failure | reverse threading

December 22, 2025
by kerrisherwood11 1 Comment

the ultimate failure. [kerri’s blog on merely-a-thought monday]

friday, december 12, 2025. too many.

another. and another. they statistically stack up, these school shooting victims, the children – children – who have died at the hand of a lethal shooter with a gun.

it is beyond comprehension.

and it has become the norm.

all the empty rooms was released on december 1. we watched it a couple days after its release. the trailer alone had made me weep, so i was aware ahead of time that it would be gut-wrenching.

steve hartman is a reporter who has often been sent to the site of the innumerable number of school shootings that happen in this country. over the past 30 years, he has attempted to help the viewers “stay optimistic”. pushing back against whitewashing these horrific acts – against simply finding something of goodness in something so heinous – he decided to do something different.

he and photographer lou bopp went to eight homes where they photographed the bedrooms that used to belong to school-shooting victims. the short documentary depicts three of these bedrooms. every nook, every cranny, every tiny nuance. not wanting any semblance of their child to disappear – the trinkets, the scent, the aura, the essence – parents have kept the room the way their child left it – on their very last day on this earth – perhaps to – desperately – try and feel their child once again.

the colorful rubber hair ties wrapped around the doorknob did me in.

because there are two bobby pins on the old desk side table next to the couch in the living room, left there by my daughter in 2019 which i dust and place back, to feel her there. she – thankfully – is very much alive and well.

but those colorful rubber hair ties – elastics of a little girl killed by a school shooter.

if you aren’t already aghast, it should not take any more than this to stop you in your tracks.

and i agree with steve: “i wish that we could transport all americans to stand in one of those bedrooms for just a few minutes. we’d be a different america.”

though i now have my doubts about the morality of some americans – even if they watched this profound short – i hope that steve’s words – his if-this-then-that antecedent-consequent trigger-action conditional statement – would be true.

and though i now have my doubts about the government of this country – the government that has not protected the children of this nation – the government that has panted over the second amendment – the government that has lost itself in big lobby money and corruption – i would hope that steve’s words could be true.

and so, instead of zealously lusting over guns, we – as a country united by broken hearts – would raise up – value above all else – the safety of our children. every single one of them.

december 13, 2025. too many + 2.

staggering and shameful.

the ultimate failure.

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this MERELY-A-THOUGHT MONDAY

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January 7, 2020
by kerrisherwood11 Leave a comment

winding trail. [two artists tuesday]

the road from here to there is oft not straight. the way the crow flies is irrelevant. “the only way there is through,” joan told me quite some time ago. we were talking about grief. i had lost my sweet momma and it felt brutal; at any age the loss of a parent is profound. i was talking to joan about it – about getting to the other side of the grief. and she told me that the only way there was through it. a winding trail it was, with switchbacks and no guardrails.

that has happened for me with each encounter with grief. there is nothing easy about it, nothing straight. the grief of loss, the grief of instability, the grief of anxiety, the grief of fear, the grief of insecurity, the grief of aging, the grief of failure, the grief of change, in all its rampant forms.

and yet, out hiking, winding trails are my preference. a hike that takes me past hidden-treasure-vistas, a hike where i cannot see the end from the beginning, a hike that surprises at each turn. these winding trails are gifts in the woods, in the mountains, in between red rock formations high in elevation. there is much to see, much to learn about. they are journeys of not-knowing. they are journeys of wonder, of revelation.

we are not crows; no flightpath in our lives will be straight, no endpoint clear in our sight, no one thing all the way from here to there, no vector traveled without veering a bit off-course. even reverse-threading our lives will not reveal a straight path; instead it will reveal a vast horizon of ping-ponging and circuitous route-making. we will most definitely wind around, through decisions and opportunities, missed marks and challenges at the goal line, defining and re-defining. living.

which winds me back to joan’s wise words of years ago, which i can still hear her saying. the only way from here to there is through. winding trail and all.

