Life Returns

    The best Easter basket...

    Happy Easter!

Another del Cossa detail

 In How to Be Both, by Ali Smith, the teenage girl protagonist, George, goes every day to the National Gallery in London to see their one Francesco del Cossa painting, “St. Vincent Ferrer” (c. 1474).

Detail: Above the saint’s head, Christ sits in what the NG calls an almond-shaped mandorla, as if emerging from a heavenly vulva, arms extended, displaying his wounded hands.  “Look what they did! It hurt, but I’m okay now.”

The Angels on either side caress the mandorla’s edges as if showing off  a game-show prize. Don’t they look coquettish? “Isn’t this a nice refrigerator?”

That early-Renaissance pink! It’s like Christ is enrobed in Easter almond marzipan. 

This painting is not currently on display, as I’d thought it would be since it is prominent in this book (but it’s been published since 2014). 

https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/francesco-del-cossa-saint-vincent-ferrer

Today is Good Friday, which rather suits our historical moment. Bad leaders, a triumph of cowardice and cruelty, a denial of spirit…  

Keep your eyes on the prize! 

Minerva & Aries

 Reading the novel How to Be Both, (2014) by Ali Smith – – this is a detail from a painting she talks about:

“Allegory of March – Triumph of Minerva and Sign of Aries”, Frescos in Palazzo Schifanoia (detail) by Francesco del Cossa

 Roman Minerva is the Greek Athena. We’re in Aries now, for a few more days. Aries is ruled by the god Mars (that is, Aries).

I know del Cossa from his St. Lucy,  holding her eyes on a stalk like flowers

wikiart.org/en/francesco-del-cossa/saint-lucy-1474

Stories create room for …. “the same ability we had when we were eight years old to go ‘wait a minute…’”

—wonderful 15-min. interview with the so- smart and likable Ali Smith, on the importance for creative work of doing nothing/ being lazy; growing up with art and images as a Scottish Catholic (I didn’t know that was a thing!); and the value of metaphor for showing the physical is the spiritual, and vice versa —and both at once; etc.:

https://channel.louisiana.dk/video/ali-smithhow-stories-work

Resting

 Shhhhh… Some people are resting.

Cloud watching under a pine.

"This episode was badly written!"

Galaxy Quest is a movie full of genius--and affectionate and smart insights into storytelling.
(I always quote David Mamet saying this is a perfect movie).

This is one of my favorite scenes.
These two real-life actors (Sigourney Weaver & Tim Allen) find themselves inside the Star Trek–like TV show they starred in, but for real.

Here, they have to pass through some "crunchy choppy things" that MAKE NO SENSE.
"We shouldn't have to do this," says Weaver's character.
"This episode was badly written!"

I was texting with MsChocolate this morning about Holy Week, grief, unfairness, and acceptance...
The feelings are entirely authentic:
THIS MAKES NO SENSE...
And you scream and suffer... and then you accept (or not) that you have to do it anyway.

Kinda like Jesus on the cross:
WHY IS THIS HAPPENING TO ME?!?!
And then, Okay, then. So be it.
And in grief, the heavens are torn apart...

But it all looks better in morning...
"Oh, there you are! I thought you were gone forever!"

Here's another of my favorite creations:
Mary Magdalene sees Jesus in the garden, returned from the dead like a kindergartener's lima bean that has sprouted between wet paper towels.



Both comical and tender: she thinks he's the gardener. (That's why Squash the Squirrel holds a digging implement (like in Rembrandt's version of this story.)
She recognizes him only when he calls her by her name. 
"Mary."

So powerful, to be called by name.

Everything with humans does go on and on though, and we keep repeating this...
We have to go through the chomper field AGAIN?!?!

Anyway, talking about karma, I was saying, as I always do,
it's not like I literally believe these religious stories--(that's not even necessary)--but the truths they contain, the insights are often so helpful to me.

And I thought, Oh! Karma is like fan fiction.

If a fan doesn't like the way a particular story goes--say, something unbearably painful and UNFAIR happens (as it does in life)---
she can write "fix it" fiction, changing some crucial point.
"They didn't really die, it was their clone!"

