Our Empire: “Hold on to something!”

My knee's not much improved, but I'm going in to work--and will leave early if my knee hurts too much.

Four weeks in with this injury and after another sleepless night, I finally made a doctor's appointment this morning.
I go in tomorrow.
I'm still waiting on State health insurance, but decided to go anyway (and pay for it out of pocket, for the time being)
because I obviously need some help!
 

Every so often I look back at previous years' posts from the month I'm in.
I almost never re-post, but this one from seventeen Februaries ago made me laugh out loud-0--and while a lot of things in my life have changed since 2008, some of my thoughts on The American Empire are just the same.

"I bet the Romans were just as surprised as Americans seem to be when the edges began to crumble and bridges to fall."

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

No Seat Belts Please, We're Imperialists

I've taken the opportunity--while being responsible over the past 10 days for the lives of the various dogs...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

...and cats... 

 

 in two homes with big TVs (while their owners fled to warm climates and broke out in rashes, some of them, no lie, from sudden exposure to the Sun)--to watch massive amounts of the follow-up Star Trek series (TNG, DS9, VOY, and ENT).
 

 

I tried; but it turns out, for me, there can be only one. And that one, of course, is the original Star Trek with that ham-and-cheese delight, Captain Kirk.

The later Star Treks are just TV shows, while the original Star Trek, with all its flaws, is right up there with the Aeneid, the tale Virgil made up about the founding of Rome. It catches who we Americans are, for better or worse, on a mythic level.

We are a lot like the ancient Romans--big bullies who built top-notch roads and stuff and held together an empire by marching heavily armed soldiers into town and saying,
We come in peace, would you like to buy a Coke?

I bet the Romans were just as surprised as Americans seem to be when the edges began to crumble and bridges to fall.

And basically Kirk is an imperialist like Aeneas, all talk about the Prime Directive respecting native cultures be damned. A hugely likable imperialist!
Sort of like Pope John Paul II. That guy was a fascist, but I couldn't help liking his media image. You felt he would truly be sorry as he held your hand and explained you couldn't be a priest because [_______fill in the blank].

Kirk would be the same: Sorry, you just didn't have the right stuff for Starfleet. Had you thought about the Merchant Marine?

There's a lot of complexity to Star Trek's weird appeal, but the thing I actually set out to write about here was the connection (slim) to Ralph Nader. He was one of the heroes on my childhood radar for making the Klingons put seat belts in cars. OK, not Klingons, but close enough.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Which got me thinking that one of the things uniting all 5 of the Star Trek series is none of the star ships ever employ seat belts. 

All these years, every time a ship runs into an asteroid or whatever, everybody goes flying out of their chairs.

In an early episode of Enterprise, the last of the series made, when the ship is about to get blasted, the captain calls out to his crew, "Hold on to something!"

Hold on to something??
That's the extent of passenger safety on starships?
Sure, why not? We don't need seat belts!
We're the Roman Empire.

Hang on

I just posted “hold on” and “come on”. Here’s my all time favorite: Captain Kirk’s advice (to Charlie X, and us all)…

Hang on.

Hold on, Come on

I. Hold On

Clothespin-people, below, made in England by Tanda Toys (1960s?) hold the lace half-curtain in my bedroom.
The southern light is extra bright today because sun is bouncing off new snow outside. After two winters with almost no snow (unheard of), this is very cheering. (I don't have to shovel it or drive in it, but I think I'd feel the same even if I were a car-owner. Winters should be snowy!)

I'm on the ground floor, and with no yard on the south side, passers-by walk right in front of my windows. Sheers give privacy while letting in light for my giant Boston fern that winters inside.
Fern is looking shaggy, having lost a lot of fronds, but always holds on, and every summer recuperates outside—and grows bigger, now taking up almost half the floor space.

Fern came from a place I house- and cat-sat three years ago.
The woman had died of cancer, and the man later moved out east with the cats and gave away the plants. 

My landlord came by with the building inspector the other day. (The landlord then installed new smoke detectors. I'd just been wondering if I should change their batteries, so that's a good thing.)

Do you ever try to imagine how you would appear to a stranger?
I was trying to imagine what my rooms look like to these people who don't know me... (Or barely know me--the landlord is a new owner. I've only met him once, but he's a nice young man who takes good care of the place.)

