"Learn Something"

"You may see the world around you devastated by evil lunatics..."

 "The best thing for being sad," replied Merlyn [to young Arthur]... "is to learn something.
That is the only thing that never fails.

"You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world around you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honor trampled in the sewers of baser minds.
There is only one thing for it then--to learn.

"Learn why the world wags and what wags it.
That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting.
Learning is the thing for you."

--T. H. White, The Once and Future King (1958)

I'd brought home a donated early edition of this book a while ago.
I haven't read it since I was young, when I loved the stuff about the boy Arthur and Merlyn, his teacher.

I totally missed its grown-up aspects ("the world around you devastated by evil lunatics" ? ), and that it is "a sad and lonely and beautiful book that transforms the old and venerable Arthurian legend into a philosophical examination of the uses of power and violence, both personally and politically. It is a little painful to read in places, because White’s loneliness and confusion feel so palpable..."

--"Why The Once and Future King Is Still the Best King Arthur Story Out There", Constance Grady, Vox, 2017.
____________________

Sunday noon.
I'm sitting outside while bink naps in my bed. She came over for our usual Sunday morning coffee, but she was so sleep-deprived she was almost nonsensical, and I insisted lie down for a while.
She hates naps, but she was so tired she agreed--and immediately fell  asleep.

But before she laid down, she dressed Fog City in a summer play suit. (Sometimes the bears like to wear clothes, and sometimes they don't.)
So that's a good day's work.

What I consciously want to learn this summer is printmaking.
I got back on Instagram after a year+ away because that's the best place to look at art-makers, and especially I am looking at relief printmakers. They're inspiring.

Am I deluding myself to think I'd enjoy carving  a pattern from this old photo of mine? I picture it all chunky and wrong.
(I admire the precise precision of some printmakers but wouldn't want to emulate them. Want to? Would never be able to!)

I don't have to wait for the class to start--that's not for ten days. I'll give this a try.
A thing about printmaking, though, is you get multiple prints. So there's that to ponder---what to do with them?

How much to think beforehand, "Is this something anyone else would want?"

Eh--very little at this stage. I'm learning!
It's for keeping at bay thoughts of trembling anatomy, disordered veins––(or teeth, in my case: the temporary crown is aching)––and evil lunatics taking the world apart.

I want to have guy lines in place when I go back to work in a couple months-- to stabilize me against the buffeting winds of High School.
Art making is a guy line.
Thinking of the students (instead of the system) is another.

(School starts the day after Labor Day--Tuesday, Sept. 3--but I think we special-ed aides have a day of training the week before.)

I just tip-toed inside. bink appears to be passed out.
I'm going to try drawing a pattern of thread now.
I hope ya'll're having a lovely weekend!

The Weight of the Invisible

I. the weight of invisible things

Book's Girl (she's nineteen!) had the day off yesterday. In her absence, I powered through a ton of books she'd stashed like a chipmunk's hoard-- here and there and everywhere.

At the end of the day, I was laughing with Grateful-J (aka Mr Mushroom, because he's a forest forager)--both saying how organized we are at work but how disorganized at home.

"I move furniture all day at work, no problem," he said. "But at home, which I want to get organized, I work for a few minutes and I'm exhausted. It's like everything there is so much heavier to move..."

"You've got to factor in the weight of invisible things at home though" I said. "History, senses, feelings, memory... Those weigh a lot!"

Grateful-J agreed.

He has been made assistant manager at the thrift store.
Luckily he's nothing like Ass't Man. To begin with, unlike A.M., Grateful-J stopped drinking a couple years ago. The difference in his personality has been gradual, but startling.

Startlingly wonderful!
He used to rage in disgust against other people--and himself.
He'll still slip into a little of that--but in far milder form, and far less often.
Now he's not bloated with self-hate (and fluids), he even holds himself differently. I think he's up for the job.

Grateful-J always set up toy scenes, no matter what, and that hasn't changed.
He did the Dino, and I added the Axolotl:

_____________________

II. Raymond Briggs

I was happy to bring home a donated, signed copy of Raymond Brigg's graphic memoir of his parents, Ethel & Ernest: A True Story (1998)--with a note tucked in from the people who got the book signed as a gift for "Carol" 26 years ago:

I read the whole thing last night--powerful in an understated way. There's a theme of the introduction of modern home-improvements, for instance--every decade the father gets newfangled things, like a fridge of the tele-vision, which the mother is skeptical of.

Briggs said illustrating his parents' deaths was the hardest thing he'd done. "He told the Guardian in 2004 that when drawing the scenes of his parents' deaths, he could work for no more than a quarter of an hour at a time."

I was glad to read that-- it's how I've felt whenever I've written or drawn things about my mother's death. Like radioactivity--the feeling is invisible, but it's heavy.

Briggs's most famous book is The Snowman. I know him from his graphic novel When the Wind Blows (1982). It's about a working-class couple like his parents who, when the UK is hit with a nuclear bomb, trustingly follow ludicrous (and real) government advice about what to do in case of nuclear attack.
He shows them hiding from radiation under a door, for instance.

Oh! Here's the shelter they make from the actual government pamphlet, Protect and Survive (1980)--you can see it at the Imperial War Museum website:

III. Curlicues

Raymond Briggs was a considerate man, I am guessing from his signature--he writes it and the greeting out, legibly:

The Peak Doll Directory ^  is from 1972--it's one person's production: a printed compilation of doll collectors' addresses, with brief statements of what they offer to sell or buy--or just invitations to be pen pals.
Old-fashioned social media.

I also got that vintage Chinese doll sitting in the basket--can you see her three pigtails stick out from her head? (Hm, not really visible.)
She is missing a foot and says it's from a shark attack--the same way girlette Pearl Duquette lost an arm!
The two have met and are saying we need to do a photo shoot of a reenactment:
"It's for healing from trauma", they say.

Ha. This would be true if they were humans, but I KNOW THEM!
They borrow these human ideas to explain why they "need" to do things they want to do for fun.

