Celebrate! And doom prep.

"Only Nixon can go to China"
--Spock, here in Star Trek VI, is recirculating a 1970s American saying meaning . . . only a leader who consistently upholds particular political values [Nixon, anti-Communist] can act in seeming defiance of them [opening relations with Communist China] without losing support or credibility.

That doesn't exactly fit Trump bringing about a [pleasegod, it holds] peace deal between Israel & Hamas, but it came to my mind.

Josh Johnson put it better, yesterday on the Daily Show:

"It's like how white people did slavery in America, 
but … but … they also ended slavery in America.
… Either way, this is a reason to celebrate. " 

[^ via NYT] 

The BBC also points out that Israel was ready to make a deal because . . .

 "All its major strategy objectives had been accomplished. . .  Iran chastened, Hezbollah to its immediate north greatly diminished and Gaza in ruins.

So, there's that. 
Still, I did feel celebratory, and you gotta jump on that while you can.
We celebrate not because everything is alright, 
but because we are encouraged to go on. To keep on going on.

Cool Monk 

 I stopped at the corner tavern for pizza after work, where I texted a photo of myself waving to Marz. Studying International Relations this semester, she has a new found interest in world affairs.

Also, my hair is growing so fast. 
"you look like a monk!" she texted. "in a cool way"

Another BBC article is titled,
 "Tech billionaires seem to be doom prepping. Should we all be worried?"

What do you mean, should we be worried?

We're already worried. 

This peace deal is a break, and thankgod for it. . . but it's a little like closing the barn door after the horse has bolted. All the dangers remain; just two of the opposing forces are on vacation, resting after wreaking their destruction for now.

Still, we can celebrate AND doom prep.

While I'm on a roll with pithy quotes, the prophet Muhammad put it best:

"Trust Allah, but tie up your camel."

________________

Yesterday was a good day.
I'd felt energized after meeting a politician I genuinely liked--has this ever happened? Not that I even follow many politicians.
(I didn't hear back from his campaign re my suggestion (instruction?) to get on TikTok. 
LOL.  Not that I need to--it's not my business.)

Meeting him reminded me of how I felt after Bishop Marianne Budde asked Trump for mercy on behalf of vulnerable people.

Budde's a hometown hero, and I was happy to see she'll be talking at the downtown Westminster Town Hall Forum.

 “We are the ones who must dare to believe that seeds of new possibilities, invisible to us now, have already been planted in the soil of our lives, and they are slowly taking root. 
New life will emerge from the ashes of what is lost.”
--Mariann Edgar Budde 

Back in BOOK's

Closer to home--a new volunteer came to help in Book's yesterday, and she was great.
However,  I'm starting to appreciate volunteers one shift at a time.
They come and go--sometimes very quickly.

A recent one in housewares was excellent for three weeks, but since then has texted me regularly about how she wants to return, but can't for x, y, z reasons. 
I reply, Come back when you can, you are always welcome.
I hope she does, but I'm not holding my breath.

BOOK's Girl Amina told me again that she doesn't like to be on the sales floor, which is a big problem since sorting & pricing in the back is only a third of the job. 
Putting out new stock, tending to the old, and making displays is the rest. 
I work 5 hours/week in BOOK's but that's not enough time to catch up on the floor. 

New volunteer happily worked the floor with me. 
While she shelved books from the New Arrivals cart, I re-alphabetized the Crime & Thrillers section, which was a jumble, and sorted Language books by language. 

So, it's frustrating, but I love Amina, and I'm sympathetic to her disliking dealing with the public--when I was twenty, I was frightened of them too. It takes time to grow into yourself and to figure out how to deal with people. (Or not.) 
It's trial and error.
Even when I started almost eight years ago, I was far less confident.

Amina also told me she was thinking of shaving her hair down, because of my haircut. Since she always wears a hijab, I had no idea how long her hair is. She showed me a photo, and she has long, curly hair! 

Fern report:
This morning, two days after their haircuts, the ferns seem to be okay. I'm not sure how to judge, exactly, but they haven't withered and died, anyway. We have a few more days forecast to be in the 60s Which means I have to figure out where to put them... which means I have to organize the yarn and sticks that are all over the floor.

I've only made a few more God's eyes, but I do want to make more. 
It's curious to me that people haven't taken them off the fence. 
In the store's neighborhood, anything that's not nailed down gets taken, just for the sake of the taking, it seems. 
I don't know, but I love to see them dancing in the sunny fall breeze.

Prune to Grow

 I. Outoing
 
I gave my newly divided Boston ferns a haircut to match my own.

I intuited it would be good--there were so many dead branches among the living fronds. (You can see dead ones sticking up.)

Looked it up, and yes, chopping Boston ferns back is advised.

Also, it offers a Metaphor of the Day:

“Severe pruning will allow the plant to rejuvenate."

We shall see. 

I hope it works for me, myself! I didn’t just prune my hair, I chopped off (most) social media in winter and spent most of the summer more or less in quiet.
_________________

II. 
Incoming

Meanwhile--so weird--I've been wanting more energy in my life, feeling the dwindlement of it––or desire for it anew—and some appeared.

(It's like the Rule of Thrift: 
If you want something... and wait... it will appear.)

I do do stuff--read, write, make art, etc.--
but it's almost all private (blogging here is next-to private), 
or anonymous (the God's eyes on the fence)---
and I LIKE it like that because it's so hard to work with people---or, at any rate, I'm not great at it and the people around me aren't either...
The store is a total non-starter in that realm (collaboration).

But... last night I went to a Meet-n-Greet mayoral-candidate [this guy, if you're interested]....
 and I LOVED him!

He poured forth so much energy, with zest and verve, he reminded me of Cory Booker, who did that 24-hour talk on the Congress floor!

But he's unplugged. 
He has a very feeble online presence, and no TikTok at all.

I see this in older people (he's 55)--just NOT GETTING it about social media. 
Still! How can this be?

Someone asked him why he's not getting more media coverage, and he talked about contacting journalists for the local paper, and pushing that... 

