Manuel on Halloween

        “Boy in Red on Halloween”

Inspired by Goya’s portrait of Don Manuel, Spain, 1878 (at the MMA)

O.P. Halloween morning—Dressing up like Don Manuel by Goya! (Final to follow…)

One Is Fake, the Others Aren't

I. Let the Fresh Air of the Spirit Dry the Laundry

Conclave (dir. Edward Berger, 2024), an entertainment about the election of a pope, looks like it's going to air clerical dirty laundry, and it does some of that.
Halfway through, however, when the priest Lawrence (a terrific Ralph Fiennes) kneels at his bedside to pray, troubled by spiritual dryness, I started to suspect the movie of reverence... not for Church politics, but for the Holy Spirit.

And reverential it is.
During the final vote, a breeze flutters the voting material in front of Lawrence, sitting in the Sistine Chapel where the vote is held. He looks up, to a high window that has been shattered earlier.
The famous call of the reforming pope (now saint) John 23 comes to mind:
Open the windows of the church and let the fresh air of the Spirit blow through.

For all of Conclave's sophisticated design values (it's gorgeous!), this scene also reminded me of the childish movie The Sound of Music, when the nun played by Julie Andrews reminds herself,
Mother Superior always says, whenever God closes a door, somewhere he opens a window.

As the credits rolled, I turned to bink and said,
"That was weirdly pious."

"Yes," she said, "it was like Song of Bernadette."

Also, bink said, in the vein of Shoes of the Fisherman––or Brother Sun, Sister Moon, Zeffirelli's love song to St. Francis, both championing pure hearts in a corrupt Church.

But kneeling by your bed to pray? That's how non-Catholics think priests act.
Sure enough. Robert Harris, who wrote the novel Conclave, said,

"I approached this not as a Catholic and not as an expert in the Church. So my preparation began by reading the gospels, which are revolutionary..."

He didn't realize the gospels are revolutionary until his sixties?
That explains a lot.
This movie believes that the Spirit works through the Church.
And it does, just as it works through the Speedway gas station.
That is, if the Spirit works, it works everywhere.
Even in a lowly peasant girl in France.

I roll my eyes at the reverence––(the healing Spirit troubling the waters is here represented by turtles)–– but I do recommend the film.
It's a romp, a slow romp, but a fun one, with pleasing visuals and a teasing, too short turn by Isabella Rossellini as the nun running hospitality.
________________________
II. "I'm moving toward as much less as possible."

It's hard for fiction to be as convincingly weird as real life. You know? The Spirit might very well use turtles to trouble the waters, but when you put it in a fiction movie, it seems contrived. I grow impatient.

While I was house sitting, I watched two excellent documentaries on the Criterion Channel.

The first was The Gleaners and I, by Agnes Varda (2000).
Why didn't someone make me watch this years ago?
It's THRIFT LIFE!

I knew it was a well-regarded doc but had thought it was about agriculture.
Sort of, but not really. It's about people who survive or create by gathering throw-aways, and it's as much about urban scavengers as rural.
__________________________

III. "Richard Nixon should do time in a greenhouse."

The second was a rewatch of Hearts and Minds (1974, dir. Peter Davis)--a classic about the US in Vietnam--have you seen it?

I watched it twice--the second time with the director's excellent commentary.
I also watched footage that didn't make it in the film, including a half-hour interview with Tony Russo, who worked alongside Daniel Ellsberg (who is in the film) to release the Pentagon Papers.
Russo interviewed Vietnamese prisoners of war held by the US in Vietnam in the mid-1960s, and realized the war was unwinnable and that the US was on the wrong side.

US leaders should do time in prison, he says.
But "I don't want to see them brutalized," he said. "Nixon should do time in a greenhouse, taking care of plants."

The film has no narration. Not a problem for many people my age, but I wonder what someone young, of Marz's age (born in the 1990s), much less a teenager would make of it.

"maybe this is your place"

Marz has got 48-hour shore leave (from college, because it's midterm exam time), and she is coming home today--yay!
She'll be here in time for lunch.
I'm making pasta with a ricotta-like goat cheese from the farmers market, and arugula and red pear salad.
A pretty lunch!

I was inspired (again) to eat more beautifully by the doc Fed Up--(free on utube)--about how the US food industry actively stacks the cards against eating well. Many, many dollars involved, as we know.
Michael Pollan was interviewed and said his usual sensible thing: eat real food. "You have to cook", he said.

