a mourning sampler

Exactly twenty years ago, while studying art in grad school, I made this piece, based on some research on  American schoolgirl embroidered samplers.  There had recently been a spate of school shootings.  At the time I was also concerned about my young son's fascination with the Power Rangers and about violence in American culture generally.

The text, taken from a historic Colonial-era sampler, reads: 

Margaret Palfrey is my name

New England is my nation

Boston is my dwelling place 

and Christ is my salvation

When I am dead and all my bones are rotten

If this you see 

Remember me

And never let me be forgotten.  

It grieves me that this sampler is as timely now as it was when I made it.  Let us neither forget nor become numb to the senseless violence.