At the museum...

My sister and I went to the art museum last night, where we found a representation of MOOD OF THE SEASON, 2...
[“Durga Slaying the orange monster” was the first one]…
A mask of the Yoruba people of Nigeria representing Eshu, the god of Chaos. The dancer wearing it would hit onlookers with a staff... as A Warning!

As the US Coast Guard motto says, Semper Paratus:
Always ready, be PREPARED!

_________________________

Something's going on with my hair.
The other day I posted that photo of me looking like a model for a knitting magazine;
the next day, a coworker asked (as a compliment), "What have you done to your hair?"; 
and yesterday I saw my sister for the first time in 9 months ago, and she said,
"OMG, you look like Ali McGraw!"

Maybe it's the SWEATER?
I never wear Scandinavian patterns, but I liked this warm cardigan. Thrift, of course.
__________________

Also at the museum---inspiration for a print! A woven wool saddle blanket by a Hopi artist, c. 1900,
So simple, so strong!

I'm in a dash--leaving to go to work in 5 minutes, so just one more cheering thought:
The algorithm has determined that I like pithy phrases from physicists. Today it gave me:::

Pink chair

My new pink chair! From the thrift store, of course--bink drove it home for me yesterday. My once empty apartment is filling up. I think I like that...?

I love the chair, anyway. It's comfy and and in surprisingly good shape, with no signs of cigarettes or cats.
I'm considering taking off its skirt, a dust catcher. It's got cute wooden legs.

BELOW: The return of my annual 'Two-Person Book Club (Start Your Own)' display. Books we have in duplicate are usually once-popular titles, now unwanted; but I enjoy gathering them together, and it shows care.
A volunteer said, "It makes us look like a regular bookstore."

______________________

When Big Boss drove me to work yesterday, he said, "You should make videos for youTube of how to make lunch with food from the food shelf."

What a neat idea! I think I'll try it next week.
I'm not wanting to film anymore Growing Older videos, but making them gave me confidence to make more. This might encourage me to research recipes too, which I'd like to do.

BELOW: The spaghetti and meatballs I made are in the red and white crock-pots on the counter in the break room at work.

On the table is the usual kind of regularly donated food: candy and commercial bakery, near or passed its sell-by date. The ingredients lists are entire paragraphs. We give the food to customers, keeping plenty for staff.

I used to eat donuts every time I worked.

Fresh fruit sometimes gets donated too, but it's often old or somehow unsettling--green oranges, here. A vegetarian volunteer took home the bag that had sat around for days.

Snow! Xmas card! Helpful Meatballs!

I. Meatballs & Bears

It's snowing this morning--lightly, but enough to whiten the grass.
I'm glad that last night I'd lined up a ride with Big Boss to take my hot lunch to work this morning.

Yesterday, the food shelf had a big bag of frozen Impossible Burger "meat"balls (soy, but very like ground beef), and I made so very much spaghetti and sauce, I didn't want to carry it in.
BB lives about 3 miles away--near the store, but he always drives--so I felt free to ask him to swing by.
He's good like that--will pitch in and help people move or whatnot.

Also, it turns out to be a good morning to test-print one Xmas card. Messy.
I like the bear a lot, but is it too simple? Maybe some green behind, instead of black?

I used red oil paint, which is okay but not tacky enough.
I'm mad because if I want oil-based color block-printing ink, I have to order it online. I went to Michael's and Blicks in nearby suburbs, and the art college supply store closer to me... nope.
And that's it--the other big art-supply stores have closed.

I just checked, and the shipping cost is more than the price of a small tube. So oil paint it is. Or hand painting!

II. Surfing the Chaos.

I'd rebounded emotionally enough from the election to read the Economist issue last night on "what to expect".
I LOVE their tone-- never hysterical, they say things like,
"So-and-so worked for the KGB. This is worrisome."
I can take that in.

I live in such a liberal area, the election results feel unreal.
This sign a few blocks away shows results (I'm not sure if they're for  the neighborhood or the whole city, but they'll be similar):

But we remember in our bodies how it went last time. Up close and personal, Covid, Black Lives Matter. And plenty more remote events that still impacted like body blows.
You know.

In our homes, a mile from George Floyd Square, we breathed in the acrid smoke of burning auto-parts; lying in bed, we heard the helicopters overhead.
Walking down the street, we saw the National Guard standing with machine guns...
(I was living a mile the other direction that year--same difference.)
This wasn't directly down to Trump, but it reflects his world of chaos and force.

I dread a repeat, but I'm going to focus on getting better at surfing the chaos. I'm grateful I'm in a good workplace to do that.
Make lunch!

Find the Good, and Praise It.

