Oh, you think that won’t work?

Anyone who says, “I’m powerless” or “Boycotts won't make any difference” has never met a bulldog.

Passive resistance has power.

These boots were made for walkin' . . .

Tra-la, tra-la... It's a Buy Nothing Day! in the USA.

I love this Economic Blackout for a lot of reasons.
Let us liberate ourselves from whatever is hurting us!

That's a tall order, eh?
But why not?
Let those chains drop like underpants whose elastic is shot.

["Elastic was truly was terrible in the 1940's because of war demands for rubber. Ladies had exit strategies for panties that just decided to fall off."]

You could knit your own. How baggy would those be in a minute?
Below: 1940's WW2 Service Panties and Bloomers Knitting Pattern (digital repro on Etsy)

It shows up how materialistic we are as a culture, if the very idea of going a measly 24 hours without buying something has power.
Like for me until 4 months ago, going 24 hours without sugar felt almost impossible.

One day is easy.
But also, Why not sacrifice a little?
Are we so fragile? Without inner resources?
So enslaved to ease?

Let us not quietly go as grist to the Mump Mill.
(Musk + Trump = Mump)

If you want to participate and do need to (or just want to) buy something today, spend $ cash at small, local businesses.
Say, your local thrift store!
___________

Often enough, we are the ones holding the chain that binds us.

For instance, I hear people say they don't give up Facebook even though they hate Mump because they like to keep in touch with x, y, z.. [cousins in Texas, reading group members, whatever].

Well, duh. OF COURSE. That's what ties you to it.
If you give it up, you make a sacrifice. 
Like, we only do things that are easy and pleasant?

And I hear people say, "Oh, I only check it once a day".

How do they not know this:
social media is like the metaphoric ants that the physical therapist said are working all the time to repair my injured ligament.
No matter what we are doing for 5 minutes a day,
THEY are working all 1,440 minutes, 24/7.

(Also--there's still the post office.)
________________

I was surprised that Tabitha Brown, a Black business-owner, said people shouldn't boycott Target because they carry her products, and those of other Black businesses, and it would hurt them.

Justice should require no sacrifice?
Wouldn't that be nice.
During the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Black Americans walked, carpooled, rode bikes for the entire year of 1956 rather than ride the bus.

But also, Ms Brown, do you really think Target is your friend, and that if you call people off them, they will be loyal to you?

Let us identify the inconsistencies in this argument.

How has loyalty to Master worked out for people in history?
________________

The point is LIBERATION.

There must be fifty ways to get yourself free.

Some of them, UPCOMING:

Today's boycott is organized by a new organization, The People's Union USA.
More on them here, in Time magazine.

After the single-day spending pause, People’s Union plans week-long boycotts against specific retailers, including...
Amazon, March 7-14
Nestlé, March 21-28
Walmart, April 7-13.

Unrelated to P.U. and irregardless of Ms Brown, some Black faith leaders are calling for a 40-day “fast” or boycott of Target to protest the corporation dropping it DEI initiatives.
The fast will  start on Ash Wednesday, Mar. 5 and run the 40 days of Lent.
[via Forbes]

"Fasting is not just about what we abstain from—it is about what we embrace."
Supporters of Black and ally-owned brands sold at Target can buy directly from those businesses.

ABOVE: “Do Not Buy Where You Will Not Be Hired”   

From the papers of Floyd McKissick, a Black attorney who worked with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Durham, North Carolina in the early 1960s.
--Via.

Stronger

Can you tell that I am chatty?
I imagine that comes through, here?
Well, anyway, I am, and even though my cold has turned into LARYNGITIS, I talked soooo much to the physical therapist, I am now practically voiceless.

He was the sort of PT I admire the most.
I suppose they all know the mechanics of the body, which is adequately admirable, but some are more forthcoming with the info, which is more so. This guy was the type who responded generously to my questions, giving me lots and lots of information. I love that!  

He spent an entire hour with me and gave me oodles of help.

He was terrific at explaining things for non-science majors.
I said I pictured tiny little knitters repairing my knee.
"That's good," he said. "I tell people it's like ants--no matter what you're doing, they're working."

He told me how he knew it was my MCL (medial collateral ligament) that was hurt and not the meniscus:
"I know this twist hurts your knee"––(it did)-- "but if it were the meniscus, you couldn't do it at all."

And, while I don't want to objectify the man, he was in possession of a most superior posterior. Walt Whitman would have approved.
"What sport do you play?" I asked.
"I never played sports," he said. "I lift weights."

I did NOT say, "Well, that's working well for you", but really, he was buff. That inspired me, it really did, that visual reminder that if you put the work in, your body will respond.
I need to put in the work to strengthen exactly that:
the glutes, which stabilize the knee.

I know some things need medication to heal, but musculoskeletal stuff?
Work it, if you can.

I was relieved to hear that my MCL injury is a relatively minor pull, and extremely common --that it will heal--is already repairing itself––and that the exercises and massage he showed me will help the strands repair themselves in proper order, and not go all sideways.(He showed me with his fingers how some of the strands are pulled out of place.)

"Without help," he said, "the fibers won't always realign in the best way. It's good you came to PT"--making me extra glad I'd been brave and called the State health insurance people yesterday.
(And then the confirmation of my new coverage came in the mail today. I'd be kicking myself if I had cancelled PT because I'd been too afraid to make that call.)