(I'm thinking here of the unbearably bleak end of Blakes Seven. Noooo!)


(Or, in a humorous version, like in Life of Brian--spaceships swoop in and save Brian--temporarily.)

And karma is like a fandom fix-it story:
It feels unbearable that life is so random and cruel--
say, your child dies hideously;
your country is taken over by stupid, bad men--
and this suffering is the be all and end-all???

Clearly, this was badly written!
Let's come up with some fix-it...

I know!
Death isn't the end!
We get a do-over, but this time, we have the key code for the chomper sequence, from a previous experience (or from heavenly helpers--in the movie, that is true-hearted fans who know the show, inside-out).

And if that doesn't work, that's okay:
we, all of us, get another--endless--lives to get it right.

That is a very satisfying addition to this awful wonderful life, and I love it, and I like to employ it, even if I don't literally believe it.

And, who knows? If it's true, then great.
No punishment in this story, just feedback:
Try, try again.
Try harder.
Or not.

Whatever gets you through this episode!

4. My couch! My beautiful little couch!

It’s here! My coworkers just delivered my loveseat with the store truck. I love it!

 

It fits perfectly, and it's just what I wanted: sort of a 1970's old-person-watching-TV (almost ugly?) couch vibe. Which I don't know why that's desirable? Because it's the comfy side of the Space Age?

It’s something my working-class Italian relatives would’ve had – – the ones my father went away from, choosing instead my mother with her Victorian aesthetics. She did have great taste, but it was narrow. This couch would not have made the cut. I don’t discard her good taste, I add to it.

[From heaven she says, Now I like that style too.

Hm. Was that really her? It sounded like Penny Cooper...]

It is in like-new shape, though its label says it was made in 2008 (by the now-closed Southwood Reproductions in North Carolina).
But you could've watched Star Trek or the Watergate hearings from a couch like this.

(You can see, I haven't put the room back together again.)
I seem to have been collecting things that match it,
including the pinky Oriental carpet that clashes in harmony...

The blue ottoman went with the boxy, big blue armchair I put out on the curb this weekend. It was always too deep for me.

My altered matador w/ duckling on the wall goes great with it too--the weird brown-yellow of the suit of lights...

I think I've talked about this painting before?
It's one of my favorite things--I added stuff to a velvet painting donated to the thrift store.
(I could stop writing " donated to the thrift store"--it goes without saying that's the norm.)
A bleeding bull used to charge in the background, but I replaced him with mountains I cut out of a damaged velvet.

 

I had no intentions when I first made this, and no one needs to see it this way, but over the years it's  totally become "The Road to Emmaus" to me.

You know the story?
After Jesus is crucified, a couple guys [represented by one matador] are walking home from Jerusalem, where they'd been to celebrate Passover. (And here in 2025, it's Passover week right now).

A stranger comes up and starts talking to them. That's the duckling---can you see? It's soooo chatty!

Eventually they realize--it's that guy!  The "Immortal Essence pervading everywhere"--the one they said was the Messiah.
He really was!

They are amazed...
"... and he disappeared from their sight. 
They asked each other,
'Were not our hearts burning within us
while he talked with us on the road....?'"

--Luke 23: 13-35

My goodness, whatever I do, I keep returning to burning hearts and the like today.
But now I'm going to read on MY COUCH!!! Something secular.

3. Cucumberness Is

Third post today.
I have to laugh: What I'm struggling to say in my previous post is, of course, something people everywhere are always trying to express. Like, here, from Hinduism, there is an "Immortal Essence pervading everywhere".

What I haven't heard before is that our [karmic] bondage is "similar to cucumbers. . .

That is, "tied to their Creepers"

I was just cleaning out my emails and found this from Marz:

I'm listening today to a wonderful mantra to Shiva.
It involves cucumbers?