I accidentally hit the Photo Booth icon on my laptop this morning, and it showed me this person: 

Me! looking like I could be a silver-hair model for designer Gudrun Sjoden...      

        LOL 😂 (This is a fluke of Morning Hair, I promise.)

 Sjoden, below, second from right.
Her stuff is nice, though beyond my price (though not insanely expensive, as nice fashion goes (a turtleneck is $68, corduroy pants $118).
Her drapey styles look best on tall people (not me).

I must stop saying things like, "I like Physics best."
There are so many things I like "best"--many varieties of wisdoms!
Like, Find the Good, and Praise It.

Another favorite is the Jewish concept Tikkun Olam--Mend the World. Or repair/ heal... its popular modern meaning. (Historically it has other meanings.)

Here, an artist friend I reconnected with this fall, Anita White, uses "Tikkun Olam" to illustrate/advertise SOUP FOR YOU---serving free hot soups, with salad and dessert, for anyone, every weekday in a church a couple miles from the thrift store.

Anita's motto is, ""Nothing is so scary you can' t draw it!"

Soup for You! was started by Chef Judah:

"Born in the ghetto of Tunis, an Arab/Jewish child of a Holocaust survivor, Chef Judah was orphaned at an early age and became a child beggar.

“I was hungry the first 8 years of my life” says Chef Judah. Thankfully, he was adopted and brought to America as an immigrant/refugee... More than 40 year ago, he landed in Minneapolis, where he experienced homelessness and hunger once again.

“I was a troll and lived underneath the Franklin Ave Bridge, for an entire year.”
After surviving the streets, Chef Judah found himself at St. Martin’s Table, a non-profit café and bookstore. For the next 15 years, he honed his skills there in global vegetarian soup making."

I would like to meet him! I must go for lunch one day.

A couple good things I saw online:

I didn't love the book The Salt Path, but the movie looks promising--to be released in April 2025:

Another women's march after the 2nd inauguration of DT, this time called a People's March:

And, I want to read her book, Orbital, about a day above Earth:

Finally—not from online—bink taking the new bears out to see the world, as they requested a Grand Tour. Here in the bird sanctuary by lake Harriet, a mile from my apartment:

Off to work now.

May your hair look good or other good things come to you today!

Small Sparkle Sunday

Just a quick hello, this Sunday morning.
I felt better after a walk yesterday and started to decorate my apartment for winter holidays
. . . with help!

They all want holiday outfits too.
I like to decorate, and I'm extra motivated this year because I want it to be sparkly for Marz's stay over Christmas, but I'm slow. No magic transformation in an afternoon---it's more like putting out a few trinkets, sitting down to admire them, and declaring it a day.

Penny Cooper just chimed in that one ornament does transform a room. And she's right.

bink's coming over soon---I'm going to try no-white-sugar banana oatmeal pancakes--in this recipe you mix in the blender
banana, eggs, oats, almond milk, cinnamon, vanilla, baking powder.

Plenty of sweet in that--if I were actually diabetic, even too much.
I know this is all predictable, boring to hear about, even? but I am shocked to look back at how much processed sugar I was eating all my adult life.
Ketchup!
The other day I thought I'd treat myself to French fries, and then realized I couldn't have ketchup, so then I didn't even want them.
Turns out I only liked them if they were sugar conveyors.
You know.

But it's going well, at four weeks. I'm just starting to look at sugars that occur naturally in foods, like bananas and oats.
But I do NOT want to freak myself out with too much change, too fast. That can backfire, I know very, very well.

So, that's it for now. Sparkle on!

Shiny at the Store

Bears in the thrift store's parking lot, excited to be GOING HOME yesterday!
Marz named the bears Abbott (taller, paler) and Costello (littler, dark one). They are to be given baths today.

That's the bike pannier ^ I transport soup in, which Ceci had asked about. I put the soup in ziplock plastic bags.
It's not even 4 p.m., but look at how low the sun is, throwing shadows on a slant.

As I left work, I took this photo, below, to show one of the Super Volunteers, Marc, how the glassware he'd shined (wiping every smudgy glass with a cloth!) glows in the setting sun.
I also like the customer's fashion. Are those Crocs?

BELOW: Earlier, I'd helped Jester (aka, Mr Mushroom or Grateful-J) price artificial Xmas trees ($25–$40). You can see some in the mirror, behind us.

Jester is assistant manager now. He is truly an ally in kaizen--continuous improvement, often slow and small. It adds up big time! Staff morale is way up too.

Below is the housewares improvement I'm most proud of:
I stood the big glass plates in racks.
They'd always been stacked flat in piles before. If you wanted to look at them, you had to sit on the ground and unstack them. Which almost no one did, of course.

     Genius, huh?