Another thing that made me happy was he said biking is exactly the thing for my injury. Yay!
"But don't start biking to work yet, where there's time and distance pressure. Bike slowly around your neighborhood for 10 minutes to start."

So I did! It's sunny and 50, and I felt giddy to be FREE after being cooped up for 6 weeks. (Even if my knee had been well, it'd been too cold to bike.)

He knew I biked because he'd asked during the intake what activities I'd given up because of my injury.

I'd told him that I don't exercise.
But as I was answering this question, I realized that statement must seem weird:
"I can't bike to work, and I can't walk around the lake, and I can't carry groceries a mile home from the store. Um, I guess that sounds like I exercise?"

"I think you mean you don't go to a gym."

Yes. It's funny how our perception can be off kilter.

I found out lots about him (because: chatty).
He went to the high school where I worked last year, and he worked at Taco Bell!
His oldest daughter is a Pisces!
He's in the National Guard and was posted as a PT to Kosovo! (Years after the war--he's young.)
He wears squishy insoles in his Converse tennies. (He'd been telling me we need cushion, and I questioned his flat-soled shoes.)

His ONLY downside, and it's neutral, not negative:
he was not someone I would tell about the dolls and bears and their knees, unlike the doctor I saw two weeks ago.
I'd trusted that she would enter into the Theater of Toys.

But truly, that's okay. A lot of (most?) people don't do toys.

Anyway, they don't care one jot:
"We only need one doctor," they said. "She was the one for us."
They want me to send her an update photo of them doing their PT exercises.

I probably will, because I want to let her know that her guess that it was the MCL was correct. It wasn't a "guess", of course!
But she'd said she couldn't be sure without an MRI. She'd been about to order one for me, when I told her not to because I wasn't sure I had insurance coverage at that point, and while I could conceivably pay for an office visit out of pocket, no way could I pay for sci-fi machinery.

Turns out, the PT didn't need that, being fluent in the language of muscle and bone, in all its intricacy.

So--now I have a regimen to follow, three more appointments (two weeks apart), and some tips on proper mechanics for getting down on the floor:
use a gardener's mat for kneeling, don't torque your knee, go straight down; squatting down is best, but my knee it still "too irritatable" to do squats.

Because everything is political these days, I apply all this metaphorically to staying strong in these Days of Destruction:
do your daily exercises-- watch your mechanics.

Small motions lead to strong posteriors, allowing us to do the HEAVY LIFTING, to stabilize us and keep us balanced.

And--my favorite:
Cushion yourself!

Humor is a great cushion--like goose-down!
I would not normally care about an image like this--not the sports nor the aggression––but I 100-percent relish how other countries are pushing back against our horrible bullying.
And it made me smile.
We have Canada geese at the lakes here, and while they look like pillows, they are fierce. I would not mess with them.
Muscle and pluck forever! says Walt Whitman.

I lifted this ^ illustration off a Canadian woman's blog, "My Life So Far". Thanks, MLSF!
She notes that these geese are called cobra chickens.
LOL--yes! They hiss and snake their necks and they bite. (They are also very poopy.) 

"You're never as weak as you think" (Unless you haven't moved for weeks, then maybe)

I. Make the Call

I dread dealing with bureaucracy. No one much likes it, right? But some people like my sister just shrug and get on with it. I am not one of those people. I've paid actual money rather than phone an agency.

But I was motivated this morning:
I got a bill for $342.45 for the [20-min] doctor visit for my knee.
I dread phone calls so much, I considered paying it, but I go to physical therapy tomorrow, and I can't afford to get billed for that too.

I even thought about cancelling PT, but I have grown weak. It's been six weeks I haven't been able to move vigorously. I want to get going!

So I called to find out why my State health insurance hasn’t kicked in yet.
And found out—it has!
They'll cover that doctor visit, and everything coming up. 
Because I earn under $20k a year, I don't even have a co-pay (I think).

Thank you, good humans!

This all changes next year when I turn 65 and have to enroll in Medi-care/-aid/-whatever. If it still exists... *
Will we have a US federal government in 2026?
This is not a rhetorical question.
_____________________

II. Show Up

It was so great how COVID-19 vaccines were handled in 2021.
No insurance needed--not here, anyway--you just [made an appointment and] showed up.
Was that national?

Below: Ass't Man and me, having gotten our first vaccines in 2021. Four springs ago! 

AM said his beard interfered with wearing a mask. He'd often have one hanging slack around his neck or up on the crown of his head.
Big Boss set an example by wearing one, but he didn't insist on others doing so.

Many of my male coworkers either wouldn't wear a mask at all, or wore one over their mouth alone---or even over their chin.
It seemed to be a gender thing.
Wearing masks was sissy?
While men I work with are robust in many ways, they were such tender blossoms about masks.
"Oh, they're uncomfortable."
But they will carry furniture when they have two broken fingers. [Actual example.]

The above photo was taken by a former coworker who, I just remembered, was having immigration problems. She'd been in the process of filing for citizenship when she left her abusive husband (an Anglo)--who then TURNED HER IN to the feds as fraudulent.
I hope she's okay.

Luckily all the people working at the store now are citizens--some only recently. But a lot of people in the neighborhood aren't.

