Hello, darlings... Thank you!

Hello, my friend...
How 'bout that election, eh? I didn't think the results would be so, so clear. Did you? I mean, this bad man actually won the popular vote, not like last time when Hillary Clinton won.

But, here we are. Somewhere on this pale blue dot...

I used to think that dictatorships are forced upon people. But often people actively invite and welcome and choose them.
When I was editing books for the publisher of K-12 nonfiction books, I read a hundred books about people CHOOSING dictators. Out of fear and illogic.
Not without opposition, but a majority actually chooses to vote them in.

And now I can see that happening in my own time and place.
"Fascinating", says Mr Spock.

(Spock also said,
"May I say that I have not thoroughly enjoyed serving with Humans? I find their illogic and foolish emotions a constant irritant.")

It's so frustrating because I DO understand people's fear---it is a scary, dangerous world. But this won't help.

Oh, well.
Here we go... Let's hold hands!

I'd gone to bed last night at 8 p.m. I hadn't looked at any news, but my cells felt jittery.
Before falling asleep, it came to me that no matter what, tomorrow (today) would be the day to start my THANK-YOU Project.

For years, I've repeatedly said, "I should send [_______] a thank-you note". To anyone from Bruce Springsteen to the kind person who helped me through a 9-1-1 call when someone was overdosing in the store's parking lot.
And then I almost never would.

So this morning I started sketching variations on "thank you" to linoprint. Accompanied by my Squirrel Knight---with a salt-shaker lid helmet. I intend to print and send 100 cards.

And in the meantime: Thank YOU for your loving hearts!

Doll Vote Parade

My favorite Election Day song

 Elvis Costello and the Attractions, “(What’s so funny ’bout) Peace, Love and Understanding”

We'll handle it.

A favorite hopeful poem I adapted slightly for this U.S. Election Day.

Sometimes things don’t go from bad to worse…
May it happen for us!

I should be at the polling place Coffee Tent right now, 6:42 a.m. It's not even raining (yet).

But I wrenched my knee at work yesterday, and it was aching so badly in the middle of the night, I texted to cancel. (They've always have had more than enough volunteers, I hope that's the case today.)

I'll go vote about 9 a.m., when people on their way to work have come and gone. At least I hope it goes that fast.

I was working too hard at the store, moving too fast, lifting too much.
"I saw a student giving 200%", said a yoga teacher online. "She was all effort and no grace. I said to her, 'Try less, maybe 80 percent'."

TRY LESS.
Yes. It would be my own fault if I injure myself.

I was so excited to make changes, I didn't even stop to take before-and-after photos. But this morning I photo'd the weird old snow people I brought home. I have a soft spot for damaged flocked items... the kind of things my coworkers would throw out.

Sorting Xmas ornaments is the best! We have stored boxes and boxes of them.
The store used to put them out for 49¢ ea., unsorted, in a bin, which quickly became a mess of broken bits.

I suggested we put ornaments together in $2.99 grab bags, so now we're doing that. I love to buy that sort of thing myself.
I also put creche sets into small baskets, instead of just plastic-bagging them. We have oodles of donated baskets.

Organizing is odd. A lot of it seems obvious to me--like, "let's protect breakable items"--but it's not always to other people. (And I have my gaps too.)
Anyway, I love it. In the middle of bagging up silly snowmen, I felt a wave of gratitude that I'm not working in direct care for people.
I work in indirect care!

It's so fun to be on the sales floor. People were buying Christmas things as I put them out. One woman said she hadn't seen me in a long while, and I explained I'd tried a job in high school.
"But I hated it, and I missed this place."

"We missed you too", she said.

There is one fly in the ointment. Of course. One woman who never liked me is sour that I'm back. But otherwise my return has been overwhelmingly positive. (I always say, "So far...".)

Penny Cooper Hands

Marz pointed out these hands at the art institute: "Look, Penny Cooper hands!"
They are little clay footsoldiers from 2nd cent. BC China.

I guess they'd be holding spears? Coffee mugs?

BELOW: Penny Cooper holds a star ornament. In front of her, a glow-in-the-dark, dashboard-magnet Mary.

If things do go from bad to worse, we'll handle it.

Have a beautiful day, everyone!

Rain & Brain

Grumble. It's raining here at 7:15 a.m.
After a long, warm, and too-dry autumn, we're having a cold and rainy November (started on Halloween, sadly for trick-or-treaters).