The basket has the most darling curlicues all over it, like a poodle.
Is it black ash? It might be.
bink & I went to a workshop this week on making baskets from black ash trees--led by a local Native artist Naneque LaTender.

Here's bink with strips of fresh ash wood, hammered and pulled from a felled tree:

Scraping and cutting the strips set off bink's concussion--made her dizzy--so we only stayed an hour. I was fine with leaving early because I impatient; I only wanted to do the fun part--the weaving.
I am still the child who doesn't wait 15 minute before eating the marshmallow.

Sharpen Your Tools

“A lumberjack said that if his life depended upon cutting down a tree in five minutes, he would spend three minutes sharpening his axe.”

--Version of this quote is often attributed to Abraham Lincoln but is actually an old logging aphorism [quote origin]

This morning before going to the dentist (for a root canal, oh joy), I've ordered wood-carving tools for the upcoming relief printmaking class... and a sharpening block.

The class description says we'll start with black-and-white prints. Looking at my old photos of sewing notions, I thought these elements might make a good b&w composition:

I've long admired and been influenced by Kenspeckle Letterpress in Duluth, MN, the studio of husband & wife artist team Rick Allen & Marian Lansky.
Allen said a high school teacher gave him an appreciation of old world printing techniques. [Article "Creative Art from Old World & 21st Century Technology"]

I've bought many of their prints as greeting cards, including some of Allen's Trapper's Daughter series. Here, "The Trapper's Daughter and the Close Reach"––I like that his prints often include words: "A Leading Wind & a Following Sea".

Some of the blocks Rick Allen carved for the above print--he uses linoleum and wood blocks:

Great notions

It's Field Trip season! This is not the June weather I expected---it's wonderful! Lots of rain and green, pleasantly hot days.

 Marz and I went to a state park yesterday. On the way we stopped at the bakery in the little town of Lindstrom and bought 3 loaves of Swedish orange rye bread--"limpa" (with real orange peel, but happily no caraway). The best toast!

This morning bink & I are going to the History Museum-- we signed up for a workshop in black ash basketry. I also want to see their gift/book shop (where I'd apply if the job posted weren't 10 hrs/week).

My stucco apartment building is being power-washed this afternoon in prep for painting, so rather than go home, I'll work the last coupla hours at the thrift store afterward.

Marz is working today at the French café where she's worked for two years. Her summer plans got thrown off since the canoe camp (where she went after the sheep farm where she worked in May) was like a military operation with obligatory sing-songs...
So she's here for July at least, which I'm personally delighted by, but she's struggling a bit to figure out what next.

It's easy for me to say that I have total faith that she will do something wonderful and or interesting (easy, because I do), but I know from the inside that being a stateless person can be hellish. 

All that time falling through space before your parachute opens...
_________________

For the upcoming printmaking class, I'm leaning toward doing sewing ephemera alone (rather than as one part of a portfolio of curious donations).

Julia Happify recently emailed me photos she'd taken years ago of my box-assemblages of stuff from sewing baskets donated to the thrift store where we'd volunteered together (Steeple People).
Such gorgeous shapes to carve and blocks of color to learn to print.

I have more indexed as "sewing notions". Looking at them this morning, I see many compositions already ready to go.
I LOVE this--it would make a gorgeous print, if I could get it right.

After the Dentist

What happens if you don't get your teeth cleaned for six years?
Now I know: they grow stalactites and stalagmites.

I've gone in for dental emergencies, but between Covid and the expense, I didn't go in for a cleaning since 2018...
Yesterday when I went (dental insurance!), the cracking and grinding sounded as if the hygienist were conducting a mining operation in my mouth. (She is an old person--almost 70--and used old-fashioned tools, said she didn't like ultra-sound.)

Her radio set to NPR was playing weirdly fitting music--not The Mountain King in Peer Gynt, but something similar.
I thought I heard the announcer say "Samuel Barber"--did he create Music to Scale Tartar By?

Speaking of music, in her car yesterday, Marz was playing Charles Mingus's The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady (1963) (album on youtube).
It sounds so visual! A dark foggy alley outside a smoky jazz club.

The way one sense can conjure another reminds me of a sentence Michael recently posted on his blog--"Chekhov Noir" he called it:

"When I stopped at the end of the street to take breath I could hear nothing but the sound of the rain, and somewhere in the distance a watchman striking on a sheet of iron."

--Anton Chekhov, “My Life: The Story of a Provincial"

Crisscross: these words about sounds create a visual image in my mind. As Michael said, "And it has to be imagined in black and white."
___________________

I asked the young dental assistant who took X-rays what he was reading. He's been reading novels I read in high school--
Invisible Man, Slaughterhouse Five, Rubyfruit Jungle, Grapes of Wrath, Catch 22.
It's hard to hold a conversation in the dental chair, so I don't know why he's reading them. He said he's catching up on novels after a couple years reading textbooks. But why these?

Perhaps I'll see him again when I return. Weirdly, I have no cavities (how can this be?), but I do need two (2) crowns...

He also told me he'd liked Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café. "Better than the movie," he said, "which was also good."
That book's from 1987, a decade after I graduated high school--it was never on my radar, though I did see the movie.

The assistant is a trans man--is that why he's reading old lesbian novels like Rubyfruit Jungle? I mean, who reads that anymore? I read it almost fifty years ago, when it was radical for a lesbian coming-of-age story to have a happy ending.
"Did it hold up?" I asked.
It did, he said.
___________

The cleaning took more than an hour, and I left feeling pummeled and sad.
I took myself to a nearby fancy restaurant with a patio-- too expensive for a meal, but in the mid-afternoon nice for a drink and a snack. I had a hard cider but skipped anything that needed chewing.

I'm almost done with American Wife ^ (2008) by Curtis Sittenfeld. I like Sittenfeld--which is a little weird because I don't like her characters. She writes about nice, normal white women of some privilege who don't rock the boat. In this case, a fictional Laura Bush! The one who married George W.

But even though Sittenfeld's writing about what is perceived as normal American life, she's really world-building--Laura Bush's interior life is the dark side of the moon.