In the neighborhood where I live, someone posted signs w/ cards in baggies  outlining legal rights, in English/Spanish:

"Immigrants Make Minneapolis
Know Your Rights"

On the cards: What to say to ICE (in English);
In Spanish, what to do:
Don't open the door, don't say or sign anything...

I took one to xerox and put up around the store.
The neighborhood where I live is mostly non-Hispanic white, but the Catholic Church two blocks from me that hosts the food shelf is largely Spanish-speaking. A lot of people who go there are refugees from Ecuador, which is ruled by gangs [BBC article], you know. 

III. Stand Up! Or, Sit Down

There are so many things we can do--little and big—to make a better world.

^ Above from Accidental Czar: The Life and Lies of Putin (2022), graphic history by Andrew S. Weiss; illus. by Brian "Box" Brown.
I just read it and learned a lot!

So many things we can do.... According to Gene Sharp,198 Things.
In his book The Politics of Nonviolent Action (1973), Sharp  catalogued 198 METHODS of Non-Violent Actions.
(They don't include online tactics, because 1973.)

These “nonviolent weapons” are in three categories:

• nonviolent protest and persuasion--marches & mockery!
  Dictators don't like being laughed at.
  
  
• noncooperation (social, economic, and political)--ways of refusing to play--like boycotts
  
  
• nonviolent intervention--civil disobedience, exposing wrong-doers, etc.

 > > > Here's an easy one we in the US could do this Friday:
join the FEBRUARY 28 Economic Blackout

"For our entire lives, they have told us we have no choice ... that we have to accept these insane prices, the corporate greed, the billionaire tax breaks, all while we struggle to just to get by,"
said  John Schwarz, founder of the unaffiliated grassroots organization The People's Union USA.

"February 28, the 24-hour economic blackout: no Amazon, no Walmart, no fast food, no gas, not a single unnecessary dollar spent ...
If you must spend, ONLY support small, local businesses.
For one day, we are going to finally turn the tables."

I don’t agree with all of People’s Union’s platform, but I agree people should pull together, and a one-day boycott is a great place to start. So, on Friday I won't get a falafel sandwich at NY Gyro (below).
I'm getting to love this basic restaurant in the corner where I transfer to an express bus (to & from the U):
it goes right to my apartment building, but it runs infrequently.
If I have to wait long, I've been eating here.

A couple really nice Middle Eastern guys run it.
Once I only had 10 minutes before my bus came:
Was there time to get a chicken gyro to go, I asked, or should I order something faster?

"You should eat what you like," the guy said. "I will make it for you."

I don't want to hurt them economically so I'll make sure to eat there an extra time that's not 2/28. Or, better, leave a $9 tip, the cost of a gyros.

IV. Know Your Salutes

Here's a boycott that didn't happen--the US did not boycott the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, even after Hitler enacted the Nuremberg Race Laws.

Perhaps Jesse Owens winning four gold medals was even more powerful than a boycott would have been?

Eighty years later, President Obama said:

“It wasn’t just Jesse. It was other African Americans athletes in the middle of Nazi Germany under the gaze of Adolf Hitler that put a lie to notions of racial superiority ––whooped ’em–– and taught them a thing or two about democracy and taught them a thing or two about the American character.”

--"The 1936 Berlin Olympics and the Controversy of U.S. Participation"

Hm, though. "The American character" is currently up for review...
Here, Jesse Owens on the podium demonstrates what "Not-a-Nazi Salute" looks like. [via NewsMuseum]

___________
* Health Care, Again

Oh--here:
The House will vote this week on the GOP's budget proposal, which includes massive cuts to Medicaid and food stamps, to pay for even more tax cuts for the rich. --Robert Reich [via Michael at OCA]

Fellow Americans, call your representatives now and tell them to reject it:
(202) 224-3121
Or…
Find your senator.
Find your representative.

A comment on Reich's YouTube:
"They've got their supporters believing that the Sheriff of Nottingham is Robinhood."

First Sighting of the Season

Shorts sighting, that is! Man spotted on my way to work from the bus stop, a block from the thrift store. It’s 47 and sunny—warm enough to bike if not for my knee. Yesterday I saw T-shirts but no shorts.)

That’s a Somali restaurant on the corner.

" I, in perfect health except for a slight cold"

I exposed myself to a surfeit of Whitman. I read too much of and about ol' Walt yesterday and became crabby.
STOP insisting on the glory of grass, WW, of glistening sweat, of gelatinous gaps...

Reading him makes me want to sit slumped in a corner and glower and point out how UNCOMFORTABLE nature is, treacherous, and rocky underfoot.
Have you ever been camping in a rainstorm?
Have you ever inhaled days-old urine striking through cotton trousers?

Well, yes, I gather he went out and about all the time (Nature!), and talked to everyone. 

He was the sort of guy who reveled in it.
The odor of feet.
The feel of hail on your face!
Doesn't it make you feel ALIVE?!

No, it makes me want to go inside.

Really, some of his stuff is great. I love the lines of "Song of Myself" recited in Nine Days.
A little is enough. Walt is so relentless, so insistent, I want to punch him.
Back off!

He invites parody.
I couldn't write it . . . and I don't have to:
E. B. White wrote a send-up of the Classics Book Club in the style of WW, "A Classic Waits for Me".