1: Om, We Worship the Tryambaka (the Three-Eyed One),

2: Who is Fragrant (as the Spiritual Essence), Increasing the Nourishment (of our Spiritual Core);

3: From these many Bondages (of Samsara) similar to Cucumbers (tied to their Creepers),

4: May I be Liberated from Death (Attachment to Perishable Things),
So that I am not separated from the perception of Immortality (Immortal Essence pervading everywhere).

_____________________

Or, as a T-shirt worn by Paul Michael Glaser (Starsky) says,
ISNESS
IS

_________________

Why am I on this roll with this today?

Maybe because Holy Week starts today, the lead-up to Easter.
All the strands come together for the Big Shebang of the Christian Year: love, betrayal, light and darkness, kindness, cruelty, death, rebirth....
I love that stuff.

And weirdly, it's the root story of the Russian novel The Master and Margarita, which I read last month.
A very curious book, written and set in Stalin's Moscow of the 1930's, the whole thing revolves around the story of Pontius Pilate's cowardice in and regret for allowing the execution of Jesus.

Pilate. Could have tried harder.

2. I know there is, an invitation.

Content NOTE: Written by a Pisces, very much in Pisces mode

I don't mean to condemn myself (or anyone else!), but I KNOW there is more I could be doing/undoing to clear the clutter of my heart and mind--or, borrowing from the Klamuth River project I just blogged about, to undam my soul.

I accept that it's meant to be comforting and encouraging, but I reject the common phrase, "Everyone is doing the best they can."

Are you?

I'm not! (I would feel sad if this was my best.)

This doesn't make me (or anyone else) evil or bad or sinful.
Absolutely not.
It doesn't mean failure.

Those are the wrong terms altogether. It's not about good or bad, it's more like true, or real... or "be-ing".
Maybe it's more like saying, I know there's something like light waves beyond what my human brain can see,
and I could explore that or . . .  swim or simply be in it more.

And it's more like an invitation to do that.

Ever since I was a kid I knew there was magic in the world; that spirit mattered; and that the surface way we live, as we must live to survive physically, was not bad, but was incomplete.
And the incidental off-put of that surface action is like clothes-dryer lint.

"Magic" maybe sounds too airy-fairy, purple gauzey, or just fake.
But magic is real and resilient. But to thrive in our surface world, it may need protecting and nurturing. The lint trap needs cleaning.

Or, in circus terms, it's hard to practice the work without a net.

Talking to the cashier and her girlfriend last night, I was telling them about the girlettes. They asked to see photos, so I showed a couple of the Toys Recreate Paintings ones.

"These are incredible! How do you get them out? Do you ever show in galleries, or...?"

No, I explained, whenever I take the girlettes too far from the realm of play––and play is free in all ways, or it isn't play––I don't like it. And they don't like it.

So, talking about doing "more" is also the wrong wording.
It's may be about being brave to go smaller, to try easier (not harder).
Like unfocusing your eyes to see the motes in the air.

Really, it's to step outside of measurement altogether.

I may never do more/less/other than I am now doing.
"And that's okay", as they say.
I am fine. I am good! I am.

But I do know there is an it--whatever "it" is--that is real.
For me, anyway.
And I am not always with it as much as I'd like to be.

No condemnation, just acknowledging my love for an unmet longing.
Or, my longing for an unmet love.

That's all.
Be on!

Life heals itself.

I'm waiting at home this morning for the thrift store to deliver my new love seat. I'm  drinking my morning coffee at my living room window, looking out at a dry and windy morning. Brown, brown, brown... but the very tips of some branches are in fresh bud, I saw as I walked to the lake yesterday.

I took the path through the bird sanctuary, and bird-watchers were out too, looking through high-powered binoculars for the bright flashes of little birds who migrate in spring.

That was the longest walk I've yet taken on my still-healing knee, and on top of clearing my apartment, moving stuff out onto the curb to give away, it was a bit much--my leg throbbed through the night. In fact, I'm thinking that after my couch is delivered, I'll take the day off and sit on the couch and rest my leg.

The learning in patience continues.

I. Ladies Who Carry On

I want to grow up to be like the Indomitable Old Ladies I know from the thrift store. Most of them are tough stock--grew up during the Great Depression on farms.

