Girlettes' Best Hanukkah ever!

The girlettes vote this the BEST Hanukkah ever. For this, the sixth night, I took them to work, having invited a few days ago a new coworker who is Jewish to join us in candle-lighting.

At 4:15 p.m., three coworkers joined us outside by the dumpster at sunset. Vincent insisted we have a menorah. (I was just going to stick the candles in a snow drift.)
"We can use an apple," he said--bags of apples having been donated that day-- so I ran and got one.
Perfect!

Coworker lit the candles (I'd brought a box of little matches) and sang the prayer. He said he hadn't done this in years because he doesn't have family. "You all are my honorary family." And he said his ancestors were happy to witness him doing this.

 

And so were the girlettes.

It was very, very good.

R.i.p. Jimmy Carter

Jimmy Carter was the first presidential candidate I voted for—when he was creamed by Reagan.

I’ve been saving books at the store to display when Carter died – – the day to do that is today. 

What I choose as the best symbol of that changeover is Reagan taking the solar panels down off the White House that Jimmy Carter had put up in 1979.

What if Americans had continued in the the direction Carter was aiming– – towards sustainable and responsible use of energy?

Swap out

First thing I did back at work yesterday was swap out the Xmas end-caps. There was damn little display-worthy material to choose from because ever since Halloween we've focused too much on holiday crap. (It'll be different next year.)

I rounded up enough for an Animal theme--including leftovers from a big donation of owl items. And I added BOOKs. Yes!

I've seen other thrift stores match books to housewares, etc. I'm going to try sneaking some in... (Feels like sneaking because almost no one reads at my workplace.)
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There's almost no reason anyone would notice this neurotic switcheroo of mine, here:
after I once again exported posts from my newer blog, noodletoon, into my old blog, l'astonave, as I do every so often (to keep them together), I realized--finally!--that I could just SWAP urls!

The loss is, all the comments didn't transfer. They're back at the old noodletoon url--now gugeo.blogspot--which I didn't delete.

The gain is, all my history is in one place.
And I like this old format better. For instance, it shows the running count of each year's posts. This year I broke 300 for the first time since Covid year 2020.

In the 17 full-years I've blogged, I posted more than 300 times in eight. I love having all that self-written history--my own personal entries in the Mass Observation Project that blogging is.

(Is Blogger really going to remove all abandoned blogs? Wouldn't they be a sociological resource? The heyday of blogging is only maybe a dozen years? And while a probably most of them weren't brilliant, blogs caught they mood of the era.)

I've always been an archivist, even when I was little I helped my mother keep up with family photo albums. I love blogging as place to access personal history. What was I doing, who was around?

Who was bink's dog? She's had wire-fox terriers since 1999.
The current one is eleven-year-old Astro. The best! Here, biting the rope toy I gave him. Poster Boy for Xmas.

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I got my hair cut yesterday after work. Karla said of my self-administered cut, "There's a hair style in here, somewhere".
To find it, she cut my hair pretty short. No curls. I feel slightly sadly shorn. But I also feel---tra la, tra la--lighter! It's a relief to have no straggly hairs in my face.

I'm taking the bus to work in half an hour. It's warm enough to bike, but it rained yesterday (!) and I'm afraid the road's are too slick. I'd hate to wipe out and get injured. I'm just feeling strong again, from work.
(Karla told me her 72-y.o. friend John is in the best shape of his life because he started working in the Amazon warehouse. Ha!)

Not-eating added sugar is starting to feel normal. At first I was nervous and didn't eat ANY added sugar. But I've found that if I eat it in rare instances, it doesn't send me back to eating quarts of ice cream, as I'd feared it might.

I'm NOT adding in occasional treats--that would be disastrous for me, I know. I just mean, like, I'd asked Annette to bring fruit for Xmas Eve dessert, and she made a fruit salad with honey. It seemed rude and (hopefully) unnecessary to avoid it. Eating that was fine.

Heading into 2025, that's a big intention:
to stay off the white sugar (syrup, honey, fructose, etc.). 
And––to add in beautiful food, like I've been pondering.

I kinda forget that I DO like non-sweets. [eye roll]
bink and I stopped at Cecil's kosher deli the other day, and I bought turkey pastrami, cole slaw, and onion rolls. With horseradish mustard = The Best Sandwich! I'm drooling writing this.

What else...? Must ponder. I mean, messing with food is BIG enough, but I do like to think... What are my Soul Life intentions?

Do you set intentions?

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PS. Walking from the bus to work, I snapped this photo of my haircut. When Marz saw it last night she had said, “Princess Di”.

2024: My Year in Review: "Despite everything, it's still you."

 January 2024, here we go...
             Above: Cider at Black Walnut Café (where Marz works)

Below: Karla trims Penny Cooper's hair. "I paid a dollar."