________________

I hadn't mentioned because it didn't affect me, but the guy who worked in Housewares for a short time before me was fired for  stealing.
Turns out it wasn't just flagrant theft though. Yesterday I found a stash of vintage goods he'd priced low and hid away with his name on them.
I repriced the dishware and set it on the vintage shelf:

I set aside the record albums he'd priced 99¢, to look up later. It included what looked like a first? release of the Beatles' White Album, which sells for hundreds of dollars.

I'd mentioned a coworker pricing undies way cheap for me. Everyone at work does that for one another, and I think it's good and fair--it helps make up for earning minimum wage.
(Full disclosure: when Big Boss rehired me, I got a 50¢ raise above min. wage. (I'd asked for a dollar, but that was a bridge too far.)

Pricing low to buy and re-sell is different. It harms the store to drain off all the cool stuff like that.
_____________________

I'm not feeling great today--not sure why. My first week of working four shifts again? It's fun but physically tiring work.
Or it it emotional tiredness?
Post-election slump?

The Big Picture [religious/philosophical] thought system I like best/believe in most is Physics. (Physics for lay people, anyway--as explained by popularizers like Carl Sagan, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Brian Cox.)

This perspective––"You are here"––is cheering and helpful to me:
Chill out!

____________________

Here's Brian Cox being chill ("gloomy but smiley") about the End of the World, with Philmona Cunk (comedian Diane Morgan). They are so good together, starting at minute 1:22

Luckily I have nothing much to do this weekend, so I can chill out. I'm going to go for a walk around the lake now. It's sunny and cold---brisk! Nice.

Wishing you all well! XO

Bejeweled.

 Ta-da! I filled the glass trees with jewel-beaded fruit from Xmas donations at the store. So pretty!

I met my friend John for coffee yesterday, and to receive my copy of his new book, Bellosio: An Age of Miracles---a world-building tale (like Dune or Game of Thrones--but no magical animals, he promises) + a whiff of A Canticle for Liebowitz.
(Available here at Bookshop.org.)

He'd told me the germ of the plot when we sat outside, face-masked, the first chilly spring of Covid.
Later, as I've done with some of his other books, I read the first few chapters and gave feedback, which he said was very helpful.
Still, I was shocked to see the dedication:

Me and Descartes!

I felt real, like the Velveteen Rabbit-- kinda like when I first saw my name on a Library of Congress heading--even though that was for hack-writing a geography book for Lerner Pub.
(I mean, that was good work, but it wasn't personal work.)

I felt honored and pleased and shy. “It wasn’t that big a deal.”
But other makers-of-things have told me that personal support--including actual editing and critical feedback, as well as emotional--means a lot.
Independent creative work maybe doesn't get enough solid support. It is a big deal.

Speaking of sci-fi, these are the books on my sci-fi bookshelf. I'd just mentioned one of my favorite books is World War Z.
I also very much enjoyed Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weil the guy who wrote The Martian, but better.

Also Walter Tevis's Mockingbird and Joanne Sinisalo's Troll: A Love Story.

But I've mentioned a hundred times, one of my favorites is the sci-fi Murderbot Diaries series by Martha Wells.
I recovered the dust jackets, to help me envision the various skin colors of the  characters, including the main character, Murderbot, who also has no gender or sex.
(The original art makes it look like a white male, which is already our default: I want to shake off that programming.)

It’s a sci-fi world we’re living in… 

Isn't it amazing we even exist, this little bundle of atoms with consciousness?

Enjoy life, everyone! 

Be the animal you are.

It's 6:34 a.m. here: Good morning!
In Swahili––I asked a coworker from Kenya––Habari za asubuhi.

"Maybe you are related to President Obama," I said.
"No," he said, "his father was Luo, I am Kisii."

This guy is so nice. He's about my age and is part of a Federal program for hard-to-place senior workers--they work at the store but are paid by the program.
He is the opposite of Louisiana Laura, my favorite, whose place putting clothes on hangers he fills. I still quote her, "Groceries get much higher, we'll be eating squirrels."
She was like a raucous crow, and he is like a gentle songbird.
Their clothes-hanging skills are similarly lopsided though.

My coworkers' skills vary widely.
One is still asking, "Where does this go?" after a month.
Another says, "Should we rearrange this area?" after two days.

A couple inefficient volunteers help out in Housewares.
I fill carts with priced goods, they put them out--theoretically in the proper sections--on the sales floor. 
After they leave, I pick up after them---the slotted spoon in the Bath & Body section, a Christmas cookie jar in with Clocks.

Some volunteers, though, are splendidly efficient. "This pitcher would look better if I polished the silver." 

And she did, and it does:


I am having so much fun at work, and the different people are part of it, even the frustrating ones.

Yesterday I set up a blue and silver display. Why did I label the menorah? I guess in case gentiles didn't know...
I am the compulsive fact-checking editor of the world.