And I'm like---Who reads the local paper?
To begin with, you have to have a paid subscription!
I only read free stuff (though I do donate to the Guardian--and NPR--and of course there's my $377 subscription to the Economist... LOL).

I was so agitated about this that it kept me awake, and this morning
 I wrote this to his campaign:

Hello, Dr. D and Team!

I was so jazzed to meet B. B. KING's cousin, once removed, [true! but he only mentioned it to me personally, in passing]! at the house party of LN and MH last night.

( I asked D. what his favorite scripture was (Luke 4:18!) and gave him a yarn God's eye with a piece of shattered glass from the George Floyd uprisings.)

“To Know You Is to Love You,” King sings. . . but people don't know Dr. D. 

Because... where are you on social media?
Your Instagram is photos of your *lawn signs*.
One of the first faces I see there is your opponent.
What is this?
Get up on it!

Someone asked why our candidate doesn't get much coverage, and he talked about the Star Tribune.

The Star Tribune?
I know maybe three people who subscribe, and they're all retired (my age group).  
We're a power, yeah, but you gotta reach the young!

A friend at the U took a journalism class--the teacher asked on the first day: 
"Where do you get your news?"

The students said,
"TikTok".

Fire up your TikTok, Dr. D.!

You've got a little more than three weeks, which is ideal, because most people pay no attention till around now.
Build a fire, and stoke it.
From now until Nov. 4., post ... I don't know, three? short clips a day on TikTok, IG, FB, and youTube 

I'm not advocating dumbing it down; 
I'm taking about punching it up:
 the parables of Jesus would fit on a YouTube short.

Post a mix of political talking points (bring the King family to George Floyd Sq!)--and personal stuff!
For God's sake, claim BB King:
People with roots in the Deep South will relate--old white liberals (like me) will think it's super cool!
Talk about your dog! (People love pets.) 
Does your husband have a recipe, like Gwen Walz's ginger snaps?
What songs move you, inspire you?
And what's your campaign song?
Play it!
(That stuff sticks: 
I still remember the Clinton campaign's "Don't Stop Thinking about Tomorrow".)

What gives you strength in the dark night of the soul?
We in this city, this world, need strength and encouragement.
Like you said--we as a city have not healed from the murder of George Floyd, and a lot of people are slipping into nihilism.
You've got energy, you've got cheer.
Share it!

Longer posts? Put it on Substack for the folks who read long stuff. (I don't even see an account for you there.)

I loved the depth and breadth of your answers last night, Dr. D.--but show the people your heart online. 
That's my advice.

Best of luck to you, Dr. D. & Team!

P.S. You mentioned Cornell West. I'd just read a terrific conversation between him and Toni Morrison, and I love what he says about the dark night and the Blues:

Cornel West:
 I’ve always viewed myself as a person with a deeply sad soul but a cheerful disposition. 
So that when you say you feel terrified and melancholic, that describes my situation too, but it’s just that I always believe that struggle and the unleashing of moral energy in the form of moral outrage can make a difference no matter what the situation is. 

"And it may have something to do with just having a blues sensibility, a tragic orientation, a sense that no matter how mendacious elites may be, they can never extinguish the forces for good in the world. 
And if that’s true, then they’re mighty but not almighty."

----END email to Dr. D. 

I've seen this before--this  absolute disconnect. It doesn't work.

Look what does work:
a MIX of personal appearance with social media.
Look at Charlie Kirk's success that way.
Of course Kirk was young himself.
So get plugged in with young people. Worked for DT.

I am not one of them.
But I see them!
My immersion in media fandom years ago showed me what a vital, vibrant world is online.

Scary and bad too---so what's new?
Fifty-sixty years ago we had political assassinations, murderous underground groups, terrorism, hostages... 

Gotta be brave!
Pull up your plucks, and prune what's not growing.

Grow, fig tree, grow!

_____________
Long interesting discussion about spirituality, religion, and engagement, podcast and Substack transcription here:
unitedlcsj.substack.com/p/the-soul-of-social-justice-a-conversation

"The Soul of Social Justice: A Conversation"

Things Done

I said I’d do some things today, 

and I did. 

The lakeside commissary is open for a few more days, so I did indeed get my last grilled cheese and beer of the season.

Gorgeous sunny day, warmed up into the 60s. I walked home through the rose garden—their fountains are also still on for this week.

Then I went to the hardware store and bought potting soil. I took the bus five blocks so I only had to carry the heavy bag the last two blocks home.

And now instead of one huge fern, I have four medium ferns. I hope they all survive – – I ripped the plant apart, as it seemed like it could tolerate it, according to online advice— https://thisismygarden.com/2024/09/divide-save-ferns-fall —but if any of them don’t make it, I won’t be heartbroken since I don’t know where I’m gonna put all these plants!

Soon I’ll get ready to go to the meet-and-greet a mayoral candidate evening. I even did some research, reading about the candidates— from local political analyst and science fiction author, Naomi Kritzer. naomikritzer.com/2025/09/18/election-2025-minneapolis-mayoral-race-the-four-contenders

Grumbly & Dissatisfied

Eating a caramel apple ^ at an orchard, October 2013

I am mad at myself. I LOVED that cashmere sweater from a dozen years ago, but I wore it so much it got stained, and I recycled it.
I'd never liked the camel color, but even so, I should have kept it! I could at least wear it at home.

Besides the color, I almost hadn't bought it because of its high price of $25 at a thrift store (not mine). Got it home looked it up and saw that was a steal--it sold for ten times that, new. (More, now.)

Anyway... this sort of carelessness is typical of me, and sometimes it catches up with me.
______________

The heat came on this morning. 
It was 39ºF (4º C) overnight--the coldest overnight yet. 

I love the cool weather, but I'd better bring the Boston fern inside.
I put off re-potting it all summer, so I need to do it now, though this is not ideal since it's its dormant season... But it's in a too-large pot, and its roots are exposed. I must do something, or let it die.

I'm a little bit mad at myself for not doing it sooner. 
The issue was (is) that I need to buy a 30 lb. bag of dirt to repot the fern, and I didn't want to carry the load 7 blocks from the hardware store, and I didn't want to ask someone with a car to help me, and I was too lazy to load in on my bike.
And this week someone stole my bike seat & post, so now it'd be more awkward...