February: I resign from the Thrift Store after six years as BOOK's & Toys Lady (I'd started to volunteer Feb. 2018)

Sundays: coffee with bink

MARCH:
Below, left: Shortly before I turn SIXTY-THREE (63), I start work as a special-education assistant (SEA) with Autistic high school students.
Right: Student Joseph makes me a googly-eye card for my birthday, which is also Presidential Primary Election Day. (Results: President Joe Biden, who later drops out, vs. Trump.)

A day in the life...

April: Special-ed outing to bowling alley.
Right: Bookmark I made for student Dylan of Frisk, his favorite character in Undertale video game. The game ends with the line in a mirror: "Despite everything, it's still you."

 

BELOW: K sends a 2009 "Timehop" of me & fellow bloggers Joanna O'C and her  (all taking a selfie at once)

JUNE Below: Summer Solstice & black ash basketry with bink

August
Printmaking class at Highpoint (bottom row, right)

...with (left) Kate; printing The Moth Burial:

BELOW: Emmler pastes up my print, How are you anyway?

Marz moves (in her new car) to Duluth to attend UM-D.

I return to high school for ONE DAY, then quit: I feel like a prison guard.

SEPTEMBER
Visiting Marz, Lake Superior at Two Harbors:

BELOW, left: Page from student JF's notebook
Right: my lino of Pegasus jumping Duluth Lift Bridge


My trio of 'Childhood Tech' prints:

"Faith Hope Love Thrift" print, based on my workplace's boarded-up windows (right), 2020, after police murdered George Floyd

 Penny Cooper is lost in Duluth! But a kind stranger sets her up on a light pole by Speedway Gas Station

October: 
I am rehired at the thrift store (yay!).
L to R: Manageress, me, Jester, Amina,
              Big Boss, E.D., Doc, me

Toys Recreate "The Jolly Flatboatmen", Henry Caleb Bingham (1846):

WaPo humorist endorses Kamala Harris after paper pulls endorsement for US president:

November: but DT wins the election.
bink's Facebook post the morning after:

Unrelated. Books in the Murderbot series by Martha Wells that I've re-covered:

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DECEMBER

Below: Winter Solstice; Magi on the way

Me, Annette, & Maura decorate the girlettes' tree:

Christmas Eve Day: Toys Re-create Bruegel's "Hunters in the Snow" (1565):

. . . On we go!

Marz telling me…

 … about the Battle of Borodino [having taken a Russian Empire history class]. “Now War and Peace makes sense.”

Toys ReCreate "Hunters in the Snow"

"Hunters in the Snow" (Winter)--cropped--by Pieter Bruegel, 1565, at the Vienna Kuntshistorisches Museum www.khm.at/objektdb/#object-327

I was really disappointed no one was skating today, but a colorful family walked by on their way to the skating hill, so there's still some of the background activity that makes Bruegel's painting so wonderful.

 BELOW: On the radiator, drying off chilly snow. Not everyone here ended up in the picture.

In the original “Hunters in the Snow” painting, one of the hunters is carrying a dead fox over his shoulder. So we had a version with a fox, but as a friend, and a dinosaur as one of the dogs. I like it a lot, but I thought it turned out too colorful.

Christmas Eve Day in the Village

Marz drove down from Duluth last night. Cars were flashing her on the highway, and she realized her tail lights were out! This morning she's off to the mechanics. Luckily they're open until noon this Christmas Eve Day and, surprisingly, not busy. 

Marz is getting a crash course in car ownership--a couple days ago she got her first flat tire!
I was telling my coworkers about this over lunch, and everyone had a lot to say--including Big Boss, who recommended Marz get Triple A roadside service. There's this village attitude--a pull-together/swap information attitude toward cars that I, never having owned a car, have missed out on.

Winter Village (below) is full--little red candles ready to be lit before dinner--and across the room, the Magi are making their way. There's still a toy creche to set up too, if there's time.

"The village needs everybody," said the Metaphysical Cowboy on youtube. "You have to have all kinds of different people. That's why communes fail--they attract too many of the same, like-minded people. Don't feel bad if you act like an idiot--the village needs you!"

That's one of the things I LOVE about the thrift store--it's a village of everybody. Like a spider web, the tension of lots of different lines holds it together. I'm so grateful I was gone for 8 months this year. I could re-set and re-approach with fresh eyes. I haven't bothered to blog about them, but all the old annoyances are still in place. I'm not as bothered. I see the store as sort of an organic animal---shambolic, for sure, but weirdly self-sustaining. Let it be.

While most of the staff are pretty poor (although some, like me, didn't grow up that way), there's a mix of well-off volunteers in the mix. The store always gives a paltry Christmas bonus--last year, I got $50. This Monday, I got a check for an unheard of $200, even though I'd been gone 2/3rds of the year. Others got a lot more. An accompanying letter said that an anonymous donor had given a gift so everyone could get a big bonus.

