Welcome to “With These Hands,” a project created by Erin Murphy, 2026-27 Penn State Laureate.
Instructions
- Brainstorm a list of jobs held by your parents, grandparents, or other family members or friends. These can be jobs inside or outside the home.
- Now choose one from the list and brainstorm everything you know or remember about this person’s job.
- Location? Time period? Duties? Uniform? Stories they told about work? Your memories of them?
- Now pretend you are that person.
- Write a line that begins: “With these hands I…”
- Send your line by completing and submitting the form below.
Hints
- Be as specific as possible.
- Try incorporating craft (repeated sounds, surprising verbs, comparisons, showing instead of telling).
Examples
- With these hands I clacked cash register keys at the Birney Ave. A&P when bananas were twelve cents a pound.
- With these hands I drove railroad ties into frozen Appalachian soil.
- With these hands I sloshed cups of extra broth into chicken & rice soup to stretch meals between paychecks.
- With these hands I felt the pulse of fellow soldiers fade like the sun beyond the Saigon River’s hazy basin.
- With these hands I plucked heavenly hymns on the harp for hundreds of weddings and funerals, including my father’s.