OPEN

In Duluth ^ I can see signs of gentrification, but not everywhere. 

I’m sitting in the co-op seating area looking out at Lake Superior—I can see a giant ship in the harbor. I’m drinking tea and waiting for Marz to finish her shift so we can go picnic up the shore. 

On the three-hour bus ride up here, I dozed off and on, looked out the window at birch and pine, and thought of the coworker who’s most difficult for me. They seem controlling, and I’m a little afraid of their sourness, but…

What if, before we were born, our souls really had made a plan to meet up on Earth?

It was such a funny and darling  idea, my fear dropped. 

“Maybe our souls could meet up without our egos needing to know.”

Open sesame!

 😆 ❤️ ❤️ ❤️

You can/'t get there from here.

"It’s hard to make bright pinks without magenta."
Oh, okay, I get it:
"Mixing ink is an art form." 
bink (and Pantone ^) pointed out that you can't mix EVERY color from the limited tubes I have. (I don't have magenta.)
And with block-printing inks, "violet, brown, and navy often come out muddy and gross". [via]

I've never paid close attention to prints before--sort of didn't have the vocabulary to enter into them fully.  It's wonderful to discover artists and art like "London through the eyes of illustrator and graphic designer Edward Bawden" (in The Guardian). A litho from linoleum, 1936:

 
And Namibian printmaking artist John Muafengejo. His "Hope and Optimism." ["Inspite of the Present difficulties"] (1984):

[for future ref: boardingallrows.com/lino-printing-artist-techniques]
_______________
I went back to work yesterday. Our admin had no plans for us. After setting up classrooms for a couple hours (no Pinterest-level decor here), the teachers left and we assistants sat around for hours.  Today will be the same.
If we were a different crew, that might be fun?
But we're not, and it wasn't.

So I texted that I can't work today. (Kids come next week, and that will be better.)

What is MY plan?
Well, my intention going back was not to take it to heart --definitely a life-challenge... I was really annoyed yesterday, but I pretty quickly got it in persepctive. I am a free agent.
Instead of going to work today, I'm taking the bus to Duluth this afternoon. Marz has tomorrow entirely off--otherwise she's working her new job--so I can spend all day with her.
_______________
Instagram determined that I'm interested in reincarnation--and I am, as a metaphor. I don't believe my soul chose to reincarnate on this planet, but it's such a happily wacky idea--it cheers me up.
I find it a helpful interpretation:
It's all good school: you're not failing, you're learning!

Instagram offered me Dolores Cannon (1931–2014, Wikipedia). A "promoter of fringe ideas", she said she channeled extraterrestrials and that they said that Earth is the hardest planet, and souls that choose to come here have their highest regard.

I'll take it! ETs are rooting for me! The weirdest idea here, to me, is that Earth is the hardest planet in the universe. I mean, it is hard, but there's a lot of fun here. Star Trek and I can imagine far worse planets.

However you look at it, there's a lot to learn, that's for sure. How to mix colors... How to make good pictures!

BELOW: Edward Bawden:
"Architectural Elements at the Higgins Bedford"

This encourages me--you can see tiny errors, and they really don't matter. In fact, they are signs of the human hand, and now we're in the age of CGI and AI perfection, those are welcome.

Five Bears

 Aaargh! I CANNOT MIX A GREEN OLIVE! I need to study color mixing—with books, YouTubes, artists (bink knows how).

And with bears—if I print 49 of these little color studies, I will learn a lot. Right now I’m frustrated with my colors. I mixed most of these, and they look okay —but many aren’t what I was aiming for. 

I started working on the bears at 6:30 this morning and worked till 2:30 p.m., printing the each bear in its color-combo three times (the first one I printed last night):  

I do want to do this!

Tomorrow I go back to work. I don’t want to… but they pay me! It’ll be good once I get started. 

"Little Brother Thinks of Pimento Olives"

Here it is, the first Little Brother print! (I printed three of this color combo.) First of forty-nine, so says Marz, each in different colors.  I will aim for seven.