THESE are my favorites, of course:

I emailed the picture to Marz, saying I hadn't brought them home.

"Why not?" she wrote back. "They are clearly a bear vaudeville team on the level of Abbott and Costello."

So now I have to bring them home.
Marz will be here a couple nights for Thanksgiving. Yay! She'll be spending the day itself with friends--we'll have dinner on Wednesday.

I'm looking into desserts with no sweeteners except fruit or sweet-seeming spices like cinnamon. (Too many recipes that say they're 'sugar-free' use sweeteners that are just as sugary as sugar, like honey and maple syrup.)

This Pumpkin Apple Bake calls for coconut, apple, banana, cinnamon--with egg and cottage cheese. Called a "breakfast" bake, I think it'd be a good Thanksgiving dessert--like pumpkin cheesecake.

I'm not worrying about carbs, not at this point. Dropping white sugar is enough for now! It's a huge change for me.
I said, and it's true, that eating no added sugar is not about losing weight, it's about maintaining mobility. It's been three+ weeks, and I'm eating a lot of anything else I want, so I don't get cranky and cravey.  But even though I'm eating a lot, I lost 5 pounds. And of course that helps with mobility too.

I shouldn't be surprised: I know I would've eaten an entire carton of Tillamook peaches-and-cream ice cream the day after the US presidential Election. It's a big difference, not to.
I imagine my body will adjust to the new normal soon enough.

Meanwhile, I'm relieved that my strength has returned after a few weeks at the store, my knee righted itself, and I've had no more injuries. I've been lucky.

So, Marz is coming home in a couple weeks--and then again for a week at Xmas. She gets a month off college over winter holidays, but has to stay in Duluth for her job at the food co-op.

It's so neat to see her finishing her first semester.  She's displaying this quality I never developed: self-discipline. Impressive!
She hasn't missed a single class or skipped an assignment. She doesn't always like it, and this crash-course in Life in Duluth has been really hard, but she's done it.

It's not just about discipline though--it's how you see things.
I always saw going to class and doing the work as optional! LOL
Some is, but some of this is not good (helpful) vs bad (restrictive) behavior, it's different strengths.

The way I see it (simplistically), is that if we can stay aligned with our own personalities, we reap the rewards and we pay the price that suit us.
While if we follow someone else,
we pay an alien price and reap an alien reward.

Is there an Aesop Fable about this?
Like, a fox labors in a field and earns grain it cannot eat?
Or a rabbit learns to hunt and kills its own relative?

Moral: Be the animal you are.

Marz is choosing classes for next semester.
So many cool choices! I hadn't expected that in a smaller university--(there's something like 8,000 students at UM-Duluth vs 40k at the Twin Cities campus).
She's rolling on from Russian Empire into The Soviet Experiment--a class I'd love to take.
But my favorite she's taking is Journalism in Movies.
She doesn't know yet what the movies they'll watch, but they used All the President's Men as their ad.

What journalism movies can you think of?

I'd mentioned Spotlight recently--about the Boston Globe team uncovering the Catholic Church's sexual abuse of children.
What others...?

His Girl Friday, with Rosalind Russell & Cary Grant.
Citizen Kane.
Geez, there must be dozens, but I'm drawing a blank...

Oh, Capote, about researching and writing In Cold Blood-- the New Journalism.
Network. "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!"

OK--it's a day off, and I'm going to meet JohnShk for coffee. He's bringing a copy of his just-[self]-published sci-fi/world building novel for me! He knows I don't love that genre, but I want a copy. It's very long. "You can use it as a door stop," he said.

Take good care of yourselves out there!

Disaster-preparedness/ Xmas card

I. At Work

Opening a box of Xmas donations yesterday,  I laughed to see these cards.  Are they perfect for the mood this season?

Could they be more funereal? There's even weeping willow, popular Victorian symbol of mourning, often on gravestones:

I didn't buy the cards, but if they're still there today, I'm going to.

Today is Hot Lunch Day. I'm taking in two batches of minestrone (vegetables in tomato base w/ spaghetti & cannellini beans)--one with Italian sausage (pork), one without.
One coworker thanked me last week for a vegetarian option. A couple Muslim coworkers don't eat pork, and a couple don't eat any red meat, but I know others love it.
I just use whatever ingredients I get at the food shelf.

Work has been great, but Amina, my replacement, is not keeping up. I worked five hours in BOOK's yesterday and had to leave it looking like this (and this is just one corner):

Amina's a lovely girl (almost twenty), and very smart, but not very physically attuned.
I like her as a person, if not as a coworker.
She's from a  Somali family, and she wears a hijab and long brown or black dresses. She's also a fantasy fan, and the other day she was wearing a Star Wars hoodie, with the hood pulled up over her headscarf.