I've also been inspired by some fat teachers of movement (yoga, resilience & flexibility coaches, etc) online, like Darcy Rosario (workouts on youTube).

You gotta be brave to put yourself out there like they do: the hateful comments viewers leave are insane (including the ones masked as concern).

I love the concept of Harm Reduction--do what you can, where you are, with what you got, rather than waiting for ideal conditions.
Conditions are never ideal!
THIS IS IT.

I saw the concept applied to the upcoming US election:
it's not about voting for an ideal candidate--those aren't on the ticket. The question is, who will do the least harm?
The answer is obvious to me.

Along those lines--working with the imperfect Good-- the thrift store offered me 15 hrs. week paid work in Housewares.
I accepted. I was working 5-7 hours hours there for free every week-- it'll be nice to be paid.

And I love housewares! That's the department I started in in 2018. It's everything from open toothpaste tubes to vintage art pottery.
I cringe sometimes to see some cool stuff thrown out because it's broken---I hope I can give the store more of a funky vintage vibe.

I asked for a raise, and they'll pay me 50¢/hour more than the minimum wage I was making there.
That almost pays my rent, and it leaves me lots of time to do things like Printmaking and maybe some house/pet sitting gigs?

It was so good for me to leave the store in February! What a relief--I'd painted myself into a corner there in some ways... plus there are serious and heavy energies there it was good to step away from (like people being murdered over drugs in the parking lot!).

And then it was good to go back for free, for fun, as a friend.
I intend to [try to] maintain my Volunteer Mindset.
I've been much happier, and management has treated me better and with more appreciation too.
Funny, eh?

It's nice to be wanted--after feeling unwelcome by some coworkers at the high school-- and to fit despite some rough edges. When I told Manageress that I'd quit the public schools in August, she texted me,
"Maybe this is your place?"

I was moved. She and I have had dust-ups, including that she was angry and hurt I left after only 2-days notice (though I did find a replacement to hire). But she believes in fresh starts, and when I returned as a volunteer, we've worked well together.

She told me she has been asking Big Boss to hire me back "every day"! At first he said there was no budget, but someone quit, there was a reshuffle, and now there is a place.
She told me another volunteer told BB he should hire me back too.

"But if Ass't Man wanted to come back," she said, "I'd say no."

I always say that I loved AM because we agreed on a lot of things (including cool old stuff, weird and wonderful), but I hated how he played the victim:
the problems were always someone else's fault--including mine!
The store has been much happier since AM left (to work in the public schools) a year ago. (I hear he doesn't love that job anymore than I did, but he has a family to support and the money is so much better, I expect he has to stay.)

I confess to being rather naïve – – despite all my complaints about middle class realities, I did think the high school would be better run than the thrift store. In some ways  it was (free school lunch!—by State law), but overall it was as emotionally dysfunctional as anywhere else. I felt like a prison guard there.

At any rate, I am excited to reapproach the store with a fresh heart and mind.
Forward!

Hej. and Joanne's Plan

Swedish hates me.
No, Swedish doesn't hate me-- but I did try for FOUR hours to carve this "HEJ." ("Hi", you know.)

I thought it'd be simple, but I should know simple is hard.
I tried "HEJ!" first, but it looked reminiscent of "HEIL".
Anyway, it never did quite balance.

Uff da! (That's Norwegian the way egg foo young is Chinese. That is, sort of.)
Well... It's all good learning.

Joanne of the beautiful tea towels, who has long experience selling her weaving wares at shows, left such a helpful comment, I'm posting it here, so I can remember it.
Marching orders!

"In case I didn't say this already, please make up at least a hundred, and book yourself into a farmer's market or street fair next year.
Print them on anything you can find.
Do not include an envelope.

Consider how much is the cost of the venue and price to earn ten times the cost of the show if you sell out.
You can set up at a show with as little as your folding chair with a golf umbrella strapped to it. Carry your cash in a fanny pack.
And be sure to get a temporary sales tax permit, and either charge it separately or include it in your price.
Ask me anything you may want to know. I may have an answer."

Thank you, Joanne!
I will do it.
My question is---why not include an envelope?

Below: One of Joanne’s handwoven towels—with scone-makings. (I’m baking this morning for KG.)

bink & I made the recipe  booklet in 1991!

Full Moon, first sale(s?)