"TOYS & BOOKS: Who is this person?" (Personally, I would want to meet them.)
____________________________

II. COME ON!

bink took photos at the protest of Trump's administration at the Capitol on Weds., when people around the country gathered at all fifty state capitols.
She circled her favorite placard in red. I love it!
GEE WHIZ
YOU GUYS,
COME ON!

"So Minnesotan," bink said.

I love this understated appeal to people's decency:
"Heck now, folks, should you be doing that?"
It's a genuine homespun humanity that reminds me of what Minnesotan Garrison Keillor was going for on his Prairie Home Companion radio show.

I never loved Keillor and his show though. It wasn't genuine.
I always saw him like Sam Anderson describes in this 2006 Slate Article, "A Prairie Home Conundrum: The Mysterious Appeal of Garrison Keillor".

Keillor's "willful simplicity is annoying because, after a while, it starts to feel prescriptive.
Being a responsible adult doesn't necessarily mean speaking slowly about tomatoes.
[His] sense of affectation is why some people instinctively dislike such a likable entertainer."

Yes, GK was an shrewd entertainer playing a part of a gee-whiz guy, and that is why some people (and I) were not surprised when dozens of women named Keillor as sexually inappropriate (during #meToo, but some allegations went back many years).
[Overview at NPR: "Investigation: For some who lived in it, Keillor's world wasn't funny", 2018]

But Keillor was a great storyteller, and I was disappointed (as I always am) that a storyteller like him couldn't rise to the challenge of telling a good story about the TRUTH of their own complicated behavior.

A Lutheranish guy like him should be able to say with Saint Paul,
I do not do the things I want to do, but the things I hate.
There's a story.

Instead it’s all Peter. “Never saw the guy before!”

Louis CK and Sherman Alexie are others, and Neil Gaiman is the latest storyteller who can't seem to see themselves as anything less than the entirely-good guy.

Come on, you guys!
People in power (not just men) act in ways that make other people (not just women) queasy, threatened, or worse?
Ya don't say.

And we ourselves, we who think of ourselves as good people: not everything we do is good, right?
Country-Western songs get it right. Welcome to the human race: You are bound to be the Bad Guy in someone else's story.
It's just not possible that our lives will always slot perfectly into the larger picture or other people's lives.

Maybe it was accidental. Maybe it was unintentional. Maybe it was "not that bad".
Maybe it was.
There is a big difference between being a thoughtless jerk and being a serial rapist like Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby.

There’s a big difference between misgendering someone and taking over the United States government so that you can outlaw transgender people.
There is a big difference between a microaggression and a lynching.

But the lesser wrongs count. There's a need, I'd say, for more good storytellers to say in public,
Yes I did that. Here's how that happens; here's how it works; here's where I slot in...
Me too.

Have I missed it? There must be some thoughtful, honest, smart, vulnerable (even funny) ‘mea culpa’…
Let me know if you know of one!

In real-life, places like Keillor's fictional Lake Wobegon are not as wholesome as he spun it.

Sam Anderson again:

"Wobegon is a little like [Faulkner's] Yoknapatawpha County, but Midwestern—i.e., with all the murder, rape, class warfare, and incest translated into gardening, ice fishing, and gentle boyish hijinks."

And the uncle (like one of mine) who touches up women and girls at the annual family picnic is translated into an avuncular radio personality.

GEE WHIZ YOU GUYS, COME ON!

Ladies Lunch: Jam & Resistance

I’m taking another long weekend off work to rest my knee. Sigh. It was waaaaay better, and then I ran across the street to catch the bus and set it waaaay back. AURGH!

Painful. Hard to sleep. You know, I’m sure—an exercise in patience.

But today I’m having lunch at Marz’s old workplace —(an easy bus connection)—because my landlord is coming over around noon with the city apartment-license inspector and I wanted to avoid that socially awkward meeting.

After this I plan to stay still with my leg up til Monday morning.

But now I’m having a tomato croque-monsieur (no meat) and an oat milk latte, and reading Home Fires: The Story of the Women’s Institute in the Second World War, by Julie Summers. 

Immediately I learned something: The WI was a pacifist organization. I thought they just made jam. 

I was inspired to take the book off my shelf because I just watched World on Fire, season 2, (PBS/Masterpiece) about interconnected lives in Europe during WWII, from the British home front to Indian sappers in North Africa (like The English Patient) to a German girl in the Lebensborn program to propagate the “Aryan race”. 

