Liars and Saints

  An essay I love is "An Ode to Mrs. MC," by Summer Pierre.  https://medium.com/spiralbound/an-ode-to-mrs-mc-1c09a53a0b08 This is an essay in pictures. The speaker is recalling her son's Kindergarten teacher. Yikes! Kindergarten. The son in question--Gus--struggled with transitions....and Kindergarten seemed daunting. But Mrs. MC worked wonders. Mrs. MC--with her hippie-ish gray braid--beamed at the children and said, "1....2...3...Eyes on me!" She re-branded homework as "fun work," and she made sure the children knew what they were doing before they unpacked their bags. She used humor, so that Gus would often burst into laughter, inexplicably, at the dinner table; he would recall a private joke.  What makes the essay special is the details. Gus--I imagine him in Park Slope, somewhere--wears a necktie with his tee shirt. The anxious mom throws up her hands at the idea of K "homework." School administrators, trying to describe Mrs. MC, settle ...

 I've become semi-hooked on the artist Summer Pierre, who reminds me of aspects of myself. Pierre sits and thinks about Frida Kahlo, or she gets very upset if a comics panel appears in "The Atlantic" without proper credit to the artist. I'm in a fight with the local library--I believe the staff lost one of the books I had borrowed--and I can imagine Summer Pierre having strong feelings about this, as well. In any case, here are three images from Pierre's work. One celebrates soap--it's from a Times piece directed at kids, "Soap Is Awesome"--and you'll want to note the tough soap molecules taking on the frowning virus. A second panel--again, for kids--lists various means of self-care; you have an exciting horizon before you, and it may involve "showering," "learning a new skill," or "breathing out." A third panel shows the valiant Frida Kahlo, and Kahlo is threading ribbons in her hair, in an effort to direct the view...