I. Feeling October

I went to a collage-making meet-up last night, at the invitation of an old friend, Morgan. The theme was joy, but that wasn't my vibe. It was a full moon, I'd found a Halloween black-cat shirt at the thrift store, and I was feeling the season.
The door to other worlds is opening soon...
The child doesn't hesitate to climb over the doorsill.

I'd brought along cards of my Typewriter and "Dept of Do Your Damn Work" prints to give away to the five others. I didn't know most of them.
One artist wanted extras, and said she'd swap a pair of Kamala Harris earrings she makes. She sells them for $35, and with the proceeds buy fresh food for the Democratic Party's site where she volunteers daily, where they live on fast food and plastic-wrapped snacks.

This is my first sale (barter) of prints! I was so pleased. I don't wear earrings, but these are very Maura, and it's her birthday soon---perfect. She can wear them to vote in three weeks.
(And, you know, it's great when people objectively like your art, strangers, beyond friends and family who may like your work partly because they see you in it.)

II. Feeling Swedish?

And... a POSSIBLE sale?
In the morning, bink and I had gone to the Swedish Insitute--a museum complex whose café makes the BEST cardamom rolls. Sitting with bink, I'd spread out the cards I'd brought for that evening, and I was signing their backs.
A woman came along and asked if she could see.

"Sure," I said, "and please take one if you like. I'm giving them away at a meeting later."

She took a "Do Your Damn Work" card and said she'd put it up in her office--she is the buyer for the gift shop there!
"Would you consider doing a Swedish-themed card for us?" she said.

What?!? Would I?
Cuh-RAY-zee.... Yes!
I have little feel for Swedish things. I like IKEA, does that count? (It kind of does.)
Because I'm mostly designing text, I looked up "funny Swedish sayings" and immediately saw and loved,
THERE'S NO COW ON THE ICE.
'Det är ingen ko på isen' --meaning, No worries.

Design issues arise.
I could print just the English, but for the Swedish shop, bilingual seems better. Must mess around and see.
The short version would fit better:
ingen ko på isen
no cow on the ice
[no worries]

Anyway, I'd genuinely enjoy making and having these cards even if the buyer doesn't want them, so I'm going to go ahead.

"I can't remember why I don't have a parrot."

I. Rocks Can't Vote Though

I signed up to be an Election Day greeter for the first time. I love the buzz of democracy.
My neighborhood association is too Damn Perky™ for me to join, but I want to join them in giving free coffee and home-baked treats at my polling place:

I signed up for the early morning shift on Tuesday, Nov. 5. Voting starts at 7 a.m.
I'm invited to a neighborhood gathering that Saturday--hopefully it will be a celebration... Fingers crossed!

I wrote earlier this morning that I'd had a wave of feeling that WE ARE GOING TO BE ALRIGHT... in the long run.
The long run can be a huge, long time though.
For Panic Management I even like to think in geological time. Heck, the rocks will be okay!

II. "I can't remember why I don't have a parrot."

Another new thing:
I visited the home of a artist & doll friend, MT, whom I've known off-and-on for decades, but never well.
Her apartment was like a dream of being up in the trees with Swiss Family Robinson and down the rabbit hole with Alice!
I wanted to stay there for days and look at every one of her treasures, which tend toward tiny and tidy:
sewing notions in glass bottles, old photos in antique frames, and her own artwork...

And dolls, which she makes or hand-sews outfits for. She made some play clothes for the girlettes a couple years ago!
These are Ruth Gibbs Dolls from the 1940s-50s that MT is making clothes for.

Hm, not much about Ruth Gibbs online--she was an antique doll collector and a design stylist for Dennison’s Department Store in NYC.

MT also lives with a parrot--an African Gray!
I was telling Marz that on the phone, and she said, "You love birds, you should have a bird."

I said, "Yes! I can't remember why I don't have a parrot."*

She laughed and said that was a perfect INFP statement. That's the Myers Briggs personality type I am. (Marz too.) That is to say, Not Very Practically Minded (NBPM).

Also I'm a Pisces, the most watery (feel-y) of the astrological signs.
The sort of person who quits their job because they FEEL BAD there.
And who still hasn't launched a job hunt...

*Really, I don't want a parrot because it'd be like getting married! They are like humans, with full emotional and intellectual needs.

III. Art Group?

Another longtime casual friend, MW, invited me to an art-making get together this evening. It's the first meeting of some women makers who want to start meeting once a month, maybe. (The friend is a poet, not a visual artist---it's great to mix it up like that.)