It also follows a French and a Polish woman risking their lives in their respective country’s underground resistance movements, and it crossed my mind—will it come to this in America? 

Rug Cleaning

I love watching yard-cleaning videos, where someone with power tools tackles an overgrown yard. I don’t enjoy rug cleaning videos as much, but they calm and ground the mind too. These are like training wheels for a mindfulness practice—help to both focus and unclench.

Restoration-of-order or “satisfying task” videos are super popular—maybe you watch them too? More on the phenomenon in the article  “Sometimes you just need to watch a guy unclog a drain” on NPR’s Pop culture happy hour (2/4/25), which shared this 6-hour (!) rug cleaning video.

Besides being soothing and centering, the article’s author, Linda Holmes, suggests they also model how we can work to good ends in hard circumstances. Like always, and now: 

“It takes work, it takes an enormous amount of patience, it takes knowledge, and it takes some willingness to look at something that looks like it's wrecked and say, 

‘Well, I'm going to try, anyway.’”

———

 

PS. I see that Robert Reich has expanded his original list of 10 Things You Can Do "in light of TrumpII's first 18 days of mayhem". There are now 16 things you can do:

https://robertreich.substack.com/p/more-on-what-you-can-do

Watching rug/yard–cleaning videos comes under Reich's no. 15:

Take care of yourself and your loved ones.
Please do not become so obsessed by what Trump and Musk are doing that you neglect your own well-being.

We will get through this, and we will prevail. But it will require confidence, courage, and tenacity.
We need to stay healthy for this fight.
We need to be fortified by those we care about.
And we need to be there for those we love.

Julia Sand: Calling out the good/Thich Nhat Hanh: Write a love letter

Marz scoffed at my letter to the Target CEO yesterday: 

"It won't make any difference, why do you bother?"

I said what I always say.
"To some extent, I do it for selfish reasons--as moral insurance:
If the worse happens, I want to be able to say that I voted No.
If they push the button, I want to be registered on some 'I-don't-think-this-is-a-good-idea' list. Or on a list of Yes-sayers: we can do better.

"But also, I don't discount the power of one person touching another person. I don't think writing a letter will change anything--it probably won't. But the chances are not zero."

And Marz said, "Wouldn't it be funny if a CEO did change because someone wrote to him about Tina Turner?"

Yes! STORY ^ IDEA!

I told that to bink, and she said, That happened!
She'd recently read about a woman who wrote to U.S. President Chester Arthur (who?), who had a corrupt past, telling his to shape up.
And he did.

Photo of Julia I. Sand, above, from Overlooked No More: Julia Sand, Whose Letters Inspired a President.
"A housebound New York woman sought to influence the heart of Chester A. Arthur at a time when no one believed in him."
nytimes.com/2018/08/08/obituaries/julia-sand-chester-a-arthur-overlooked.html

As assassin shot President Garfield on July 2, 1881.
It would take him two-and-a-half months to die.

(newspaper via LOC)

As Garfield was dying, 33-year-old Miss Julia Sands, wrote to Vice President Chester Arthur, next in line and known for corruption and cronyism:

"Now your kindest opponents say:
'Arthur will try to do right'—adding gloomily—
'He wont succeed, though—making a man President cannot change him.'

"But …great emergencies awaken generous traits which have lain dormant half a life.
If there is a spark of true nobility in you, now is the occasion to let it shine.”

I don't know that this ^ applies to the current president of my country--I haven't seen any sign of it--but surely it applies to a lot of his associates.
And it applies to us, to our spark of nobility, to our shining forth.

"Unlike so many others who wrote to Arthur, Julia Sands asked no favors of him, sought no position for herself, and felt free to speak to him with honesty.
"I know that my opinion, as mine, can have no weight with you," she explained. "If it has any value, it is because we are strangers, because our paths have never crossed… I have no political ties. It is because it is impersonal."

She wrote about all sorts of detailed advice--keep former President Grant as a friend to "smoke segars" with, but don't give him power.

Here's a good one:
Julia Sands on the "mean and cowardly" Chinese exclusion legislation, appealing to Arthur to veto the bills passed by Congress:

"A congress of ignorant school boys could not devise more idiotic legislation.

