UPDATE: 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.

DeLIGHT in You

Catch-up Saturday.

Eating Food

Eating my greens---at the restaurant/natural store, Tao Foods, started in 1968, when it was a "natural foods store".
It recently restyled itself a "Café and Herbery", with quotes from Rumi on the chalkboard. It markets itself as "Quaint and Magic", and I suppose it is.
What I love is, you can get a big bowl of sautéd kale  with sesame oil & seeds for $5:

You can still buy herbs in bulk there---glass jars ring the balcony in the other room.

What do ya'll think of Ozempic?
It looks like a miracle drug, and I hope it is, because so many people are drowning in suffering. There's no doubt about that.
If those people could get help, that would be excellent.

But I guess it makes me feel some overall ... 'disappointment', is that the word? in my species.
In solving huge and horrible problems like starvation (until the other day, a far worse problem than obesity), we have created other problems for us as a group that overwhelm us as individuals--we little beings are unable to resolve them.
Bring on pills and computers.

I still want to draw in the dirt with sticks.

And after all, I am free to do that for now [she writes on her computer, aware of the role of luck and double-dealing... ].

Meanwhile, vulnerable species like the golden frog can just disappear.
These frogs wave(d) at each other:

"Males attract females with visual displays, instead of calling like most male frogs and toads do. These attractive displays include leg and head twitching, stamping the ground and hopping in place. Male frogs often wave their arms to communicate with females whom will wave back if interested."

Waving, or Drowning? 

Our species has got some persistent problems there're no pills for.
"Sin" is out of favor as a word, but the Seven Deadly and their offspring are going strong.

Former Washington Post editor Marty Baron--the guy who helped expose the Catholic Church's systematic abuse of children (I'd just rewatched Spotlight, a movie about that)-- calls the WaPo's refusal yesterday to endorse Harris for president,
“Disturbing spinelessness at an institution famed for courage”.

Spinelessness would fall under the deadly sin of Sloth, I'd say. Or, also pride. And lust, greed and ...
All of them, they travel in a pack.

"Fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.” [1 John 4:18]

PS. Yeah, but Fear the A.I.

I searched "how many times does it say 'do not be afraid in the Bible?' and the FIRST thing that appears is AI saying "365 times."
The AI links to INSTAGRAM as a source!!!
. . . Where there's this cute idea that God said it 365 times so we could make calendars with one-a-day Bible verses!

This is not true.
"Anyone can jump over to BibleGateway.com and do a simple search of the phrase, 'Do Not Be Afraid' and see for themselves that it does NOT appear 365 times," says Keith Giles, progressive Christian. And he does the search.
Phrased in various ways, it does appear a lot--more than one hundred times? Cause we need to hear it?

"Even if it only appeared once, you could still wake up and read it to yourself every single day."

Heaven help us.
__________________________________
Interlude

Afternoon at the art institute with Marz (& her college camera):
 

These are doll-sized! Two thousand years old! I love them!

Added face on a bus bench:

____________________

The first night of the community ed Printing at Home class was fairly pointless--the teacher handed out easy-carve lino and one carver each and said "do what you want". Luckily I'd brought my carving tools.

I did not feel de-LIGHT-ful, and my print does not delight me.
It's okay though, and I hope it'll get me going again.

Scratching in the dirt, looking for the seed of light in the individual...

This weekend, I'm dog-sitting beautiful Burton, named after Richard, and didn't bring printmaking stuff.

_____________________
Return to Move

Man, am I sore this morning! Yesterday I worked my first shift back at the thrift store as a paid employee again.

It was just the sort of thing I love: Big Boss asked me to start by winnowing the housewares on the sales floor.
It hadn't been done thoroughly in months so it was very satisfying---I pulled tons of cracked plates, chipped glassware, broken tschotchkes, empty packages (contents stolen or separated into useless parts), faded and filmy plastic, and generally undesirable crap.
I started to reorganize too--but that will take longer.

