Items

• 
  2020-03-22

  Travelers Nevertheless

  Faced with the impossibility of international travel during the COVID-19 pandemic, my family embarked on an unplanned intrastate adventure that led to a deeper appreciation for the city of Los Angeles and for family members that call that city home. Along with posing serious day-to-day challenges, the pandemic created opportunities for new relationships with people and places.
• 
  2022-07-12

  Email to project coordinator of SMhopes

  I hope Santa Monica will use its resources to clean up the streets from urine and feces instead of covering it up with art. A good power wash plus a lawsuit against LA county for wasting our tax money that was supposed to go to affordable housing would make me much happier than beautiful art in a smelly street. COVID made this worse. Art won't make it better. Please do something. Anything.
• 
  2022-07-21

  SMhopes and the Big Blue Bus

  Through a grant from the City of Santa Monica Cultural Affairs Department program, Art of Recovery, artist Paula Goldman designed five banners based on uploads to the project call page on this website, SMhopes: an Archive of Hopes and Dreams. The banners will run on Santa Monica's Big Blue Bus transit system for the month of July, 2022.
• 
  2022-04-12

  VAP and SMhopes #30

  I wish that in the future I would have a trillion dollars; I wish the animal the Phoenix would still exist; I wish I had a gingerbread house; I wish I had another cat.
• 
  2022-04-12

  VAP and SMhopes #29

  I hope the future has more nature, and animals can talk. (The bulldozer is tearing down buildings, and the animals are attacking, to make more room for nature.)
• 
  2022-04-12

  VAP and SMhopes #28

  Help the Earth! We want Covid to end! Stop littering! Stop fires! Stop capturing animals! Stop wasting! Stop cutting trees!
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  2022-04-12

  VAP and SMhopes #27

  I hope I will have a house that can make dinosaurs and more trees, and no fire.
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  2022-04-12

  VAP and SMhopes #26

  I hope the world turns to chocolate and I hope the world is eatable.
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  2022-04-12

  VAP and SMhopes #25

  There will be shoes with fire shooting out of them in the future.
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  2022-04-12

  VAP and SMhopes #24

  Back to the future
• 
  2022-04-12

  VAP and SMhopes #23

  Me: We can help the earth. Diego: We can save earth.
• 
  2022-04-12

  VAP and SMhopes #22

  I hope for a cleaner world
• 
  2022-04-12

  VAP and SMhopes #21

  Technology will take over the World!
• 
  2022-04-12

  VAP and SMhopes #20

  There will be roads connecting buildings in the sky and over water.
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  2022-04-12

  VAP and SMhopes #19

  More nature
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  2022-04-12

  VAP and SMhopes #18

  End world pollution
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  2022-04-12

  VAP and SMhopes #17

  In the future I want to be a singer and an artist
• 
  2022-04-12

  VAP and SMhopes #16

  World peace is one project that we all have to do together!
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  2022-04-12

  VAP and SMhopes #15

  I think that the world can be a better place.
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  2022-04-12

  VAP and SMhopes #13

  In the future, the world will be clean, with no germs.
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  2022-04-12

  VAP and SMhopes #12

  In the future I want to be a baseball player.
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  2022-04-12

  VAP and SMhopes #11

  Yo quiero ser un jugador de fútbol
• 
  2022-04-12

  VAP and SMhopes #10

  No taxes, no Roblox, no homework, no veggies, no pollution. Edgar will be President and I will be Vice President
• 
  2022-04-12

  VAP and SMhopes #9

  Ser el jugador, estrella de todo el mundo.
• 
  2022-04-12

  VAP and SMhopes #8

  I hope that in the future I am a gajillionaire and the world will have high tech cars, machines, etc. All humans will be smart so schools will not exist! I also hope that people will live forever, but that will also mean that people cannot have babies. Which means that we cannot reproduce because the world would be over populated. The world will also have a high technology system named "Operation Last Long" which will allow us to survive when the Sun eats Earth, which will be kind of cool because we will be living inside the Sun. The sight would be cool and I'd be very fortunate to not be melting! But before that happens life will be extraordinary! All food will be brought to the next level! Everybody will have super powers too! And Magic will finally exist! With infinite land, space and etc. with infinite money too! Because then everyone will be gajillionaires! So there will be no homeless people and no one will suffer from financial problems.
• 
  2022-04-12

  VAP and SMhopes #7

  Santa Monica is the future
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  2022-04-12

  VAP and SMhopes #6

  20 years in the future
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  2022-04-12

  VAP and SMhopes #5

  All these eyes will help for seeing things better. Or if you're getting attacked these eyes will help you dodge or more.
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  2022-04-12

  VAP and SMhopes #4

  No more people = no more pollution; it's the truth
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  2022-04-12

  VAP and SMhopes #3

  No violence in the world
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  2022-04-12