I saw the oldest of the original cadre-–Doris, who turns ninety-nine this summer--at the annual Appreciation Dinner yesterday evening. She is one of the few surviving founders of the store. Though she no longer volunteers, she is still going strong, getting her own plate from the buffet without help, still talking your ear off.
"I'm praying for you," she said.
"That's powerful," I said.

The next-oldest, Geraldine, rather shocked me by admitting she "isn't doing very well". These women rarely admit to a weakness unless it's deadly serious.

I got a ride with my work pal, Volunteer Abby, to the Italian-American restaurant across the river, where the dinner is always held.
I've always found the upper management to be stingy and unimaginative, and it's a low-rent affair:
a buffet of pasta without enough sauce and Caesar salad with too much, set up in the windowless, concrete party room.

This year, though the stores are earning more, our free drink tickets had been reduced from two to one. I bought  a second drink for Abby and me, and prices were not as low as the surroundings suggested-- a glass of wine and a can of beer cost $25.
But I felt better when I won a raffle prize for the first time:
$50 worth of coupons to a breakfast place that's been around for decades.

My constant disappointment in management aside, it's a good idea to gather the large and scattered group of workers, volunteers, and board members, and I was lucky in my table mates.
The new cashier had brought her girlfriend, both in their mid-twenties, and they were good conversationalists. We talked about the tattoos on their arms--mostly media references, including a peach from  a book I loved in fourth grade! James and the Giant Peach, by Roald Dahl.

The girlfriend works in IT for the insurance company whose CEO was murdered in December. "I used to run into him in the cafeteria. It was so weird, the sadness at work compared to the reactions on social media."

I said I hated that some people rejoiced in the assassination. 
I understand the anger and frustration--I share some of it! I felt a little surge of happiness when I read the news. But I won't go that way.
Returning to the Wild West, shooting each other down in cold blood, in public?
Such a symptom of social rot is not cause for celebration.

II. "The river is healing itself."

Is the rot so far gone that it can't be reversed?

No.
Life comes back.
This morning I read a BBC article about salmon returning to Oregon's Klamath River last fall, soon after four dams were removed following a campaign by tribal communities.

Fish biologists had thought it'd take years for the salmon to return, their numbers had been so decimated since 1912.
It took weeks.

bbc.com/future/article/20241122-salmon-return-to-californias-klamath-river-after-dam-removal

Image ^ from the podcast, Undammed: The Klamath River Story, buzzsprout.com/2375804

We don't have to keep descending into barbarity.
We can think different.
Not like Apple, but, for instance, like Lyla June, a Diné musician and cultural historian. Below, from her 2022 TED Talk...

"Much was made last year about the positive environmental effect of the [COVID] pandemic.

As more people stayed home, pollution levels dropped, animals began to reclaim habitat,
and the logical leap that many observers seemed to make was that the Earth would be better off without humans.

"I reject that leap.

(Laughter)

"The Earth may be better off without certain systems we have created, but we are not those systems. We don’t have to be, at least.

"What if I told you that the Earth needs us?

What if I told you that we belong here?

"What if I told you I've seen my people turn deserts into gardens?

What if these human hands and minds could be such a great gift to the Earth that they sparked new life wherever people and purpose met?"

In her TED Talk, "3000-year-old solutions to modern problems", Lyla June elaborates on four indigenous land-management techniques.

1) Align with the forces of nature:
"Why try to control the Earth when you can work with her?"

2) Intentionally expand habitat:

"Why put plants and animals into farms and cages when you can simply make a home for them and they come to you?"

  3) De-center humans:

"Why hoard for your own species when you can live to serve all life around you?"

4) Design for perpetuity:

"Why plan for just the next fiscal quarter when we could plan for generations not yet born?"

Even if the murdered health-care CEO represented the forces of domination that "plan for just the next fiscal quarter", we will not succeed in creating new and incorporating old good ways by damming our own souls like rivers, until the only way we can imagine change is to kill the messenger.