These types of women--like the characters Mary Tyler Moore played-- are hard--remote and unsympathetic–– for me, but Sittenfeld helps me understand them better. Though I don't exactly like them better, I judge them less harshly, and I like understanding . . . and seeing into my misunderstanding.
Your Cognitive Biases Explained.

These women are the ones who relate to the older brother in the Tale of the Prodigal Son--the one who stayed home and did well and good.
They resent their father's love and forgiveness of their wastrel of a younger brother.
My sister is one such. I don't understand her very well. In the parable, I'd be the prodigal. (Though in our actual lives, my father always preferred my sister.)

(Recently I read (where?) someone point out that the stories of undeserved love and forgiveness in the Bible, and elsewhere, seem unfair... until you need that stuff.)

I don't like Sittenfeld's characters, but I enjoy how she shows their inner workings, like those cross-section, cutaway illustrations of a complicated machine. "Oh, that's how that works! The fuel rod is shielded..."

I'm interested to read Sittenfeld's novel Rodham, which imagines Hillary's life if she hadn't married Bill Clinton.
Sittenfels's a good writer--smart, imaginative, never rings false. You can imagine her process of imagining, which is enjoyable.

Like a George Miller movie--the imagined details of Furiosa/Mad Max world--I can imagine imagining them, though I would never work on such a scale (or work so hard, either).

I loved Fury Road but don't feel like putting myself through the new Furiosa. Mad Max world movies are pummeling. Even though Marz told me there's a STUFFED BEAR in it! Carried by bad guy Dementus (Chris Hemsworth).

_______________

Biking from the dentist with my bright-green shoulder bag (2 photos above) slung across my back, I heard a woman in a car call out, "I like your bag".

I wonder if she recognized the patch I sewed on. It's the salamander from the movie of Fahrenheit 451--in the book too, salamanders (and the phoenix) are badges of the book-burning firemen. Below: François Truffaut, directs Julie Christie and Oskar Werner
The movie has wonderful ingredients, but it gets terrible reviews and I've never seen it.

Squirrel Swirl

I bought a NEW thing on Saturday at La Mexicana Groceries by the store: a clay squirrel.
I was standing in line idly gazing at the display of clay animals behind the counter. I saw the squirrel and wished my father were alive so I could buy it for him. Then it occurred to me that I could buy it for myself.

It's so nice to have money!
The squirrel was $24--not very expensive, but I don't know when I've spent that much on a thing I don't need. (And usually I get everything I want or need from the thrift store.)

These clay animals are mass produced in Mexico––but they're hand-painted, so each one's different. When I got home I realized I'd chosen colors like the rug's in BOOK's, which I shampooed that day after work:

Abby had brought in her carpet cleaner for me to use, and Amina, above, right, wanted to try it too. You can just see that her eye is crinkled because she's smiling--the shampooer was fun to use–– and satisfying to see the results, the rug was so dirty! (You can see the dark wash-water in the lower canister.)

It's satisfying overall to be at the store.
As a volunteer, it's easier to practice my Life Challenge: 
hold on loosely, but don't let go.

I really, really want to approach my school job with that attitude when I return in a couple months.
The work is a good, new stretch for me, but even if I were younger and had years of work ahead of me, I wouldn't go into education or education reform.
My heart's not in it.

Why I'm Not a Librarian

If anything, when I was younger I would/could have (but not "should have") gotten my MLS and stayed in library work.

I don't regret not becoming a professional librarian though: it would've kept me firmly in the life I was already in.
I would not have ended up being a sacristan at the Basilica;
And back in nursing homes with people with Alzheimer's;
and working in the three thrift stores--the indie Steeple People; Goodwill (barely counts, it was so corporate); and SVDP, which has been one of the great universities of my life;
and now, working with autistic students.

Hm, though actually. . . if I'd worked in the city public libraries, where I'd have wanted to be, I'd have encountered a lot of what I do at the store as libraries have become places (like the store) where people go who have nowhere else.
There's a full-time social worker on staff at the downtown library now--with an open glass office near the entrance.
I think I'd have loved working for the public library.

Why didn't I go that route?
[digs around in memory bank]
Oh! I remember how it all went …
When I was forty-one, after a dozen years at the art college library and one+ years as a proofreader, full-time, in-office at the publisher's, I was ready to launch a Life Exploration Expedition.
Geez, I almost forgot how open the future felt to me...

I'd already walked the Camino when I turned forty--the next year I quit the publisher's (I'd saved money);
kept my weekend job at the Basilica (I loved tending to the magic objects, like lighting beeswax candles on the altar);
and I signed up for training to be a body pump instructor at the YWCA. (God, I forget I was in good enough shape I would even consider that...)

In October I took a train trip out east to see friends in NYC and Boston... When I came back I went on retreat to St John's Abbey. I wanted most of all to be open to possibly—open to the winds of spirit.
About a month later, my sister and brother called me one night. Our mother had killed herself.

Boom--the door to my open future slammed shut, lights out. I’ve written about all this before, but I half-forget. “Why didn’t I…?”

After that... I canceled the YW training class. Not that I would have studied library science either, but for a long time I didn’t have energy or desire for anything. 

In a daze, I took on some at-home work for the publisher, which turned into a dozen years of contract work proofing, editing, and writing non-fiction books for kids.
I wrote for a few other places (and starting in 2007 I blogged--that was huge), but that was the bulk of it. Mostly geography books, but other stuff too.

It was good work, in its way. I learned a ton!
Coworkers always said that if you worked for this publisher for a a few years, you got the equivalent of an excellent sixth-grade education.
LOL, it's true.
I know the dates of the American Revolution (1776-1783) and what molybedum is (a metal used as an alloy to make things like aircraft).
My best book was on the history of toilets---which turned out to be a history of public health.

Eventually I walked Camino again, when I was fifty---with Marz, who moved here afterward, and that began a whole new chapter... Many adventures.

But, wow--that moment when the future looked like a fresh open field... That was nice.

Rainbow Jesus

Store donation. I kinda love Schlocky Jesus being happy to see us.
And this one's got a dove and a rainbow!