You can see he is not terribly complicated, and you can also see how off my registration was, and other things. Printmaking is FUTZY.

I do not know why I like such a futzy process, but I do. Maybe it's partly because I like handmade errors, and since they are hard to avoid in printmaking, errors are somewhat acceptable--small ones, anyway.
I watched an expert lino-printer on youTube who said as much:
"Don't worry about small errors; usually they are not even noticeable."

Here is how I made this reduction print.

1. Carve your image, then carve away the parts that you want to be plain-paper color--here, the whites of Little Brother's eyes and the background.

2, 3. Ink up the color (green) of the head (around the eyes), and print the green.
Then carve away the green, leaving the eyes and ear lines. Ink those up (black), and print on top of the green:

4. I realized afterward that I hadn't really needed to carve away the head, because I could've avoided it by inking up the shirt with a small brayer. But I did.
The colors were inspired by pimento olives, btw, but I'm not experienced in color mixing, so they're not very like.

5.  Then, I didn't carve away the shirt, I just inked up the bottom half and wiped off any ink above the waist.
I cut separate little lino pieces (like rubber stamps) to print the yellow collar and brown buttons.
Ta-da!

Nothing is just one color.

I'm jazzed to start my next color-print experiment--a series of reduction (carve away) prints of Little Brother (the bear) in different color combos.

It was Marz's idea, actually, and then I saw this lino-print of tea mugs by hannah forward and got inspired to think up color combos:

In nature, nothing is just one color.

Yesterday I photographed colors as I walked around the lake.
It was so humid, I was dripping sweat, and even the mushrooms were sweating. Really!--center photo (top row), below:

Pinky oranges, yellow greens, splattered with siennas and ochres...

I see uniform colors in printing (aside from ombre shading). Could a color be peppered with others? Maybe by splattering dots of ink after printing...?
Will mess around and see.
I want my very first bears to print as clean as the tea mugs, but I'm sure they won't!

I go back to work in two days--Thursday. The weekend is three-days, for Labor Day, then school starts. On Saturday, I think I'll be taking the bus up to see Marz.

She's not lovin' it so far... I don't know if hers is just the normal reaction to overload (new apartment in a new city, starting a new job, and going to classes)…

UPDATE: 

Marz got into a closed class she wanted to take—History of the Russian Empire—and now she’s much happier.

II. "Another adjective."

Thinking about journalism, last night I rewatched Spotlight (2015)--the movie about the investigative journalists at the Boston Globe who uncovered the Catholic Church's complicity in child sex abuse.
So good.

My favorite part is when the unemotional executive editor, Martin Baron (Liev Schreiber--above, standing) is reading the draft of the story. He circles something in red, and one of the journalists asks, "What is it?"

"Another adjective."

I've resubscribed to The Economist.
I'd started subscribing to The Economist when I was writing geography books for school libraries.
I wanted it again partly so I'd have something I could read at work during slow times, partly because I think I can stand to read news again (I hope). Also, I can afford it with my new job. (Still, I was shocked: $275/year.)
The first copy came in the mail yesterday, and it was worth it. What a relief to read good, smart journalism again. I'd been surprised at how lax the New York Times has gotten--I hadn't read it in years. It made me sad.

Up in Duluth

Marz went up to Duluth yesterday, to sign her apartment lease.
bink & I went with her, and while Marz went to a transfer-student meeting at the U after, we went hiking in nearby Hartley Park--picking up a loop of the Superior Hiking Trail. This is one of my favorite places.

Below, I'm pointing toward Lake Superior in the distance. You could keep hiking for 300 more trail miles along the North Shore...

Due to last-minuteness, Marz ended up with a huge apartment, paying more rent than she wanted, but the windows look onto Lake Superior, just down the hill.

A couple miles up the steep hill is the university, and a block away is the co-op where she'll be working--she just got hired this week. 