I'd like being in an art group, I think. Would like to know more people who make stuff.
I'd invited my printmaking class over, but got no takers. bink & I are taking a community ed. class, Printing at Home--it starts next week.

Printmaking means I have prints to share, and I'm not sure about doing that. It's not a big deal at this point, but if I keep printmaking, I'm going to have a backlog... To give away. Possibly sell.

I want to discover more channels where I could release prints I make, like baby salmon. Swim, little fishies!
But I don't want to get heavy into marketing, because that makes me cranky. (Pisces don't feel like it.)
I can keep putting my prints out and about in public too--like, in Little Free Libraries. I like that!

Eh, some channels will open up, make themselves known, as they always do. (Well, usually.)
The main thing is, I want to keep printing––because I like it.
It is far less demanding than a parrot.

"I think we're going to be alright" (Take a Walk with Me)

Walking every day this week--and forever--I've snapped some signs in the neighborhoods near the lake.
No sign on this house--I just loved the red maple against the pink stucco. It's condos. I would like to live here:

It's all walking distance to busy streets with buses, but the closer you get to prime lake property, the bigger and snazzier the houses are, until you get proper mansions across the street from the lakes.

The 'Chain of Lakes' themselves are ringed in public parkland:
you can walk/wheel around all four, and if you follow the connecting path along the Creek, you'll reach the River and can continue along that too.
It's genius public planning--thank you to city ancestors like Theodore Wirth who worked hard to make it happen! 

Here are some signs...

When I saw this sign--there are many such, and none for Trump--I had a rush of feeling:
I THINK WE'RE GOING TO BE ALRIGHT (in the long run).
Pleasegod they win, but history is long, and it's unprecedented that it's the WOMAN of color who is the US presidential candidate of a main party, and the white guy is her support person...

BELOW: Squirrel Camp!

Yay for bicycle supporters!
I bet there's a car (or two) in their garage, but still...
This city continues to build safe bike lanes--more great city planning! Met with some strong disapproval, though.
Change IS hard---and inconvenient to some--but what're the options?
Let's start!

BELOW: I stopped for lunch at a place which serves Creole/Southern US food, like greens and cornbread. The sign says,
"You don't have to be great to start
but you have to start to be great
--Zig Ziglar".

BELOW: Pippi Longstocking lifts a Dala horse (from Dalarna, Sweden ) on a Little Free Library.  Lots of Scandinavians settled here 100+ years ago, and Germans, English...
Then Black Americans in the Great Migration from the South--lots of my thrift store coworkers have roots in states like Mississippi.
The original settlers are Ojibwe/Chippewa/Anishinabe (three names, same people) and Dakota, et al. (www.mnhs.org/fortsnelling/learn/native-americans)
In more recent times, lots of people from Vietnam and Laos (Hmong), East Africa (esp. Somalia), Latin America. Now Afghanistan, Ukraine...
Many good restaurants!

Not everyone supports Harris/Walz.
(You know, the quote is from the movie The Big Lebowski.)

At LoTI: More good planning!
It took a LONG time to get these trash-catchers installed where street drains empty into the lake.

Halloween approaches! You can see how dry we are. Boo. After a nice long, wet summer, we're back in drought conditions.

What about the “o”?

 Can you read the “o” in LOVE? (Or does it look too much like an “e”?)

I’ve been wanting to do this design ever since I painted “Faith Hope love” on the boarded-up thrift store windows after George Floyd’s murder – – when the store was broken – – and my painted words lined up with the word in the sign above it saying THRIFT.

Here, me, May 2020 (that’s Asst Man, left):

My Current Workplace …

…though I don’t spend as much time in my department as I’d like to/should.

Linoleum prints (5” X 7” text)

The Museum of Solitude 

Dept. of Do Your Damn Work

Three Docs, in Oct.

Hello to you, darlings, here in October.
I'm drinking my half–pumpkin spice coffee at the kitchen table this Sunday morning. It's still pitch black out at 6:30, but I can see trees blowing in the light of the streetlamps.
Let's see... The sun will rise in an hour, at 7:26; sunset is 6:30 p.m.

People in the northern hemisphere sleep more in October than any other month (per). I feel that. Not that it's the darkest and coldest month, but it's the change-over month.

I haven't been sleeping more (I sleep a lot anyway), but I've been watching lots more movies. (DVDs from the library.I don't have streaming because without internet, my computer connection (phone hot spot) is too slow.)
Mostly documentaries, or that sort of thing.