I'd mentioned to Abby that I'd love to shampoo the carpets in the BOOK's section.
"I have a carpet cleaner," she said. "I'll bring it in!"

So that's what's happening today after work.
I'm ridiculously happy about it. I am not the savior. But I can do little things like that.

Being back at the store, I see clearly how rough it is there, and how little I can do. Every day there's some crisis or other, often more than one, and very little help available.
No wonder I felt so frayed working there!
Three different people have told me I'm calmer and happier since I left. In comparison, the annoyances of my new job are piffling.

Manageress told me yesterday, for instance, that Ramón died this winter.
He was the customer who used to sit in my BOOK's section and read religious books. Living on the streets, he slowly drank himself to death over the years I knew him. I think he was in his later 40s.

I know his faith gave him comfort, and the store was a safe place, out of the weather, where everybody knew his name. He always returned, and I always tried to help him in small ways--giving him books and dry boots and clothes, for instance.

It got harder and harder to reach him as his life eroded.
One time, I lost it with him. I literally yelled at him as he sat slumped, blotto, in BOOK's,
"Ramón, do you think God wants this for you? No!"

He looked so ashamed, I instantly apologized, "I'm sorry I'm yelling at you. God loves you, and so do I."

"I know, Mamacita," he said. "I love you too."

Others ––his church, social workers–– tried to help him too, but too many pieces were missing. His life didn't come with brakes--and every road he was on ran downhill.

The last time I saw him, last fall, his liver had backed up into his eyes, and they were deep yellow. We sat him in a trashed but cushy armchair in the parking lot. I wrapped him in a sleeping bag.
At closing time, Big Boss called an ambulance, but Ramón refused it. He staggered away down the street, and I thought, "I will not see him again".

I am choosing to think of him now in the loving, welcoming arms of the savior he believed in.
And after work, I'm going to enjoy the hell out of cleaning the carpets.

Print Project: donations (curious); Objects of Affection

I started sketching some "Curious Donations" from the thrift store--ideas for the 6-week relief-printmaking class that starts in a couple weeks.
Maybe a little book/portfolio of six objects?

This is partly inspired by the illustrations of flea-market finds in Belonging. Plus, on l'astronave I have a tab for "donations (curious)".

Rather than trying to tell a complicated story, I'm thinking of what will help me to learn color printing. How to visualize in reverse?
How to design, cut, and line up the puzzle-pieces that add color?--and have visual and story-telling interest.

For that: objects with simple (abstractable), recognizable, visually interesting (decorative) forms, with easy-to-separate colors.
And some suggestion of a story, signs of human use.
Plus, all REAL donations I've seen, not made up.

A favorite: holy medals (choose one--a blue plastic Mary?) strung on a diaper pin w/ yellow plastic ducky closure.
(Holy medals on safety pins are an old-fashioned thing, but I only ever saw this one that was clearly a diaper pin--with a cute animal.
It's hanging by my front door.)

Little, worn-out objects from a sewing basket. (A card of sew-on snaps with some missing.)
A half-eaten donut with pink frosting & sprinkles. Etc.

More ideas to come.

Too complicated? Dead mouse in the bottom of a grocery bag with an early US edition of Sylvia Plath's Bell Jar.

Or, simpler-- just a dead mouse?
But that's not colorful...
Oh, wait-- it could be gray/brown + black.
Too gross?
No, I just looked it up--a dead mouse could look sweet, with delicate pink feet (tricky registration) and a white tummy.
Dead mice are definitely a feature of thrift work...

Something from the category for Contents of Dead Person's Desk/Bedside table.
I don't want to be too disgusting (no emesis basins or false teeth).  A folder of receipts and old bills?
Expired driver's license?
Oh, a FAMILY PHOTO...
Yes...!
(Which one?)

I want to carve words too--because I like words.
Maybe one per image?
Like, "Microwaved" for the Cool Whip container with its bottom nuked into ripples.

Or, a not so literal but related comment? "Forever" (Ugh, no, I don't want to preach.)
Or, a joke (but true): "Vegan"

Or, it could be more than one word.
Common phrases from thrift:
"Someone could use this." [sarcastic mimic of what donors of junk must be thinking--but I don't want this to be social commentary]
"What is this?"
"WHY?!?!"

As I write about this, I realize I want the objects to be objects of my affection, not despair.
This could include a dead mouse (tenderness), and I love broken toys, so that's good.
But not the melted Cool Whip container (also, too Andy Warhol--ditto the half-eaten donut with pink frosting?).

I want to have these prepared so I can jump into working.
Printmaking needs prep (not my usual style). Then the carving and printing is an execution of ideas already completed--with surprises provided by the materials and the process.

Sun & Moon Play

 

"You are the sun, I am the moon,
You are the words, I am the tune.
Play me."
--Neil Diamond, "Play Me" (1972)

Happy Summer Solstice!

bink made the girlettes' sun discs.

Summer solstice costume-making

 It begins now! The costumes, that is. Solstice is 3:50 p.m. in the midwestern USA. 

Bullet Flowers

 Content Note: suicide, exploded bullets

At coffee this morning, I was telling my writer friend Shek about my mother inheriting family money from a forced-labor tobacco farm (what used to be called a plantation).
[It's been on my mind--blogged about it a couple days ago]

"Getting that money led in part to her suicide," I said.

"How did she kill herself, if I may ask...?" he asked.

"She shot herself with a hollow-tip bullet," I said. "They spread open on impact and peel back like petals. The spent bullets look like flowers."

". . . I wonder if tobacco has flowers," he said.

I looked it up on the spot.
It does. Some kinds of Nicotiana are even ornamentals, like the white blossoms below.

They look like bullet flowers.

I was thinking of writing or making art about this. It could be a tarot card, like I was thinking about this morning---designing a symbol based on your real life.

This could illustrate karma.
But when I think about my mother's death for long, I start to feel  heavy and slow, like I'm drugged. I probably won’t go any further than this.

Ten years ago I started an art project about my mother (her death, and life) —I painted a few good watercolors before I got swamped. 
_______________________

I told Shek how I gave away the money I inherited from my mother.

"You're so good," he said.