  VAP and SMhopes #2

  Let's celebrate our differences
• 
  2022-04-12

  VAP and SMhopes #1

  I wish that I turned into the Flash,
• 
  2022-04-12

  SMhopes and Civic Wellbeing Partners

  Using a grant from Civic Wellbeing Partners in Santa Monica, teachers at the Virginia Avenue Park Spring Camp program asked their students, from grades 1 through 8, to envision their hopes for the future. The students responded with drawings (and one story). Facilitated by artist Paula Goldman as part of SMhopes, the students were also asked to rank how happy they were with their lives now, and how they view their future prospects, two indicators of well being.
• 
  0002-03-01

  SMhopes at the SMPL Teen Lounge

  A variety of submissions to the SMhopes website, designed as posters and banners by Paula Goldman, and installed in the Teen Lounge at the main branch of the Santa Monica Public Library. The Library asked for a variety of hopeful messages as they begin having students visit the Teen Lounge again.
• 
  2021-08-28

  End of pitching in

  At the beginning it was different. April and May of 2020 was not the later, divisive and hate-filled environment that would allow the Covid virus to flourish, not the largely “every-man-for-himself” climate whose popularity grew to mirror the surge of the pandemic itself. Back then, everyone was hunkering down, the streets were empty, and Santa Monica was more like the city I had seen in pictures from the 1940's. The light even seemed different. Despite the specter of certain death, or at least alongside it, was an almost relaxed feeling: we were all in this together, against a common (if mysteriously deadly) enemy, and there is nothing we could do. Well, except stay indoors, and avoid contact with other humans at all costs. I know that during WWII, Santa Monica hummed with activity, with defense plants working three shifts, and Clover Field roaring with warbird take offs and landings almost continuously, and in the Spring of 2020, Santa Monica was still largely of the “we did it once, we'll do it again” mindset—everyone had a job to do, and it was actually an easy one: all you had to do was to keep to yourself. Loose lips may not sink ships anymore, but uncovered ones (especially in public) could spew a deadly toxin—the origins and makeup of it almost completely unknown—and leave devastation in its wake. This feeling couldn't, and wouldn't, last long; humans being what they are. With a national figurehead in a leadership position that was unable to understand complexities, and that largely and specifically promoted failure, the home front grew distrustful of the concept of a “common good”. Citizens quickly grew weary of making sacrifices, of doing without the niceties to which they had become accustomed. Under the guise of individual freedoms, all suffered. “It will all just go away very soon”, we were told, and eventually it did. Not the disease. Our American way of life.
• 
  2021-11-09

  SMhopes banner with Santa Monica Public Library

  Graphic banner made from a submission to #SMhopes by Roxane D., a Fifth Grade student in Paula Flynn's class at Franklin Elementary School in Santa Monica, CA. In cooperation with Santa Monica Public Library, at the historic Ocean Park Branch on Main Street and Ocean Park.
• 
  2021-06-01

  SMhopes banners with Community Corp

  Graphic banners from submissions to #SMhopes on the Journal of the Plague Year website, in cooperation with the Community Corporation of Santa Monica, at 3031 Santa Monica Blvd. in Santa Monica, CA
• 
  2021-08-11

  Hoping for herd immunity

  During covid my wife and I feel we are very lucky to be senior citizens. We are able to stay at home for long periods of time. We were able to get vaccinated early. We do not have to worry about our jobs or businesses. Our children are grown up, safe and vaccinated. We were able to have time to cook and clean our house ourselves. We watched with horror as people who could not get vaccinated died. Then we watched with horror as people who were able to get vaccinated and chose not to, died unnecessarily, whether for political reasons, fear, or misguided individualism. We grew up with many vaccinations. I made a list -- smallpox, measles, mumps, german measles, diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus, polio, pneumonia, seasonal flu, shingles, also yellow fever (required in 70s) and cholera for traveling. It is astounding to me how a percentage of our population does not get vaccinated. Some of the military has apparently declined covid vaccination, but 100%of them received a mandatory batch of vaccines when they enlisted – it is difficult to understand that logic. My hope for the future is that we can get to 80% covid vaccinated in the USA. Experts speculate that may be the herd immunity threshold. More hopes are that the rich western world can vaccinate the poor parts of the world quickly to save lives there and to prevent newer covid mutations. And final hopes are that we can fully return to the full life we so enjoyed in Santa Monica before covid.
• 
  2021-08-10

  Resilience, Hope, and Turbulent Waters: have we learned?