"It is not only behind the age, but behind several ages—not only opposed to the spirit of American institutions, but opposed to the spirit of civilization all the world over.
… It is mean & cowardly—more than that, it is a step back into barbarism.
...
"At all events do not let your Administration be marked by any such disgraceful retrograde movements."

What influence did she have on Arthur? There's no evidence.
It seems he never wrote back (though her papers were destroyed at her death), but he saved her twenty-three letters in an envelope, and he did visit her once at her family home.

At any rate,
"President Arthur left office having served far more independently and competently than most Americans expected he would in September 1881.
He returned to his home and law firm in New York City in 1885, but on November 18, 1886, he died of a kidney ailment then known as Bright's disease."

Source for above:  "Chester A. Arthur's "Little Dwarf": The Correspondence of Julia I. Sand", Library of Congress,
loc.gov/collections/chester-alan-arthur-papers/articles-and-essays/correspondence-of-julia-i-sand

________________________
Even if we don't influence other people we write to, we shape our own selves, our own lives by our practice.
I'd been inspired years ago by Thich Nhat Hanh to try to write a letter the addressee might want to read.

A Love Letter to Your Congressman
From Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life (1990), by Thich Nhat Hanh

"In the peace movement there is a lot of anger, frustration, and misunderstanding. People in the peace movement can write very good protest letters, but they are not so skilled at writing love letters.

"We need to learn to write letters to the Congress and the President that they will want to read, and not just throw away. The way we speak, the kind of understanding, the kind of language we use should not turn people off.
The President is a person like any of us.

"Can the peace movement talk in loving speech, showing the way for peace? I think that will depend on whether the people in the peace movement can “be peace.” Because without being peace, we cannot do anything for peace.
If we cannot smile, we cannot help other people smile. If we are not peaceful, then we cannot contribute to the peace movement.

"I hope we can offer a new dimension to the peace movement. The peace movement often is filled with anger and hatred and does not fulfill the role we expect of it. A fresh way of being peace, of making peace is needed. That is why it is so important for us to practice mindfulness, to acquire the capacity to look, to see, and to understand.

"It would be wonderful if we could bring to the peace movement our non-dualistic way of looking at things. That alone would diminish hatred and aggression. Peace work means, first of all, being peace. We rely on each other.
Our children are relying on us in order for them to have a future."

My card (+ contact info) for Target CEO/HQ

I wrote to Target CEO, Brian Cornell (posted here, at end).

The buck stops here. 

From CNN: Target was one of the most outspoken supporters of DEI. It’s changed its tune

amp.cnn.com/cnn/2025/02/03/business/target-dei-walmart-amazon

To support the boycott of Target for rolling back their DEI…

1. Contact Brian Cornell, Target CEO:

brian.cornell@target.com

Street address:
1000 Nicollet Mall
Minneapolis, Minnesota 55403

2. Same address to ‘Board of Directors’, or Email:

BoardOfDirectors@target.com

“The Corporate Secretary has been instructed by the Board to forward communications to the relevant Board members…”

3. Phone Target Corporate

“Guest inquiries should be directed to 

1-800-440-0680 ”

___________

Here’s what I wrote on one of my printed cards.

I took a slightly obsequious tone – – (so different from how I wrote to Mariann Budde)– – because I feel like these guys in power respond to that. 

Also, it’s true: I really was proud of Target, and I would really love him/them to be heroic.

This guy is my age—whaddya think: surely he remembers Tina Turner in Mad Max?

Shop different.

 fortune.com/2025/01/31/target-national-boycott-call-drop-dei-initiatives My city:

Invent

St. Brigid/Imbolc was this weekend--another fire opportunity, but the Girlettes couldn't find matches. (They're in the kitchen drawer, but they didn't know that, and they didn't ask.)
Daffodil-gazing was deemed an appropriate replacement:
"It fires up!"

And today is St. Blaise Day--patron of throats.
"We need our throats blessed," they say.
They’d burned all their little candles at Hanukkah, so they used fettuccine.

Gotta be inventive.

Little is known of Brigid or Blaise, but I love that one Catholic site says, "Biographical details are not essential".

That's right. Make 'em up.
We made up all this stuff anyway. Our very own names. Made up!

The other day I told someone that I love religion.
She looked shocked and worried, as if I'd said I love our president. "What do you mean?!"

