Snow! Xmas card! Helpful Meatballs!

I. Meatballs & Bears

It's snowing this morning--lightly, but enough to whiten the grass.
I'm glad that last night I'd lined up a ride with Big Boss to take my hot lunch to work this morning.

Yesterday, the food shelf had a big bag of frozen Impossible Burger "meat"balls (soy, but very like ground beef), and I made so very much spaghetti and sauce, I didn't want to carry it in.
BB lives about 3 miles away--near the store, but he always drives--so I felt free to ask him to swing by.
He's good like that--will pitch in and help people move or whatnot.

Also, it turns out to be a good morning to test-print one Xmas card. Messy.
I like the bear a lot, but is it too simple? Maybe some green behind, instead of black?

I used red oil paint, which is okay but not tacky enough.
I'm mad because if I want oil-based color block-printing ink, I have to order it online. I went to Michael's and Blicks in nearby suburbs, and the art college supply store closer to me... nope.
And that's it--the other big art-supply stores have closed.

I just checked, and the shipping cost is more than the price of a small tube. So oil paint it is. Or hand painting!

II. Surfing the Chaos.

I'd rebounded emotionally enough from the election to read the Economist issue last night on "what to expect".
I LOVE their tone-- never hysterical, they say things like,
"So-and-so worked for the KGB. This is worrisome."
I can take that in.

I live in such a liberal area, the election results feel unreal.
This sign a few blocks away shows results (I'm not sure if they're for  the neighborhood or the whole city, but they'll be similar):

But we remember in our bodies how it went last time. Up close and personal, Covid, Black Lives Matter. And plenty more remote events that still impacted like body blows.
You know.

In our homes, a mile from George Floyd Square, we breathed in the acrid smoke of burning auto-parts; lying in bed, we heard the helicopters overhead.
Walking down the street, we saw the National Guard standing with machine guns...
(I was living a mile the other direction that year--same difference.)
This wasn't directly down to Trump, but it reflects his world of chaos and force.

I dread a repeat, but I'm going to focus on getting better at surfing the chaos. I'm grateful I'm in a good workplace to do that.
Make lunch!

Find the Good, and Praise It.

I accidentally hit the Photo Booth icon on my laptop this morning, and it showed me this person: 

Me! looking like I could be a silver-hair model for designer Gudrun Sjoden...      

        LOL 😂 (This is a fluke of Morning Hair, I promise.)

 Sjoden, below, second from right.
Her stuff is nice, though beyond my price (though not insanely expensive, as nice fashion goes (a turtleneck is $68, corduroy pants $118).
Her drapey styles look best on tall people (not me).

I must stop saying things like, "I like Physics best."
There are so many things I like "best"--many varieties of wisdoms!
Like, Find the Good, and Praise It.

Another favorite is the Jewish concept Tikkun Olam--Mend the World. Or repair/ heal... its popular modern meaning. (Historically it has other meanings.)

Here, an artist friend I reconnected with this fall, Anita White, uses "Tikkun Olam" to illustrate/advertise SOUP FOR YOU---serving free hot soups, with salad and dessert, for anyone, every weekday in a church a couple miles from the thrift store.

Anita's motto is, ""Nothing is so scary you can' t draw it!"

Soup for You! was started by Chef Judah:

"Born in the ghetto of Tunis, an Arab/Jewish child of a Holocaust survivor, Chef Judah was orphaned at an early age and became a child beggar.

“I was hungry the first 8 years of my life” says Chef Judah. Thankfully, he was adopted and brought to America as an immigrant/refugee... More than 40 year ago, he landed in Minneapolis, where he experienced homelessness and hunger once again.

“I was a troll and lived underneath the Franklin Ave Bridge, for an entire year.”
After surviving the streets, Chef Judah found himself at St. Martin’s Table, a non-profit café and bookstore. For the next 15 years, he honed his skills there in global vegetarian soup making."

I would like to meet him! I must go for lunch one day.