But really, those are all minor problems, easily solved.
 I could make three trips with 10-lb bags.
The real problem is my laziness about PHYSICAL ACTION, which has always been one of my top "could try harder" spots.

So. NOT TOO LATE.
Today is the day.
I will do that--go get dirt.

Sometimes a tiny crisis is just the thing to shove me into action. 
And sometimes I miss it, or ignore it, and the fern dies, or whatever.
______________________

I'm feeling disgruntled with myself just lately.
Taking the summer off was good, but I'm looking at a lot of nothing right now, and that's uncomfortable.

Last night I looked at blog posts I'd marked "favorite posts" 
and was reminded that I do like (love!) many things I've done.

A lot of favorites fall into the "Things Look Like Other Things" line.
This is one of my all-time favorites:
The Girlettes re-creation of Manet's "Bundle of Asparagus". 

It's genius, I declare, and I can hardly believe I put this together.
Why did I?
I don't even recall my thought process.

(Oh, wait. No, now I do:
Something came wrapped in that red rubber band, and since I was doing Manet's painting of the bar at the Folies-Bergeres, I'd been looking at his other paintings, and the association came to mind--this rubber band is like the binding around the asparagus.)

Those Manet toy re-creations are some of my best work ever.

Only 22 out of more than 5,000 posts are "favorites", with no posts tagged after fall 2022, three years ago?
 That can't be right...

I guess I rarely look at these, but I like knowing they're collected... So, here, I will at least add this one that was important for me when I wrote it in 2024, about the death of Ramon, a regular at the thrift store: 
"Rainbow Jesus".

Hm. That post used to have some good comments, but they are lost.
When I exported a year of posts from the old url (gugeo) to this one (noodletoon), their comments dropped off.
That's a real shame---
and an unexpected cost of my neurosis about comments!

I'd wanted to shake off comments that I was irretractably annoyed by, and in the process I lost some good exchanges with people in the comments section.

Well, we have to work with/around  our neuroses... I remember clearly I didn't feel I could even keep blogging if I couldn't get clear of either my reactions or the comments.

Turned out it was easier to change the comments/url than to change me.
______________________

I was encouraged to read that Ram Dass said he never lost any of his neuroses after a lifetime of spiritual practice. Christopher Isherwood seems the same.

It's like I wrote in a favorite post on walking Camino, "I Never Slept with Charlamagne":
THIS (life) IS NOT a SELF-IMPROVEMENT Project.

(I reread that post every so often and think, This is pretty smart. I wish I'd remember it more often.)

Self-improvement... such an American idea. Everything should get bigger, better, faster.

How 'bout instead, Being Here Now?

For me, just lately, that means being okay with being grumbly and dissatisfied.

I think it's like the pins and needles you feel when a limb that's fallen asleep starts to wake up.
Some waking up is going on.

Don't know what that means.
_____________________

I'm going to a friend's house this evening for a meet-and-greet with a mayoral candidate.
I am not motivated to go by politics but by curiosity about the role of faith in the candidate's politics: 
this guy is a pastor, a Black man from Mississippi who is married to another man, and he has been involved in the Poor People’s Campaign, (started by the Rev. MLK and was rekindled by pastors William Barber and Liz Theoharis).
So, this whole story interests me.

Pay attention to what gets you off the couch. 
I am lazy, and I certainly wouldn't go out for a politician, but religion has always fascinated me. 

I will go out for dirt! TODAY.

And... for a grilled cheese sandwich, the last one of the season. 
I hope the lakefront commissary is still open--they were going to stay open until Oct. 13, but perhaps last night's cold made them shut early...
I will walk over and see. 

Grumble, grumble...
I hope you all have a nice day. Or, nice enough.

18th Birthday! /Atoms & Other Trinkets

Today is the eighteenth birthday of this blog! 
I've left the address the same, but this morning I changed the name "noodletoon" back to its original l'astronave. That's "starship" in Italian. 

I chose the name in 2007 (!) for Star Trek's l'astronave Enterprise, but also for the Earth in space, and us on the planet--in our "ten fingered space suits" as Ram Dass said.

As I get older, this vision of existence means more to me:
that we are blips of carbon with consciousness riding on a rock in space FOR A MOMENT... 

Though hopefully I'll last a couple more decades, this spacesuit's life-support systems are getting old. I can tell my physical ride is starting to run down. 
But other systems have come online...

 No great claims . . . but I do notice some wisdom I didn't have before. Mostly, I have an ability to stand back, sometimes, just a little, and to observe myself and others with some dispassion.
Only some!
Only sometimes!

Or, maybe it's that I'm able to do that--get perspective--sooner than I was before.
I think that's it---I have seen this movie before. 

What role does blogging play?
It's a mirror, a record--of things I have done, and things I have failed to do.

I think of this graph often. It's like a picture of my philosophy/theology: 
We can only see a tiny range of light waves. Similarly, we can barely sense the repercussions of things we have done (or not done). 
But, we develop other tools to sense them. To study the effects of gamma rays on man-in-the-mood marigolds.* (Remember that book (play) by Paul Zindel? I read it in high school.)


One thing I see in blogging is how I am not less-reactive than I ever was! 
Ha. Not at all.
I did all this flip-flopping of blog-addresses in order to shake off some commenters I could not stand. 

I see plenty of other bloggers blithely tolerate inane comments--even welcome them!
 But I still see red when I think of comments that annoyed me the most.

And it's funny---one I felt "hottest" about is really lukewarm-- even benign:
 In the midst of my agonizing over my city coming apart after the police murdered George Floyd, someone I barely knew (I've even forgotten who!) commented,

"Remember, most people mean well."

It was clearly meant to be comforting, I can see that.
Couldn't I take it as that?
Guess not!

To me, it represented a kind of pop psychology that papers over the intensity of life, that says, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
I don't mean the commenter was such a person. 
(I have no idea!)
But the timing was terrible.

People "meaning well" doesn't help when people around you are acting like monsters, when the man behind the curtain is Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd's neck.
And,
when you're maybe even feeling your own ability to be monstrous.