I said, "I don't mean Christian Nationalism. I mean the way we make stories and art and meaning out of life. Or discover it. Like the dolls."

Of course it can go very badly.
Everything can go very badly.
Make up some new stuff. Better stories.

The dolls say, We are brave inventors!
Yes, but they are scared (!) of groundhogs and left that holiday out.

Spinning Consolation

ABOVE: Frenchman Philippe Petit, seen from 1,350 feet below, walking a tightrope stretched between the World Trade Center’s twin towers in NYC. 
––"Philippe Petit's real-life walk between the twin towers – in pictures"

Let the Great World Spin, by Colum McCann is a novel about lives that intersect on or around August 7, 1974, the day Petit walked a tightrope between the Twin Towers.
Published in 2009, Great World is a reflection of 9/11. You could figure that, and the author confirms it:
"Intentionally so, yes, . . . but not only". [interview with McCann]

It's a book of consolation, a message book.
In the author's note at the end of the novel, McCann quotes the Arabic "Suspended Poems" of the sixth century:
"Is there any hope this desolation can bring me solace?"

The book constructs and delivers an answer:

Yes.

___________________

The character central to the book's first part, Corrigan, is appealing. He is an Irish monk who chooses to live in poverty in the devastated Bronx.

"What Corrigan wanted was a fully believable God, one you could find in the grime of the everyday. The comfort he got from the hard, cold truth––the filth, the war, the poverty––was that life could be capable of small beauties. He wasn't interested in the glorious tales of the afterlife or the notions of a honey-soaked heaven. To him that was a dressing room for hell.

Rather he consoled himself with the fact that, in the real world, when he looked closely into the darkness he might find the presence of a light, damaged and bruised, but a little light all the same. He wanted, quite simply, for the world to be a better place, and he was in the habit of hoping for it. Out of that came some sort of triumph that went beyond theological proof, a cause for optimism against all the evidence."
_______________

That's wordy. (The book is wordy.) But I like that passage--it reminds me of what I see at the thrift store.
So I trimmed and rearranged it, here:

"What Corrigan wanted was a believable God, one you could find in everyday grime. He wasn't interested in heaven.  Rather he consoled himself that when he looked into the darkness of the real world, he might find a little light shining on small beauties, damaged and bruised.
He wanted the world to be a better place. He was in the habit of hoping for it."

Corrigan was interesting, I liked him, but once he sets the other characters in motion, the author removes him, and I lost interest.
The book does not feel bare and believable but like the author's construction, built to deliver comfort.

I've been fretting about why I didn't like this book. Writing this out, it's this:
I like when people tell me THEIR hope, their consolation.
I don't like it when they preach it as a recipe for MY (your) consolation.
Secondhand consolation.

Work out your own consolation.

Your Stuff in a Museum

I. Home Alone

I'm in the middle of 4 days, 5 nights staying off my hurt knee (from after work on Weds to Monday)--to give it a chance to heal. That means not even going to the basement to do laundry.
At first I felt frightened and tiny, but then thought, Hey, an enforced vacation–– to read and watch documentaries!

Luckily I'd recently been to the library and had a pile of DVDs.
Watched so far: PBS, Korea: The Never-Ending War (I had almost no idea what this war was about);
The Pulitzer at 100 (2017); 
American Experience: Oklahoma City (about Ruby Ridge, Waco, white supremacy groups, and T McVeigh. We are seeing a metastasis.)

All good, but every novel I've started recently has been so disappointing I have put them all down.
Last night, I picked the short novel Utz off my Unread shelf, by Bruce Chatwin. It is so good--and a relief that it is.

Utz immediately reminded me of my work in thrift!
It's about collecting––and desire––specifically, it's about Kaspar Utz, a passionate collector of Meissen porcelain, a thousand pieces "all crammed into the tiny two-room flat."

II. "I want him."

Kaspar Utz's desire started as a boy, when...

"...a precocious child, standing on tiptoe before [his grandmother's] vitrine of antique porcelain, he found himself bewitched by a figure in Harlequin...
    His taut frame was sheathed in a costume of multi-colored chevrons. ... Over his face was a leering orange mask.