Her apartment's in an old brick building, not gentrified by/for Californian climate refugees (not yet). The laundry room is in the old stables underneath--you have to go outside and enter through stable doors! A bit inconvenient in winter...

Shabby-chic, it has the most amazing radiators--below, in the bathroom. Don't they look like cathedral windows?

A shop below her apartment sells used outdoor gear––hiking, biking, kayaking–– and at the corner, a place serves Philly cheesesteak and adult (alcoholic) ice-cream floats. I didn't see toffee ice-cream in Guiness though.

The U starts Monday, and Marz'll make a couple more trips with her stuff in her little car--her bike alone will take up half the available space.
A different friend is going with her today, but Sunday will be a one-way drive...

This morning she said, "I'm not going."

I feel for her. She's making enormous changes at the last minute, and to some extent all this is based on an idea, FREE TUITION, not on a deep desire.
But that's what eighteen-year-olds do, right? Head off to college because it's the Next Thing to Do, not because they have a driving need to get educated. Not that Marz is eighteen! I mean, it's a passage in American life--leaving home to go to college, and she's never done that...

I said, "You can always come back". That's true, and Marz has returned from adventures before, but she's more locked in than before, with classes set for the coming semester--plus, she signed a one-year lease.

Once again I get a mommish experience--the empty nest.
Marz has lived with me off and on in the thirteen years since she moved here (from Oregon), after Camino 2011. Mostly off in recent years, but on again this summer or I wouldn’t feel such a tug.

When she leaves, I'll move my bed back into the bedroom and set up a better printmaking area in the living room. I'll reserve a table JUST for inking and printing, because I keep making a mess doing everything on one crowded table. Tiny bits of carved linoleum get in the ink...

Besides working on little stories, I want a production project--something I can do without much thinking (assuming my brain will be tired from working). Marz suggested a poster of 49 images of Little Brother--the small bear who got locked in the basement--each image in 3 different colors. This would be a good jigsaw style printing project.

I found a Community Ed class I might take: Exploring Home Printmaking. They don't say what kind of printmaking, but I'd be open to trying most any kind you can do at home.
Five Thursdays starting late October (dark! cold!), only $55 ($300 less than the summer class I took at the professional print studio).

So I’m good to go.

‘The Escape’ begins…

. . . Panel 2

___________

I worked all morning carving this first panel of the next adventure– –I started all over at one point, then recarved the words, then decided the first words were best. It’s been like that.

This still has things wrong, but actually, it’s all right!

The picture is nice and small, 5” X 3.5”—good for a little booklet.

"Locked in the basement..."

"Oh, no! We are locked in the basement!"

No one is locked in the basement.
Well, not anymore.

Yesterday before I left the house, I locked the door that goes to the basement (where the shared laundry is), forgetting that Marz was down there. Luckily the neighbor was home, and he let her out, otherwise she'd have missed a job interview on Zoom.

It was a weirdly lucky event, too, because it gave me an idea for the next Girlette True-Life Adventure Story to lino-print. I'd been wanting a reason why Little Brother (the yellow-headed bear) should be rolled through a typewriter carriage.
And--there it is:
The girlettes want to flatten him so he can squeeze under the basement door. There really is a gap along the door bottom, like in the drawing. (I did my research. Because documentary.)

In fifteen minutes, Volunteer Abby is coming to help me put up curtain rods--something I've meant to do since I moved in here two years ago. I was telling her what a non-starter I am with an electric drill, and she said, "I'll do it for you--it'll take ten minutes." She's the sort of person who has restored her own little house mostly by herself.
She's also super tidy, so I cleaned the apartment well for the first time since Marz came to stay two months ago. Didn't seem any point until she left--two people sharing this one-bedroom...