I am not happy that rain is forecast for tomorrow morning, when I go staff the coffee tent in the park by the polling place.
It'll be jolly in its way though--Minnesotans like to pride themselves on being hardy.
Must bundle up...

Good thing so many people have done Early Voting, since the cold and rain might put them off otherwise.

(I just got a flash of missing Auntie Vi--almost every morning we emailed--often about the weather.)
_________________

Our Future President Kamala Harris shopping at Penzey's Spices:

Update on Penzey's closing tomorrow (Election Day)--they say online:

"Tomorrow’s election will determine what our future holds like no election in our lifetimes. Tomorrow Penzeys will be closed for a paid day off to make it easier for our people to vote..."

__________________

Uuuummm, what else?
Oh--I was disappointed to re-watch The Fisher King last night--(dir. Terry Gilliam, starring Robin Williams, Jeff Bridges, Mercedes Ruehl).
I hadn't much liked it when it came out  in 1991, but saw the DVD from the Criterion Collection at the library, and thought maybe it'd improve on rewatching.

In fact, it was worse.
So many plot holes, way too long (137 minutes), unbelievable psychology (even granting that it's myth)---and creepy about men and women.
When the Robin Williams character tells the woman he's in love with (Amanda Plummer) that he'd been stalking her, she tears up, thinking it's romantic.

There're a couple tributes to THRIFT LIFE though.
"You find some pretty wonderful things in the trash."
When Jeff Bridges is departing, RW wants him to stay but settles for inviting him to return sometime:
"Come back. We'll rummage."
Love that. It sounded improvised to me...

I never liked Robin Williams's humor though. I found him frenetic, not funny, and he made me nervous. "What is wrong with that person?"
I was sad when he died though.  He was only sixty-three. My age.
I just looked up his death by suicide:
an autopsy revealed he had--not depression, but--Lewy body dementia, a truly horrible brain disease.
________________

"Brain, brain, what is brain?" (--Star Trek)

Re Alzheimer's--a different kind of dementia--have you seen the link with eating sugar?
"A higher intake of ... sugar is associated with increased dementia risk in older adults." --via NLM
And:
"This relationship is so strong that some have called Alzheimer's 'diabetes of the brain' or 'type 3 diabetes (T3D)'."

That ^ report was from 2020. I never heard it till now that I'm looking more into sugar. I mean, I knew sugar was bad for overall health, but I didn't know it affected brain health.

Scary stuff.
It bothers me that a lot of this is known to science, but not publicized.
LIKE TOBACCO.
Sugary crap should be marked with health warnings like cigarettes.

I knew a lot of it, and I had a hell of a time changing my habits. Having cheap---or free! (at work)--sugar available everywhere in friendly packaging doesn't help.
Well, I'm not saying anything new--even to me--but it does shock me to look at the sugar situation with fresh eyes, just recently.

I started to look at it again because I was thinking about Ozempic and how much MONEY is involved in people being sick from food.
I'd been horrified to read that the food industry is worried about Ozempic--not because it might harm bodies but because it might harm their profits.
Talk about sick...

Btw, the Economist says glp-1 receptor agonists--the class of drugs that includes Ozempic--are looking to have far-reaching excellent affects:

"It is early days yet, but glp-1 receptor agonists have all the makings of one of the most successful classes of drugs in history.
Every day seems to bring more exciting news. First the drugs tackled diabetes. Then, with just an injection a week, they took on obesity.
Now they are being found to treat cardiovascular and kidney disease, and are being tested for Alzheimer’s and addiction.

As they become cheaper and easier to use, they promise to dramatically improve the lives of more than a billion people—with profound consequences for industry, the economy and society."

I worked with people with Alzheimer's, and if there's a drug to prevent or reverse it, I am 1000% all for it.
Celebrities using it to be thin... not so much. But that's the world we live in.

Eh, there's always something. Marz loves to quote Captain Kirk:
"Death, destruction, disease, horror..."
Auntie Vi always used to sign off,
"Enjoy life!"

Enjoy your day anyway, everybody!

Resist Stories

Clocks went back an hour this Sunday morning. Nice to get up at six knowing it will soon be light.
Well . . .  "soon" at this latitude = 6:55 a.m.