I am always interested in this very real question:
What is to be done?
How do I/how do we remove the dams in my/our hearts, minds, souls,
when we, even we who don't like it, are complicit (inevitably) in a profit-motivated, death-dealing culture?

How to protect and restore the rivers of my/our own lives?

Love seat coming...

I. Thrift

No surprise--most things sell better when visible. Mostly, only record collectors flip through the LPs, but once in a while I set one up for its cool cover.
My Boyfriend's Back sold soon after I put it on display:

Other things just don't move. I love vintage hammered aluminum, like the tray below, but it doesn't sell well.
That gorgeous green coffee pot is by Frankoma, out of Oklahoma, (I'd had some mugs by them, but they were so heavy, I gave them away.)

BELOW: Space age spun-aluminum is another matter---this set of kitchen canisters in the to-shelve cart will sell in a minute, I bet.

BELOW: Paddington Bear squints to look out through the small bullet hole in the window (above him, slightly to the right). "It's a fun game!"

The annual Society of St V de P conference will be in our town this year.
It'll be held at a conference center hotel by the suburban Mall of America.
Usually, attendees visit the local SVDP stores, but the organizers say they won't arrange trips to our store because "it's too dangerous".

It's not that it's not dangerous to live around there.
But even so, the whole MISSION of the society is to follow the model of Vincent de Paul, a real guy in 1600s Paris who followed the model of Jesus--that is, to be with the deprived and despised.

And to do it in LOVE, not in condescension!!!
Vincent said, " It is only for your love alone that the poor will forgive you the bread you give to them."

[Did he really say that? I guess not literally. But he'd agree.]

These Society members seem to prefer the far easier call of Being Nice . . . and serving the 'worried well'.

You'd think I'd be immune to moral cowardice and hypocrisy by my age, (being guilty of both myself sometimes!), but I was fuming with disgust over this.
I felt better after talking to Amina, Book Girl.
She just laughed merrily.
"Of course they don't want to come here!"

Of course.

 II. Clear the Clutter

I am in the mood for spring cleaning, and I need to––because I bought a love seat at work! I've wanted one for a long time, but never liked what got donated.

This new-to-me love seat is a modern-day reproduction of a 1970s piece of furniture. It's a puce green woven with golds.
It will go great with my pink velvet armchair!

To make room, I hauled the big blue armchair (always too deep for my short legs)--and a lot of other stuff --onto the boulevard outside my apartment with a big FREE sign.
I love doing that: stuff magically disappears.

It meant dumping stuff off bookshelves, etc.
Now my apartment must be restored to rights before the couch gets delivered tomorrow...

Pictures tomorrow...

Good Readings!

I got my lab results yesterday,
and my readings had returned to well within normal.
Toy, Triumphant:
"I have done it!"

bink sent me this ^

And the lab sent me this:

Not-eating processed sugar works, especially if you go from eating sugar all day, every day––like I did.
I still eat lots of carbs like bananas, bread, and even an occasional beer, but compared to candy for lunch and ice-cream for dinner. . .
I don't know why I wasn't already pre-diabetic. (You can see I was heading that way).

What a relief! It'd been in the back of my mind for a year:
Will changing what I eat reverse my abnormal readings [not primarily glucose, but I was personally worried about that]?

I've said before--the turning point for me was watching the documentary Fed Up (2012, Katie Couric, free with ads on youtube). I got so angry, especially on behalf of the children (I used to be one), and that fired me up and gave me the motivation, the fuel, to make changes.

The sugar companies lobby hard (hard! more than I knew) against restrictions, and they knowingly target children with sugar in attractive packaging w/ cute characters, low prices, available everywhere. 

They create suffering. 

Worked for me. In high school, I would watch Star Trek after school and eat bowl after bowl of cuddly Sugar Bear brand cereal, basically sugar-coated air. I was overweight and miserable about it. Learned to fear food, not love and respect it.

It's EASY to addict people, right? But food habits don't have to be this way. Japan proves that.
According to UNICEF,

"There is only one country where fewer than one in five children are overweight: Japan. ...And overweightness overall in Japan is a mere 4.2% compared to 40% in the United States."