Unlike Walt, though, he kept it short: a page long.
Here are a few lines:

"I to the classics devoted, brother of rough mechanics, beauty-parlor technicians, spot welders, radio-program directors
(It is not necessary to have a higher education to appreciate these books),
I, connoisseur of good reading, friend of connoisseurs of good reading everywhere,
I, not obligated to take any specific number of books, free to reject any volume, perfectly free to reject Montaigne, Erasmus, Milton,
I, in perfect health except for a slight cold, pressed for time, having only a few more years to live,
Now celebrate this opportunity."

_______________

"To my other favorite W.W." Walt Whitman’s poetic influence on Breaking Bad"--article in Medium

Here's an interesting connection---Whitman's poetry features in Breaking Bad--the TV show about Walter White, a man living his as his freest, most intense, truest self––as a meth making, dealing, murdering bastard.

The contradictions in the worship of freedom, of self. "If I worship one thing more than another it shall be the spread of my own body."

I didn't like Breaking Bad, but Marz did, and she showed me clips of the highlights.
Like the ending:

"I did it for me," Walter White says. "I liked it. I was good at it. It made me feel alive."

Oh, Walt!

UPDATE: A commenter kindly (or vengefully) informed me I misquoted Mr White:

"Hello, I am the Associate Angel of Vengeance.
Unlike my boss, I am a coward, so I limit my vengeance to correcting misquotations.
Walter White says:
I did it for me. I was good at it. I was alive.
The situation didn't act on him to make him feel aliveness; he became aliveness in action. "

Yes. I double-checked that scene on youTube.
Walt says to his wife, "I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. And I was really... I was alive."
_____________

I actually do have a slight cold.
But my knee continues to improve, and since it's supposed to be almost hot–– sunny and 45º––this afternoon I will try walking with a cane to the park, half a mile away. Or at least around the block.

I bet I will see someone in shorts. (A man.)

The body exposed! The milk white legs!

Sad 'n' Cheerful Chitchat

I. Saturday morning chitchat

It's an exciting day: it's warming up!
Jumping from below zero up to the thirties... and beyond.

AND, my knee let me sleep all night without stabbing me in the brain. I’m so proud of my body for knitting itself back together.
Yay, health! 

Only: I have a small cold.
Gee whiz, come on you guys, enough already.

But, truly, it's small---I can breathe easily, and that's the main thing. The best thing!

"My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart,
the passing of blood and air through my lungs...."

BREATHE!

The lines ^  are from Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself", which I only truly registered when I heard them in the movie Nine Days.
I love that scene so much, I'm going to embed it here--it stands alone.

NOTE: It's a SPOILER

This movie stays with me--it feels so much like ME.
Me, as myself. 
Sad and life affirming.
Sleepy, slow, and vital, vibrant.

II. Movies of Our Selves

Other films have felt like my life, my family, my times--the forces at work---but not about me qua me.

Some of them...

Moonstruck (1987)--My Sicilian (father's) side of the family. Still love that film. Presented as funny, but there's real hurt in there.

Thirty-two Short Films about Glenn Gould (1993) felt like a home movie from my childhood. I haven't watched this in 30 years, so I'm not sure why, besides that my mother was a pianist, and my parents loved Glenn Gould. Beauty and befuddlement.

Love, Liza (2002)-- Phillips Seymour Hoffman, as a man  blasted by the suicide of his wife, who left a note he spends the movie getting up the energy to read. Definitely a picture of me after my mother's death. Very loving.

Downfall, (2004, w/ Bruno Ganz), about the final days of the Third Reich, with Hitler in the bunker.
Weirdly, I found an uplifting message in this dark film:
IT MATTERS WHAT WE DO, what I do... even if the world falls apart around us. Do the right thing.

Paired ^ with  Blindspot: Hitler's Secretary, a documentary about a young woman who chose not to see, not to do;
and The White Rose about young people who did see, and act.

Capote (2005), another with Philip S. Hoffman––a picture of how riveting narcissism can be... and also of how slim the line is between creation and destruction.
What door did you walk out of?

> > > What are the movies of YOU?

iii. Sad 'n' Cheerful

Ha! I was just texting with Tracy about wanting to chit-chat lightly, but even if I start with the weather, I end up chatting about suicide and liberation.

LOL... "And that's okay". That is the background radiation.
I'm feeling quite cheerful.

I relate to Cornel West saying to Toni Morrison that he is a cheerful person with a sad soul. He also said, “I'm not an optimist but I'm a prisoner of hope”.

Makes sense to me--like physics:
Entropy wins, but isn't it so cool we exist?
To infinity, and beyond!

I guess Harold & Maude (1971) felt like me, myself, when I saw it at fifteen. Or, it felt like who I wanted to be: Maude.
That didn't seem possible, at fifteen--I thought we were different species; but now I see it's a matter of different life stages. Bean sprouts don't look much like beans.

Now I have flashes that I have indeed grown up into my version of a Maude. The mature stage of me.
Sad 'n' Cheerful.

 Maude in the greenhouse: " I like to watch things grow. They grow and bloom and fade and die and change into something else.
Ah, life!"

iv. Back to chitchat...  What's poppin' at the store?