I'll be especially glad of it Tuesday morning, when I help set up and staff the Free Coffee booth at the park on Election Day.
Voting starts at 7, so we start at 6. It'll be cold, even once they get the fire pits lit.

I. Are we in the US all a little nervous? [And not just in the US...]

How not?

This is the first time I (we?) have been nervous not just about election results but about possible violence afterward.
Oh--wait, no--of course:
LAST presidential election that threat was in the air. And it happened! So this election, it's on the ground.
So weird.
This is not the way I thought my country would go.

I walked past Penzey's Spices yesterday and a sign said they're closed Election Day: "Everybody go vote!"
No reason given, and I found nothing online, but I'm guessing they want to protect employees from possible violence---because the founder Bill Penzey has drawn fire for speaking against Trump.
That that's even a thought...[UPDATE: 

On Facebook, Penzeys says Tuesday they are closed for voting. But they also say, we don’t know what will happen, will we be looted, or will we be welcoming democracy? So, yeah, it’s like that.]

II. Do y'all have a plan?

Just last night bink and I decided that if Trump wins, we will make a second edition of our resistance zine.
We'd made Baby's First Resist-story: An Alphabet Book in response to Trump's first 100 days in 2017.
[Posts on l'astronave about making it.]

. . . And here's the whole thing, online at Issuu (pages turn like a book).

A favorite spread:

This is the cover--featuring bink & Maura's dog, Astro:

The thing is, we never disseminated it very far.
If we need to, this time we will Xerox both the first and the second editions and pass them out more widely.

(This is if things are only mildly bad. More direct action might be called for. We'll see.)

And if it's Madam President Harris, pleasegodYes, we could do a different zine, for fun love.
_________________________

III. My Sugar Resistory

Cheerier news in my personal life:
a few things have come together nicely for my health.

First, after a sedentary summer, I was seriously frightened when I couldn't run up the path at a state park. So I started taking daily walks, which was a great start.
Walking is a complete movement for life.

Then I started working at the thrift store again, which has me lifting and carrying for 15 hours/week.
I was so sore last weekend, I worried I might not be up to it--but this weekend I'm only mildly sore.
Yay!

Third, two weeks ago I'd watched Fed Up (free on youtube), a 2012 documentary about the food industry pushing sugar/fat calories like the Sacklers pushed OxyContin.

It made me so mad––on top of being sad I couldn't run and rightfully scared of diabetes––I decided to take up the filmmaker's challenge to give up processed sugar for ten days.

And I did.
And now it's been two weeks!
For me, this is HUGE. I never went a day without eating something with added sugar--and often many things in large amounts. Weirdly, I consumed less sugar than some Americans because I don't drink pop. (I don't like it.)

Now I still eat a lot of sugar--but in fruit.
I laugh when I read warnings that some fruits are high in sugar. (Grapes have 15 grams of sugar in a cup; bananas, 14+ g).
So, yeah, something to watch if you're [pre-]diabetic.
Adults should get no more than 30 grams of sugar/ day.

But compare fruit to a movie-size box of Milk Duds.
The box holds 4.5 "servings" (10 duds =17 g).
I'd eat the whole box, for a total of 76.5 grams of sugar.

A pint of Ben & Jerry's (I'd eat an entire carton) = 105 grams.

I'd have to eat a lot of grapes to match that. And I just don't.
(I imagine everyone knows this--even if I did, grapes don't inject sugar into your veins the way candy does.)

* * * If people (you) have tips or stories about eating well, I'd love to hear them.

I almost hate to admit it, it's such a cliché, but I feel better.
I feel more... even. And while I swear this was not the point--at this age, health is the Big Motivator--I am not unhappy that my tight clothes are looser.
But truly, if I stay this size, I'm fine with that.
I JUST WANT TO BE ABLE TO MOVE.

Gotta be in shape to man those barricades, eh?

Happy in Thrift

Four M-W-F shifts in, I'm thrilled to be back to playing with thrift. The store and I fit each other, despite everything.
I'm happy, and they are lucky to have me, frankly:
the Housewares sales floor has been neglected since Ass't Man left a year ago.

Hm... what can I do? Let's move stuff around!