My art workspace is this pile-up in the living room, below (my bed is in the other corner; I gave Marz the bedroom). Right now I'm sitting typing in the gray chair looking out the window:

Marz is waiting to hear--hopefully today--if she has a job and an apartment... Classes start on Monday!
She was going to live in campus housing, thinking she'd get a private room in a shared apartment.
Not only were those all assigned early (and she applied late) so she'd have to share a bedroom (which she really didn't want), but she only last week got a roommate assigned, and that woman had replied "No" to the question on the intake form, "Are you willing to share a bedroom with someone who is LGBTQA?"

No? Like, not even with an A-for-Ally?
Yet, the form didn't ask, "Are you LGBTQA"? Maybe they can't, by law? 

There’s an option to live on a “gender-diverse inclusive” floor, so maybe the U assumes everybody who is not 100% straight takes that option? But even if I were 100% anything, I wouldn’t want to live in a ghetto of only-like-me. Would they offer an all-one-race option? Would they ask, "Are you willing to share a bedroom with someone of another race or culture?"

All very odd!

"Please absorb all that."

Garner's Modern English Usage, which I got from the thrift store the other day, is a hoot! (Thank you, Michael, for recommending this.)

Look:

"Please absorb all that."
Not likely---my brain is too (or, not enough) spongey! [Spongy? Really? Looks wrong.]

I'd just mentioned here that turning sixty was a turning point in my physical aging--and it surprised me (and still surprises me, at sixty-three)--and there it was in the Guardian yesterday:
Studies suggest aging is not a slow and steady process, rather...  "Scientists find humans age dramatically in two bursts – at 44, then 60".
_____________

Reduction Prints

But old dogs do learn new tricks. bink and I made "reduction prints" for the first time during our usual Sunday morning coffee at my place. (Actually, it took us till 3 p.m. to finish printing them.)
My tangerines, top; her asparagus, below. (These are 5" x7" cards.)

It was confusing at first---using one block, you carve & print each color at a time... (lightest to darkest)...  You are not only visualizing the image in reverse (tangerines don't care), but you are thinking of the whole image in layers, from front to back.
Once you get started, it's fine--but futzy. Even tidy Virgo bink made a messy print.
_______________

Through Linda Sue, I recently met Abby, blogger of AbbyNormal, (not thrift-store-volunteer Abby).
She asked about what I do.
Here's a brief overview--plucked from some of the 71 posts on my old blog (2007– ) tagged "About Me".

THiS IS ME:

I volunteer now where I worked for six years as BOOK's Lady (Toys too), at a thrift store in my city's poorest neighborhood--a mile from where the police murdered George Floyd. Lots of street business goes on there too.
I love the store, but the stress-to-pay ratio was atrocious.
This spring I started working as a special-ed assistant with autistic high-schoolers. Love the kids, love the pay, hate high school.

BELOW: February 2020 (right before Covid) Me, far right (gray sweater), having lined up staff for my online campaign for the thrift store to win Best of... Which we did!

A couple friends turn up in my blog all the time--bink & Marz.
Here we are on Camino, walking across Spain in 2011:
Below, L to R: me, bink, Marz.

I don't have much bio family.
Here are some of my roots:
TOP: my mother's father (far right) w/ his parents and sister, Kentucky, 1912
BELOW: my father's father––in a photo, far right, held by a brother (because my grandfather had already emigrated to Milwaukee, WI)–– Sicily, 1913

BELOW: Very representative of me NOW--photographing the girlettes' (dolls) and bears' summer solstice parade last year. (Marz is holding the parade balloon bear, and bink took the photo.)

All for now! Have a lovely week, everyone!

Sacred Space

I texted the volunteer, a retired medical doctor, who'd tried to help the young man shot in the parking lot Thursday, to thank her.

I loved what she wrote back: "It was quite a day...

Her reminder to consider the spirit helped, slowed me down, recalled me to my own. The spirit can get calloused, develop a shell...
Sometimes, a pearl? 