    'I want him,' said Kaspar."
___________________

Below left: Meissen Harlequin; right: Bruce Chatwin at Sotheby's

Harlequin ^ listed on ebay for $5k

I've never read Chatwin--I thought of him only as a travel writer--but before he went traveling, he'd worked with THINGS--physical objects--for Sotheby's in his twenties.
The objects were d’art, but his sounds like my work in thrift store Housewares! Researching and assigning value to stuff--including, he said, the time "spent valuing for probate the apartment of somebody recently dead."

Not that I do it for probate, but I handle a lot of donations from dead people--either because they left stuff to us, like the recent collection of owl statues and pictures (mostly I priced them $2.99) or because their surviving relatives swooped everything of theirs into black plastic trash bags and dropped them on us--false teeth in a basin and all.

On Chatwin, by his editor of In Patagonia, Susannah Clapp:

"For me, his great gift – on the page and in person – was visual generosity. He made you see different things and look at things differently. It was not works of art in galleries that interested him so much as objects, particularly those from which a story could be extracted."

And, "Every night, the author went home merrily to hack away his stuff: he loved chucking out adjectives and anything that looked like a moody reaction shot. "

Also, this:
"He wanted to give all his friends presents...."

––Above quotes, and tip-top photo of Bruce Chatwin: theguardian.com/books/2017/sep/24/bruce-chatwin-in-patagonia-fortieth-anniversary

I like this harlequin, below, better, with his stripey legs--and it's owned by the MIA here. I'm disappointed-- it's not on display. 

 "Harlequin with jug", c. 1730s; Artist: Johann Joachim Kändler; Manufacturer: Meissen Porcelain Factory, Dresden, Germany--

collections.artsmia.org/art/34865/harlequin-with-jug-johann-joachim-kaendler

I'd recently written that I saw museums as sterile boxes.
Utz says,
"Ideally, museums should be looted every fifty years, and their collections returned to circulation...."

    "'An object in a museum case', he wrote, 'must suffer the de-natured existence of an animal in the zoo. In any museum the object dies--of suffocation and the public gaze--whereas private ownership confers on the owner the right and the need to touch.
...The passionate collector ...restores to the life-giving touch of its makers. The collector's enemy is the museum curator."
___________________

STORY IDEA: Write an art-historical History of an Object in your own life, as if it were for Sotheby's; or a sign to go with the object in a Fine Art Museum.

"This saucepan..."

___________
III. Unrelated

I wandered into this article with wonderful photos:
"Strange, surreal and sexy: 31 images that changed the way we see our bodies"--in today's Guardian (2/1/25): theguardian.com/artanddesign/2025/feb/01/strange-surreal-and-sexy-31-images-that-changed-the-way-we-see-our-bodies

In it--some of photographer Angélica Daas's ongoing series matching skin tones to Pantone colors. She's done 4,000 humans so far.
Note the center 4 all match Pantone 58-7 C.

The 36 /Shake It Off

The world is sustained by 36 special, ordinary people. (As James Baldwin said, a very few —“that’s enough”.) In mystical Jewish tradition/folklore, that is: these are the Tzadikim Nistarin, the "hidden righteous ones".

"Who are these 36?
We don't know. Even the 36 don't know.
So what is the lesson?
The lesson is to treat each other. . . as if we might be one. Or who knows? You might be standing next to one now."

STORY IDEA: Write a short bio, or 36 bios, of these anonymous people whose existence justifies the world's continued existence. They’re ordinary, they aren’t the famous heavy hitters. What would one be like? 

Extra credit: Write about, what if you are one?

Ben Shahn, "Silent Music", 1950 (Wash DC Nat'l Gallery)

My favorite of the 36 was a print I saw: "The Idler". I can't remember the artist! It showed a man sitting at a table with wine and a book, talking and gesturing. They were otherwise from all walks of life.

"Even if the rest of humanity has degenerated to the level of total barbarism, God preserves the world for the sake of these 36 hidden ones."

*"Who are these 36?"--from the TV series Transparent, S3 ep. 5, "Oh Holy Night", spoken by Rabbi Raquel Fine
_____________________
Shake It Off

Meanwhile, we, in the lunar calendar, enter The Year of the Snake--not the Western snake, with its bad rep, but the Wise Snake of the East.
Time to shed the old tight skin, shake off the too-tight restrictions!

The snake in Eden was right anyway:
God is keeping you like pets, like powerless stupid children.
Time to Grow Up!