"It wasn't good!" I said. "Money like that is a curse."

_________________________

988 = Suicide and Crisis Lifeline in the United States.
Phone 988, or call, chat, or text from the website: https://988lifeline.org/talk-to-someone-now
Languages: English, Spanish, and ASL

Wikipedia has a list of Worldwide Suicide Crisis Lines:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicide_crisis_line

Regular-life tarot cards

I read tarot a little when I was in my twenties but was never fluent in it. The cards didn't satisfactorily fit my life, but I loved their art.
It might be fun to design a few idiosyncratic personal ones.

If I were designing tarot cards, I would make one for the satisfaction-to-the-point-of-joy that comes from taking care of unpleasant business, (like paying bills but) best exemplified by making a dental appointment.

Yesterday I had the extra happiness of learning that the dentist I've gone to for years even though they don't take the State's poor people's insurance does take the school district's dental insurance (for which I pay $4/month).

I felt giddy! I met bink at tea time and I hugged her with the good news, "The dentist takes my insurance!"
[Reason no. 7 to love my job.]

What spiritual quality/experience does this illustrate? What is it a metaphor for?
Not just taking care of business, but being happy about it, like when you hear yourself say, "Oh, good! Someone cancelled, and I can get my teeth cleaned on Monday at 7:30 before work!"

The joy of averting disaster by willingly signing up for smaller unpleasantnesses... Is this the joy of sacrifice maybe?
Mmm, no... I'm thinking of it as a sign of being grown up--and the unexpected but satisfying satisfaction that comes with that.

I was thinking about spiritual/psychological metaphors yesterday after blogging about giving away the money I'd inherited from my mother's family.
On an individual level, the umbrella question is,
What do I inherit that is hurtful or limiting, and how can I divest myself of that? (The political question of inheriting systems of harm is related but different.)

What would illustrate that symbolically--liberating your personal self from inherited bad stuff?
Like releasing your leg from a bear trap?

You're free by your own efforts of something that was not your fault, but you're not unaffected.

Via exploremarmaris.com/read/Survival/How%20to%20Free%20Your%20Leg%20from%20a%20Bear%20Trap.pdf

Custodian of Things (What comes to us?)

I found a job I'd like, looking on the Non-Profit Job Site:
assistant manager of the gift shop at the MN History Center. (They carry books!--the full catalog of titles from MNHS Press. )

Sadly, it's only 10 hours/week ($19/hour).
Gives me hope, though that I can do that sort of thing when I "retire".
I will look more into that possibility for later... or sooner?

In the meantime, it's (probably) smart to stay in my new job and work it out. (It's not like I won't have issues with management most ANYWHERE I work. It's the nature of the beast--and of me, eh?)
My work with the kids has enough good in it to be satisfying and worthwhile. And at my age, the money matters.

Big Boss manages the thrift store on Monday mornings--yesterday he asked me my overview of my new job.
"I love the students but hate the institution," I said.

"A spiritual opportunity," he said.

Yes! A helpful reminder--my school job is Doing Magic by Stealth .

I. Things with History

It is funny to me how much I like things... especially old or handmade things--things with history. Books are things, after all. So is art.

I'm reading an excellent graphic memoir I picked up at the store yesterday:
Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home (Scribner, 2018), by Nora Krug.

Born into a German Christian family in 1977 (the year I graduated high school), Krug always felt guilty about the Holocaust. She learned her nation's history in school--this book is a record of how she finally looks into her own family history.

Like me--only two year ago my sister searched online and found our family's history of enslaving people to work on a tobacco farm...

Krug lives in the US but in Germany hunts for WWII stuff from flea markets and thrift stores--she calls herself a Memory Archivist.
She includes actual photos and also her drawings of photos––I love how she mix-and-matches.

II. My Response

Looking at that post about my enslaving ancestors, I see I never wrote anything about how I felt or what I did after I got that hard proof of what my mother always suspected.
When I learned that the family money came directly and indubiously from slavery*, I decided to give away all the money I'd inherited from my mother.

There wasn't that much money left.
My mother had inherited a lot from her mother ––
(traceable to that enslaving family, related by a distant cousin's marriage--it's a maze)––
but she'd spent most of it (like, ordering crap on QVC) in her last dozen years--the years she withdrew into isolation--something she could do because she had the money to retire early.

Unearned, ill-begotten wealth was part of her decline.
She called those years "my dwindlement".
In her self-isolation, my mother's mental health declined until she ended her own life.

We three kids inherited 18k each.

(I've inherited money from my father and some of his family too--Auntie Vi!-- but it all came from their honest work, and I don't feel burdened with that--they wanted to help me carry on, be well, and share it forward.
Thank you, dead relatives!)

I've always given money to people who ask--or even who don't. When I got proof of where it came from, I upped the amount.

At the thrift store, I was in the perfect position to give away money organically. I'd thought about finding an organization that managed reparations, but there were soooo many people right in front of me who needed money. It was more natural (and easy!) to share with them.

I didn't select people by their race, but simply by need--coworkers who were out of groceries, were facing eviction, needed new car tires, etc.
You could say, people God sent...

One of those people was BJ, friend of the store who lived across the alley. She was dying of lung cancer that spring my sister found our family history.
Honestly, I'd have given BJ some money anyway... but giving more felt like justice as well as friendship:
She had nothing, lived in public housing. . . 

I didn’t say anything about it to her—didn’t want it to sound like charity—it wasn’t! I was lucky to be a conduit to make her final months easier. Not just with money, but by mopping her floor--and most importantly, keeping her company. But money matters.

"This will come back to you," BJ said to me.

I rolled my eyes or something, and she added, "Wait and see."

I love that she said that.
I don't see it literally like she meant it, but anyone can see that what we do does "come back” to us.
How not? It shapes who we become--it is our history.

I wonder if this might be something I could work on in the printmaking class I'm taking... I want to do a little project...
I don't know... It's heavy. Not sure if I'm up for that in this form.
But maybe something illustrating THINGS....
_______________

*You could say wealth in the US often flows indirectly from slavery (and other injustices), but I have to say, it feels different to see proof with my family name on it. 