Let's see. Oh, Amina set up a Black History Month book display.
She is so lovely... and so clueless about physical things. She piled the books all on top of one another.
I used to get annoyed with her, but I like her so much--and she's extremely smart, and kind and funny--now I just follow behind and rearrange. 

Many books have already sold off the display--this was yesterday's selection:

Volunteer Abby was excited about a set of Denby stoneware dishes, made in England in the 1970s.
I have some Denby mustard-yellow salad plates w/ brown rims that I love, but I don't much care for this Tulip pattern. Though I do like the sugar bowl w/ lid, below, right:

My Denby plates are chipped because I am a terrible one for BREAKING PLATES. Or, rather, I am very good at breaking them. And mugs, etc. All of them are chipped.

> > > Do you break things?

I was mentioning to the cashier that I always have to have a broom handy at work because I break something most every day--and never have dishes at home for long.

"I don't think I've ever broken any of my dishes," she said.
Granted she's only 26, but by 26 I'm sure I'd broken a lifetime's worth of crockery.

I was wondering if I'm mentally inattentive, or perhaps I have some biological lack of coordination?

I kinda think the latter:
I remember breaking things when I was little---a porcelain horse figurine I loved; my mother's Brown Betty tea pot she loved.
It doesn't feel like I'm distracted,
it feels like things are easy to break. They practically do it themselves!

It's nothing tragic, just a propensity to break things.
They're just things. There are a lot of them in this, our world.
Good thing I work in a thrift store. 😊
What else?
Four old dolls-of-the-world came in. The ones with blue shawls are Ireland.

Which reminds me, I'd come across a photo bink took of me biking in Ireland when I was twenty-five---with a boy we met named, was it Wade? Wayne?
Do you remember, bink?

[bink says: he was Wyatt!]

It's so low res--this is as big as it gets.

Back when we hopped onto a plane and headed off on our bikes with NO physical prep. "I can bike up mountains."

My knee says, those days are done and gone.
Which is fine. I could and did bike up mountains, but I distinctly didn't enjoy it. bink can attest to this.

And, that's it for today because--more cheer--Maura is coming in her car to take me to the art supply store (Blicks) for linoleum. Getting going with printmaking again.
 

Tootle-oo, you! ❤️ Take good care of your joints. And your lungs. And your tender heart.

Organ Recitals

I. You can... Name Your Own Gulf on Mapquest (via Orange Crate Art--thanks, Michael!).

II. Going Swimmingly

Hey, We're in Pisces! My sign.
No wonder I feel better.  I always feel better around my birthday--the light returns!

And, if we're lucky...
Health returns.
My knee is slightly better, after weeks of not improving. (I could roll over in bed last night!)
Energy returns.
After printing for the first time in months, I want to keep rolling. 

This prediction for Pisces is timely:

"Have you been struggling to summon the motivation to start anew in some area of your life?
I predict that in the coming weeks, you will find all the motivation you need."

I was grumbling to Maura that I need more linoleum blocks and inks, and I will have to order some online, and I always prefer to browse in person. But the one remaining art store requires a bus + walking several blocks.
"I'll take you!" she said.

So--yay!

Other people have offered rides or otherwise been kind--several have brought me groceries (without me asking)--sister even brought me flowers.
It's helped a lot––with mood as much as food.


 ^ Among donated greeting cards.
Sympathy helps.

Weirdly, though, Volunteer Abby from work has been rather unsympathetic.
We've become friends in the past year, but I started to notice she was not offering help. She's usually keen to do things for people.

Then, she and I went out with a third thrift-store worker for happy hour, and Abby recited a list of all the times she's been injured (sometimes badly), clearly implying,
"Stop feeling sorry for yourself."

That's it, I thought:
She has had to struggle through hard times (very hard times) alone, without help--and she's become the sort of person who resents other people when they're "needy".

In fact, while sometimes I've been down about my knee, at work I've been as cheerful as ever.  I'm happy to be at work, and I know it shows.

I see this injury as another Trial Run for getting old.
Message: Strengthen your glutes!
Also: stock up on canned goods and books.
Practice patience.

Having someone else tell you to shut up and buck up is not helpful. It's judgment, not support.

What helps most is what always helps, at least for people like me:
a friendly ear.

"Tell me more" is the best offer.

Maybe it can be boring to listen to people talk about their health, but our bodies are where we live/who we are--it's a big deal.

I took J-shek out for his birthday yesterday--he turned 74.  We laughed about how talking about our health is part of our conversational repertoire now, and we even enjoy it--the mutual support.
He said an elderly friend calls such conversations Organ Recitals.

But then we got on to talking about his writing--he has started on the second novel in his world-building trilogy.

III. #BeHereTomorrow

I talked about researching more about suicide.
I've followed up on one of the survivors mentioned in the New Yorker article "Jumpers"--Kevin Hines.

His work since has been getting and staying healthy (he's bi-polar, with childhood trauma), and working for suicide prevention--#BeHereTomorrow––including getting a net installed under the GG bridge.

Interesting article in the San Francisco Standard.
The suicide deterrent barriers are not what I thought:

"Certainly, they are not the springy mesh used to protect high-wire aerialists. " 

"Rather, they’re marine-grade stainless-steel wire rope, akin to a horizontal fence four millimeters thick, positioned 20 feet below the roadbed and extending 20 feet out.
Anyone who jumps into this net is likely to be injured."
_______________

Here's a crazy detail I hadn't known:
A SEA LION saved Hines's life.