I haven't heard the "many who live with violence every day" say "it's good for me to be at Vinnie's" (the thrift store).
I do say that, Dr. Volunteer does, Housewares Abby does--but we all have a lot of protective space in between our experiences of violence.
When that space got awfully thin for me after a few years of exposure--and then when George Floyd was murdered and there was no space-- I started to feel rubbed raw, and I stopped feeling it was a good place for me.

After a break, I'm enormously glad to be back. One day a week is good though.

Another coworker yesterday (I worked two days in a row) talked with me about being desensitized. He grew up in Chicago:
"At first I used to be shocked to see a dead body. Now I only feel something when it's someone I know."

He and I were chatting as we assembled $1.99 grab-bags toys together. He's a new guy in furniture, and that area was slow yesterday. He's great: he likes toys! Hardly anyone there does--so it's rare that anyone enjoys helping me sort them, and they don't do a good job making a nice mix for the bags.

And he put things on the Toy Bridge, which he likes. He lives nearby and has been a regular customer. "I bought things off there. That was you?!"

The Toy Bridge is sacred space. I mean that. Space for frivolity, space for toys to mingle, and for adults to find them...

I sorted more paper ephemera and Cool Old Books & Things:

And more boxes of model railroad scenes. I almost bought these two for the boxes:

AUG Sat 17

ABOVE: Marz's bookshelf this morning, with her new MOMA perpetual calendar I got for her at the thrift store yesterday--I volunteered all day--
and the Frankoma pottery mug I got for myself. I love the mug's "plainsman green" glaze--the clay shows through more than you can see here. Frankoma (Frank + Oma) was established by John Frank in 1933 in Oklahoma, making use of local clay.
I think the mug is from the 1980s.

I got her an AP stylebook yesterday too.
And, if she wants it, she can have Garner's Modern English Usage (rec by Michael of OCA)--the rest are for me.
Seems like eventually every book gets donated to the store.

Other books in my haul:

•The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm is a translation by Jack Zipes, who was in my printmaking class! (He's an esteemed scholar, retired from the U here--he's 87.)

•I'd loved Lytton Strachey's Eminent Victorians, and here came his Queen Victoria.
•A customer yesterday recommended Love Wins, by Christian pastor Rob Bell. The customer had grown up with a blood and brimstone fundamentalism and said Bell, in contrast, teaches empathy. He seems kinda Oprah-friendly? Marz wrinkled her nose, but I have no dog in the race--I'll give him a a try.
•I'm interested in the force of charisma and religion--so, The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and People's Temple (2017)--something I've read a lot about already, but not this book.
•Kirsten had recommended Quilters: Women and Domestic Art, an Oral History.
_____________

Thrift Violence

The news from the thrift store last week--a customer pulling a machete because clothes prices were too high--was disturbing but funny.
Yesterday's was just plain bad. [That's my WARNING]

I hate to even report on this sort of thing again. The day before, someone murdered a young man in the parking lot in the middle of the afternoon-- shot him to death. Quite likely related to the drug trade across the street? There've been several murders there, but never one right on our doorstep. One of the volunteers is a retired doctor, and she tended to the victim, but he went fast...
"There was a lot of blood."

Some of my coworkers were upset, but others took it in stride.
One told me, "I've become so numb to this, my first thought honestly was worrying that I wouldn't get my lunch break."
We laughed.

I TOTALLY GET THIS.
I wasn't particularly upset either. I mean, the tragedy of lives destroyed (and destroying) is there to see every day. It is par for the course in this neighborhood, though I'm very glad I didn't actually see the dead man.

But of course the pain and the fear of violence affects you. It's like you live inside a hard rubber ball to protect yourself:
bouncy! but it doesn't let in light and air.
I was so angry and thin-skinned, those years after the murder of George Floyd, a mile from the store.

I used to keep a thriftstore diary, but I stopped recording daily, it was too upsetting. Hm--my last post with that ^ tag was less than a year ago: it was about how I hit someone at work!
I was especially angry at the complacency of middle-class life, (partly why I'd had such a bad reaction to bloggers complaining about their hired house cleaners last year).