I don't know.
I read this helpful distinction a long time ago:
We are not personally "guilty" for history (things we didn't personally do), but we are "responsible"---called upon to respond to the forces that act upon us.
Respond how?
That's up to us to discover.

Summer on

--"Ignore Alien Orders", Joe Strummer, The Clash.

Gotta go to the store, so I'm copying an email update here:

This morning I applied for unemployment.
I should get about $800/month. Less than I thought, but next year I'll get more, if I'm still doing this. They base it on your yearly earnings, so they factor in the thrift store, which paid far less than I'm making at school.

But, hey! It's amazing I get ANYTHING.
Schools are desperate to keep SEAs (special ed assistants), so the State voted we get unemployment over the summer.
We're also getting a stepped raise---in the coming months it will go from near $24/hour to $26!
(That's $11 more than the store!!!)

And their plan works: it's good they pay so much because, you know what?
If it weren't for the pay,
I wouldn't stay.

I hate school.
I love the kids, but I hate being in prison with them.
I know I do Good (magic by stealth), and that matters a lot too, but it's awful to be in this Institution for Instilling Control and Compliance. And I hate how the adults I work with most closely enforce those things--often, it seems, without even questioning.
(Maybe if I were a teacher and ran my own classroom, I'd like it better, but as an assistant I am under alien orders.)

I figure I'll work a couple more years, if I can stand it, and then see what the landscape looks like when I'm 65 years old. (Not that I'd retire.)
I'm going to look around this summer and see if there's other well-paying work out there.
Ya never know...

I'm so happy to be volunteering at the thrift store this summer! I worked all day Saturday with my replacement, the young college student Amina.
She's off for a couple days for Eid al-Adha, and I hope to power through a lot of stuff. She's lovely, but she's rather scattered. She'll price a thing, set it down and wander off...
LOL

This is a confusing holiday to me. It celebrates Abraham's obedience in being willing to sacrifice Isaac--my most hated Biblical story
(it can be taken metaphorically--give your all for spiritual truth--I'm good with that--(like Jesus saying to hate your family!)--
but it usually shows up in religious society as meaning obedience and compliance to human Authority)--
but Amina tells me that it's a holiday to HAVE FUN---give gifts--be HAPPY!
She's going to spend it with family---was excitedly gathering gifts...

Maybe like Easter?---when Christians focus on the happy outcome.
So... yeah. Religion is a hoot.

I'm heading out in a few minutes, so all for now.

Witches & Lairds

“Amina” is a fantasy and anime fan, and this Magic & Dragons display was her idea. She gathered most of the stuff, complete with little toys and Tarot cards.
I was happy to set it out for her yesterday:

And happy to be at the store: the energy among coworkers has improved since I left four months ago.
With Amina coming on to replace me, now three store workers are in their twenties:
Amina, whose parents are from Somalia; “Junior”, whose parents are from Mexico; and “Tracy”, a white girl from Wisconsin whose great-grandparents (like my grandparents) were from Sicily.

All three get along with everyone and have sweet natures--it's as if they're out of Studio Ghibli. "Here, I saved this Totoro keychain for you."
I don't know what theme song this trio would choose (I should ask!), but collectively I'd give them Fleetwood Mac's "Landslide":

"Oh, mirror in the sky, what is love?
Can the child within my heart rise above?
Can I sail through the changin' ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?"

For a brief time, three workers were white guys in their 40s (Ass't Man, Mr Mushroom, and mattdamon).
Kinda smelled like Teen Spirit in the back room.
They'd happily set up a stereo system for anyone, but they'd get in fights with each other about the correct way to do it.
Tom Petty's "And I Won't Back Down" couldv'e been this group's theme song:

"I know what's right/I got just one life,
In a world that keeps on pushin' me around,
But I'll stand my ground/ And I won't back down."

The configuration could not hold, and now it's just Mr Mushroom. On his own, he's all Jerry Garcia and Bob Marley.
Big Boss is now E.D. (executive director), so he's not around much-- it's mostly Manageress, who is happier on her own (without Ass't Man).

It's a nice place to be--for me as a volunteer, anyway.

Hot Scots!

Yesterday a couple boxes of romance books came in. I was laughing at several lurid covers showing brooding Highland lairds, shirtless in kilts, tattoos banding their bulging biceps.
Ha--here--like this, though more often their dark hair is whipping in the wind.

They are stories of "the mythical men and women who once roamed the Highland moors". Like ptarmigan? Ludicrous!

"Maybe I should read one though," I said.

"I've been thinking the same thing!" Amina said. "But if my mother caught me with something like that..."
(Amina and Jr. both live at home, and Tracy lives with roommates--another feature of modern 20-somethings. How can you afford rent?)
Amina did borrow one of the Highland romances anyway though. 

All for now--bink is on her way for our usual Sunday morning coffee.
Have a good day!

Dream Dispersal

Note in my staff mailbox. ^ I found it at the end of the last day of school, yesterday--from my favorite student in the Bad Class:

"Thanks for being the coach who never benched my dreams and thoughts!!! You are amazing
Thank you for being so nice and real. You are one of my favorites at this school."

This is The Best Reward. I got teary.

Several other students expressed things like this to me, in their way.
The student I attended art class with is graduating. He--not a touchy kid--said, "I'll miss you" and hugged me.
A girl who doesn't speak and who often hits for attention instead patted me at the bus stop. This speaks volumes.

Meanwhile admin gave nothing. One of the v.p.s was outside with the bus crew. I approached her and reached out to shake her hand.

"Thanks for everything," I said. "Am I invited back next year?" I asked. [By default I figured I was, but I had had no official notification.]

"We'd let you know if you weren't," she said. "But we always need sped assistants," she said.

"Do you mean, 'Yes, you did such a good job, we'd love to have you back!'?"

"Well, yeah, of course. But have you seen how many opening there are for assistants?"

Okay, then.
In the end, the management is no better with humans than the thrift store was.

Like at the thrift store, it works best to LOOK TO THE HEART OF THE MATTER: the people I serve.
The customers or the students give the truest read.