Girlettes are wise without being grown up--they wanted to get painted with snake patterns with Gel Glue from bink, who helped.
Here they are with my NEW Royal typewriter––from an old friend, Lynn W. She is slowly divesting herself of possessions as she is deteriorating with ALS.

“Some Dancer”

* DANCER:
"A dance to summer.
In this dance I symbolize the restlessness of new seasons.
The desire to escape from boredom–
From responsibility–
From cool men–
From all the inadequate pleasures.
The desire to lift oneself out of the predictable–
And never have to return."

Little KID, watches Dancer fly away:

"Some dancer."

––Jules Feiffer, 1929 – 2025

_______________
From an interview w/ Feiffer at 95 years old, NPR:

"Among other things, I'm suffering from acute macular degeneration.
I have to work big, big, big, big, big to see what I'm doing....
I started fooling both with drawing and text, which is drawn on 18-by-24 sheets of watercolor paper.

"But I'm happier now than I ever have been, doing the work I love and having a wife I'm crazy about and living this wonderful life to the end, where I can say things and do things, and my work has been accepted so that I can get away with it.
Getting away with it is a very important deal."
________________

* Jules Feiffer. A Dance to Summer, 1964. Published in The Village Voice, June 25, 1964. Library of Congress

www.loc.gov/exhibits/swann-gallery/exhibitionitems/Assets/00183u_enlarge.jpg

Tuesday Warm-Up: Dolls, Food, Love

It's warm: in the 30s, heading for the mid-40s. And sunny!
I wish I could take a walk, but my knee is still dicky.

Kirsten emailed a couple days ago: Do old dolls ever get donated to the store? she would like one.
Yesterday this doll came in. I've never seen one like her.
Would K. like her? 
Yes!

A pal, a regular customer who used to be a doll dealer (before the Internet), happened in yesterday afternoon.
I ran and got the doll.

"Beautiful!" she declared---"all handmade. Fully jointed cloth body, with mohair hair, the face is a fine papier-mache... Unmarked so not as valuable to a collector, but very like dolls by Lenci or Käthe Kruse."  

BELOW: Dolls by Käthe Kruse, who began making dolls in 1909 in Berlin, German:

II. A favorite photo of mine

Me, below, left, holding yellow book, with coworkers (Big Boss in Santa hat; Jester, E.D., and Mr Furniture) pose in the donation door for a photo advertising our Wednesday Food-Giveaways during Covid.
This cracks me up because we're so scruffy, and it's so cute, me waving.

Due to politics, Society of SVDP no longer has a food bank. All grocery stores & distributors now give their expired/ excess food to one state-supported distribution facility, Second Harvest.
This is efficient–-monopolies are--but knocking out little rag-tag operations is a loss.

Also, groceries from the Society's food bank supplemented the staff's minimum wage, so it was a big loss to us. I've written about this before--sometimes my coworkers make their meals from the expired bakery that still gets donated directly to the store.

(The wonderful Sisters Camelot is one of the few indies in town who still operate. They handle a lot of produce, and they give out free meals from an old school bus.)

BELOW: I took this photo yesterday to show to the folks at the Food Shelf where I get free food to make hot lunch for my coworkers every week.
I aim not to cook red meat very often because some people don’t eat it (and especially not pork), but I take whatever looks good. Last week, organic (!) hamburger.

III. James Baldwin on Holding on to Your Humanity:

"There may not be as much humanity in the world as one would like to see.
But there is some.
...
I may know six people, but that's enough.
...
The world is held together, really it is—held together, by the love and the passion of a very few people."

I've watched this (1 minute) a dozen times:

--Meeting The Man : James Baldwin in Paris.
Dir. Terence Dixon, 1970.

Boycott Target/Buy greener TP or Make Your Own

Why are halfway decent companies caving without a fuss to the New Emperor?
When I heard Target is rolling back their DEI, I immediately thought, I'm not shopping there. Starting NOW.

I don’t know why this Target boycott waits to starts Feb 1––maybe to give everybody time to go to Target and stock up?! 😄
This feels personal to me--Target is based in my city and has been a good ally.

And then, some people online are saying,
But there's nowhere else to shop!  
But... Let's show some initiative. Our ancestors didn't have Target. What are our options?
Like toilet paper… There are several.