I'm much calmer now... that happened pretty quickly once I quit the store and got into the light and air.
I'd wondered if I could reenter middle-class normalcy, but it's been easy. There're plenty of highly distressed kids at the high school, but there's a lot of support––by law!––for people under 18. Like, the state legally has to supply kids with a place to live, even if it's a hotel room.
It makes a big difference when the workplace is empowered to help.
Once you're over eighteen, you're on your own.

Heavy stuff. I'm volunteering again today--my BOOK's replacement is away, and I can power through a lot of donations--I love to work alone there. Zoom, zoom, zip, zip.
Feels good to help get it out.
________________

By the way...
I checked, and Ancestry does coordinate with FB, so that is likely how FB linked me to my cousin. I can't think of any other link, since we've never connected online (not being in touch since the 1970s).

Catch Up / Typewriter

I've been gone from blogging for a week because SOMEONE took my iPhone to New York City and traded it for a BAGEL.
But what a beautiful bagel, eh?

Truth: I did lend Marz my iPhone to take to NYC last week because she only has a flip phone. And she did get that bagel.
But it was bought (for a surprising amount of money, like $30+) by a  friend from here whose family lives in Brooklyn. Marz and her friend were staying in the house while the family went to Cape Cod.

Here she is in a park--maybe you recognize it?

Marz had never been to NYC. "It's vertical", she reports. Also, like everybody says, "THE ENERGY." I've only been a few times, and not in twenty years, but I remember that--like an electric shock, but in a good way.
She loved it. She says maybe she'll move there after she gets her degree. (BA in journalism is the current plan.)

Now I have my phone back, and this morning Marz is driving up to Duluth (150 miles/241 km) to look at apartments, last minute, so she doesn't have to share a dorm room at 33 years old.
Classes start in 12 days...

Duluth is horizontal---it runs along the lake, and above the city is a ridge traversed by the Lake Superior Hiking Trail.
The energy is nature and weather. Wolves and wind.
Really wolves--residents are warned to keep their pets safe--wolves will snatch and eat them.

I always thought Duluth was an undiscovered wonder.
No more. Climate refugees are moving (lots from California) to this cool port city on fresh water. It's still plenty wild, for now. Just, yoga studios have moved into broken down sailor bars.

Speaking of urban wildness--Emmler's boyfriend took this photo in the densely populated neighborhood near the thrift store.
You can see the little face looking out of the sewer, can't you?

I've loved having Marz here this summer, and I'll miss her, but I'm super excited for her next new endeavor. I hope it's like the NM goat farm (good) and not the wilderness canoe camp (bad).
It's so funny to me how I never particularly wanted children, but I get all these mommish experiences from knowing Marz since 2009 (... omg, that's fifteen years). Ta-da!
___________

Typewriters

My last printmaking class was last night. I'm sad about that. I'll continue printing at home, but I'll miss the company.
Continuing on with my plan to make small and/or usable things, I made typewriter cards.

Fifty of them! I don't even know fifty people.

My biggest lesson: take more care, especially with ink. I am fast but messy, and that's not a good mix in printmaking: half the cards have smudges on the empty page from where it brushed against the ink. Still perfectly usable, but not ideal.
Gotta work fast + clean.
Will try harder.

Also, drawing and printing the machine evoked such physical memories-- ink on your fingers from changing the ribbon, the ding of the paper return-- it made me want a typewriter. They get donated sometimes, but they usually don't work, and they aren't cheap to get repaired. I'll keep an eye out, though I don't know how much I'll volunteer at the thrift store once school starts.

OMG, the store!
The efflorescence of deprivation there had worn me down to my last nerve, but I want to stay in touch with the humor and creativity that also flowers there.
My coworkers told me that last week a customer pulled a machete--a machete!--because she was unhappy with the price of clothes.
"But everyone knows you can ask and we'll give you some clothes."

Luckily Mr Furniture was there (he's usually at the warehouse these days). He knows about these things.
"What did he do?" I asked.

