poetry
Has feelings
Every story
About my confidence
Any poetry
Had lyrics it has music in my heart
Ric: Very good, thanks for sharing that
Anne: Thank you
Ric: And thanks everyone for listening, anything else to add?
Anne: Well just one quick short poem
Ric: You wanna read one more, I’d love that.
Anne: Every night as you feel on your voice in my head and right now God is telling you thank you so much for being here in life, thank you God for being here and we all love you, God is rest in peace in your heart.
Ric: That’s fantastic, I didn’t want to talk over the thunder, but listen to it it’s still rumbling
Anne: That thunder is God
Ric: That’s spectacular. Yes it is, He must have known we would be recording today.