As soon as Hines jumped he thought, "What have I done? I don't want to die!"

When he hit the water though, his spine shattered, and he was drowning. A swimming animal came up beneath his.
He thought it was a shark--"great, I'm drowning and a shark is going to bite off my legs".
But observers later said it was a sea lion.
The sea lion circled under him and kept him afloat until the Coast Guard arrived.

There are a lot of different attitudes and approaches to suicide prevention--or to suffering.
Hines's is very pro-active, very strong and positive, very loving.
I like that--I love this guy--but a little of that energy goes a long way with me.

I am more drawn to the slowness and sadness of the caretaker Will in the movie Nine Days.

Everyone's different. The message that applies to us all is,

Everyone Matters.

Yes. Whether we like each other or not! 🙄

I matter.

YOU matter.

We matter, we and our organs. 

RePrints/ "Fuck Your Fear." Or, try again later.

I printed up a snowstorm...

I. Advice from a Flamenco Teacher

My friend Dee is a school counselor at a tough high school --lots of her kids live below the poverty line, come from undocumented immigrant families, have a hard time making it to graduation.
She'd put my print "NO TENGAS MIEDO/Don't Be Afraid" on her office door.

I'd carved it the night after DT won the presidential election,   inspired by advice from a Spanish flamenco teacher,
but I thought it was too simplistic or preachy, and I'd only printed a few.
I’d forgotten I’d given Dee one—she must've and seen it at my place, because I didn't hand them out.

But ALSO... AS A PISCES, I always want to add to Gung-Ho Marines advice…

It's OK to sit in the corner and read a book; 
It's okay to feel afraid with a teddy bear!!!
But... in your interactions with other people (and your self),
be cognizant that in whatever you do or feel or say, 
you have POWER.

The other day Dee texted me a photo of her office door covered in signs and posters, and said,
"Guess which sign gets the most comments?"

"Don't be Afraid"! and people sometimes ask her where they can get one too. 

Did I have extras?

 I didn't, and her inquiry spurred me to print again.
(I'd stopped after failing to create a print for the Swedish museum last fall.  Like a knee injury--I'd over-stressed some interior structure of mine, and it had seized up! Frustrating.)

Another friend had asked me for "Dept. of Do Your Damn Work", and that'd be good for Ben at the gym too--a version of "ISYMFS" ("it's still your mother-fucking set").
I also printed some Get Well cards--once you have them on hand, they're easy to use up--at least this winter they are.
________________

II. Advice from an Improv Teacher

Maybe I should have printed this slogan:
Fuck Your Fear.

Hm. No, that sounds like, "I want you and your fear to fuck off."
Maybe, FUCK FEAR?
Hm. Ambiguous...?

Fuck the Fear? 

Anyway, "Fuck Your Fear" is Advice for Improv from Mick Napier's book Improvise: Scene from the Inside Out:

"Make strong choices.

Fuck your fear.

We want to see your power, not your fear. Nobody has time for your fear. ...
Take the powerful choices [you make] and utilize them in the show.

If... [you are] coming from a huge space of insecurity in the first place...that's the problem right there, not the idea or character or anything.
The more you approach a director or other actors in this needy manner, the more you will alienate yourself from the director's power and your own.

If you find yourself in a show and you are afraid, then fake it. ...

The best thing you could say to me in notes [on rehearsals] is,
"I'll make another choice and we'll see if it works."
______________________

That last bit reminds me of what I like about reincarnation, the insertion of this phrase after everything:
"I'll try again and see how it goes".

Anyway, I was feeling down about my knee--I go to the PT in a week, and it's not significantly better after 5 weeks--
and I thought I'd better adopt an approach for the long haul.

I like this:

FUCK YOUR FEAR.
Or, try again later.

Maybe I will print that...

Here we go!

Toffee Tin

My new Favorite Thing Ever, a donation I unboxed yesterday
and immediately claimed for myself:
Riley Brothers Toffee tin, Halifax, England (1950s?)

"Brothers Fred & John Herbert Riley launched Riley's Toffee Rolls in 1907, using a recipe from their mother."

This tin could illustrate the cover of Barbara Pym's novel Excellent Women (1952).
Food rationing in the UK didn't end entirely after WWII until 1954. Confectionery (sweets and chocolate) came off in February 1953.
I can imagine this 10-oz. (small!) tin of individually wrapped toffees would be a special gift--from the rector's sister, perhaps–– and on Sundays the book's heroine, Mildred Lathbury, would have allowed herself one toffee.
__________

Another extraordinary donation, from around the same time--this Kommando 2000 car by Schuco, Made in US-zone Germany.
Circa 1945–1949.
I showed it to Big Boss, explaining that the US occupied Germany after WWII...  He's generally interested to learn things.
"My history lesson for the day," he said.

Ebay is always declaring things to be rare, but this really is an unusual item. I priced it $49.

The Powers That Be decided we should put out Easter this week--two months before the holiday--hence my amused but annoyed look, below...
It's true, though, that I don't have anything else to fill the shelves where Valentines were. And spring equinox is only a month away.
I made a sign of upcoming Spring Holidays.
(Must add Ramadan--it happens to fall in spring this year.)