Good intentions aren't meaningless--intentions can set a course--but it's if and how I practice putting them out into the world that matters. 

So, that's one vision the blog mirror shows--what I have "failed to do". No big deal--we fail every day--and what's helpful is not to judge it, but to see it, clearly:

"Huh, that seems to be the material, the system, I am working with at this time. Let's see if I can tweak this reaction so it's not eroding the seals on my space suit!"

The blog also shows some things I've done shimmering in gold.
Sometimes I'll browse through old posts, see something, and think,
"But, this is exactly who I want to be."

And I was! 
For a moment, anyway, and that's lovely to see. Not a place to stop, but an encouragment to go on....

To hang on. It's a wild ride on this starship Earth!

Statistically speaking, I have around another 18 years until I use up my life-expectancy... 
I hope I do and that I can keep blogging through it.
________________

II. Movie Tie-In Toys

Yesterday I asked Sander (Hannukah coworker) what a couple plastic animals were. I think there were meant to be bears, but were more like... prehistoric sloths?

He held them a moment and said, 
"Rodents of Unusual Size."

That's a reference to a movie--can you name it?
And the others? Turtle Diary (well, that's obvious);
 and, does everyone know "I want to be a dentist"? 
I'll put the answers in the comments.

BELOW: I've saved these toys to live in my housewares work area. 
That's an Infant of Prague (baby Jesus) in the box, and St. Francis with the skull. 

My favorite is the papier-mache woman with the pin-cushion hat.
 A search says she's mid-century, made by Italian-born Gemma Taccogna (1923–2007) of US and Mexico. (It sells for an average of $35.)

The rabbit on the bottom shelf is knitting ^ --but its wind-up mechanism is broken.

Below: Gemma Taccogna with one of her hat stands, from an online gallery of her work.  

_____________________

* Monologue from The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, by Paul Zindel (1965).
I'd totally forgotten this till I went browsing on the internet just now, but it's probably the first time I encountered the fact that we are made of stars:

Tillie: He [her high school science teacher] told me to look at my hand, for a part of it came from a star that exploded too long ago to imagine. This part of me was formed from a tongue of fire that screamed through the heavens until there was our sun. And this part of me
–
this tiny part of me
–
was on the sun when it itself exploded and whirled in a great
storm until the planets came to be.
And this small part of me was then a whisper of the Earth. When there was life, perhaps this part of me got lost in a fern that was crushed and covered until it was coal. And then it was a diamond millions of years later
–
it must have been a diamond as beautiful as the star from which it had first come.
Or perhaps this part of me became lost in a terrible beast, or became part of a huge bird that flew above the primeval swamps.
And he said this thing was so small
–
this part of me was so small it couldn’t be seen
–
but it was there from the beginning of the world.
And he called this bit of me an atom. And when wrote the word, I fell in love with it. 

Atom
Atom
What a beautiful word. 
___________________

[end of monologue from The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds]

Energetic, Cheerful, & Blue

October, a dozen years ago:

     Me & Marz ^ jumping at an apple orchard, 2013 (photo by bink)
 

I. Can you be both cheerful and deep?

My mother doubted it, and she was my first teacher, 
So I've struggled with this, but ultimately I say, 
Yes! 

It seems to be in my nature, but I also choose it...
I take heart from Cornell West who says he is a cheerful person with a sad soul.

Where did I hear him say that?
Ok... here, in a talk with Toni Morrison. 
Wow, it was published here in  2004, twenty-one years ago!

"The Nobel Prize-winning author and the Princeton professor sat down to discuss blues, love, and politics:
 ‘We Better Do Something’: Toni Morrison and Cornel West in Conversation", The Nation, May 4, 2004, thenation.com/article/archive/toni-morrison-cornel-west-politics.

It's a good, longish article, and I'll put part of their beginning exchange here. Boldface mine.

> > > Boldface mine.

Toni Morisson: 
I feel two things at the same time: terrified and melancholy... 

...The melancholy that I feel now is about a country like this with the best shot in the world, that a country like this with a certain kind of plenitude and intelligence and ambition and generosity and some history from which to learn, could, indeed, throw it all away 
and become the worst parts of its own self. 

Cornel, I see you sitting here nodding and frowning, but what is curious to me is that whenever I read you, as well as talk to you, and as clear-sighted as you are and as aware as you are of these difficulties, you always seem to be something I used to be but no longer am, optimistic. 

And since I’m rapidly losing that quality, maybe just because of age, I wanted to ask you why.

Cornel West:
 I’ve always viewed myself as a person with a deeply sad soul but a cheerful disposition. 
So that when you say you feel terrified and melancholic, that describes my situation too, but it’s just that I always believe that struggle and the unleashing of moral energy in the form of moral outrage can make a difference no matter what the situation is. 

And it may have something to do with just having a blues sensibility, a tragic orientation, a sense that no matter how mendacious elites may be, they can never extinguish the forces for good in the world. 
And if that’s true, then they’re mighty but not almighty.
....

You've got a blues sensibility, don't you?

Toni Morrison:
A very complicated sense of blues... for me it’s a question of not whining. 

The blues is about some loss, some pain and some other things. 
But it doesn’t whine; even when it’s begging to be understood in the lyrics, the music contradicts that feeling of being a complete victim and completely taken over. 

There’s a sense of agency, even when someone has broken your heart. The process of having the freedom to have made that choice is what surfaces in blues. 
I don’t see it as a crying music.

--END, clip of conversation between Morisson & West.
__________________ 

That's it:
the expression of grief and outrage, and claiming your agency.

__________________

ii. Blues Eyes, with Agency

The girlettes are about seeing with different eyes, for me.
They are sprites---in our world, but not of it.
So they look at Lucretia, who in the myth has stabbed herself because she's been raped--
and they see someone who has spilled strawberry jam on her nightgown.
[Their re-creation of Rembrandt's painting.]

NOW,  of course, the story is more complicated than that, so... it makes me wonder... 
what all is going on with this story?

And I looked up Livy, the Roman writer who tells Lucretia's story.

