Today we recover from a 12-hour day of moving the exhibit across the state. It began at 7:30 am with the key lockbox at UHaul frozen shut. My husband had just been on an 18-day expedition in the Sea of Cortez, working from dawn to dusk on the water, flew home to a three-hour time difference PLUS Daylight Savings Time, loaded up new portraits at the Paint Factory in howling cold winds, and now we stood at a frozen lockbox.

It is extremely rare that my husband loses his temper, but pity the lockbox that is present when he does.

Two hours later we were loading the exhibit at the Holyoke Mall and completed before their opening time of 11 am, only to have to wait to install at South Shore Plaza AFTER their closing time at 6. It was a sweet ending to Holyoke, though, because even in the dim light of pre-opening, two people were standing and reading the essays in the silence.

We meandered across the state with the distraction of friends, food, and coffee, and arrived in Braintree just before 5. What we found stunned us. A packed parking lot, hundreds of people going in and out–families, mobs of teens, couples, babies, wheelchairs. I stood at the proposed exhibit site and watched all the activity around me. I hadn’t been here since I was in my twenties and I had no idea how busy it was.

For the first time in quite a while Iain and I had help! Friend and Ocean Alliance board member Jeff Kunz swooped in and did the heavy lifting with Iain:

So today South Shore Plaza has a new exhibit at the head of the Nordstrom Wing, just inside the entrance next to California Pizza Kitchen. NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) South Shore has provided brochures about their support groups in the area, and we continue to promote the mental health awareness and suicide prevention work of The NAN Project in high schools around Massachusetts.

A huge thank you to the Simon Corporation for continuing to host us, to Jeff for the welcome help, and to Iain for everything else. You can rest now.

To make a tax-deductible contribution towards the transport of I Am More exhibits to future public spaces go the the Ocean Alliance donation page and choose I Am More from the list of programs. Thank you for your support!