Anyway--never too early for Peeps!
(I was glad to find lacey table runners to line the ugly shelves.)

 

There was absolutely nothing unusual in the boxes of Easter unpacked so far. 

We've got lots more boxes though.
I will keep an eye out for a tumbrel. Last year we didn't have one, and Penny Cooper couldn't perform her annual reenactment of Sydney Carton's martyrdom: "It is a far, far better thing I do..." 

The days are getting longer---almost 11 hours of daylight now!--but today it's so cold, the city's public schools are closed. They don't do that until the wind-chill is –35º F, (right around where Fahrenheit & Celsius catch up to each other).
It's my day off anyway, or I'd have taken it off.

Safety precautions must be taken!
bink's dog Astro wrapped his fleece blanket around his head last night:

My friend Kate wrapped up her orphan, Ivy, to keep her warm and  healthy. Lots of gunk going around: Kate is recovering from pneumonia, and Sister has been coughing for two weeks too.

I love when I get reports from Girlettes in the Field.

MT's girlette, Margaret Helen Conway, is dressed for spring in an outfit MT sewed by hand. Flirting with freckles--and eyebrows--she looks a little like Peppermint Patty...

Stay warm, everyone! Or cool, depending on where in the world you are.

Cleaning your room is not a moral issue.

Beethoven didn't make his bed.
In fact, he was filthy. He left filled chamber pots under his piano, wore overripe clothes... and, have you seen his hair?

Cleanliness is not next to godliness.

Beethoven is next to godliness.

I've been wanting to say clearly (having recently quoted Jordan Peterson's "make your bed") that I believe that taking agency, claiming our self-sovereignty are good things---
but what we do with our agency is our choice.

By definition:
Sovereignty means self-determination.
You do not take orders (unless you determine them to be helpful). Not from influencers ("arrange your designer ice-cubes in plexiglass trays!"); not from Jordan Peterson; not from your dead grandmother's voice in your head.
(I can still hear my mother's mother, and she definitely judged a person's character by the state of their bed––and in her eyes, mine was rumpled).

Now I'm off Meta, I'm not watching hundreds of 1-minute videos, I'm watching several18-minute TED Talks. I like sinking into a subject instead of skittering along the surface. (Not that that's not fun--like a shiny dragonfly!)

I watched a good TED talk yesterday--
"How to Do Laundry When You're Depressed". 
The speaker, KC Davis, emphasizes that
Care tasks are morally neutral.

Yes!
(She has a website too: strugglecare.com.)

A year ago, when I was learning about autism for my job at the high school, I came across a lot of helpful life hacks--neurodivergent people offering practical approaches to managing tasks.
(And of course you don't gave to be depressed or neurodivergent or laid up with a bad knee to experience overwhelm,
and to benefit from these approaches.)

Find work-arounds.
Can't wash dishes?
Use paper plates.
Can't handle the many steps of brushing your teeth?
You can buy toothbrushes with toothpaste already on them.

KC even talks about environmentalism:
It is better you stay alive than you take out your recycling. Buy the paper plates.
(And sadly, we individual households don't make much difference anyway.)

She doesn't say this, but if you're staying in bed all day, your carbon footprint is already pretty low. (lol, but true.)

One of my favorite hacks I read last year, personally, was:
you never have to fold your laundry.
If it's too much, or even if you just don't want to?
So what?
Don't.

That didn't change my behavior--it changed how I felt about my behavior.
Like so many of us (most of us?), I felt shame about not folding my laundry. But really, it doesn't bother me if it's sitting in the kitchen chair where guests sit. . . until guests come over.
(What's the harm, Grandmother? It's clean. Go away.)

KC Davis says the main issue is not good vs. bad, it's
WHAT WORKS?
What is most functional for you?

Determine that, and find ways to make it happen for you. It will take some work, but it will serve you, not some fictional judge.

I'd say this applies to most everything--including morality.
I mean, some things we determine are morally Good. But still, how we do or be them--what a functional approach to them is--is up to us.

There are some great teachers out there,
but if we accept their teaching, we still have to determine how to apply it. I just read that Thich Nhat Hanh changed the name of his teaching from Engaged Buddhism to Applied Buddhism. It's something you do. (Doing includes--starts with--breathing.)
If we accept it, what does 'love your neighbor' look like, applied?

NOTE: Suicide

Recently I've been watching more talks about suicide.
Every so often I sidle up to the topic. Have I developed a tolerance?
Recently, a little bit, ever since making that video about my mother taking her life, and then getting mad at her--and then being happy that if reincarnation were real, I would see her again.

I had watched this TED Talk years ago, and it's till my favorite--and judging by the comments, many other people's too:
Sami Moukaddem's
"On living with depression and suicidal feelings".

Of course I love him---he starts the talk holding onto a giant stuffed giraffe (is it a giraffe?).

It seems to me, the best talks and teachers are people who have survived suicide--not someone else's, but their own.

The least helpful may be the well-meaning people who have no clue and say things like, "Talk to your friends and family! Ask for help from someone you trust."

Their comment sections are full of replies like,
"I told my wife I wanted to die, and she told me to pull it together."
"No one loves me."
"The NHS put me on a two-year wait list."

Another longstanding favorite of mine is the New Yorker article "Jumpers" from 2003, about people who jump off San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge.