1. Order tp from sustainable or recycled materials--from Who Gives a Crap or another good company.
Former Housemate ordered these, and they're just dandy. They offer bamboo tp too, which is softer than recycled tree paper.
Order a batch with friends and share.
You get 20% off a first order: https://us.whogivesacrap.org

2. It's more expensive than Target, yes, so to save money and the environment. . .
Make cloth wipes instead of toilet paper (or paper towels). Use flannel, old T-shirt material, light washcloths--whatever does the job.

There are patterns for sewing cute cloth wipes, but I just cut up flannel with pinking sheers. I leave the squares unhemmed, and I launder the wipes in a net bag.
(I only use them for pee, so I still buy tp, but far less.)

Also, rinse your backside with warm water in a squeeze bottle.
(Folks chit-chat about tp alternatives, here at Homesteading and Permaculture.)

My motivations were environmental, after I wrote a kids book about toilet history and learned how much tp we put in our waters. I'm sure you know--besides pollution, it takes a lot of water to make tp, not to mention trees. From 2014:

bink assembles her mosaic

Kirsten said she'd like to see more of bink's process of mosaic-making. bink didn't record every step, but here are the finals ones anyway. I'm sure she'd be happy to answer questions, if you have any.

1. bink designed the mosaic after Greek art + her own terriers.
She cut the glass with special glass-cutting nippers or cutting wheels (or some she hit with a hammer). She laid-out the glass pieces in her basement studio. 

She bought colored glass (in sheets or scraps) from local companies who import it. Other supplies came from the hardware store.

2. She glued the glass pieces to the kitchen wall, using some super-strong silicone glue (GE brand). She cut lots of new glass pieces for the background. Mounting it took forever—like a very elaborate puzzle. (A few weeks.)

3. Then she applied dark gray grout with a special trowel for tiling called a float.
When wiped off with a warm damp sponge, it remains only in the cracks between the glass pieces.

4. Some touch-up (with heavy duty paper towels) and removing the last glue smudges with razor blade and glue-removers, and . . Ta-da!

some things, ten things

Snorlax on Camino, 2011:

______________

Yesterday I rescued this Faribo wool blanket (below) from the store's textile recycling bin. Someone had cut a big hole in it, but its "Fluff-Loomed" label is vintage.  (The woolen mill later returned to its original spelling, "Faribault"--some of its history).
I priced the cut blanket $2.99 (intact, it lists for around $50 online). I'd have bought and repaired it myself, but I don't much like that green.

My family in childhood had drinking goblets ^ like these.
They are too heavy and knock-overable for me now.
_______________

Speaking of family--my sister sent me this photo of her with our brother. He'd met her for lunch during her recent trip out east. While he is in limited touch with her (unlike me), he's usually extremely stand-offish. But here he is, goofing around, so maybe he's happier now. I hope so.
And, in the photo on bottom--sister (left) and me.

____________________

Uh... so... I don't need to say, do I, that I am not a fan of Jordan Peterson?
Yeah. No. Not a fan of this guy who said Trump's victory is a good thing.

He does, however, (as Marz said), put forth one good idea:
Clean your room = Take care of your life.
Take up your life.
Take responsibility.
You matter. All of that.

Self-reliance, self-determination, self-respect, self-empowerment:
these are key teachings of liberation,
. . . from Jesus Christ ("The kingdom is within YOU.")

. . . to Gloria Steinem (“Without self-esteem, the only change is an exchange of masters; with it, there is no need for masters.”)

. . . to Malcolm X ("[The Black American] has to... know that he can stand on his own two feet.")

Great! Beyond that, I cannot go with Peterson and his muddled thinking. But then, he's not talking to me.
_____________

Politically, I'm more in line with Robert Reich's thinking here:
"Trump’s neofascism is here now.
Here are 10 things you can do to resist":
theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jan/24/trump-fascism-what-to-do

"America has deep problems, which is why we can’t give up. Protect the vulnerable, organize boycotts and keep fighting...

What is giving me hope now

Finding room in life for joy, fun and laughter.
We cannot let Trump and his darkness take over.
Just as it’s important not to give up the fight, it’s critically important to take care of ourselves.
If we obsess about Trump and fall down the rabbit hole of outrage, worry and anxiety, we won’t be able to keep fighting."

This poster ^ was produced in GB as one of three 'Home Publicity' posters in 1939 --another being "Keep Calm and Carry On", wildly popular in modern times.