I-Wish-I-Could-Draw Graphic Memoir, School Segment

Awareness of the outside worlds. One small step, 56 years today. Also Apollo-Soyuz, 50 years ago last week. General perspective, “Leonov surprised his U.S. counterparts with squeeze tubes labeled as containing vodka — in reality, they were filled with borscht (cold beet soup). ‘The best part of a good dinner is not what you eat, but with whom you eat,1 said Leonov.” Space.com: The Apollo–Soyuz Legacy Lives On, Fifty Years Later, Pearlman, July 17, 2025. Engineering perspective, “While the Space Race saw the two counties approach spaceflight as a competition, from this point on, it would largely be treated as a collaborative endeavour.” Hackaday: 50 years after a historic handshake in space, the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project’s legacy still resonates, Nardi, July 17 2025.

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Legend

First color square, NYC

Top, Stephen Wise. Nursery school. A synagogue school, so I got to celebrate both Hanukkah & Christmas. Colors: It may have official colors, but what I remember is a stone building with a red door.

Middle, St. Hilda’s & St, Hugh’s. Kindergarten thru 8th grade. My first nine years of education were in a small, high-pressure school run by conservative nuns. That’s gonna leave a mark. Colors: Internet says the colors are blue and white. When I was there, the colors were navy and gold. To this day, I prefer not to wear navy blue. To get the color here, I simply moved the widget until my stomach said, yup that one.

Bottom, Bronx High School of Science. After 8th grade, we all scattered to various magnet high schools. I took honors geometry and ran track. The start of high school was huge, and new, and temporary. Colors: Green & yellow. The orange bar is for my commute on the D train. I used to do my math homework.

Second color square, DC

Bottom left, Western Junior High School. Moved in the middle of 9th grade. From the city to the suburbs. From high school back to junior high. If there’s a fork in my road, that’s the big one. Colors: It is now Westland, history does not record the Western school colors and I don’t remember.

Walt Whitman High School. 10th thru 12th. It was high school. I rode a lot.

Third color square, NH

Dartmouth College. Met my husband there. Everything after age 25 was due to this choice. Big fork. Colors: “Since that time, the primary nickname for Dartmouth teams, again never officially adopted, has been the “Big Green.” D Sports: The “Big Green” Nickname.

Fourth color square, Misc Adult Classes

Inner square, Duke. Middle, UAB. Outer, U Chicago Graham School. Do you notice that the farther back the school, the more I am willing to talk about it? For a clever person, I don’t have the fondest memories of my school years. [Schadenfreude Saturday, My Pain Is Your Amusement]

Interstitial black & white squares

I leave these as an exercise for the reader.

Premise

I love graphic novels. Unfortunately, it is an admiration that is not returned. This project is to see what I can do for a graphic memoir without being able to draw.

Influences. In His Likeness, a dot comic that has been taken down. XKCD.

Process Notes

Official hex# colors, if given, or sampled from website, or approximated.

If I do another iteration, I will consider how to incorporate the information into the images. Caption boxes underneath? Stylized lettering within the boxes? A combination?

Some text appeared previously. [Life in Seven States, Or Seven State-Like Entities]

Onwards!
Katherine