"He picked up a chair and told her, 'I will hit you over the head so hard...', and she put it away. And then she only took ONE shirt!"

Of course they gave her a shirt.
________________________

Learn, Deflect

School is going to be wonderful!
So I tell myself.
In fact, I kinda doubt it, but there is no doubt that I will learn a lot, and that's important. A School for Learning, wonderful in its way. And have I mentioned the pay? (Heh, that's a big feature, and we just got a raise.)

I was thinking of jobs I've loved.
I'd loved being a breakfast grill cook in my late teens, early twenties---the speed and heat and dance of it. I was proud that I could take raisin bread out of the toaster with my bare hands, the raisins heated to be little sugar bombs.

I just read Anthony Bourdain's memoir about restaurant work--Kitchen Confidential. I recognized a lot of it, though I worked in gentler social circumstances--not the late night, cocaine-fueled, psycho kitchens he loved. Still, even the collectively run, whole-foods restaurant I worked at when I was nineteen was plenty whacko. 

Bourdain--his book--was a shot in the arm, an antidote to an overexposure of woke green hygge self-care worry.
"Your body is not a temple," he writes, "it's a playground."

What I want to learn most at school: play! And don't give a fuck about the inane systems and their implementers.
Yeah, right: that's an Olympic level task when you're IN the system.

[Above, via someone on FB]

The trick, I think, is not to focus on or fight the system,
but to give love and energy to life/work OUTSIDE the system.
Distract, and move on.
Deflect and redirect.

I will work on printmaking, and a lot of planning that goes into that--more than I realized. "Reduction printmaking", which I haven't done, is all about planning... carving and printing layers of color at each stage. You have to think the whole process through before you start. I can work that out during slow times. (But pleasegod, let us not watch Disney movies three times a week like last year.)
______________________

Cousins

Facebook did something curious--it linked me to a cousin on my mother's side. I only have two cousins on that side--this woman, Kate, and her brother--and I've had no contact with them since the 1970s.
(My mother was mostly estranged from her one sibling, Mary.)

So, HOW DID FB KNOW?
Perhaps both Kate and I searched Ancestry.com or something?
I can't find any other connection.

I friended Kate, and she accepted, saying that that very week she'd been talking to her teenage daughter about family members the daughter had never met---and then I turned up.

She hasn't said much else, but she sent me a couple photos on her family's porch--from 1974, I think.
L to R: My aunt Mary, my sister (15), cousin Tom, me (13), cousin Kate

My aunt had adopted a John-Updike life in Amherst, MA, far from her Missouri roots. I remember her being sour with Kate. They certainly don't look happy here...

Judging from her FB, Kate is thriving now, running a horse-training and boarding farm. We'd both loved horses when we were girls, and I was a little envious to see that. Good for her!

All for now--I have things I should do but don't have to do, so I won't. I'm going to play with my typewriter cards.

Joyful /"We'll sleep when we're dead."

I. Punch for Joy

Oh, for joy! I'm thrilled with my punch cards. This pink–gray–green is my favorite of several color combinations I printed:

My neck and back is so sore today, I canceled my volunteer shift at the thrift store. Printing is more physical than I expected, and I'd carved linoleum 3 hours at home yesterday, then hand-printed for the entire 3-hour class.
(The jigsaw-cut blocks don't get run through the press, you rub them with a baren. Because I used thick paper––BFK Rives, swankiest punch-cards ever––I had to rub hard.)

I love the cards' look and feel. I love their usefulness as a motivator--one suited to me, anyway. Yesterday I truly went for a walk so I could punch my card.

Another joyful thing:
some other people like the punch cards enough to want one.

A young women in the printmaking class is getting married this weekend and won't be in class next week, our last meeting.
She was admiring the cards and seemed really attracted to them, so I asked her if she wanted one as a wedding present.

"Really?" she said. "I don't want to..." [= Minnesota nice.]