"You look like one of the Sand People," I said, "with your hood up."
[Looking them up, I think I meant Jawas?]

Later I thought that might be insulting, and I apologized the next day.
"No, no, I thought it was funny," she said.
_________________________

II. Life During and After Life

Speaking of funereal matters, I want to add to what I wrote yesterday that while I find the story of reincarnation helpful, I take the more Jewishy perspective that we can't know if there's an afterlife, and it doesn't much matter:
What's more important is what we do here, in our life on Earth.

Reincarnation is, for me, a reminder that a person might not be able to do all that much, and that's okay.

My actual beliefs pretty much line up with author Marge Piercy's:

"What you’ve got is what you’ve got. It increases the poignancy.
You’re given a life, you do the best you can, you do what you must do, what’s right for you,
and then you wear out and you’re done."

--From this interesting article-- different Jewish writers and thinkers respond to the question:
"Is There Life After Death? Jewish Thinking on the Afterlife".
(Judaism, as you may know, doesn't take a hard line on the subject.)

Max Brooks, author of a favorite book, World War Z, about zombies--says he's more concerned with Disaster Preparedness in the here-and-now. He says,

"I have no idea if there’s an afterlife. I’d like there to be. I’d like to think that when I said goodbye to my mom, it wasn’t forever.
But how would I know? Because some guy in the desert wrote a book and told me so? I don’t go in for that stuff.

I grew up in California, so it’s all about disaster preparedness for me.
We had earthquake drills; nuclear war drills, because it was the Reagan era; and then we had real disasters, we had fires, we had the Rodney King riots. L. A. was never safe.
And now [2011] it’s even worse—9/11, global warming.
So I took that mindset of disaster preparedness and applied it to a science fiction concept.

Zombie culture has really taken off in the last decade and it’s because of the times we’re living in.
The world hasn’t been this inside-out since the 1970s, and that was the last time zombies were popular."

That was 2011--it hasn't gotten more right-side out since then.

Hm... Disaster Preparedness could make a good zine topic...
Only this year did I procure a first-aid kit, and a length of rope.
I don't know what for, exactly--but rope always comes in handy in disasters, right? For tying up zombies?
Like Michonne, here, in The Walking Dead:

III. Reading

Speaking of books, here's one of my favorite paintings, "The Magdalen Reading", by Rogier van der Weyden, c. 1435 (at the Nat'l Gallery, London):

I'd sent the picture of "Durga Slaying the Orange Monster" (posted a couple days ago) to a friend, who thanked me for the detailed explanation I included.

The friend is someone I 'd met years ago at the Catholic Church, and I wrote back saying I needed the explanation of Hindu iconography myself, but neither of us would for, say, this Christian painting, which we can easily read:
To Mary's right dangles a rope of prayer beads.
The jar on the floor must signify the ointment she anointed Jesus' feet with.
I don't know, but I'd guess she's reading the Psalms---at any rate, it must be the Hebrew scriptures.
Her hair is covered modestly, but are the drapes of her skirt rather... fleshy? That fold between her knees? A reminder of her renunciation of her sexual past?

Hm, I know these visual cues mostly from studying art history, but Catholicism fills in the story.
It's funny what you know, what you think you know, what you know you can't know... etc.

Tootle-oo, all. Go forth! Be Prepared!

Stepping into the Stream of Time/ Thank-You Project

bink and I met to talk about our next Resist-story zine, now the unthinkable has happened. I'm still a bit in shock after the Election one week ago.
"We have to do this again?! Nooooooooo...."

But, yes.
Time to pull up our big girl panties...

NOT a phrase I've ever used before, but I thought of it literally when I got actual new undies at work last week. Size XL. Two new 3-packs of Jockey hipsters, my size, had been donated. Their price sticker still on: $24 per pack.
That's $8 per panty! But Jockeys are nice, all cotton, attractive patterns and colors, and I covet them. (I usually buy whatever brand at Target.)
Linens Lady priced them at $1.99/pack for me––one of the unwritten benefits of the job.

Anyway, bink and I couldn't come up with an idea to get started on.
I think it is too soon, not even a week after the Election.
Nothing has settled down enough, within us. (We didn't make our first Baby's ResiStory until after the inauguration in 2017.)

I. Thank-You Project

But I did start my Thank-You Project, which I'd wanted to do no matter who won the election. It's a much easier thing to do, in theory, but there was the usual membrane between the idea and the action---took me a bit to DO IT.

I'd thought I should design a thank-you card, but decided the cards I've already made are good--especially, for writers, this typewriter card. Here, going to Barbara Scully, c/o her publisher.

