If she had the proper words to say,

(If we were at home, I'd be doing a search online for the best news article about this subject and linking it in my post. However, since we're still here in West Virginia, I'm going to pretend that I don't know how to make links...)

Hi. The national news story about the painting of Jesus right outside the door of the school office? That's our (mine and Philip's) high school - Bridgeport High School, here in Bridgeport, West Virginia. I caught a glimpse of it a few weeks ago on one of the national news channels, but new developments are playing almost nightly here, now that we're back in the area.

When my mom brought me to enroll in BHS on February 1, 1995, I noticed the painting right away as something that would NEVER be allowed to display so prominently in my old school in Texas (Nacogdoches High School, for those of you playing the home game). Still, the painting is a gorgeous one, and it was kind of neat, I thought. I never had any feeling that our principal, assistant principal, or secretary was deeply religious, so I wondered why the painting was kept.

In my senior year, a classmate of mine, Micah Wedemeyer, began to make a real stink about the painting. He and I spoke often, having many classes together, and he'd mentioned to me the year before in Trigonometry that he was thinking of bringing the issue up in hopes of retaliating against our Assistant Principal Mr. Romeo and getting him fired. I didn't hear another word of it that year, so I thought Micah had dropped the idea. However, an altercation happened between he and Mr. Romeo our senior year, and I was irritated when he followed through with his "plan." No, Mr. Romeo was not fired, but the seed had been planted. Still, when Philip and I graduated in May of 1998, the painting was still firmly mounted on the wall.

I'm sure if you ran of search on the story right now, you'd quickly find that four men here in Bridgeport are the vocal force behind removing the painting from the school right now. The primary voice of these men is a man named Gerald Wedemeyer - Micah's father. I guess what floors me the most is that an issue that began over nine years ago (since Micah mentioned it to me in our junior year) as nothing more than a way to fire back at the administration is still steaming ahead. Micah - by far, the most vociferous atheist I've yet known - even told me himself that the painting didn't bother him in the least. He only used the painting as a means to achieve his own ends.

Curious and curiouser, he explained to me his full name: Micah Abraham Zebulon Wedemeyer. Look at all those Biblical names!

Maybe we'll stop by the school and see if we can get a glimpse of the now-famous painting one more time before it is - inevitably - removed from the halls of BHS.