Small plates, small talk

Leftovers, below, from yesterday's Happy Hour in the backyard with the new neighbors. (Empty hummus and beer containers out of frame).
One of Joanne's hand-woven towels folded on top.
The plate with fig painting is new from the thrift store. 49¢. I have a thing for small plates--I probably have twenty now.

The neighbors were so nice and easy to talk with--a welcome change from the rather sour previous neighbors. They suggested we get together again before summer's end.
A young, white man and woman married to each other (I was going to write "married couple" but that no longer means man & woman), they're from North Carolina. They were incredulous at the nice summer weather here--though that's one of the reasons they moved. She said, "It was in the 90s in May and I thought, I don't want to live here one more year."

They also want to have kids and are choosing where and how to live in the light of climate change. They talked in terms of "future planning".
She works for a nonprofit environmental group, so she has the facts.

(You might think the facts argue for not having children at all, but most humans conclude, We should make more of us!
It's true we're pretty adorable . . . when we're little.
I figure it's sorta like me and ice-cream--knowing the nutritional facts doesn't stop me from eating the whole pint--and enjoying it.)

Anyway, her job is remote, so it was no problem for them to relocate in that sense. Her husband works in outdoor sports--rock climbing especially--and immediately got a job at a bike and board shop. His other main sport is snow boarding.

There were asking for winter tips. It's been relatively mild the past few years, I said, but no matter the temperature, sunlight is always sparse. "Be sure to get outside, and take Vitamin D."

I was a little surprised--and pleased--that they're finding people very friendly here. "People will talk to you with no motive, and all different kinds of people talk to each other."

They were pretty bitter about NC. There, they said, people mainly talk to others in their same social group or if they have something to gain--and there's a lot of surface fake-friendliness and behind-your-back sniping.

Well, Godknows this city has all the problems of our species, but I'd just been thinking that the thrift store, in fact, for all its many ills, is an example of good social mixing. (On the street outside the store, it's still an ugly hell.)

The other day,  for instance, plump and pink Grateful J was helping  willowy, dark Book's Amina mount a lock on a mini-fridge she was buying. He in his Duluth Trading Co. work clothes, she's in her hijab and long dress.
Amina lives at home, and her teenage brothers eat all the food––they even raid her room for food she's stashed. Grateful had helped her come up with this solution--a locked fridge--and was lending her the store's dolly for her to wheel it three blocks home. (It's not very heavy.)

Everyone in the back was commiserating with her, and laughing too about the naughty hungry brothers. Everyone was from different racial, ethnic, social, and age groups, and I thought, in this moment, we are in the peaceable kingdom.
Sometimes we do sparkle.
_____________________

P.S. Here's a medieval illustration that encourages me in my printmaking. Like life--it doesn't have to be perfect to be excellent.