Ellen’s Work Blog
December 2025
I am having so much fun helping address envelopes for our annual appeal. It is the one time of year I get to slip back in time, thinking about all of you who support AMP. Some are recent donors I have yet to meet, while others have been helping us out for a decade or two.
It is the perfect time of year to appreciate what all this means. I remember early days of working hard to translate my idea for the mural project to others without much visual aid. Instead, our future home for AMP was a cavernous basement space in an old mill, pitch dark and full of water. My description of a future five-story high, three-dimensional work of art was a pretty hard sell. And to suggest to most audiences that this installation, once complete, would spur subsequent ideas for all sorts of kids' programming and live events for all of us bordered on the absurd.
Sometimes it happens that you have to plunge ahead with a tiny group who believe in your giant idea. And once on a roll, momentum builds in its favor. But it is ALWAYS the people behind the effort who make it happen. The small group grows and the power and impact grows with it.
In the end, it is all of you who sensed this big idea could be our present reality.
More than anything, this giant tribute to American workers is about community. We are all in this together.
