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The organization LA Arts put out a call for people to share their love for Lewiston, in postcard form, after the horrific mass shooting in October. The call has been met with a beautiful, difficult, vulnerable, powerful wave of responses.
According to LA Arts agency manager Gerald Walsh, his group, the arts agency for Lewiston and neighboring Auburn, has received over 400 responses so far, which had been displayed in the organization’s gallery. And LA Arts is extending the original Jan. 19 deadline for project entries, should anyone else wish to send their support.
“Writing the open call was itself an expression of love. It was a painful process conceiving the idea. I felt vulnerable, asking others to reveal and share their vulnerability, and I feared that no one would respond,” Walsh explained in a statement to the BDN editorial board. “Even though I knew that wouldn’t be true, I still feared it because there is so much trauma and so much hardship in the world right now that it can be hard to know what to do. It can be desensitizing and paralyzing and the only way it feels we can cope is to turn off, to slide into apathy. But that is not the case with this project. People care and people responded overwhelmingly.”
They also responded beautifully. Not just in the stirring, personal art they included with some of their postcards (people were also encouraged to paint or draw pictures, send photographs or write poems), but in their words of support and in their calls to action. Walsh shared images of some of the postcards with us.
Some of the postcards were unsigned, some included only first names, others were difficult for us to make out full names. Some of them came from Maine students. Some were from out of state. But regardless of how they were sent or signed, together they are a sign of the tremendous love and support that has flowed and must continue to flow to the people of Lewiston. Tragedy and hate must be met with love and action.
As one of the postcards proclaims, “We are stronger together.” Another shares love from Blacksburg, Virginia, home to Virginia Tech and its own mass shooting in 2007.
“Sending love to Lewiston, from Blacksburg, Va., a place that truly and unfortunately understands what you are going through. We grieve with you. We send love, peace and hope. We know that the holes left will never fill, but will heal.”
Maureen and Rick sent their love from Winter Harbor, writing about living in the Lewiston-Auburn area for more than two decades and how they came to learn that the people there were “loving, strong, supportive, creative, charitable, and proud.”
“We were proud to call it home, and to be part of such a unique, openhearted, welcoming place,” they continued. “Our hearts have broken for you. We know you will get through it. We know you will keep getting stronger.”
Patricia O’Brien Quinn, a 1959 graduate of Edward Little High School in Auburn, sent a piece called “Sending Love:
“May we heal.
May good come from this tragedy.
May we become one united against sickness and hate.
May our mental health system benefit.
May our gun laws be improved.
May our love and understanding for our fellow man grow.
May we support each other.
May we love one another.
May God and all his angels and saints comfort you and bring you peace.”
Yes, may all those things come to pass. And may the togetherness and hope present in the “To Lewiston with Love” postcards ripple out across the city and across the state.
“LA Arts is extraordinarily grateful for everyone who answered our Open Call. We have so much work to do to heal as a community and a nation, but we sincerely hope that this project will contribute to the healing process,” Walsh, the agency manager, continued in his statement on Friday to the editorial board. “It will take us some time as an organization to sort through and reflect on all the postcards, but it is our goal to dedicate a webpage to the project. We are also currently investigating the possibility of producing a book or pamphlet to memorialize the work. When we are finished with the process of documentation, the postcards will go to Maine Mill to be a part of the community archive in the way it was originally intended. In the meantime, we have decided to extend the Open Call beyond the Jan. 19 deadline. More information will be shared about the extension soon.”
We hope that people will keep sending love letters to Lewiston, both in word and deed. And we especially hope that lawmakers in Augusta will also show their love and support, in the form of legislation to address gun violence and improve mental health services. The strongest love letter that officials in Augusta can send to Lewiston is action.