  I’m torn. I see resilience and hope: Resilience of so many in societies across the world who reconfigured their everyday lives to attempt to keep the virus at bay and hope swept in largely by Biden and his competent army of experienced workers who believe in the power of government to be a positive and unifying agent of change. But, we have a troubled world with a geopolitical climate and an environmental climate pushing us into turbulent waters. I’m torn because I have seen the virus pull us together as a community of pods and isolate us from one another. My hope and dream? That we learn from this Covid journey to do better with the other crises bearing down on us. That each of us take up individually and as a community the challenge to address climate change now in our homes, in our daily tasks, in the way we function in our communities, and at the ballot box.
• 
  2021

  Six Room Poem, Franklin Elementary

  Paula Flynn's 5th grade class at Franklin Elementary School, in Santa Monica, CA. "Six Room Poem" template provided by Paula Goodman.
• 
  2020

  Lincoln Middle School, prompt "My Post COVID Hopes and Dreams"

  Assignment given to Lincoln Middle School seventh grade students. Prompt provided by Paula Goodman, class taught by Sara Greenfield.
• 
  2021-07-10

  Moving on

  I am hoping that the divisiveness of the last few years will go away. People no longer disagree, they attribute negative intentions and even criminality to anyone who thinks differently than they do. We all live in the same city. We need to pull together not tear each other down. We need to hold each other up and stop all the "us" and "them". We are Santa Monica.
• 
  2021-07-21

  Hope Love Heal

  “Hope Love Heal” is a series of 30 separate artworks. Each mail art piece was made with the hope that it would inspire the recipient to seek out mental health care as one way of dealing with the pandemic. Each artwork was hand made with love.
• 
  2021-07-12

  SMhopes banners

  These banners were made from submissions to the #SMhopes call on this site, and displayed around the City of Santa Monica in the Spring and Summer of 2021. Designed by Paula Goldman and supported by a grant from Art of Recovery, an initiative of Santa Monica Cultural Affairs.
• 
  2021-07-05

  Gonna Dolly Myself Up

  For the past year, I cycled in and out of a few uniforms. At the start of the pandemic, when the weather was warm, I wore a simple, roomy, tan linen dress that could have fit in at a nice restaurant for lunch, if I'd dressed it up with accessories. A chic friend recommended it over a Zoom call as her Amazon "find". During a year of lock-down, it became more of a "housecoat" than a chic dress and I wore it a lot, usually barefoot. If I wasn't wearing the tan housecoat, I wore the green or black one. (I'd bought three at my friend's exuberant recommendation.) As the weather changed, oversize jeans (my husband's hand-me-down) and my favorite navy sweatshirt from Paris became my go-to. This outfit coincided with learning how to clean the house (nobody was allowed to come inside, not even our cleaning ladies). I got a bleach stain on the sweatshirt and eventually a hole formed at the elbow. It's still my favorite. Another pair of loose jeans and a couple of other sweatshirts bought on Amazon got me through the rest of the winter. Socks were usually all I put on my feet. The weather is warming up and I've started shopping again, in-person! I've bought a few wide-brimmed hats, a couple of skirts, and even a silk blouse. I'm eyeing some nice sandals. I won't be cleaning the bathrooms in these new clothes. I'll be wearing them out to museums, to lunches with friends, to dinners on new outdoor dining patios, and maybe even on airplanes. I'll be mixing and matching, accessorizing, dolling up and down. When I'm home, though, I'll be back in my uniforms. I've grown to love them.
• 
  2021-05-10

  Universal Hopes

  This work was done as an assignment for Paula Flynn's Fifth Grade class at Franklin Elementary, in Santa Monica, CA. Hogwarts soaring above my head, the ecstatic Harry Potter fans walking around, amazed seeing their favorite book come alive. Hagrid’s roller coaster, and the long-but worth it 4 hour line to ultimate Harry potter ride The sunlight shining down on Hogsmeade, the fake snow shining bright The sound of chattering people, and the whoosh of the rides The excitement bubbling up inside me, this is my dream, being in Hogwarts When can I go back?
• 
  2021-05-22

  POST-PANDEMIC IDENTITY

  See file uploaded "Post-Pandemic Vision"
• 
  2021-05-19

  New Dawn, New Day

  Nina Simone’s iconic version of "Feeling Good" plays as I put the last touches on my final painting for the We Rise L.A. project. Nina sings: “It's a new dawn It's a new day It's a new life For me And I'm feeling good I'm feeling good” My gouache (opaque watercolor) and ink artworks on paper, explore morning light, morning life, and the hope engendered by the dawn of a new day. Sourced from my memories of travel, these paintings reflect morning journeys, rituals, and routines. This series was created in partnership with We Rise LA for Mental Health Awareness and 18th Street Arts. My 41 works of art were created as messages of hope, beauty, wellbeing, and self-compassion. Nina sings: “Oh, freedom is mine And I know how I feel It's a new dawn It's a new day It's a new life”
• 2021-05-03

  Hope for a normal life

  This was written as an assignment for Paula Flynn's fifth grade class at Franklin Elementary School in Santa Monica, CA. I hope that after covid i can live my normal school, spring, fall, winter, and summer life including: playing with my friends, doing sleepovers, going to the beach/playground, eating at a restaurant with no mask, summer camps.
• 2021-05-03

  Vaccines for the world

  This was written as an assignment for Paula Flynn's fifth grade class at Franklin Elementary School in Santa Monica, CA. I dream for Covid to end and for everyone to be given the vaccine. The world has taken a heavy hit from covid and I know that we can come back from it. Covid has affected many people from around the world. I hope that we are able to all stay safe during this pandemic.