A couple good things I saw online:

I didn't love the book The Salt Path, but the movie looks promising--to be released in April 2025:

Another women's march after the 2nd inauguration of DT, this time called a People's March:

And, I want to read her book, Orbital, about a day above Earth:

Finally—not from online—bink taking the new bears out to see the world, as they requested a Grand Tour. Here in the bird sanctuary by lake Harriet, a mile from my apartment:

Off to work now.

May your hair look good or other good things come to you today!

Small Sparkle Sunday

Just a quick hello, this Sunday morning.
I felt better after a walk yesterday and started to decorate my apartment for winter holidays
. . . with help!

They all want holiday outfits too.
I like to decorate, and I'm extra motivated this year because I want it to be sparkly for Marz's stay over Christmas, but I'm slow. No magic transformation in an afternoon---it's more like putting out a few trinkets, sitting down to admire them, and declaring it a day.

Penny Cooper just chimed in that one ornament does transform a room. And she's right.

bink's coming over soon---I'm going to try no-white-sugar banana oatmeal pancakes--in this recipe you mix in the blender
banana, eggs, oats, almond milk, cinnamon, vanilla, baking powder.

Plenty of sweet in that--if I were actually diabetic, even too much.
I know this is all predictable, boring to hear about, even? but I am shocked to look back at how much processed sugar I was eating all my adult life.
Ketchup!
The other day I thought I'd treat myself to French fries, and then realized I couldn't have ketchup, so then I didn't even want them.
Turns out I only liked them if they were sugar conveyors.
You know.

But it's going well, at four weeks. I'm just starting to look at sugars that occur naturally in foods, like bananas and oats.
But I do NOT want to freak myself out with too much change, too fast. That can backfire, I know very, very well.

So, that's it for now. Sparkle on!

Shiny at the Store

Bears in the thrift store's parking lot, excited to be GOING HOME yesterday!
Marz named the bears Abbott (taller, paler) and Costello (littler, dark one). They are to be given baths today.

That's the bike pannier ^ I transport soup in, which Ceci had asked about. I put the soup in ziplock plastic bags.
It's not even 4 p.m., but look at how low the sun is, throwing shadows on a slant.

As I left work, I took this photo, below, to show one of the Super Volunteers, Marc, how the glassware he'd shined (wiping every smudgy glass with a cloth!) glows in the setting sun.
I also like the customer's fashion. Are those Crocs?

BELOW: Earlier, I'd helped Jester (aka, Mr Mushroom or Grateful-J) price artificial Xmas trees ($25–$40). You can see some in the mirror, behind us.

Jester is assistant manager now. He is truly an ally in kaizen--continuous improvement, often slow and small. It adds up big time! Staff morale is way up too.

Below is the housewares improvement I'm most proud of:
I stood the big glass plates in racks.
They'd always been stacked flat in piles before. If you wanted to look at them, you had to sit on the ground and unstack them. Which almost no one did, of course.

     Genius, huh?

________________

I hadn't mentioned because it didn't affect me, but the guy who worked in Housewares for a short time before me was fired for  stealing.
Turns out it wasn't just flagrant theft though. Yesterday I found a stash of vintage goods he'd priced low and hid away with his name on them.
I repriced the dishware and set it on the vintage shelf:

I set aside the record albums he'd priced 99¢, to look up later. It included what looked like a first? release of the Beatles' White Album, which sells for hundreds of dollars.

I'd mentioned a coworker pricing undies way cheap for me. Everyone at work does that for one another, and I think it's good and fair--it helps make up for earning minimum wage.
(Full disclosure: when Big Boss rehired me, I got a 50¢ raise above min. wage. (I'd asked for a dollar, but that was a bridge too far.)

Pricing low to buy and re-sell is different. It harms the store to drain off all the cool stuff like that.
_____________________

I'm not feeling great today--not sure why. My first week of working four shifts again? It's fun but physically tiring work.
Or it it emotional tiredness?
Post-election slump?

