Suzanne's Mom's Blog

I hope you’ll enjoy these photos and some explanations. The only one I didn’t take myself is the photograph of a dime.

Here’s the story of that. A couple days after the temporary ban on travelers from seven countries was announced, the teacher in a refugee ESL class where I volunteer was teaching about money — what different coins and bills are worth, whose picture is on them, what the words say, and so on. On her big video screen, she pointed out the phrase gracing the dime, “E Pluribus Unum,” and since I’d had Latin, I translated it as “Out of Many, One.” Sure did seem timely.

The sign from the January Women’s March was on a neighbor’s fence. The unprepossessing gray house, we recently discovered, was a Norwegian church in the 1800s. My husband had been telling his coffee group that he saw a sign by the Concord Post Office that said “Parking for Norwegians Only,” and someone told him, “Probably has something to do with the Norwegian church that used to be on Lang Street.” A Norwegian church was on Lang Street? That was a surprise!

The angry sky and the pictures of lichen need no explanation. The frosted window was taken last Friday, after our big storm.

The Frida Kahlo portrait was painted on a wall in the parking lot of Dorcas International, a refugee resettlement center in Providence.