There's a way to access articles without subscriptions--but I think you can see one free article. (Then you have to sign out and in again--a pain.)
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/10/13/jumpers

A Paywall Workaround

Oh!!! Here! I googled how, and found https://12ft.io

You type a url in their "clean website" box, and it give you the article or site without ads or anything.

"All we do is disable the javascript of the site. This obviously doesn't work for all websites, but it works for a surprisingly large proportion of them. "

It doesn't provide a shareable live link--but I put in the Jumpers url, and there was the article.
______________________

We don't know what people who succeed feel, but the article reports,

Survivors often regret their decision mid-air.

Ken Baldwin hurdled over the railing, afraid that if [he] stood on the chord he might lose his courage.
“I instantly realized that everything in my life that I’d thought was unfixable was totally fixable—except for having just jumped.”

But I always imagined my mother felt relief, honestly.
She shot herself, so she died too fast for regrets;
but first, she had shot one bullet into the wall. (The police found it.)

I take a weird comfort that she had had time to realize the gun worked––she would have felt and heard its power––and she had an opportunity, a moment to decide "not to jump", as it were.
But she did.

For her to have stopped then--and I know she had stopped herself many times before--so very many things would have had to be different for so, so long...
I can't even imagine.

We can help each other, but we cannot force someone into being saved.
I am not the savior.
And if someone I love takes their life, at that point I say, well...

We can try again in our next incarnation.

Is that true?

Who cares?
It's a story-line that I like a lot––a workaround of crippling moral judgement or dead-end despair.
The paper plate for "I cannot wash the dishes."

Rest.
And try again on another day. Or, another life.

"Nine Days"

In the movie Nine Days (2021), five newly minted personalities (souls?) show up at a house on a salt flat, an in-between/neither life nor death station, to be interviewed and observed by a caretaker.
At the end of nine days, he will select one of them to be born into life. 

“You will not remember any of this,
but you will still be you.” 

Nine Days is like a response to one of my Story Ideas:
Explore what a process for selecting who gets incarnated on Earth would look like. Use more images than words.

Also, without being preachy:
 Life. Why bother?
Suicide. Depression. What helps?

At the end of the movie, Nine Days, I thought, 
Did I make this movie?  It's the most Pisces movie I've ever seen.*

Japanese-Brazilian director and writer Edson Oda's uncle committed suicide when he was fifty, and Edson was twelve --that was his motivation.
For me, he got it right.

It's a film for people who are already likely to like it. You can judge by the trailer, below.  If this attracts you, you'll probably love it. If not, I think it would leave you unmoved.

 

With Winston Duke as the caretaker, Benedict Wong as his assistant, and, as the candidates, Bill Skarsgard, Zazie Beetz, Tony Hale, and David Rysdahl.
_____________________

* Pisces, in this sense (I don't remember where I got this quote):

"Pisces witness to the difficult task of straddling the divide between the human and the divine. More than any other sign, perhaps, Pisces experiences normal human life as limited, for it excludes so much that can make life more complete. 

“Yet, even Pisceans have to live as human beings in a world full of limitations. 
Coming to terms with the necessity to live in a world separate from Paradise can be an immense problem. 

“Some may attempt to live as if exclusion from Paradise had never happened, and live life in a constant daydream, very ineffective in the world as it is. Others, however, may learn to live life in the human arena in such a way as to infuse it with divine meaning."
__________________

I can mention that Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” comes into it. 

This scene (link below) is a spoiler, but even if you’re not interested in the whole movie, you might love this rendition by Winston Duke (Will, the caretaker);

https://youtu.be/pR2i24iJTX4

The lines from Whitman reminded me of a Capt Kirk pin-up vid I made a dozen years ago...

Whitman's  hymn to the male body in "I Sing the Body Electric" could've been written with Kirk in mind ("O Captain, my Captain!"). All lines here are from the poem, though not in the original order.

Aaron Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man" seems tailor made…

“The Weaver of Grass” blog archive

 https://web.archive.org/web/20240913055517/http://weaverofgrass.blogspot.com

A kind commenter told me that after the death of blogger Pat, her son archived her blog, The Weaver of Grass, at the above live link.*

I thought of Pat when I was reading Home Fires, about the rural Women’s Institute in World War II Britain. Hers was very much their “put a smile on a your face” philosophy that my Auntie Vi practiced too. 

The word that is repeated over and over again in the book about the WI is “cheerful”.

That has its limitations (and it’s a limitation of the book that it buys that that surface cheer was the whole story), but in hard times when one has limited options, it can be extremely helpful. 

I’ve been dialing it up to deal with the limited mobility and pain of having an injured knee. 

I was walking five blocks home from the bus the other day, and it was a cold cold beautifully bright day after a snowfall, and my knee hurt, so I thought,

 I’ll just try walking very, very slowly – – like the mindfulness practice that Thich Nhat Hanh recommends. 

It took me almost half an hour, but it didn’t hurt! and I was able to enter into the pleasure of being outside. 

I’ve missed being able to walk around the lake—but I can savor a walk to the bus. 

It’s good to SLOW DOWN! And breathe…

* I note the archive has some limitations too—comments aren’t saved, links aren’t active, and you need to navigate backwards through the blog’s sidebar archive (“older posts” arrows don’t work).