I immediately thought of the volunteer, a retired doctor, who'd attended the young man dying of a gunshot in the parking lot this summer. I'd blogged about how she'd replied to my text thanking her for being there for him:
"I really did nothing, could do nothing but hold some space for his soul to leave his body, and to witness the results of the violence many live with every day."

She and I have discussed the store in depth, in the past. She thinks the staff is treated atrociously, especially financially.
I texted her saying the donation was the sort of thing she would do.
She texted back, "It takes a village."

Yesterday as I was getting ready to leave (early) after lunch, coworkers still in the break room were discussing a recurring topic--what awful punishments should be meted out to people who hurt children. Medieval villagers could be no more inventive.
I say nothing.

But as I was about to leave, I said, "I'm leaving for Christmas now, let's have a happy moment. Let's sing a song!"
And one of my newer coworkers, Ms Linens, leapt up, came over to me, and started to do simple line-dance moves I could follow. We sang a few lines of "Happy Holidays" while the others laughed and applauded.
I left in a happy mood thinking, I am in the right place.
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It's a good gray day here for recreating Bruegel's "Hunters in the Snow"--so that's what's on today. It's cold though, so it will have to be fast.
Then around 4 pm, I will start cooking the Moroccan fish for Christmas Eve dinner here, for bink & Maura, a couple other old friends, and Marz and me.

I hope you all are enjoying these holidays--and if not, that they pass quickly for you!

Magi on the move

The magi came “from the east”, following a star – – so they had to have been traveling for months – – but they still arrive late! (They don’t arrive till epiphany, January 6.)

But maybe they’re not late, maybe they’re considerate of the stress around a new birth, and they wanted to wait till all the kerfuffle had died down and Mary was feeling restored.

These garments are actually for the Infant of Prague—but they were donated to the store without an accompanying statue of the infant.

The toys said they would far rather be magi: “babies are the  boring parts,” it was declared. However, on January 6 they would like to be referred to as the Triplets of Prague. (After …Belleville?)

Happy Winter Solstice!

Museum Hours

After years of despising art museums as sterile boxes, I've started to enjoy Mia, the art institute here, and I think I'd like to visit other museums to see certain paintings--including ones the toys have re-created.

I could start in New York City (Goya's "Red Boy") and Wash DC (Manet's "Dead Toreador"), but it would have to be a world tour.
I haven't done this painting with the toys yet, but, for instance, I'd love to see Bruegel's "Hunters in the Snow" (1565) up close––it's at Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Art Museum.

Now we have snow again (unlike last winter, weirdly), I was looking more closely at it this morning, thinking how to re-create it.
I'd never looked closely at the skaters. They look so modern.
Hockey sticks!

I will go to the lake this winter, maybe during the next couple holiday weeks, and photograph the ice rink. The figures will look similar.
The most important thing for this re-creation the quality of the light.

The painting reminded me of a movie I'd loved, Museum Hours (2012), about a Canadian woman in Vienna to attend to a dying cousin in a coma... At loose ends, she befriends a guard at the Kunsthistorisches museum. A lot of it is him, the guard, musing on the paintings.

(I remember bink found the woman character so annoying, it ruined the movie for her--but she didn't bother me.)
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I watched a disappointing movie last night--Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine (2002), about guns in America. I'd stopped watching Moore's movies years ago, and this one reminded me why--it's heavy-handed and one sided.
Bam, bam, bam. No nuance.

I turned it off halfway through---BUT, I was glad I watched the first half because there was Timothy McVeigh! Moore interviews the brother of Terry Nichols, TMcV's associate.

I'm almost done with Comfort Me with Apples, the memoir by food writer Ruth Reichl--it also disappoints me. It's as much about her love life as food, and I don't care about that. I mean, it's normal--heard it all before.

But she is inspiring me a little to cook, as I've been thinking I might/should do. Her chapter about eating in Thailand made me want to try cooking Thai food again. I used to make a good Thai chicken soup... There are Asian groceries not far from me that sell lemon grass, galangal (like ginger root), lime leaves, and the like.

Raspberries with Avocado

I made up a really good dessert last night. The food shelf had had perfectly ripe avocados--I only took one, you know they only last a minute––and it occurred to me one would go well with frozen raspberries I had on hand...
I was right! Tart and creamy, and so pretty, pink and green.

Maybe I will enjoy eating food, not just getting high on sugar.

On Weds. Manageress complained that I hadn't brought hot lunch, as I usually do. Ha! I went to the food shelf, and last night I cooked up more vegetarian ("impossible burger") meatballs and spaghetti, and made sauce with oddments of vegetables.

I hadn't brought lunch on Weds. because my friend Volunteer Abby had told me she was going to bring in her annual Homemade Holiday Treats that afternoon. I didn't want to compete for kitchen space.

