Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Sand bagging the flood away

As many of you know, I work part of the year, in Jamestown, North Dakota as part of an artist in residency program. I teach art classes from kindergarten up to adults, and I create artwork here. I am in month number 4 of a 5 month residency right now, and write this blog from my artist apartment in downtown Jamestown.

Currently, the city is under a major flood warning. Similar, but not as serious as the flooding in Fargo, North Dakota; two hours East of Jamestown. Here are some photo of the flooding in Fargo.

Since Jamestown puts money into the arts, and the arts gives money to me as a resident artist, I owe it to Jamestown to spend my free time bagging sand and getting it ready to stop the river from flooding the town. I spend my night standing amongst a crowd of various Jamestown and nearby residents from all walks of life, elementary students, teachers, retired farmers, the college baseball team and many many more in between. It is great to see the hardworking attitude of this group working together to shovel sand, fill bag, tie bags, stack bags and get them ready to build walls and fight the flood. Tomorrow is my birthday, and I will gladly spend it teaching Jamestown youth about art, and then bagging sand to make sure Jamestown (the city that supports me) survives. 'The Buffalo City' is a town worth saving and the people are working hard to keep it safe, are the very reasons Jamestown is worth saving in the first place.

Back to work.

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