I'm not going to get all into it, but the thing is,
Lucretia IS USING HER AGENCY, such as it is, as a Roman woman in a world where overt political power is male---she uses what choices she has to exact revenge upon her rapist--Tarquin.
And it works:
her husband and father start a revolution that overthrows Tarquin's father, the king, and sets up the Roman Republic. 

It takes some doing to look through the veil of this story that looks like nothing but a misogynistic story that romanticizes women's victimhood.
It takes some doing to retain the horror, but also to see honor in her choice (it was a choice)--and while we may not agree with her, the challenge is to see it through her eyes...

She's got those Blues eyes... 

Lucretia looks at Penny Cooper looking at her.
What do you see, leap-frogging across the centuries?


III. Energy and Cheer

Cheerful: "that which promotes good spirits" is from late 14c., "elevating the spirits" is from mid-15c.

'Cheerful' is the opposite of the mood of many people around me, who are rightfully concerned about our country, the world...

But when I read that the incoming Japanese prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, wants her government to be "energetic and cheerful"--[via NPR]
. . . (well, honestly, my first instinct was that that was creepy and fake, like a robotic Margaret Thatcher (whom Takaichi admires, which might give one pause), 

 

...or like Hegseth telling the generals to shape up), 
but...
 my second reaction was, on a personal level, THAT SOUNDS GREAT!

I want to channel energy and cheer--the cheer might seem surfacey, might indeed be surafacey, but it is in connection with The Spirits.

The surface is a place that touches the outer world, 
while energy draws deep on our resources.

I don't know what this means for me, but...

 "We better do something."
Something. Really, . . anything!

Toys Recreate Art: Lucretia (spills jam)

When the Girlettes saw Rembrandt's "Lucretia" at the Art Institute yesterday, they were moved. 
They said,

"She was making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to eat in bed, and she got jam all over her nightgown!

You can see she feels bad about it. Maybe there wasn't any more and she'll have to eat plain peanut butter..."

And they voted to do that one.

Next to the Rembrandt (1666):

They acknowledge they have taken historical liberties:

"She probably wouldn't have had Smucker's strawberry jam, because it was long ago. Probably hers was homemade. That was probably even better, and so she's even sadder than we are."

(Naturally I didn’t tell them about other differences between their version and Rembrandt’s.)

I almost never photoshop these re-creations, but I did take her smile down a titch. 
"I looked too happy in the original." 

I got the single-serve Smucker's from a restaurant this morning. I didn't eat there, I just knew they had these.
"Can I buy one?" I asked the server. "I need it for an art project."

She gave me one for free. So nice. 
I said I'd come back and show her what I made with it. 

If you've done this sort of thing (set up tableaux), you know it's harder —well, or futzier— than it looks. 
For instance, I dyed the hairnet blue. It was too big, so while it was still damp, I cut part of it off. Later I realized it'd stuck to the bottom of my sandal and I'd tracked blue paint all over.

Also, did we get jam on the armchair? 

Yes, but JUST A LITTLE!

Girlettes in Their Summer Dresses/ “We have met the enemy…”

They joined me and volunteer Abby for Happy Hour yesterday, wearing their vintage doll dresses, newly tailored-to-fit by MT. She even hand-stitched tiny pleats on the bodices!

Maybe the last time this season on our usual patio? We are forecast  hot daytime temperatures for only a few more days.

________

Did you see the latest lunacy from DT? I laughed out loud reading him on not-falling downstairs—it had a slapstick humor, and the headline could’ve been straight out of The Onion: 

Trump compliments Obama’s ability to walk down stairs in rambling speech to military leaders.

Military leaders! This is their Commander in Chief… 

This is where he praises President Obama:

“So one thing with Obama, I had zero respect for him as a president, but he would bop down those stairs, I’ve never seen it. Dah-dah, dah-dah, dah-dah, bah, bah, bah. He’d go down the stairs. Wouldn’t hold on.

 I said, it’s great. I don’t want to do it. I guess I could do it. But eventually, bad things are gonna happen, and it only takes once.”

I read the whole stairs riff here at Orange Crate Art: mleddy.blogspot.com/2025/10/not-well-stairs

Marz said, “This is the kind of personality we crave and celebrate in a cab driver. You wish he were a commenter and not a player.”

And not just a player—the coach and seemingly the owner of the team—the whole league!—too.

Not in the least funny though:

“Trump also highlighted the current and potential use of the National Guard and Active-duty military to aid law enforcement in American cities, saying it was important to quell ‘the enemy within.’”

The enemy? The enemy is real, alright, and we need help with him  us. 

—Pogo poster for the first Earth Day, 1970, by Walt Kelly—library.osu.edu/site/40stories/2020/01/05/we-have-met-the-enemy

A few lines I wrote for an imaginary character in "Hamilton"

This morning I wrote some lines for a (non-existent) Black character I suggest be added to the hip-hop musical Hamilton:

["air quotes", quoting Hamilton]
 "I'm opposed to slavery, 
it's so very degrading."

But he was wavery–– 
lacked the bravery?
When it was time to shine,
his fervor was fading.

"Slavery is odious," so he said,*
But when it was time to rise,**

His words stayed home in bed.
__________________

Jeez, if I can toss this off, 
imagine what Lin-Manuel Miranda could've written for such a character!

Footnotes: 

*"The abandonment of negroes, who had been promised freedom, to bondage and slavery, would be odious and immoral, and as such cannot be presumed to have been intended. "  
––Philo Camillus No. 2, [7 August 1795], by Alexander Hamilton, writing as “Philo Camillus”,
founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-19-02-0010

**Rise up is a repeated phrase in the song "My Shot", sung by the young Hamilton.
But...
"Evidently, Hamilton abandoned his youthful Revolutionary-era antislavery idealism and became indifferent toward the cause of abolition." --via
___________________

Maybe the character could be named Peggy, an enslaved woman listed as sold in Hamilton's account books (below)--and mirroring the name of one of his sisters in law, Peggy Schuyler.  

via

This year's Two-Person Book Club/ Vienna?