The boy who said, "Don't touch my backpack!" at the beginning of my time taught me more than all the required video trainings on boundaries.

The girl who asked me to make cupcakes again, because more students were having birthdays taught me about making implicit promises.
(She was quite right--stupid of me not to see if you do it once, you have to be fair and do it for everyone--I made rice krispie treats the second time.)

The note in my mailbox said, keep supporting students who are not always easy to support.
It came from the student I'd met with one-on-one after she said rude things in class about sped students.

She'd told me, "I have no filter", which may also be why she calls out things in class to the teacher like, "You don't know what you're doing".
Unlike her sped comments, the student's judgements of the teacher were astute.

In the last week, for instance, the teacher handed out worksheets every day on random topics, like hammerhead sharks and Amelia Earhart.
The student said, "You're just giving us busy work."

This was so clearly true, if I were the teacher I'd have agreed––"Well, we've got to fill the time somehow!"––but the teacher dissembled, as always.

My friend Abby says, "Never lie to the students. They know."
Right!

(I had a failure of nerve and never did recommend to the teacher that we read short stories. She was so hard to approach, I just backed off.)

The student also says she fears failure.
I can see that: in her writing, where she can employ Failure Filters, she relies a lot on clichés instead of being fresh and honest.
The coach metaphor in the note to me, for instance, but I believe she means something along those lines.

But to me, the fact that she, a freshman, figured out how to find my mailbox in the main office speaks loudest:
"I went out of my way to say thank you".

This is an example of this student's strength. I wish she could see that. She is Taurus, an earthed sign, that yokes itself to its love and that pulls with strength.
If she doesn't somehow get derailed (pleasegod no), I predict this kid will be a leader. I told her that, but I don't think she believes it.

Anyway, cliché or no, I'll take that metaphor! It matches how I see myself--as someone who champions the students' dreams.

. . . And overlooks their grammar.
Grammar is good, and learning self-discipline is good,
but there are other, better people to help with that.
_______________________

Marz read aloud a passage from a newish book about astrology––You Were Born For This: Astrology for Radical Self-Acceptance (by Chani Nichols, 2020)–– about the "modalities" of the signs.
The 12 signs are grouped into 3 modalities, classically called cardinal (ruler), fixed, and mutable.

Often these are presented as possible negatives:
Cardinal signs are rulers, inclined to despotism like Putin;
Fixed are rigid, may get frozen in place;
and mutables are flaky. Pisces is mutable.
Nichols reframes that:
cardinals initiate; fixed signs harness, stabilize; and mutables release and disperse.

Pisces, the most watery sign, disperses dreams.
That sounds so woo-woo, but looking back, that's exactly what I did with the students, and I'd say it's my superstrength to encourage them in the direction of their love.
Because what you love is a good--probably the best--indicator of where you should plant your seeds--invest your energy.

Like... I printed info about art schools for the kid who wants to be an animator.
I picked up paper bus schedules at the library for Transit Boy.
I wrote out summer hours & directions to a library closest to a student's home--a kid who loves the library's excellent computers.

And I'd asked Maura to calligraph Certificates of Achievement for the seniors--both of whom were more moved than I expected.
One put his hands to his cheeks and said, "I can't believe it! I can't believe it!"
These students really are starved for positive feedback.

I also wrote little notes to my favorite staff people, including drawing a bear in a motorcycle helmet for the art teacher, who loves motorcycles.

"Everybody is a star," I wrote––[from the Sly and the Family Stone song he knows I love]--"But not everybody is a Cool Bear! Thanks for making art a good place to be."

Really everyone was running up until the last minute though, and there wasn't  much of a wrap-up between coworkers, or at least not my ASD (autism) unit.

But a bunch of teachers/staff from a different, sometimes overlapping sped group (mostly DCD--developmentally/cognitively delayed) went out for happy hour at a nearby Filipino bistro and invited everyone.
I work tangentially with some of them, so I went too.

It was fun, and helpful at the last minute:
I got the validation I needed when I told a speech pathologist how I'd approached the v.p.–– "I thought she might be out there thanking all the staff and wishing us a good summer"––and this woman burst out laughing, "Oh, you are new to this."

At the end of the gathering, I went up to a young man I admire, "Andy", who is all of 22. He has gotten licensed as a teacher and will be at a different school in the fall.
He and I had been assigned to split the task of attending Trouble Student ...who, as it turned out, was no trouble. 
We had talked and agreed that we had gotten the assignment because we were lowest in rank, but that we ended up liking it and admiring this student.

Andy is my opposite in temperament.
He is so quiet, sometimes I didn't realize he was in a room--sitting in the corner. He worked so well with the students! He was their silent support, instead of the other adults who are always helping--or controlling--the students.

So I try to be like him, though I am always going to be more engaged, I can still be background. I am not the star, the students are.

Anyway, I went up to Andy and I said, "I'm going to miss you. I learned so much from you, and I really love you."
(I'd had a margarita, but I'd have said this anyway.)

I was so, so touched:
He hugged me and said, "I love you too."

Last Day (Ground Up)

I leave in 45 minutes for the last day of school.
Connections with several students have just started to bear fruit, so it's not great timing for me, but next year I'll have the full run.
At least I'm ending my first quarter-year on a high note.

Example: In my first week, I'd drawn a bookmark of a student’s favorite video character and gave it to him. I never work with this student, but I see him in passing.

On Monday, he said to me in his Mr. Spock-like way, "I have a request. I seem to have misplaced the bookmark you gave me. Would you make me another one?"

I said I would. Yesterday I gave it to him. He said thanks and immediately tucked it into a book in his backpack.

At the bus stop at the end of the day, the aide who works one-on-one with him was all teary. Not only is this kid's family moving out of town, but his parents had called him that very day at noon to say they were leaving tomorrow.
That's today--so he’s missing the last day of class. 

I'm sorry because I like this student—and the aide said he wanted to stay for his senior year.