"Don't take one if you don't want one," I said. I only made about a dozen. (It's laborious to print them--for each one, you take apart each jigsaw, ink each piece, and reassemble them before printing.) "But I'd be happy if you want one. You can choose your favorite."

She did.

Another woman who'd been listening said, "I won't be in class next week either...".  [= Minnesota nice, again--godforbid you ASK for what you want. This is not allowed.]
I offered her one too, and she accepted with alacrity.

I was pleased. Many classmates have made "better" prints--more clearly, crisply, and cleanly carved and printed. But because they're multiple, prints raise the question, What are you going to do with these?
Where are you going to put them?

By its nature, I'm realizing, printing is more like mass-communication than private expression. (If you want that, you could draw or paint a single picture and skip the labor.)

I want to keep printing. What would I print?
What could I make to share? 

Any wall art would be small (I have sone of these up myself—including one by GZ.)
Maybe. . . more things like punch cards---common, workaday paper ephemera. Usable things. Things I like.
Common right up until the Internet, now "vintage".

Sewing stuff like button cards and fold-up needle books (oooh!).
Stationery supplies... Tags and labels with holes w/ strings. Paper tickets, like you used to get at movie theaters: "GOOD FOR ONE".
Greeting cards, postcards, playing cards (56 though?). Matchbooks!

It's been a happy class, and I'm sorry it's almost over--I wish it were a semester long.
Me and KG taking selfies in class:

II. Joyful, Joyful, we adore thee...

Biking home on the new urban trail that goes past their house, I stopped at L & M's to show them my cards.  They each wanted a one--said they'd use it, too.

AAAAaaand.... Maura wanted to watch the governor of our state and lover of our State Fair, Tim Walz, give his first speech as vice-presidential candidate.
Did you see it? [here, on youtube]

I was reluctant (a political speech? come on), but politely agreed... And... OMG!
I couldn't believe it.
It was fun. FUN!
Walz's theme was JOY. He was funny and personable and energetic and encouraging.... "We have 91 days. By God, that's easy! We'll sleep when we're dead."

What? IS FUN EVEN ALLOWED in politics?! You wouldn't know it, normally.

Without going too low, he and Kamala are using playground tactics-- hitting right where Trump lives. If that's political discourse now, then give as good as you get, like Kamala did when she taunted Trump,
"If you have something to say, Donald, say it to my face".

You can almost hear, "nyah, nyah, nyah".

And last night Walz did it too:
"Trump is creepy and weird as hell."
Got that right.

BELOW: I saw this "WEIRDO" billboard on a stranger's FB.
I think it's one of several such by Mad Dog PAC.

A comment in reply: "It’s very evocative of Dr. TJ Eckleberg. The waste of the past lingers on, indeed."
[The Great Gatsby, ya know.]

Judging from comments on youTube--not usually the happiest place--other people were as jazzed about Walz's speech as I was:

And, "I am crying in Sweden! Thank you for giving the world hope again!"

Laughing in Minnesota (me) replies, We elected him. You're welcome. 🤣

Looks like home

Because she’s signed up to study journalism in college this fall, Marz has started to read the New York Times Sunday paper—on paper. Last night she tried the crossword for the first time, with occasional help from me. (“The Ghost and Mrs. ____”? 

“Muir”.) We got maybe ten answers? 

This morning, the paper on the ottoman gave me a flash of the handful of years growing up when my parents were happy together and newspapers were spread all over the house throughout the week. 

I’m carving lino at my desk (5th of 6 classes printmaking tonight)—and this looks like my grown-up life—including living with a painter, bink, for thirteen years. Except when she had a studio while she was getting her MFA (UI-Chicago), wherever we lived is where she worked.

Rooms that look like a disheveled library or a working studio feel like home. Thrift store vibes. I love to stay in pristine rooms that look like magazine shoots on vacation—but wouldn’t aim to live that way. Couldn’t! What to do with ongoing projects and papers?