read DAVID’S thoughts this TWO ARTISTS TUESDAY

February 26, 2018
by kerrisherwood11 Leave a comment

chicken marsala monday #3

every summer i break one of my two little baby toes. every single summer. last summer alone i logged tons of miles on my $2 old navy flipflops as a result. i even talked about it on this blog. what did i learn? in particular, what did i learn THIS time as opposed to all the other times? i learned to either 1. slow down a little 2. watch where i’m going a tad bit more 3. never go barefoot. the thing is, i’m pretty sure it will happen again. i’m still learning.

i haven’t fallen off my bike in quite some time (and hope not to cause these days it will hurt much more than it used to) but i can relate in countless ways to our chicken marsala monday in the melange this week. i can distinctly remember taking off the training wheels and teaching the children to ride their two-wheelers, running down the sidewalk next to them. for that matter, i can totally -and (yougetthis) viscerally- remember teaching them how to drive.

we’ve been watching the olympics. athletes of inordinate ability who had to start somewhere – and, for sure, who fell in the process. not afraid of failing, but keeping on keeping on. being an ace anything is far off. do any of us ever really get there?

as an adult (ugh, i guess 58 qualifies me if for no other reason than sheer number) there are a lot of things i still want to learn. a few years ago i wanted to throw pots. i spent more than i bargained on for clay and lessons and studio time and more clay and ended up with the most wonderful tea light holder. (ok, i also threw a cereal-size-bowl and a few other assorted incredibly-shrinking-bowls as i struggled to center them and not have the clay collapse on the wheel.) let’s just say i was not gifted at this. but it did (and still does) make me laugh. and i know that i will someday try it again and i will add to my assortment of teenytinyclayobjects in which i can store paperclips.

when we see my amazing son and his boyfriend, we seem to be developing this tradition of bowling together. now, even though i live in wisconsin – and it is practically a law to be a good bowler here – i am pretty bad at bowling. every now and then i do something (like pick up a spare or get a strike) and am shocked, but most of the time i am aghast at how the ball creates splits in the pins and i find myself leaning while watching it careen (generous term) down the alley. the thing i must say, though, is that each time i do a little better. and the reallybadscores will, if i dedicate any time at all to practice, perhaps improve. mostly, i laugh. and i wish i could bring that to ANY thing i am learning – be it a new sport, an artform, a study of some philosophy or political issue, or – a big one – relationship. we fall. we get up, brush ourselves off, ask for grace and try again.

even though there are so many venues of crashing, the recording studio is a prime place to watch yourself fall down. you’ve written music, lyrics. you’ve practiced and practiced – there’s muscle memory in each measure. you’re ready, water and coffee by your side. (for me, not so much water once in the studio as it ….toomuchinformationalert…makes throat noises i can’t avoid.) and then you start. there’s so much riding on the line. and some days? some days you can’t get through a track. something is amiss; something is wrong. the first track of my first album was recorded in a studio in evanston. ken, my producer, was a stranger to me and i drove down with a posse of friends. i felt a little nervous, but mostly felt confident i was prepared. hours later, i had recorded the solo piano track for galena (the album released from the heart) and ken gave me a cassette tape (how funny is that?!) to listen to. i put it in the cassette deck of my old chrysler blue minivan and turned it on. and was appalled. rigid playing met my ears. it sounded nothing like me or my playing, or my piece of music, for that matter. all that confidence translated to a coldness, an unemotional-ness instead of a good track. i called ken (who i barely knew then, but now the same brilliant producer who has produced 14 of my 15 albums) and he suggested that, “maybe you should just write the music and have someone else play it on the recording FOR you.” what???!!! uhhh, i didn’t even know what to answer that would sound in the least bit polite.

and so i painfully listened to the recording again and sat back down at home on my bench. and i realized i needed to be ready -at any moment- to fall. THAT is what would make the piece sound like me and sound like, well, music. the rawness, the every-moment-ness, the vulnerability to mistakes and moving beyond them. that is what would make it shine as a learning. preparation is wise, flexibility is a must, a sense of humor is required, confidence is irrelevant, perseverance is utmost.

and falling down is a gift.

FALLING DOWN IS AN ESSENTIAL PART OF LEARNING MERCHANDISE