My annual round-up of books we have more than one copy of, for a display of selections for The Two-Person Book Club. (< I feel like I missed index-labeling a couple years though. I started this in 2019, and I thought I'd done it every year...)

Rarely do both copies sell, but it's one of my favorite ideas. I almost never read in tandem either, but Ms Chocolate and I plan to read the 3-vol. Kristin Lavransdatter* by Sigrid Undset together this winter.

Every year I find we have different duplicate copies, but some titles are perennials. 
Most days you could find a copy on the shelf of Tuesdays with Morrie, Peace like a River, Cold Mountain (four, here!), and Angela's Ashes. 
And always some title by Alexander McCall Smith (three No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency in this display).

(Also the Bible, and probably there're some Shakespeare repeats--Romeo and Juliet is a good bet--I didn't check for them yet.)

Some titles have faded away--bestsellers of the moment.
 I haven't seen a single donation of Eat, Pray, Love for a couple years--nor, come to think of it, The Purpose-Driven Life.

Some have not. 
Dan Brown. The man is undimmed.
We have a copy of The DaVinci Code in stock, but only the one, but two of Angels & Demons here.
_______________________

"Vienna waits for you."

Billy Joel said his song is about:
"Slow down, look around you and have some gratitude for the good things in your life. That’s what Vienna represented to me."

But to me, Vienna is... art museums!

Have you been? I haven't.

 I've wanted to go to Vienna, ever since
1. Watching Museum Hours (2012, interview with dir. Jem Cohen), about a museum guard who befriends a visitor at the Kunsthistorisches Museum. www.khm.at/en

(Or, maybe since watching The Third Man, though that's hardly inviting!)

2. And then, doing a Toy Recreation of "Hunters in the Snow", by Pieter Brueghel the elder--that and the largest collection of his other paintings is in Vienna. 

Jem Cohen, dir. of Museum Hours, in front of a Brueghel (The Fight Between Carnival and Lent) [via]:

There's an excellent museum of design I'd like to see too.

3. And now... my friend John Shk told me his will be in Vienna for a couple days next fall, as part of a river cruise. 
I was so envious, I decided to look into going.

Of course Penny Cooper wants to go!
Only problem: money.

So (instead? in the meantime?), I am thinking I will FINALLY do something I've meant to do: Toys Recreate Art... locally!

Today I am going to the art museum here to see if there's a painting there the girlettes would like to recreate. 
I'll take a couple with me in my bag, as sensors. They can go off like a vibrating phone if/when I walk past one they like.
_______________

* I've never read Kirsten Lavransdatter
but someone recommended it to me highly, and it sounds interesting:

"The novel is meticulously faithful ... in its depiction of conditions in 14th century Norway and presents a broad picture of life in that period at all levels of society. 

But it is not an historical novel as a story of characters whose lives are set against the background of a particular historical event; 
it is rather a psychological study of individuals and the way they seek to confront the truth about their actions and to bring their lives into conformity with the truth about the kinds of beings they believe that we are."

--graham.uchicago.edu/course/sigrid-undset-kristin-lavransdatter

Fancy a brew?

I. How to Trump-proof Hamilton

I've come to the sad conclusion that if the white characters in the Broadway musical Hamilton

(= every character who speaks, that is) were played by white actors,
Hamilton would please Donald Trump.

Hamilton is the story of a "self-starter, who worked harder, was smarter...", which is how Trump sees himself--and he too is the son of a Scottish immigrant.
(Trump's mother, Mary MacLeod (1912–2000), immigrated to the United States from Scotland in 1930.)

How to remedy this?
Easy.

1. Include a a running commentary from a Black character. There’s no existing candidate, so write the part ––say, a Hamilton family "servant" [code word for slave].

2. Cast a white actor as that non-white character.

There.
Solved it, to my satisfaction.
___________________

II. Fluff 'n' Stuff

I have no deep thoughts on Downton Abbey.
I watched one episode and thought it was "empty gorgeousness", as Hilary Mantel called such historical dramas. That gives a lot of pleasure, it just isn't my thing.

But it did promise to be gorgeous--like these Royal Doulton plates.
(I photographed them, below, as I was leaving work yesterday, and the afternoon sun obscures their details.)
They are perfect for the end-cap where I display pretty things.

They didn't sell at $10 each, and I doubt they'll sell at $5 either, but I like it when displays stick around.
I bet I'll eventually have to mark them down again, but if I priced them $1.99 now...
Poof! There'd go my display.

The last DA movie is in theaters now, so I suggested,
"For your Downtown Abbey dinner party?"



We get gorgeous antique stemware ^ too.
Etched crystal, cut glass, etc. Bowls, plates, and vases too. It barely moves, even priced 99 cents a piece.

Tea cups don't sell either.
Nobody drinks out of 6 oz. cups. I did for a minute, then went back to mugs.

I recently brought home a mug from the state where I grew up (below).
And I'm starting a book set in the year I was born (in a different state)--the year the Berlin Wall went up. (I'm still reading the history of sugar book too.)

I haven't had to bring in my Boston fern yet. It's chilly at night, but days have been unseasonably warm here--hot even, in the high 80ºs in the late afternoons this week.
Hard to believe it's October tomorrow.

III. Recharging. Without a Nice Cup of Tea.

I was surprised how drained I felt after hanging the God's eyes three days ago.
I said that to a friend, who commented,
"Well, you expended a great deal of chi!
Time to recharge your battery."

Yes, that's it.
For a month, I wove a lot of life energy into those eyes.
I thought I'd roll right on with making them, but oof--I'm out of steam.
I'm taking a break.

Yesterday after I left work, I was admiring them on the fence. Only a few have been taken.
A man, woman, and their two little kids came walking by.
The kids ran ahead and stopped and were handling the eyes.

"Do you know what these are?" the man asked.

I explained ("like guardian angels")
--and I added that they could take one, if they wanted. "I know the person who made them."

"We can?!" he said. "You know the person?"
He seemed impressed, and I left them looking closely at the eyes.

I suppose I should put up a sign, Take One.
But, like the plates, I don't mind if they linger.
Also, I kinda don't even have the energy to make a sign.