I'm glad I have the weekend off to stretch out, and then I'll be working 5-hour shifts, Mon-Wed-Fri–days. I can recover from exertion in between.
I'm thrilled about this return to physical work. As I knew, I don't push myself as much as a job with built-in exercise.

Like with food--we've freed ourselves from onerous and dangerous physical situations (working or starving to death)–– THIS IS SO GOOD–– . . . but instead of becoming beautifully free, we've (I've!) become couch potatoes.

Ah, well.
This is the world we live in now.
And so, I appreciate the necessity of movement--if it's a job I generally like, for a cause I support (making excess stuff affordable and available). I'm not forced to plant potatoes or die.

I was (of course) already agitated by the energies around me at work---but that's the world we live in. I am willing and able (I think!) to be in it.
The agitation came from exposure to the larger social setting (poverty, mostly), not from coworkers.
I went around and told everyone I was rehired (I am prepared for the fact that management's communication style is "knowledge by osmosis" (not to say secretive?), and everyone was welcoming--even very happy I'm back.
And I am too.
[Watch this space for ranting and raging in the future, however.]

I do think it's funny I'm back. Marz said she'd thought I would be. "You love so much about it."
Like life (and one's self), it's full of annoyances and contradictions--and good.
I'm not done there.
________________

Side-by-sides I'd set up at the thrift store (previously, but never posted)

             And bookends:

"I threw myself off trying to do something Swedish."

Beautiful weather as we enter Scorpio, sign of all things deep and dark. Riches, or horrors...

Marz is here for a couple days. We went for a walk yesterday and she took the DSLR camera she'd signed-out from the college media center.
I'd half-forgotten how many resources and opportunities you get in college. How many? VERY many.
Study Abroad, for instance. Marz had gone to a presentation, and students can choose from forty countries. Forty!

I woke up feeling happy.
It's a relief that money will be coming in again. (Though I feel immense relief not to be a prison guard   school aide anymore, I do miss making lots of money...)
I go to pick up the dog-sitting house keys in fifteen minutes;
I go to my first paid shift at the thrift store tomorrow;
and an old friend has asked to hire me to clean her house once a month--she had a stroke and can't do the deep cleaning.

As for printmaking--I miss it and need/want to pick that up again. I just need to carve and print one of MY phrases again, but I can't remember any! Certain things can slip out of focus, like a camera lens.
I told Marz "I threw myself off trying to do something Swedish,"
(a sentence she said that pairs nicely with "I can't remember why I don't have a parrot").
I trust that good words to print will rise up in my brain any moment now.

"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!

Fresca "7 Up" x 9

At sixty-three, this is my ninth "7-Up" year.
You know the British "Up" series of documentaries, where people are interviewed/filmed from age seven (in 1964) and every seven years afterward?
I love this sort of time-lapse / before-and-after/ behind the scenes thing. 

63 Up was released in 2019.
Director Michael Apted died in 2021, and there are no plans for a "70 Up" installment.
Two of the participants have died too. Lynn Johnson, children's librarian, died at 57, in 2013. Nick Hitchon, scientist, died at 65, in 2023 (Guardian obit).

Today I'm posting photos and abbreviated text from my first Up collages, which I put together when I was 49, in 2010; then 56 in 2017.
(A lot more people were blogging in 2010, and that post is worth visiting for the fun comments:
gugeo.blogspot.com/2010/03/fresca-7-up.html)

I find these fun and also really helpful--an Anchor and a Mirror of the self in time... It'd be great to add historic (impersonal) photos of each year, but not today!

Fresca's Seven Up

 YEAR ZERO,
Christmas 1960

My parents at my mother's family home, in southern Missouri.

My mother, Lytton Virginia Davis, 26, is seven months pregnant with me.
My father, Daniele, 30, is finishing his PhD in political science.