Abby is an excellent baker, and very generous. She covers the breakroom table with bakery and goodies she makes for people to take home in containers she provides. She must spend hundreds of dollars on the ingredients--for not only the usual holiday sugar cookies and gingerbread, but for sugared nuts; caramel toffees; buttery caramel corn...
She doesn't eat it herself--she just likes to cook, and she is someone who loves--needs, even--to stay busy.

Most people totally love the spread, of course.
But even before this year when I stopped eating sugar (have I mentioned?), I found the onslaught a little disturbing. Though it's all good quality ingredients (real butter), and beautifully and lovingly prepared, it's more of what we at the store already get pounds and pounds of almost every day:
free sugar + fat, in the most seductive forms.

It reminds me of my Uncle Tony, who joined the US Navy at 17 years old, just in time for the end of WWII. He said the Navy would heap piles of individual cigarettes on the mess room tables for the sailors to take as many as they wanted.
"You had all these young men at sea," he said, "you had to keep them occupied..."

My uncle died of emphysema.

To be fair, Abby also brings in fresh fruit almost every week--leftovers from the school lunches where she works--and it often goes uneaten.
An old apple has a hard time competing with a chocolate-dipped pretzel.

On a lighter, brighter note…

I just got an email from Marz with a screen cap of her semester grades: all A’s! 

I am over the moon proud of and happy for her. I’m not surprised at her grades; but I’m, … not ‘surprised’ exactly, but, um, impressed to witness her all semester calling up strengths I didn’t know she had – – probably because I didn’t recognize them in their latency because they are not my strengths: drive and discipline. 

Ya know, I don’t mean to just brag about my “child” [not my child] here. It’s also that I want to share how moved I am to see the resilience of the human spirit. Marz was not exactly encouraged to flourish, but here she is. It’s like how I got all choked up over the reopening of the cathedral of Notre Dame. 

Humans can do great things, if we get on it. You see the cathedral and you think, we could have rebuilt New Orleans in that short time too. (Oh, we knew we could have, but here’s the counter-example to what we did do.)

Here in town, we could get something brilliant at George Floyd Square instead of still squabbling over the tattered dump that it is.

And for our individual selves, we can be great, whatever that is for each of us. We can shine. 

We do shine!

"What is your deal?"

There's a new guy at work--a young, toy-loving (!) punk from the East Coast, "in recovery", Jewish...
I asked him if he'd like to light candles for Hannukah with the girlettes.
"Are you Jewish?" he asked.

"No," I said, "but some of the dolls are. Or, they say they are--but really, they just like to set things on fire."

(You know. Zoroastrians.)

A couple days later I was telling him we're soon entering his sign, Capricorn, and what great energy that is. (He's anxious a lot, and this seemed like a good perspective to share.)

He looked at me suspiciously. "What is your deal?" he said.

Then he immediately took it back––"No, no, I didn't mean that..."––and walked off to do something else.

But, honestly, I was wondering the same thing about him!
You're smart, creative, active... What are you doing here?

What am I doing there? What is my deal?
I don't know...

To do: work on an elevator pitch in reply to that.

And you?
Can you say in the length of a comment, what's your deal?

Work out your own movement

I. Freeze Frame

I'm posting this photo for the people behind me--it's this funny phenomenon where a photo makes people look frozen... or like actors in a film-still.
"The Thrift Store".
(The cashier, left, is also my replacement in BOOK's--I call her Amina here. I don't know the customer.)

The blond woman ^ is a friend of a friend--we're posing for the mutual friend who lives far away.
(I'm not too keen on my self-cut hair, but I am loving not having hair wrapping itself around my face at night!)

What causes this freeze-effect? Is it partly the light?

BELOW:
1. Marz at Lake Superior
2. Me, Italian dinner with Uncle Tony and Auntie Vi
3. Take-out delivery guy in Brooklyn, photo by Marz

BELOW: Amina put out this toy truck. I don't know if she didn't see the alteration to SWAT? I thought it was kind of hilarious and left it out, but I'll take it away today--I don't want someone buying it for their kid, not knowing what it means.

_______________________

II. Move Your Own Self

BELOW: I just discovered the name "functional movement". (Screencap from IG.)
It's whole-body movement, based on stuff you already do--real-life movement... Or, dancing around with intention.

Of course there's science to it... but like so many things in life, you don't need an expert--you can just MAKE IT UP!

I've been enjoying watching reels on IG--not just current mini-videos, but snippets of material from the past.
Last night I saw a clip from an old interview with Noam Chomsky saying that when people ask him for advice––
"The world is so terrible, what should I do?"––
he says, Figure out for yourself what you should do. Everyone's different, there's no expert who can answer that for you.

(Like what St Paul said that I'd quoted recently: Work out your own salvation.)

Similarly, we look to exercise experts, but really,  you can work out your own movement.