I'm done.
For now.
But probably not for long.
I have lots of beautiful yarn--a friend just sent me more!--and I have one hour’s listening left of Smoke and Ash, the audio book about tea and opium in China.

The thing that most amazes me is that the plant material that drove all of this-- European colonial drug smuggling, enslaved workers growing sugar on plantation --is now an everyday item you can buy for a couple bucks at any grocery store:
TEA.

Tea!
I have a box in my cupboard from a year ago.
A year, because that's when I quit eating added sugar,
last year around Halloween.

Like the Brits, I like sugar in my tea, with milk. A lot of sugar.
One lump or two?

Actually, six.

Funny, because I dislike sugar in coffee. (Luckily.) But they're different brews. I would probably engage in illegal trade to get coffee.

Pekes, Tea, Blue Willow, and Alexander Hamilton

“There would be no opium trade
 if there weren’t a tea trade before that.”
--"How opium, imperialism boosted Chinese art trade"--Harvard Gazette

. . . ALSO, no Blue Willow dishware (like the vintage stuff recently donated to the thrift store), no Pekingese dogs, no Caribbean sugar plantations (maybe), and no Broadway play about Alexander Hamilton.

So good! So dubious...

ABOVE: Creator Lin-Manuel Miranda as Alexander Hamilton, with Jonathan Groff as King George III. 
Photographed by Annie Leibovitz, Vogue, July 2015

I went looking...

I. First--I know you know, but my god, do NOT BELIEVE A.I.!

I just googled, What year was 2600 years ago? 

[Because I am dim with numbers, and this involves counting backward, I wanted to double-check. 
The Chinese invented porcelain 2600 years ago, and I figured that was 575 BCE.]

But AI answered (How can I turn this feature OFF?):
2,600 years ago, the time was the 26th century BCE (2600 BCE - 2501 BCE).

Thank you, we are not in Year Zero.

Here's a BC to AD Calculator, and yes, of course 2,600 years ago = the 6th cent. BCE.

 I was checking because I was looking for a link between Blue Willow china and the Opium Trade (Because of reading (listening to) Anita’s Ghosh’s Smoke and  Ashes). 

II. But also first, dogs! 

Above: Queen Victoria's Pekingese dog, Looty, by Friedrich Wilhelm Keyl, 1861 [via CNN, "Looty"]

I'd just mentioned plants (tea, opium poppies) as agents in history--specifically, British smuggling opium into China leading to the Opium Wars--and this morning I read that Pekingese dogs were caught up in that too: 

"Pekes entered Britain amid the nineteenth-century Opium Wars, after conquering European forces ransacked Beijing’s Summer Palace in 1860 for art and other valuables. 
Among the loot of the destroyed palace were five Pekingese dogs. 

"Toy-sized, these 'Chinese spaniels' were considered appropriate for women. 
One was named Looty and given to Queen Victoria. 
The rest went to the duchesses of Richmond and Wellington, whose plans to breed their new pets sparked a market for peke imports."

--daily.jstor.org/the-surprising-imperial-history-of-the-pekingese-dog

III. As for Tea, Blue Willow, Sugar, and Alexander Hamilton

1. Tea first arrived in Britain in the 1650s via the Dutch East India Company. Tea consumption in Britain increased across the 1700s, imported by the British East India Company. . .

From the London Museum:
londonmuseum.org.uk/blog/steeped-in-history-tea-drinking-in-britain/

2. . . . Leading to a fourfold increase in sugar consumption. Used to sweeten tea in Britain, sugar was produced on Caribbean plantations using the labour of enslaved African people. 

3. Alongside tea’s rise came an increasing desire for Chinese porcelain tea sets , etc. In 1734, the British East India Company imported over a million items of Chinese porcelain. 
Europeans learned to make fine china and blue glazes, and in later 1700s, the Blue Willow pattern was designed in England.

4. And that's all why Alexander Hamilton was born c. 1756 a British subject in the Caribbean (British West Indies, the island of Nevis, site of sugar plantations):
His Scots father, James Hamilton, was a trader. 
I can't find out what he traded, but sugar is a good bet. 

Ah--yes, here, from the Smithsonian Magazine:
The Hamilton family owned a sugar plantation and processing plant on Nevis.
(It stayed in the family until the 1950s.)

5. Meanwhile in the 1700s, the opium trade in China had begun when the British East India company found that the drug, mostly produced under their auspices in India, would be a competitive commodity in trade for tea. 

Outlawed by the Qing dynasty, opium was sold through a network of European (and American) smugglers and corrupt Chinese merchants.

IV. White as Sugar

Sugar isn't naturally white (it's processed--sometimes with "bone char"––burned cattle bones–– as a carbon filter), but the Founding Fathers were.

Yeah, so... I got rummaging around because I went to see the film of the Broadway musical Hamilton for the second time yesterday.
And this time I saw beyond its enormous creative energy (really, it's so good!) to its very dubious portrayal of the Founding Fathers.

Depicted by actors of color, in reality, of course, they were white men, and mostly enslavers--including Hamilton.

A Chicago documentary filmmaker Arlen Parsa put red dots on 34 faces in the painting Declaration of Independence (1818, by John Trumbull), which hangs in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol.

These 34 (of 47) signers of the Declaration were slave owners.

“This is one of the most famous paintings in American history”, Parsa said. “Next time someone puts them on a pedestal and says we can’t question their judgement on guns or whatever, show them this image.”

Fact checked here:
"We found strong evidence to back the claim on the 34, recognizing there is no one definitive source on the question.
We rate the statement True."

illinoisanswers.org/2019/09/10/fact-check-evidence-shows-most-of-the-men-in-famous-declaration-of-independence-painting-were-slaveholders

Was Alexander Hamilton an enslaver?
 (He was a Founding Father but not in the painting as he did not sign the Declaration.)
Smithsonian Magazine, again:
Yes. 
smithsonianmag.com/history/new-research-alexander-hamilton-slave-owner-180976260

And he opposed slavery. 
It's socially and economically complicated (if not morally). 