_________________

 

1) Spring 1967
"7 Up"

My first-grade school photo, in Madison, Wisconsin.
I am six.

I'm reading Green Eggs and Ham, by Dr. Seuss, and Where the Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak.

 

 

___________________

 
2) 1974, "14 Up"

I'm 13 here, (in my 14th year), right before I go to high school.

The last photo of my childhood.
My mother had left the family that spring;
my father spends the summer watching Watergate hearings. (Nixon resigns in August.)  

___________________

3) 1983, "21 Up"
... Or thereabouts: first at 20; then 23 years old.

I'm living in Minneapolis, working as a cook, then a nursing assistant, and--bottom photo--have taken a 10-day solo bike trip.

Times feel rather grim:
John Lennon has been murdered; Ronald Reagan [hearts] Margaret Thatcher; U.S. Marines are killed in Beirut and invade Grenada; a toxic gas leak at Bhopal, India, kills thousands of people.

Still, Lech Walesa, glasnost, and the Sony Walkman give us hope.

___________________________

4) 1989, "28 Up"

George H. W. Bush is prez;
the Soviets leave Afghanistan, a country many Americans have barely heard of; Tiananmen Square demonstrations end in violence;
Berlin Wall falls.

I'm living for a year with bink in New Bedford, MA, (the port Ishmael ships out of in Moby Dick), while bink teaches illustration.
I worked as a janitor at the YW and worked out there to the soundtrack of Dirty Dancing (1987).

Bonus "Up", below:
bink at Seven Up and 28 Up:

_________________ 

  5) 1996,  "35 Up"

Nelson Mandela is president of South Africa; massacre in Rwanda; Dolly the sheep is cloned; Bill Clinton reelected.

Having gone back to college, I graduate with my B.A. in Classics.
When people ask me what I want to do with my degree, I say,
"I want to lead a life of conversation."
Mostly this means I write volumes of e-mails during my evening shift at the art college library.
(Blogger dot com won't be launched for three more years, in 1999.)

_____________________

 6) 2003, "42 Up"

Post-September 11, 2001:
George W. Bush is prez; the US & allies are at war in Iraq and Afghanistan; Jimmy Carter wins the Nobel Peace Prize; people line up at midnight to buy the new Harry Potter;
Google buys Blogger.

Left: Me, at a hostel in New York City.
My mother had taken her life around winter solstice, 2002.
I've begun to edit and write world geography reference books for teens, which will over the next dozen years span from Finland to Zimbabwe.
I buy my first Apple laptop and begin my first blog, flightless parrots, which I delete two years later, realizing with a shock that the Internet isn't kidding.

_____________________
7) 2010, "49 Up"

Above--Me at my 49th birthday party, wearing mittens knitted by Poodletail. 

 
Barak Obama is US president (term will run 2009-2017).
Instagram launches.

Rediscovered Star Trek, a couple years earlier and having made my peace with the bright lights of the 'net, I've been blogging again for a couple years, which comes pretty close to fulfilling my desire for a life of conversation.
I meet Marz through a William Shatner (Captain Kirk) online fan site.

_______________________
8) 2017: 56 Up

Red Hair Girl, the first of the girlettes, comes with me when I am on a panel in Dallas for children's nonfiction. The book I wrote on creative fandom is my last project in publishing.

If a film crew showed up to depict my life, they'd show me looking at open water, not sure which way to row or where the currents will take me next. Once again.
This seems to be my return-to position. :)
I mean that mostly in relation to [paid] work, not self. At this age, I feel centered in who I am, like a person sitting in a boat is stable, and that's nice. 

Volunteering at thrift stores, I have also started doing SNARP: Stuffed Needy Animal Rescue Project.
Flying Monkey is my favorite rescue story:

Still, I can feel soggy with seriousness sometimes. "Especially now," as I keep hearing people say since January 20, when Trump was inaugurated as president of the US.

