Back in mid-March, when we were first given the stay-at-home order by our governor, I felt the need to do something to lift the spirits of my neighbors in some way. My neighbor Chris and I had long had a plan to use something called Rainworks (link here to see what Rainworks is) to leave fun messages on the sidewalks of our town. Two (three?) years ago Chris bought us each a kit to get started on our messages, but we just never got around to doing it. When lock down started, I texted Chris and said, “Let’s do the Rainworks messages! Now!” and he responded, “Yes. Yes. 1000 x Yes!!!”
The problem is, it turns out that making a Rainworks message is kind of tricky. You have to cut a stencil out of cardboard and then spray it carefully so that the letters are distinct and don’t bleed. My first two efforts turned out to be unintelligible blobs. I lost momentum at that point, but neighbor Chris saved the day by buying two large buckets of chalk for us to chalk our messages around the neighborhood instead. After that I was hooked. A couple of chalking adventures in the neighborhood later, I decided to stay closer to home, writing a new message every morning on the sidewalk in front of my house. Every night I go out and wash the old message down.
I’m not sure how long I’ll carry on with my messages. Our governor is set to start gradually re-opening Ohio on May 1, but I’m not even sure what that means (and he won’t be revealing what that means until next Monday). My workplace will start to gradually go back to normal operations on May 4, but we haven’t been told yet what that will mean. I may be working remotely at least some of the time well into June. So, we’ll see. All I know is tomorrow is Arbor Day, and I hope the rain lets up by morning so that I can get out there and draw a tree.
