Maria very wants to do something, like so many people of conscience this week. She has found her way, and as usual, it is unique and compelling.

Some of Maria’s art has had a social activist edge to it at times – empowerment, voice, feminism, compassion. She is not looking to be a political artist, but an artist whose work has meaning.

She just sent another fiber quote off to the Tiny Pricks Project, which is using fiber art to create a material record of the quotees of the Trump Presidency.

Diana Weymar is an artist and social activist from British Columbia. Her work speaks to the power of art to put life into context, and challenge us to do the same. When I read all of this quote, I see just how much damage words can cause, even without rifles and machine guns.

On Jan. 8th, 2018, Diana Waymar stitched her first quote from President Trump – “I am a very stable genius” into a piece of her grandmother’s abandoned needlework from the 1960s and posted it on Instagram.

She called her project the Tiny Pricks Project, and it has become one of the largest textile protests in history, it now has 700 tiny pricks contributed by artists all over the world, including Maria. Weymar travels all over the country with her growing quilt, communicating with artists by e-mail and text messaging.

This embroidery is Maria’s second contribution to the Tiny Pricks Project; it was spoken by Presidential Candidate Beto O’Rourke.

She wrote a thoughtful piece last night on her blog about words and responsibility, an issue I have often written about.

The President says a lot, much of it cruel and demeaning, but he does not ever take any responsibility for the things he says. Critics say he knows just what he is doing, but I’m not so sure. He seems to me to be utterly unaware of the power of his words.  He seems to reject the idea that as a powerful leader, he needs to be a moral one. So do his supporters.

It is a very familiar male thing to deny any wrongdoing or to never acknowledge fault for the words they use.

I can’t say whether or not the President is a racist.

I can see quite clearly that many of his statements and policies are racist beyond doubt, and destructive to the character of our country, just as O’Rourke said.

It doesn’t matter to me what he is; it matters more to me what he does. I am responsible for my words; I put my name on everything that I write and stand behind it.

When I began my blog, I promised myself I would challenge the angry and cruel people who have turned the public spaces of the Internet into a cesspool of hostility.

I resolved to challenge them at every opportunity.

This decision has upset some of my followers; they claim it is wrong – a kind of bullying – for me to respond to these people when they surface in my world.

They say I am more powerful than my angry hornets online; therefore, I should accept hostility as a kind of toll for being out there.

I don’t agree, and will not likely ever agree to be silent in that way.

I am responsible for what I write, the people who write to me and post public messages are responsible for what their words as well. Just as I am rightfully held responsible for what I write, so are the people who cannot talk to me in a civil way.

I won’t support cruelty and hostility online; it is a significant threat to free speech and open minds.

As it is, there are few of those in the world of the left and the right.

I am responsible for my words, good or bad, and so are the people who write to me, or about me. I welcome and enjoy disagreement; I get a lot of it. But I will challenge hostile and intrusive people whenever I get the chance.

Sadly, if people messaged me in the way President Trump uses his social media, I would challenge then and ban them in a heartbeat. I would never use this forum in the way the President uses his, to assault and humiliate people. Talk about abusing power and bullying.

It’ a stain on our national honor and pride for our national leader to do the very same thing mindless 17-year-old trolls do every hour of every day.

So good for Maria, the Tiny Pricks Project is already a powerful testament to the place we have entered as a country. And the reason we will get our American Dream back one day.