Scully is an Irish (Dublin) woman about my age who wrote her first book during Covid, after a type 2 diabetes diagnosis made her sit up and take notice of the health of her body:
Wise Up, Power, Wisdom and the Older Woman.


But it wasn't her book (though I read it later),
it was simply her face, which appeared on my Instagram feed a coupla months ago when I was in Duluth. [Her IG.]
I just loved her gray hair and her lack of pretense and her open smile.
My people have showed up!

Seeing her inspired me to start making my own videos, for a short time, which led me to the important realization that I need to and want to consciously shine light on my own aging--because my mother's light does not serve. To put it mildly.

I haven't written about this--but making the video about that led me to feeling angry at my mother for killing herself--feeling angry for the FIRST time in 22 years!
How's that for a lag time? Talk about a membrane between action and reaction!

I did not say all this to Barbara Scully, I just said thank you for showing up; I share her experience that life gets BETTER after menopause.

Scully is a big ol' extrovert---she's now started doing live storytelling in Dublin. So while I wanted to say thanks, I didn't feel it was important--it was just fun.

II. The Stream of Time

Barbara's was my second; I'd written my first thank-you to someone much more vulnerable--almost an opposite of Barbara––who has sometimes asked for feed-back---a youTuber, Call Me Sam.
Sam is a middle-aged man in Scotland who detransitioned after 20-plus years of living as a trans-woman.

He barely, rarely touches on current gender politics at all (which is not really my interest)---his is a a personal, psychological reclamation project--a journey of personal transformation to find his authentic self after a life of abuse.

He has said that making videos are part of his exploration and transformation, but also he shares them hoping they help other people--and I wanted to let him know that yes, they do, and thank him for them.

I wrote (emailed) that the biggest help I get is the reminder to GIVE IT TIME. He didn't get clear until he had a breakdown in his mid-40s.
And this isn't a reminder to me about my life alone--it's a reminder to give OTHER people time.

An example of how wonderful that can be:
When I told bink that I was angry at my mother (after making that video), she told me she'd wondered if I ever would be. But for twenty-two years, she never said anything---and while it wouldn've been okay if she'd said something gently (NOT "you should"), I huge, huge, hugely appreciate that she never once did.
In fact, bink's ability to stand-by is why we've remained such tight friends all our adult lives.

My reaction was locked rigidly in place, and any suggestion I do it otherwise would have been received as . . . threatening.
I was holding it together to hold my self together.
And that was fine.
If it had never shifted, so what?

Lately I've been thinking a lot about reincarnation.
I just love it! I doubt it's a fact, but it's an extremely helpful story to me--because it's about Giving It Time, big time.

Haven't figured it out in this lifetime?
Eh, that's okay---there'll be endless other lifetimes.

I feel I've figured out... ummmm, I don't know... two? three? things in this life so far.
Maybe it'll snowball here in older age and I'll figure out another couple-few things. Who knows?
It doesn't matter.

Oh--anyway, I want to send paper mail if that's possible, but in this case I wrote to Sam's email (he put it on his youTube channel) saying some of that. 
He wrote back, "How strange the workings of this miraculous Universe where we find ourselves living for a time..."
He had lain awake the night before, doubting himself and his videos... and, "Then this morning, your glorious, heartfelt email telling me they do matter and I should not hide away...".

That was unexpected, and wonderful––to step into the stream of time and arrive at your desired destination right away.
But I don't expect or need that. My thank-you is a response to the people putting their work/selves out there, and I trust it is received even if not replied to.

Both of those people are strangers, and I probably? will keep writing thank-yous mostly to strangers or people who are not in my everyday life.
Sending it out into the world.
I feel, I certainly hope that I have expressed ample thanks and appreciation to people I know in person.

I hope I have said often enough to register, but I'll say it here (and later) again:
THANK YOU to you fellow/sister bloggers and commenters!

I wouldn't have written --almost every day for most of 20 years! (17 in this current blog--with a few years off)--without readers and, most importantly, other bloggers writing alongside, making themselves vulnerable in public.

We're used to it now, but when I first blogged in 2003, it was very scary to be public. (I later deleted that first blog, feeling too exposed.)
And it is a balance--how public to be, about what--and about whom?

At any rate, as Sam says, putting myself out in public has been and remains part of my Discover & Reclaim Project.
I never got obliterated by abuse, but I've certainly been knocked off my pins---or, as Reincarnation suggests, I've certainly met with--and retreated from!-- some difficult karma.
So--shining light on it by writing has been invaluable to me--and hearing other people's stories and thoughts has been huge.

Thank you for listening and sharing.
Love ya! Shine on!
XO Fresca

Calling Durga

A little loving-fierceness charges my batteries and dims my fears. So I say, Durga, I need you now!
Or, we may call up our own Durga energy, if that feels fitting.