My contribution, the bookmark, is small but real--a physical reminder that he was seen and liked at this school. (Not by everyone though--he was a Mr Spock who hadn't learned emotional regulation yet.)
__________________

Broken Pencils

Marz wrote me this letter, below, from canoe camp describing the kind of people she loves--and specifically here, me and another friend.
The letter arrived on the same day I'd cleaned out my school locker and brought home the broken pencils I'd picked up. (I'd planned to use them to make art with the students, but I realized that didn't fit them.)

If I were a teacher, this summer I'd be busy planning my class project for next year. I've come up with a year-long class:
"Post-Apocalypse."
Wouldn't that be fun?
 I'd call it something less predictable. Maybe...
Things Could Be Different.

Or, Ground Up. Yes! Double meaning.

It'd cover everything---basic survival (food, fire, and sanitation) to political philosophy.

And education! How--and what?--would you teach kids if society was devastated?
In the book Earth Abides, the protagonist tries to teach reading to the children born after a mysterious human wipe-out--in a schoolroom setting-- but without a larger society, most just don't care.

And entertainment. In Station Eleven, the characters are a traveling band of performers.

I'd want to steer away from the default of "society devolves into cruelty"---everything from the Bible's Revelations to Lord of the Flies to the Walking Dead.

Even though I didn't like A Psalm for the Wild-Built, Becky Chambers does offer a different possibility--
that human society after a die-off could be better.

Could I make this my personal project?
I don't know...
It wouldn't be as interesting as playing it with a class of 15 year olds.

Naw. I'm going to start with the Toy Spaceship--which I have meant to build for YEARS.

Also, next week, June 20, is Solstice. Last year there was a toy parade--they want to do something this year too.
What?
Things could be different!
But then, each parade is different.

Circus parade!

Also, I have a dentist appointment for a broken tooth. 

Throw Forward

"I am holding this string up so it can get air."
Marz is home! Her wet boots ^ are drying on the windowsill.

She'd told me on the phone that the Wilderness Training was like war games, and I was amazed to hear more about how the expert trainers taught survival skills:
Beyond the expected "how to tie a tourniquet", it culminated in a 2-hour long "mass casualty event"--everyone assigned to a different role, with some camp counselors instructed to lie in the woods and act horribly injured... complete with fake blood, others to haul them out, others to triage, and tend wounds...

Good skills to know! if you're leading children in the wilderness---or who knows what civilian disaster might arise...
I'd like to learn some of that.

She did not enjoy the relentless obligatory camaraderie of camp life ("like war games, but with singing"), nor did she feel confident enough to lead children afterward.
(In fact, what they practiced in a week is supposed to be a month-long course.)
So she's home.

 She still plans on college in the fall.
"I am bookish," she said.
Meanwhile, she's here, and I'm happy about that. She's got a project to work on....
_______________________

And I am thinking on a summer-long project for myself.
Pro-ject: throw forward

Creative/educator Ken Robinson suggested that for good schools: instead of atomizing education (subjects separated and taught in 50-min chunks to students segregated by age and abilities)--CHOOSE PROJECTS.
Everyone with a stake, from students and teachers to admin to custodians (I'd include them!), actually choosing = "democratic schools".

Teachers have a lot of leeway, he pointed out, even in schools as they are.
I see that.
Yesterday, for instance, the English teacher told students the class is done--they don't have to be there.
???
Where are they supposed to go, though? They are freshman. And, the building exit-doors are locked.
 I suppose they could sit in the library and talk--they'd like that.
I'll catch a few in the halls and suggest that.
No one got up and left class... They sat and watched a video of a book we've already seen videos of.

If I were a teacher I'd work with students to come up with year–long (or semester-, or even week- long)  project.
Because we want practice, learning to do that in our own lives, right?---choosing projects to work on, so we are not just consumers of entertainment.
(I don't have internet so I cannot spend the summer binge-watching media.)

Walkabout

I said I'm proud of my young self. I sometimes forget that I left high school building when I was only15 years old:
My final semester (during which I turned 16), I home-schooled myself because I chose to do a program called Walkabout:
With the guidance of a couple teachers, you chose PROJECTS in five areas, and found resource people in the community (mostly not teachers) to guide you--and then you only came to school once a week for group meetings.

I had been surprised how HARD it was to have nothing but free time.
I watched a lot of daytime TV.

But at the end of the semester, I'd done a few things I'm still remember with pride:
learned to play "Blackbird" on guitar (I'd never played guitar);
took a trip into Canada with my older friend Chuck;
written and illustrated a book of poetry;
struggled through reading some French existential literature in French--(reading Camus' The Flies was the basis of my movie 40 years later, Orestes and the Fly!).

What else do I remember with pride of accomplishment that I did in high school?
Aside from reading a ton of books (mostly on my own, during classes), it's mostly BOREDOM I remember, and anger at bad teachers:
like the tenth grade English teacher, who was a harridan. Her primary method of control was shaming students in front of the class.
I hated her.
Everyone said, "Oh, but she's a good teacher because you really learn grammar in her class."

At the end of the year, she had us write out what we'd learned. People told me that's what they said: they really learned parts of speech.

I wrote, "I learned I do not want to be like you."

Which was a total FAIL, in fact, because it was being like her to say something mean and shaming like that.
(Now I'd put it in the positive:
"I saw a style of teaching I would not want to emulate--I am inspired to strive instead for a democratic classroom, with respect for all.")

It helps to remember I was fifteen---the same age as the children in English class--they say snarky things to the teacher, but--throwing forward-- they might.could grow out of that.

I could try making a movie... or a series of small movies?
I've wondered about stop-animation with toys...

And I've got printmaking---perhaps make it a project---instead of free-standing images, create pictures to tell a story.

The girlettes' faces are so hard to get right! I messed this one’s up--I do like the lines though, so I will hand paint the features or cut a jigsaw piece to print to fit:

“Teach a new way”—Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes

The art teacher was playing this song—“Wake Up, Everybody”— in class. “I listen to this every morning,” he said. No wonder I love him .

“Wake up all the teachers,

Time to teach a new way,
Maybe then they'll listen,
To whatcha have to say,
'Cause they're the ones who's comin' up
And the world is in their hands….”