Button Sunday


Four little girls
Who went to Sunday School that day
And never came back home at all…

the first lines of Langston Hughes’s poem “Birmingham Sunday”

It was on a Sunday fifty years ago today when a bomb planted by segregationists exploded in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. Addie Mae Collins, 14; Denise McNair, 11; Carole Robertson, 14; and Cynthia Wesley, 14, died while studying their lesson in their Sunday school class.

Button Sunday

National Suicide Prevention Week begins September 8. This is the 39th annual dedication of a week to raise awareness of the issues around suicide: causes, prevention, warning signs, survivors, and grief.

People whose lives have been affected by suicide often find it difficult to talk about it. But the more we learn, the more open we are, the better chance we have of preventing suicide and the more we can foster healing for those affected by suicide.

If you want to learn more, or if you are a suicide attempt survivor or a suicide loss survivor, there’s a lot of information on the American Association of Suicidology site. If you are struggling, please check out the Suicide Prevention Lifeline site.

From an AAS resource: AAS reports that 12% of suicides are young people and according to research by CDC, addicts are 6 times more likely to take their own life so we feel anyone looking for suicide prevention information may also appreciate our addiction resource.

If you are struggling with addition and thoughts of suicide, you can get more information here.

And please, please, if you are alone or scared, no matter what problems you’re dealing with, you can call 1-800-273-8255. This helpline has trained counselors available 24/7. Please make that call, because we need you here.

Button Sunday

I’m abnormally caught up on sleep. But I’m behind with my email, behind with my editing, behind with my paperwork, behind with my blog reading, behind with my blogging, behind with berating myself about not writing–I claim the insanity of the dog days of summer. And since it’s inevitable that I’ve missed people’s birthdays and will miss more of them, here, all of you get a button of good wishes.

Button Sunday

Another button from Jim, to celebrate our seeing the Late Surrealism exhibition at the Menil Collection during his visit to Houston. I was a little surprised to see works by some of my favorite Abstract Expressionists in this installation (Mark Rothko, Lee Krasner, Jackson Pollock), but the curator, Michelle White, wrote a compelling essay describing the influence of Surrealism on Abstract Expressionism and how the works of these two movements intersect.

This button is a detail from Surrealist painter Rene Magritte’s Le fils de l’homme (The Son of Man), a self-portrait from 1964.