The Big Picture [religious/philosophical] thought system I like best/believe in most is Physics. (Physics for lay people, anyway--as explained by popularizers like Carl Sagan, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Brian Cox.)

This perspective––"You are here"––is cheering and helpful to me:
Chill out!

____________________

Here's Brian Cox being chill ("gloomy but smiley") about the End of the World, with Philmona Cunk (comedian Diane Morgan). They are so good together, starting at minute 1:22

Luckily I have nothing much to do this weekend, so I can chill out. I'm going to go for a walk around the lake now. It's sunny and cold---brisk! Nice.

Wishing you all well! XO

Bejeweled.

 Ta-da! I filled the glass trees with jewel-beaded fruit from Xmas donations at the store. So pretty!

I met my friend John for coffee yesterday, and to receive my copy of his new book, Bellosio: An Age of Miracles---a world-building tale (like Dune or Game of Thrones--but no magical animals, he promises) + a whiff of A Canticle for Liebowitz.
(Available here at Bookshop.org.)

He'd told me the germ of the plot when we sat outside, face-masked, the first chilly spring of Covid.
Later, as I've done with some of his other books, I read the first few chapters and gave feedback, which he said was very helpful.
Still, I was shocked to see the dedication:

Me and Descartes!

I felt real, like the Velveteen Rabbit-- kinda like when I first saw my name on a Library of Congress heading--even though that was for hack-writing a geography book for Lerner Pub.
(I mean, that was good work, but it wasn't personal work.)

I felt honored and pleased and shy. “It wasn’t that big a deal.”
But other makers-of-things have told me that personal support--including actual editing and critical feedback, as well as emotional--means a lot.
Independent creative work maybe doesn't get enough solid support. It is a big deal.

Speaking of sci-fi, these are the books on my sci-fi bookshelf. I'd just mentioned one of my favorite books is World War Z.
I also very much enjoyed Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weil the guy who wrote The Martian, but better.

Also Walter Tevis's Mockingbird and Joanne Sinisalo's Troll: A Love Story.

But I've mentioned a hundred times, one of my favorites is the sci-fi Murderbot Diaries series by Martha Wells.
I recovered the dust jackets, to help me envision the various skin colors of the  characters, including the main character, Murderbot, who also has no gender or sex.
(The original art makes it look like a white male, which is already our default: I want to shake off that programming.)

It’s a sci-fi world we’re living in… 

Isn't it amazing we even exist, this little bundle of atoms with consciousness?

Enjoy life, everyone! 

Be the animal you are.

It's 6:34 a.m. here: Good morning!
In Swahili––I asked a coworker from Kenya––Habari za asubuhi.

"Maybe you are related to President Obama," I said.
"No," he said, "his father was Luo, I am Kisii."

This guy is so nice. He's about my age and is part of a Federal program for hard-to-place senior workers--they work at the store but are paid by the program.
He is the opposite of Louisiana Laura, my favorite, whose place putting clothes on hangers he fills. I still quote her, "Groceries get much higher, we'll be eating squirrels."
She was like a raucous crow, and he is like a gentle songbird.
Their clothes-hanging skills are similarly lopsided though.

My coworkers' skills vary widely.
One is still asking, "Where does this go?" after a month.
Another says, "Should we rearrange this area?" after two days.

A couple inefficient volunteers help out in Housewares.
I fill carts with priced goods, they put them out--theoretically in the proper sections--on the sales floor. 
After they leave, I pick up after them---the slotted spoon in the Bath & Body section, a Christmas cookie jar in with Clocks.

Some volunteers, though, are splendidly efficient. "This pitcher would look better if I polished the silver." 

And she did, and it does:


I am having so much fun at work, and the different people are part of it, even the frustrating ones.

Yesterday I set up a blue and silver display. Why did I label the menorah? I guess in case gentiles didn't know...
I am the compulsive fact-checking editor of the world.

THESE are my favorites, of course:

I emailed the picture to Marz, saying I hadn't brought them home.