I. The Lost King (2022, dir. Stephen Frears, UK), which I watched last night looked promising, based on the true story of amateur historian,  Philippa Langley (Sally Hawkins, below), searching for  the long-lost remains of King Richard III--and finding them under a parking lot.
But the story is poorly served.
Was slandered Richard really a mopey, dopey-eyed love puppy, as the Hawkins character envisions him? (Just because someone is poorly done by history (or society or family) doesn't mean they are a sweet innocent.)

Feels untrustworthy--which would be okay, but it's also kind of boring. I wouldn't recommend this.

II. Much better---All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (2022, Laura Poitras, USA), a documentary about photographer Nan Goldin taking on the Sackler family and their philanthropy paid for with billion-dollar profits from OxyContin.
Released on Criterion.

What struck me:
the power of age and of drawing on your own history.
In taking on the Sadler family, Nan Goldin (b. 1953, only 8 years before me), drew on her activist experiences during the 1980s-90s HIV/AIDS epidemic––the political theater/direct action of ACT UP's die-ins, etc.––and also on her understanding of her teenage sister Barbara's suicide when Nan was eleven.

III. Best thing I've watched so far:
Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy (2023, dir. Nancy Buirski, USA)--a doc about Midnight Cowboy--not just about the movie, but the bigger picture of American culture at the moment--drawing parallels with Vietnam War reporting-- and the place, New York City.

As Bob Balaban says in the doc, it was "a picture of New York that really looked like New York, not like Easter Parade with Judy Garland going to come down singing".

Balaban played the young man who picks up Joe Buck (Jon Voight) outside a movie theater. It was Balaban's first movie.

(Reminds me, have you seen the 10-second video of a little kid saying, "I'm just a baby!"?)

Director Nancy Buirski interviewed online at Westdoc.

IV. Funny to realize just now, Balaban also features in Eva Hesse (2016, dir. Marcie Begleiter), another doc about an artist. He reads the letters of Hesse's father.
Eva Hesse was "one of the few women to make work taken seriously" in the largely male downtown New York City art scene.

Main message: DO YOUR WORK. This is the message I take from every creator's life: CREATE YOURSELF.

Below, Hesse who died at thirty-four, creating her first breakthrough unsettling organic sculptures. --Via "Portrait of the artist as a young woman: inside the mind of Eva Hesse"

Perambulating in the Park

Heaven help me, it is the truth, it is no lie that I have become positively LUMBROUS in my decrepitude.

I attempted to run up a slight––slight!–– incline to catch up with Marz gamboling ahead at Gooseberry Falls State Park, and I felt like a suet pudding. (We don't have those here, but they sound like how I felt.)

Now I'm back home, I am committed--committed!--to standing up every day, stepping outside, and locomoting myself from there.
I have no excuse not to. I'm just genuinely physically lazy. (I say this with affection. It's the plain truth.)
I have time: I'm unemployed!
All my body parts function, if reluctantly.

I live a pleasant walk from a lake with a walking path.
Today I walked those 5 miles (8 km) to the lake, around, and back.
It rained the tiniest bit, which intensified the colors and thinned the crowds. (Weekends, the paths can be mobbed. Luckily there's a separate path for people on wheels.)

The lake commissary closes tomorrow for winter, and I got my last grilled cheese of the season, with the extra treat of a local beer--a "dry-hopped and citrus-forward IPA with a smooth, malty finish".

This may seem counterproductive, but believe me, I'd eat this sort of thing whether I'd taken a walk or not.
It made for a perfect Saturday in the park.

Duluth Diptychs: Circles

Circles in Duluth, Minnesota

1. Clock at North Shore Bank (1960s?)
2-3. Architectural decorations on Carnegie Library (1902)
4. Electricity pole innards
5. Skylight at Karpeles Manuscript Museum, former First Church of Christ, Scientist, 1912
6. Graffiti in alley
7. Vault of North Shore Bank
8. Non-slip sidewalk plate

Penny Cooper at Speedway

I was horrified to be halfway up the Chester Creek path with Marz this morning and to realize that  Penny Cooper was no longer in the side pocket of my bag!

I retraced my steps – – 2 miles back – – and found her on the stoplight across from Speedway gas station and convenience store – – purveyors of the Big Gulp I’ve been writing about and of fried chicken, a half-eaten piece of which was next to Penny. 

