Miles 25 & 26: Emphasis. Change. We Are Nashville

Well, I know this looks an awful lot like Mile 24, but I just couldn’t bring myself to paint over it. Maybe there was a reason I haven’t painted the last two miles in the past few weeks (I thought I was just being lazy. or was scared to finish). It hit me today that I should combine miles 24, 25, and 26 as a tribute to my flooded Nashville.

The design principle for Mile 25 was EMPHASIS. The assignment was to paint a word or phrase that reflected something that needed more emphasis in my life. Since the floods of the past weekend, I think we are all realizing we need to emphasize each other right now. We need to provide money and time to those who lost everything to the waters. We need to stand up together to rebuild this great city of ours. We are Nashville. So that’s my phrase for the emphasis mile. The letters were cut out of cardboard that was soaked from the floodwaters in my basement. What was wet and ruined is now dry and beautiful. We can do the same for our city.

In Mile 26, the finish line mile, we were to paint the change we wish to create. I want to change this city into what it was last week, but with stronger, more unified citizens. I want Nashville to be like the one in my painting. So I couldn’t paint over it. My mile 24 IS my mile 26. Some tragic things happened in between the two, but we’ll come back strong. We Are Nashville.