"Why not?" she wrote back. "They are clearly a bear vaudeville team on the level of Abbott and Costello."

So now I have to bring them home.
Marz will be here a couple nights for Thanksgiving. Yay! She'll be spending the day itself with friends--we'll have dinner on Wednesday.

I'm looking into desserts with no sweeteners except fruit or sweet-seeming spices like cinnamon. (Too many recipes that say they're 'sugar-free' use sweeteners that are just as sugary as sugar, like honey and maple syrup.)

This Pumpkin Apple Bake calls for coconut, apple, banana, cinnamon--with egg and cottage cheese. Called a "breakfast" bake, I think it'd be a good Thanksgiving dessert--like pumpkin cheesecake.

I'm not worrying about carbs, not at this point. Dropping white sugar is enough for now! It's a huge change for me.
I said, and it's true, that eating no added sugar is not about losing weight, it's about maintaining mobility. It's been three+ weeks, and I'm eating a lot of anything else I want, so I don't get cranky and cravey.  But even though I'm eating a lot, I lost 5 pounds. And of course that helps with mobility too.

I shouldn't be surprised: I know I would've eaten an entire carton of Tillamook peaches-and-cream ice cream the day after the US presidential Election. It's a big difference, not to.
I imagine my body will adjust to the new normal soon enough.

Meanwhile, I'm relieved that my strength has returned after a few weeks at the store, my knee righted itself, and I've had no more injuries. I've been lucky.

So, Marz is coming home in a couple weeks--and then again for a week at Xmas. She gets a month off college over winter holidays, but has to stay in Duluth for her job at the food co-op.

It's so neat to see her finishing her first semester.  She's displaying this quality I never developed: self-discipline. Impressive!
She hasn't missed a single class or skipped an assignment. She doesn't always like it, and this crash-course in Life in Duluth has been really hard, but she's done it.

It's not just about discipline though--it's how you see things.
I always saw going to class and doing the work as optional! LOL
Some is, but some of this is not good (helpful) vs bad (restrictive) behavior, it's different strengths.

The way I see it (simplistically), is that if we can stay aligned with our own personalities, we reap the rewards and we pay the price that suit us.
While if we follow someone else,
we pay an alien price and reap an alien reward.

Is there an Aesop Fable about this?
Like, a fox labors in a field and earns grain it cannot eat?
Or a rabbit learns to hunt and kills its own relative?

Moral: Be the animal you are.

Marz is choosing classes for next semester.
So many cool choices! I hadn't expected that in a smaller university--(there's something like 8,000 students at UM-Duluth vs 40k at the Twin Cities campus).
She's rolling on from Russian Empire into The Soviet Experiment--a class I'd love to take.
But my favorite she's taking is Journalism in Movies.
She doesn't know yet what the movies they'll watch, but they used All the President's Men as their ad.

What journalism movies can you think of?

I'd mentioned Spotlight recently--about the Boston Globe team uncovering the Catholic Church's sexual abuse of children.
What others...?

His Girl Friday, with Rosalind Russell & Cary Grant.
Citizen Kane.
Geez, there must be dozens, but I'm drawing a blank...

Oh, Capote, about researching and writing In Cold Blood-- the New Journalism.
Network. "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!"

OK--it's a day off, and I'm going to meet JohnShk for coffee. He's bringing a copy of his just-[self]-published sci-fi/world building novel for me! He knows I don't love that genre, but I want a copy. It's very long. "You can use it as a door stop," he said.

Take good care of yourselves out there!

Disaster-preparedness/ Xmas card

I. At Work

Opening a box of Xmas donations yesterday,  I laughed to see these cards.  Are they perfect for the mood this season?

Could they be more funereal? There's even weeping willow, popular Victorian symbol of mourning, often on gravestones:

I didn't buy the cards, but if they're still there today, I'm going to.