And we were right.
Still to come: worldwide Coronavirus (COVID 19) pandemic; police murder of George Floyd, May 25, 2020, leads to protests for justice, and riots; and January 6 (2021) attack on the US Capitol by a mob of supporters of Trump.
_____________________

9) 2024: "63 Up"

US presidential election coming up between prosecutor Vice President Kamala Harris & felon Trump.
War and more war. (Ukraine/Russia, Hamas(Palestine)/Israel, Sudan...)

Also, baby pygmy hippo Moo Deng, whose name translates to “bouncy pork,” unites the internet, "Stealing Hearts (and Biting Zookeepers)"

I finished up six years at the thrift store, worked a short stint as a special ed high school aide, and then printmaking!

Some Novels I've Read

Mail! My favorite!
I got a package from my friend Tracy and her Sjölind's Chocolate House in Wisconsin, where she makes chocolates from bean to bar, as well making many other fine things, like knitted–coffee cup sleeves/wrist warmers I'm wearing, and linocuts--you can just see her print of a coffee cup.
The girlettes are most excited about the doll-sized Radio-Flyer wagon, to be featured at Halloween. (I'm wearing my black-cat Halloween shirt from the thrift store.)

I was inspired  by the upcoming visit of a pal who's never been here to start organizing my apartment.
I finally--after two years--finished organizing my books, including shelving all the Novels I've Read together, in alphabetical order.

I'd gotten rid of most of my books over time, and when I moved to HouseMate's in August 2019 I only owned a few shelves' worth. Then Covid closed libraries seven months later on St. Patrick's Day 2020, leaving me high and dry.
Once the thrift store reopened, I started bringing books home for myself. Insurance!
"As God is my witness, I'll never be bookless again!"

I've filled three tall bookshelves. "Novels I've Read" (not counting sci-fi) fill only one shelf.  I'll just show you them, here, because I love seeing other people's shelves.

My criteria for keeping books is that I'd read them again––some for comfort reading, say if I were sick (Less, by AS Greer)––or they're personally significant to gaze upon, even if I'd never read them again (John Steinbeck's Cannery Row, which I loved at thirteen but now can't stomach).

•Jane Eyre is one of the first novels I read that stands up to reading every decade.

•I read Name of the Rose while bicycling through Ireland in 1986. Finished it one night at a hostel in an crumbling monastery--don't want to reread it, but looking at it takes me there!
•Novel without a Name (1995) by Duong Thu Huong is practically the only thing I've read about the Vietnam War from the pov of the North.

•I only just read Turtle Diary this summer--because I'd loved Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker--also his Frances the Badger books! What an amazing writer. I loved Turtle Diary--nothing dramatic happens when the characters rescue a couple turtles from the zoo, except, it sort of does...? So true to life.

•I faced The Dubliners forward because the spine is gone. Really I only have it for the last lines of "The Dead" ("snow was general all over Ireland").

*Makkai's The Borrower is about a children's librarian who runs away with a library kid, a boy whose evangelical parents have enrolled him in a gay-proofing ministry. Not a great book, but it has a great ending.

•I couldn't believe what a great writer Wodehouse is when I read him this summer. I'd watched Fry & Laurie's Jeeves & Wooster TV series, and it's delightful--but Wodehouse's writing is. . . well, people always say this, but really, it's flawlessness is a delight in itself.

•Winterson's Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit-- my favorite scene--in her school sewing class, the girl growing up in an evangelical home wants to needlepoint "The summer is over and we are not yet saved" (Jeremiah 8:20).
•I kept Curtis Sittenfeld Sisterland and J Walter's Beautiful Ruins for rereading when sick in bed.

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 (Harriet, Bde Maka Ska, Cedar, and Lake of the Isles) are ringed in public parkland:
you can walk/wheel around all four, and if you follow the connecting path along Minnehaha Creek, you'll reach the Mississippi 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 Brasa, 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 Lake of the Isles: 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.