This week, I set up a Vintage section---a first for the store.
With Big Boss's permission––(I am being judicious and checking before I make big changes––he likes that (and, fair enough)––I moved Religious Goods from its prominent position to a side shelf, and moved Cool Old Stuff in:

Old stuff can seem junky among shiny, newer home decor. Separating it brings out its cool factor and justifies higher prices. (I mean, like $2.99.) 

I don't like that tacky wood bookshelf though. Maybe I could cover it?
[Linda Sue, I wish you'd come and make everything cool!]

The spun aluminum canisters are the coolest of the collection. A man commented on them, and I said, "Why don't you get them?"

"My wife prefers square things," he said.

He was pretty round himself, and I was going to say he and I wouldn't meet her standards, but figured body shape is not a joking matter, sadly...

Personally, my favorites are little oddments, like the "cool old stuff" baggy I assembled. It holds a farmer's account-diary from 1939, a metal pill tin, and a magnifying glass and a tube of test strips from a chemical company.

 

The slides ^ are from a 1977 trip to Little Norway--a living history museum in Wisconsin that closed in 2012.
You can see I left a couple of religious items that could count as Vintage (or kitsch). Most of our religious donations are treacly porcelain figurines.

Volunteer pricers often don't recognize less-than-obvious vintage.
They'd priced the floral tray 99 cents. It's hand painted and stamped "Made in USSR" on the back. Not super valuable--there are zillions of them--but they do sell online from $20 up.
I repriced it $2.99:

 

I pulled the Dippity-do ^ from the trash, with its original 97¢ Kresge price sticker.
"A little dab'll do ya." Oh, no--that's Brylcreem.

I LOVE how vintage opens history up.
The above white and blue pitcher & cup are stamped 'National Brotherhood of Operative Potters'. 
The NBOP "was founded in 1890 when skilled pottery workers and unionists in the vicinity of East Liverpool, Ohio, broke away from the then faltering Knights of Labor." 
[via Kent State U]

Yesterday I threw out leftovers from the Halloween display (= a jumble of garbage) and set up Thanksgiving. Standard stuff, mostly.

I'd already set up Christmas, below.
Nothing super cool . . . yet. There are boxes and boxes of this stuff to be priced and put out. I know there's something I NEED in there.

It's not all about stuff, though. I also reinstituted a practice I'd started: cooking hot lunch for my coworkers once a week, using free food from the food shelf near my house.

I made chicken chili on Weds., with fresh salsa, colored bell peppers, butternut squash, and chopped onions.
(It's wonderful to get free fresh veg, but they're always at the edge of melting into sludge, so you have to use them right away.)

I'd started making lunch after a coworker told me he was out of groceries. A lot of my coworkers have no financial back-up. (I have savings from my dead relatives.)
So I started for practical reasons––"feed my sheep"––but it has a really nice side-effect:
people serve themselves from the crock pot in the break room, then sit down and eat together.

Below, L to R: Big Boss, Manageress, me, and Volunteer Abby, at the charitable society's annual dinner, spring 2023:

Big Boss and I have had good, meaningful conversations--mostly about scripture. He's Christian and I'm Catholic--NOT the same thing, as you know.
So we differ, but we would both agree with Ram Dass:
"Treat everyone you meet like they are God in drag".
(Though Big Boss would not say "drag".)

We have also clashed pretty seriously in the six years I was at the store. He values Obedience as a virtue.
I Question Authority.
Once I was so mad about a matter of fairness, I broke something in front of him!
He walked away.
Later he came back and said I was right.

I'm surprised he hired me back.
I know (because she told me) that Manageress pushed him to do so.
In fact, it was her saying to me, "Maybe this is your place" that made me even consider coming back.
I'd rejected the possibility as a bad idea when I quit the high school in late August.

When she'd suggested it, I told Manageress that Big Boss wouldn't hire me back.
And I know he was worried about doing so. Abby told me after he rehired me that Big Boss had asked her opinion.
He'd said, "She's strong willed". As in, that's a BAD thing.

"But she's been working for free because she loves the store," Abby told him. "And she knows everything and everyone, and she's a hard worker. You and she don't have to agree on everything."

"That's what I'm thinking," he said.

I don't know that we will clash (so much) going forward.
We know each other, and I think, I hope, we will respect our differences. Like how I asked him for his opinion about moving things around. And he does have good ones; he has worked at the store for thirty years! 

For now, it seems I was wrong. He did hire me back, and it is a good thing.
Fingers crossed!