Today is Hot Lunch Day. I'm taking in two batches of minestrone (vegetables in tomato base w/ spaghetti & cannellini beans)--one with Italian sausage (pork), one without.
One coworker thanked me last week for a vegetarian option. A couple Muslim coworkers don't eat pork, and a couple don't eat any red meat, but I know others love it.
I just use whatever ingredients I get at the food shelf.

Work has been great, but Amina, my replacement, is not keeping up. I worked five hours in BOOK's yesterday and had to leave it looking like this (and this is just one corner):

Amina's a lovely girl (almost twenty), and very smart, but not very physically attuned.
I like her as a person, if not as a coworker.
She's from a  Somali family, and she wears a hijab and long brown or black dresses. She's also a fantasy fan, and the other day she was wearing a Star Wars hoodie, with the hood pulled up over her headscarf.

"You look like one of the Sand People," I said, "with your hood up."
[Looking them up, I think I meant Jawas?]

Later I thought that might be insulting, and I apologized the next day.
"No, no, I thought it was funny," she said.
_________________________

II. Life During and After Life

Speaking of funereal matters, I want to add to what I wrote yesterday that while I find the story of reincarnation helpful, I take the more Jewishy perspective that we can't know if there's an afterlife, and it doesn't much matter:
What's more important is what we do here, in our life on Earth.

Reincarnation is, for me, a reminder that a person might not be able to do all that much, and that's okay.

My actual beliefs pretty much line up with author Marge Piercy's:

"What you’ve got is what you’ve got. It increases the poignancy.
You’re given a life, you do the best you can, you do what you must do, what’s right for you,
and then you wear out and you’re done."

--From this interesting article-- different Jewish writers and thinkers respond to the question:
"Is There Life After Death? Jewish Thinking on the Afterlife".
(Judaism, as you may know, doesn't take a hard line on the subject.)

Max Brooks, author of a favorite book, World War Z, about zombies--says he's more concerned with Disaster Preparedness in the here-and-now. He says,

"I have no idea if there’s an afterlife. I’d like there to be. I’d like to think that when I said goodbye to my mom, it wasn’t forever.
But how would I know? Because some guy in the desert wrote a book and told me so? I don’t go in for that stuff.

I grew up in California, so it’s all about disaster preparedness for me.
We had earthquake drills; nuclear war drills, because it was the Reagan era; and then we had real disasters, we had fires, we had the Rodney King riots. L. A. was never safe.
And now [2011] it’s even worse—9/11, global warming.
So I took that mindset of disaster preparedness and applied it to a science fiction concept.

Zombie culture has really taken off in the last decade and it’s because of the times we’re living in.
The world hasn’t been this inside-out since the 1970s, and that was the last time zombies were popular."

That was 2011--it hasn't gotten more right-side out since then.

Hm... Disaster Preparedness could make a good zine topic...
Only this year did I procure a first-aid kit, and a length of rope.
I don't know what for, exactly--but rope always comes in handy in disasters, right? For tying up zombies?
Like Michonne, here, in The Walking Dead:

III. Reading

Speaking of books, here's one of my favorite paintings, "The Magdalen Reading", by Rogier van der Weyden, c. 1435 (at the Nat'l Gallery, London):

I'd sent the picture of "Durga Slaying the Orange Monster" (posted a couple days ago) to a friend, who thanked me for the detailed explanation I included.

The friend is someone I 'd met years ago at the Catholic Church, and I wrote back saying I needed the explanation of Hindu iconography myself, but neither of us would for, say, this Christian painting, which we can easily read:
To Mary's right dangles a rope of prayer beads.
The jar on the floor must signify the ointment she anointed Jesus' feet with.
I don't know, but I'd guess she's reading the Psalms---at any rate, it must be the Hebrew scriptures.
Her hair is covered modestly, but are the drapes of her skirt rather... fleshy? That fold between her knees? A reminder of her renunciation of her sexual past?

Hm, I know these visual cues mostly from studying art history, but Catholicism fills in the story.
It's funny what you know, what you think you know, what you know you can't know... etc.

Tootle-oo, all. Go forth! Be Prepared!