Durga is a major Hindu goddess who "unleashes her divine wrath against the wicked––for the liberation of the oppressed, and she brings destruction to empower creation".

BELOW: Painting from the Brooklyn Museum:

The Hindu Goddess Durga on her tiger slays an orange demon (part buffalo);
the seated goddess Kali extends her long tongue to lap up the demon's blood before it touches the ground and coagulates into new asuras (demons).
Some blood transforms into tiny demons, who, emerging from the bloodbath,  continue the battle.

Caption: "Indian. Durga Slaying the Buffalo Demon, Raktabij, and Kali Lapping up the Demon's Blood, Page from a Markandeya Purana Series, 1800–1825. Opaque watercolor on paper, sheet: 11 1/8 x 15 in. (28.3 x 38.1 cm). Brooklyn Museum."

. . . Have a great week ahead, everyone!

"Contenta."

I. Contenta

". . . de nada" my Mexican coworker Esmeralda added, when I said to her, "No tengas miedo".
That is, "Don't be afraid... of anything"!

I love Es--she's warm and funny, and proud of her grown, gay daughter.
Her English is not fluent, and she tells me I should speak Spanish.
My Spanish is small and bad. It's often a wobbly conversation.

As I was leaving yesterday, she offered me a cookie.
"No, gracias", I said, "yo soy gordo." [I couldn't explain about fasting from sugar in Spanish.]

"Gorda", she said. "You are not fat!"

"Si", I said. "Gorda, vieja [old], and pobrecita? .... How do you say 'poor'?"

"Pobre."

"Gorda, vieja, y pobre. But happy!"

"Contenta."

Huh, like contented. "Feliz" also means happy. I don't know the difference, but I like "content"--it seems less... temporary? Less emotional, more a state of being.

II. Thrifty Goodness

I stopped following the news closely years ago. The hype makes me less able to act, less able to keep my center, to hold my seat.
It's a form of "leaving" inwardly, like the video suggests when the situation is overwhelming.

The good I do is small and mostly local, I suppose. I want to do it though, and not be overwhelmed by despair.
I have my mother as an example of how that goes.

I'm happy at work, after two weeks back.
And can I claim thrift as a Good?
Absolutely!
Urban poverty is dirty and ugly. You deal with a lot more visible (and audible) brokenness right up close than people who can afford space and cleanliness, quiet and solitude.
So, yeah: a pleasant, fun thrift store that shows it cares can be a small respite and offer a sense of dignity.

III. Decorate Early, Decorate Often

I'm having a ball making a nice Xmas section that people are obviously enjoying.
I put these guys in the Vintage section:

I almost bought this so-tacky-its-cool holly stand, below, (or it can hang from its ring on top). Its a candle-holder though, and I don't like to burn candles. And it's too big.
I priced it high--$5.99. I wonder if it will sell.

The store has always put ornaments in bins, for 49¢ each.
The ornaments are often fragile and with small parts--you can imagine the mess.
So I'm bagging them up now--below-- for  $1.99–$3.99.
(There are plenty of more-robust 49¢ items too.)

I know people are enjoying my work because they tell me so.
Yesterday a customer introduced himself. He's a regular I'd never met before. "You're doing a great job", he said. "Last week I thought, They must have hired someone new who knows what they're doing."

Also, they buy stuff. The Xmas section was already picked over. I left it full yesterday. I'm curious to see if it will be significantly less full on Monday.

IV. Work & Oatmeal

Oh--good news--I got another shift at the store:
5 hours/week back in BOOK's and Toys! That makes 20 hrs/week--enough to pay rent, plus a little. I can get most things cheap (or free) at the store, and I'm supplement groceries with the nearby food shelf  too (+ using their food to make hot lunch once a week for coworkers).

BOOK's needs me. Book's Girl Amina is totally snowed under. And Manageress keeps pulling her to cashier instead, which she's actually much better at. Amina is the one I've described as "floaty"---she has a ver nice energy with the public, but is slow in sorting material.

I go too fast, as I've mentioned--and yesterday, flying around, I slammed my thumb into a splintery board and got a splinter under my nail. Owowowow!!!
It's still there, the tip just visible...
bink is a good surgeon--I hope she can get it out tomorrow.

(This reminds me, I have no health insurance since quitting my school job. They sent me a Cobra option:
$800+/ month. I barely make much more than that.
Must apply for the state's insurance for povvos, which is excellent. Covers everything.
In the meantime, if my thumb turns black, I will pay cash.
Thank you, Auntie Vi, for leaving me that!)

Speaking of health, I'm pleased and surprised! that I didn't turn to processed sugar in these jittery days around the US Election.