Though Penny appears a very proper eight-and-a-half year old, she is a doll, and doll ways are not our ways. I suspect that she had jumped out of my bag to get Speedway goodies.

Look how pleased she looks with herself, the darling! It also looks like she may have had run in with a vehicle. 

THANK YOU, kind stranger!!!

Duluth Signs

 In Duluth for a couple days—New Bear (mohair, glass eyes) came to meet Marz.

 Some signs I have enjoyed here…

Detour, every which way:

Below: Near Marz’s place. I get the chicken sandwich.

Bent.

Below: What they got against the SAX?

Security camera… tiny pots:

If I were an oil painter, I would love to paint the beautiful patina of urban decay

Childhood Tech Trio

I wasn’t in love with today’s ^ print. Looks more like a mutant movie camera than a pencil sharpener. But if I think of it as one of a print series of tech from my childhood (which it is), it’s okay.

So… I just printed the three so far on nice paper with my new oil ink (so messy to use!!!)— whew! Yes, they’re good together.

_________

I talk about ‘doing it badly’ and ‘considering everything an experiment’, blah blah blah, but really I’m always disappointed when I don’t love the result. Human!

"It's great to be an American"

I began blogging l'astronave (starship in Italian) on October 7, 2007. This blog, noodletoon, rolled on without an interruption from that one. So yesterday was this blog's seventeenth birthday.
Seventeen! I first went to college when I was seventeen... (Didn't stay long that time, but went.)

People have liked my transistor radio print* more than I'd expected---I think it has emotional resonance for those of us who grew up before computers. Also old tech looks cool.
I'm going to do some more prints of communication tech from my childhood. Rotary dial phones. View Masters!

This morning I'm looking at wall-mounted pencil sharpeners.
In the high school last spring, I saw none--only electric pencil sharpeners. Half the time they didn't work so people used those little plastic ones--one inchers.

Kids did use pencils, but every classroom had a 'Promethean board' mounted in front of the old blackboard. These are electronic touch screens that connect to the Internet--you can write on them and show videos.
No more clapping chalk out of erasers...
__________

"current state of America"

This mini-vid online showing warring yard signs made me laugh, so I took screencaps.
Feels just right, though usually these people aren't right next to each other, at least not in my neighborhood, where I've not seen a single Trump sign.

Funny how we separate ourselves.
Though not always...

I was shocked yesterday when an old friend told me he approves of how El Salvador's president/dictator Nayeb Bukele has suspended legal rights and used police to round-up suspected gang members [84,000+ so far] with no due-process and put them in camps like the new Terrorism Confinement Center (overview on Wikipedia),
and then I was horrified that he thinks we (the US) should do this too.

"Why can't we round up these guys hanging out on the corners, killing downtown businesses?"
(He's older and rather frail. He's afraid to walk downtown. He’s not paranoid: it’s true it's emptied out and become more crimey, as has the whole city, since Covid--and after the murder of George Floyd. But who did that? THE POLICE.)

But they aren't breaking any laws, I said. They're just poor and have nowhere to go--maybe we could change that. And besides, I said, we already have a massive prison system.

He wants more discipline, and harsher. Like extending Guantanamo to every city in the US.

I was truly shocked--perplexed--disturbed. Disbelieving. Surely he didn't understand what he was saying?
I kept bringing up objections and alternatives.
"How bout if we start with changing gun laws?"

"That's too hard," he said. "It's not going to happen."

"But this sort of 'solution' has never turned out well. What's to stop someone who does that from rounding up, say, trans people?" I asked.

He abruptly stood up and said he had to go.

I felt rather sick. But it gave me new insight into why people would vote for Trump, if this educated, well-off man--a "nice" person--wants to put people in camps (he used that word, "camps") because they frighten him.
________________

Coincidentally, this morning I was listening to Harry Nilsson and heard him sing Randy Newman's "Sail Away" for the first time--about how happy people should be to be brought to America:

"Sail away
We will cross the mighty ocean into Charleston Bay.
In America you'll get food to eat.
You won't have to run through the jungle and scuff up your feet,
You'll just sing about Jesus and drink wine all day,
It's great to be an American."

______________________

* P.S. I added an antenna to the radio--(I think I''ll angle it up a bit)--but most importantly, I finally bought some water-washable, oil-based printing ink.
It's (relatively) waterproof, nicer to work with, and it covers smoother and prints glossier: