It started during the pandemic. Everything got quiet, and not in a peaceful way. It was more like don’t-touch-anything, don’t-breathe-near-me quiet. The whole world was holding its breath, no one sure when to exhale.
I had a plain white t-shirt, bought for a tie-dye experiment. I never got to it, and the dye is still in my closet. It’s a child’s medium, nothing special. I put it on a table with some colorful markers and said to myself, “Write peace or just write something.”
The markers didn’t cooperate. They were supposed to be neat and permanent. Instead, they bled everywhere until the white shirt turned pink. That felt about right. Nothing else was staying inside the lines either.
People didn’t hesitate. They picked up a marker and wrote PEACE. English. Japanese. French. German. Hearts showed up everywhere, around the words and between them. They chose whatever felt natural.
The shirt traveled to New York. My family added their handwriting next to strangers’. People who will never meet, sharing the same small piece of fabric. When it came back, it felt full. Like it was holding more than ink.
A few years passed. Life opened up again. People stood next to each other without thinking about it. Then came All People’s Day.
I was at a community booth with a friend, representing Gallery&Studio. New shirt, this one an XL. Big enough for everyone’s opinion, which is always a bit of a gamble. I set it on the table and said, “Write anything about love, peace, or happiness.”
No hesitation. “Be kind.” “Stay strong.” “Be the light.” “Everything is possible.” “CoExist in Love.” English and Spanish. Hearts again, some small, some large, some overlapping without concern.
This was a neighborhood people had warned me about. The kind of warning that makes you look a little more closely when you arrive. And still, people walked up and wrote love. No one wrote hate. No one wrote fear. Not one.
Two shirts. Two different moments. A quiet kitchen and a busy festival. Different people, different languages, different lives. Same result.
This country was built on a gamble: that if you gave ordinary people a voice, they could be trusted with it. Two hundred and fifty years later, that gamble still feels fragile…The headlines say division, conflict, everything falling apart.
But I keep looking at those shirts and thinking: the experiment is working. Not perfectly. Not loudly. But in the places where people are free to speak without being told what to say, look what they choose. Love, kindness and hope.
I stood looking at those shirts, the small pink one and the larger white one, and it was hard not to laugh a little. Because underneath all the noise, we are one.
Maybe that’s what America the Beautiful really is. Not agreement. Not perfection. Just this: given a little space, without the noise, without being told what to think… we remember. G&S
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