I always say that it's sorta like us owning cars but opposing climate change. I don’t own a car but I benefit all the time from friends who do, and from mass transportation, including flying on airplanes and consuming goods transported around the world. A German beer the other day!

We all do – – benefit from and pay for carbon fuels. You could say it’s our collective karma. I’m not aiming for purity, I’m aiming for awareness. And maybe harm reduction. 

The play Hamilton is a weird whitewash––like filtering the brown out of sugar with the ashes of bone–– and if we weren't still suffering so much from the history or slavery, it wouldn't matter. 
Maybe LM Miranda thought that was behind us in the Obama era?

As the Trump era quickly proved, it is not.
Sugar, opioids, and the tentacles of slavery are very much with us. 

Hamilton is terrific, if you see it as the AU (Alternate Universe) fan-fiction that it is. 
I highly recommend it!
Also the film To Kill a Mockingbird.
Good stories, well done, but not Get Out of Jail Free cards.

_____________

I have to go to work now--
I found a couple essays critical of Hamilton--I'm putting the links here, to read later:

"Review Essay: Race-Conscious Casting and the Erasure of the Black Past in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton", by Lyra D. Monteiro, The Public Historian (2016) 38 (1): 89–98.
https://online.ucpress.edu/tph/article/38/1/89/90687/Review-Essay-Race-Conscious-Casting-and-the 

Also:
'Hamilton: The Musical': Black Actors Dress Up Like Slave Traders . . . and It’s Not Halloween”, by Ishmael Reed, CounterPunch, August 21, 2015:

counterpunch.org/2015/08/21/hamilton-the-musical-black-actors-dress-up-like-slave-tradersand-its-not-halloween

Wrap Arounds

I. Wrap Around Eyes

I could've used double the 125 God's eyes, but by spacing them out, we did wrap a line of them all the way around the fence yesterday morning. 
They glowed in the sun, and caught the breeze.

The monarch mural ^ had gone up in happier days, before George Floyd's murder, when the park was open to the public.
photo ^ by bink

BELOW: KG photographing God's eyes she helped hang

BELOW: Photographed from the alley that borders the thrift store. A glimpse of L & M hanging eyes.

So, that's done. 
Not sure if I'll keep making eyes to add (or to hang on utility poles around the neighborhood).
Maybe...
Especially since I've started to listen to audio books, free from the library on the Libby app.

Do you use Libby? 
You just sign in with your local library card!
libbyapp.com/interview/welcome#doYouHaveACard

II. Secret Agents 

I've always preferred to read than to listen, but as I've wrapped the sticks, I've loved listening to Smoke and Ashes: Opium's Hidden Histories  (2023) by Amitav Ghosh.

So interesting, history connecting our opium troubles today--which damages the neighborhood where I work--and is why I hung the God's eyes. 
It's all connected.

It's largely about the history of the West (starting with the British--an "imperial narco-state" Ghosh says) smuggling opium into China.
(What I previously knew about the Opium Wars was that they happened.) 

But more--it's about the role of non-human agents---plants!--in driving human history. Not just opium, also tea--and flowers.

I've just started reading Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (1985) by Sidney W. Mintz (on paper, not available on Libby). 

Sugar and opium and tea are easy to see, still very much in our lives--
but nutmeg was a huge deal in global trade too, leading in the 1600s to Spice Wars between Anglo-Dutch colonial powers over control of Indonesian spice trade. 
I had no idea!

And get this:
The Dutch traded New York City for nutmeg:

"In 1667, the Treaty of Breda was signed, bringing an end to the Second Anglo-Dutch War. The treaty is perhaps most famous for one of its territorial exchanges: 
the Dutch agreed to cede control of New Amsterdam (which the British promptly renamed New York) in exchange for the tiny island of Run, one of the [Indonesian] Banda Islands and a key source of nutmeg."
--Eats History

III.  SWIRLS of History

So many things we haven't seen, refuse to or cannot see...

My coworker Teeter photographed the top of my head after my super-short haircut yesterday (free in the thrift store parking lot), to show me my cowlicks.
And when I got home, I took a photo of the front, where a badger stripe of dark hair is now clear (badgers are inverse white and black):

Weirdly...
1. In my entire life, I don't think I've ever seen the crown of my head like this;

and, 
2. Last week, I'd gone to see  Yi Yi (2000, dir. Edward Yang, Taiwan--this is the 25th anniversary re-release of the film--on Criterion), 
and in it an 8-year-old boy, Yang-Yang, photographs the back of people's heads to show them a part of themselves they cannot see.

Which is what stories can do, right? 
This was one of those immersive movies that leave you feeling when you exit the theater that you are playing in a movie of your own life. 
(What are the ingredients of making that happen?)

Not at all like Yi Yi, but also related to MY HAIR:
 Seven Samurai (1954, dir. Akira Kurosawa, Japan), which I saw on the big screen a couple weeks ago.  (It is my favorite movie, every time I see it.)

The lead samurai (Kambei Shimada, actor Takashi Shimura)* gets his head shaved so he can imitate a monk in order to save a little boy.

It's a big deal for a samurai, to lose his top knot, but he does it calmly. Because he's like that. 
I'd like to be more like that too. (Maybe in another lifetime. But in this one, maybe the haircut will help. 😆)

 As the bandits start to attack the village, he says:

I should print this out and plaster it everywhere, or get a tattoo or something.
___________________

After all, WHO KNOWS where history is going.

On a day when many bad things were happening (could be any day), Marz, who is studying international relations and diplomacy this semester, called me all happy about a Syrian president speaking at the United Nations for the first time in six decades. 

More drugs, and not nutmeg...
NPR article:

"President Ahmad Al-Sharaa said that the new authorities in Syria have destroyed the drugs business that Assad used to fund his government.... 

"Assad's fall revealed industrial-scale manufacturing facilities of the amphetamine-like stimulant Captagon, also known as fenethylline, which experts say fed a $10 billion annual global trade in the highly addictive drug."

If sanctions are lifted, perhaps Syria could get their economy together...

Who knows.
But good things are possible.

_______________________

* It's not necessary to rank them, but here are all seven samurai described (spoilers):
https://collider.com/seven-samurai-characters-ranked/