I'm grateful it'd already been a couple weeks processed-sugar–free before an election so bad I'd normally comfort myself with a pint of Ben & Jerry's Americone Dream ice cream ["Vanilla Ice Cream with Fudge-Covered Waffle Cone Pieces & a Caramel Swirl. Partnered with Stephen Colbert"].

But I did comfort-eat: I made myself a big bowl of thick-rolled oats in almond milk, "Melt" plant butter, and fresh raspberries, w/ cinnamon.

(Darn. Looking up Melt just now, I see it's tropical oils--coconut and palm. Gross. I wonder if olive oil would be nice in oatmeal...)

Well, anyway, sometimes I need comforting food. It's okay. It's good!
I am NOT going to be obsessive about this, I only intend to avoid one thing: white sugar.
Since it's added to so much, that does mean being creative, thinking ahead, about what to eat.
_______________

Today I'm going to a Holiday Craft Fair with a friend (Denise W.).
I want to investigate how people present and price their handmade cards, to prepare for doing it next year (maybe).

I've not been printing much---I got derailed by work, and I derailed myself by pressuring myself to make something saleable (esp. to the Swedish Institute).
Then it's not play, and I freeze up.
Must sidle up to it again.
A splinter under the thumb is not helpful. At least it's my left thumb.

Okay, then---have a good weekend, everyone! Or, you know, a not-too-bad one?

"No tengas miedo. Don't be afraid." How?

Still stunned by the election, I didn't feel up to the community-ed printmaking last night. But bink always goes to class, so I went along.
The class was beginning screen printing. I didn't have the oomph to do something new. I carved this lino instead.

"No tengas miedo. Don't be afraid."

(Ha, ha, don't be afraid ...to carve letters backwards.)

I'm reluctant to print too many simplistic "buck up" phrases. The question is more complex:  "Fine. HOW?"

But, I love this phrase because I first received it when I was a guest in a flamenco class that had brought in for one-time a teacher from Spain. (My sister was in the class. I sat on the sidelines.)

This guy was not an American idea of a dancer/athlete:
small (like Prince), scruffy, and chain smoking cigarettes! But just as intense as you'd expect for flamenco. I was a little frightened of him, but I loved his energy.
He didn't speak much English--he gave this instruction in both languages.
No tengas miedo!
Okay then!

The teacher was like the flamenco-dancing father (dancer and choreographer Antonio Vargas) in a favorite movie, Strictly Ballroom (1992, dir. Baz Luhrman).
The daughter, Fran, the movie's hero, says in Spanish to the boy, Scott, "A life lived in fear is a life half-lived."

Still the question remains, How to do that?

Lot's of ideas and teachings. This one has been helpful to me:
If you can't hold your center, leave.
--Saint Benedict said it in the 400s, and today I watched a video clip of  Asha Nayaswami saying the same thing:
When someone's power of negativity is far stronger than you...

"RUN AWAY... If you can't, then run away inwardly. Don't even pray for these people. You end up entangled. Don't make a link. Just say to Divine Mother, once, "Your problem. Too big for me."

Awe-ful Grace 'n' Thrift

My favorite post yesterday on FB, where some people changed their profile picture to black, was from bink: Shine brighter!

_____________________

It was good to work at the thrift store yesterday.
My coworkers were unhappy with the election results, but many are used to terrible things happening and kind of roll with it. 

Out of terrible reasons (not to be romanticized), grace may come.
An expansiveness.
Watching it, I learn and practice. It's a Good.

It's like the Aeschylus Robert Kennedy quoted when MLK was murdered:

“In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”

(You know... MAYBE. Not always. But I've seen it.)

I'd brought two soups––one w/ ground beef, one w/ beans––made mostly from food from the food shelf:
cabbage, potato, carrots, onions... and an addition I thought up:
an apple, and a splash of apple-cider vinegar.
Apple and cabbage--I guess I didn't exactly make that up! but anyway, it was good.

Mostly I did the usual prosaic things.  I priced Xmas, washed coffee mugs donated dirty, and assembled vintage stuff.

These salespeople letter openers were yesterday's coolest:

Below, bottom shelf: Baby bowler w/ mohawk ASH TRAY.

I could use that tea strainer ^ spoon, come to think of it.

BELOW: The tie was from a men's fashion store here, Juster's.
The 45s record holder is cracked... because *I* dropped it. Shame!

Often working in thrift is like time travel. I remember those rattan mugs from childhood.
My mother disapproved of plastic––she liked Oriental carpets, wood-and-brick bookshelves, her grand piano––so we wouldn't have had them. Must've been the cool neighbors. I always loved their mod stuff.

This stuff can be valuable, especially in a set; but often there's only one. Then, not so much.
I brought home the one Vernon's Tickled Pink mug (made 1958–1965), to see if I like using it.