That's not accidental. Japanese children are taught good nutrition and habits in school, and their school lunches are healthy.

I am not keen to adopt Japanese pressures to conform--like workplaces that monitor people's weight--but American eating habits are not freely chosen either.
We, our biological programming to prefer sugar, salt, & fat, are manipulated by industries that make billions of dollars off our supposed "freedom to choose".
(Remember, that was a Pepsi campaign slogan, and an ad for gas station food at Seven-Eleven.)

I choose not to give them my money.

Burn it down! says Elmo.

Encouragement

Drinking a latte at a coffee shop after a 12-hour fast for a blood draw. I’d woken up thinking, Why should I get up if I can’t have coffee?

I just looked up and saw a sign on a city bus outside. I thought, that looks like a Tesla “T” logo – – it was a big IUD, an ad for Planned Parenthood.

Googled it: that’s a famous comparison, since 2003–and I just noticed it (neither being much on my radar).

I can be slow to connect the dots. Besides being out of sorts without coffee, this morning I was feeling low for no (“no”) reason. “It’s just a 5-minute lab appointment”. 

Finally realized I’m a little apprehensive about the results… This is a one-year-later follow up to slightly bad kidney tests —indicators that had improved when I’d changed my diet (mostly eating a lot less foods from animals, which are hard work for kidneys).

Since then, I’ve also cut out added-sugars and lost 15 pounds, so I’m hoping the results will be even better (clear, maybe…?). 

BUT, if not, something is wrong and I’ll have to make more dietary changes—which I’m WILLING to do (in theory), but not thrilled about. 

Like my physical therapy exercises, these dietary changes are all to the good, no matter what the labs show. My hurt knee was a shove to get and stay more strong and stable, as I am able. Wonky kidney readings invited me to eat better for my whole system.

I’ve been noticing how incredibly helpful encouragement is. I told the PT that the best thing I get from PT is psychological support.

He agreed—“we walk along with people, and we reassure you—‘this is normal’.”

Yes, getting hurt, getting sick, falling apart is normal—and so is healing normal, though it’s miraculous. Miracles are normal—and so is disaster and decay and death. It’s okay! 

And people being kind and helping one another is normal too, and its power can also feel miraculous.  

When I left PT last time, the PT said, “It’s nice to see your improvement “—and he clearly meant that he took encouragement from it, personally. His help is helping. 

Help doesn’t always help, but a little kindness doesn’t hurt.

So—I’m sending out some good wishes:  I hope something good happens to you today!

I saw that on a bumper sticker, but I assume the person who stuck it on their car (not a Tesla) meant it. I do too.

The Things We Care For

Yay! the original owner of the dirty, old stuffed animals I restored said she has been missing them, and since I suggested it, she will change her mind and take one of them back.

She denigrated the grief she felt at their loss – – "I am just anthropomorphizing fabric".
That is not how I see it at all.
Our things may carry some of our heart and our history, and they are worthy of being honored, as are our tender feelings for them.

Which one will go back? (Their owner lives in another state.)
I sent this photo: "Choose one, two, three, or all four!"

Our materialistic culture can confuse us...
We're enticed to spend a lot of money on things and yet are supposed to consider them entirely disposable. Feelings for them may be denied or mocked.
This isn't good for us--or for the things--especially if they are intimate possessions, like toys often are.
(I wonder how hoarding ties in with our disordered relationship to things...)

Respecting things doesn't mean we have to keep everything.
Of course not!
In Japan, for instance, temples hold an annual Doll Burial ceremony-- ningyo kuyo. The spirit of the doll is thanked and released so that the physical object can be let go. Traditionally, the temples burn them.

We could adopt such an attitude to the things we care for.

On a happy note…

 A quick happy note this evening – – I went to my fourth physical therapy appointment for my knee today and I earned a gold star. Unfortunately the PT didn’t have any gold stars, but he said if he did I would get one for “doing the work”.

Truth be told, I am not a great patient – –my cells do their magic on their own (though I do give them thanks and praise!), while I only do about half of my exercises – – but starting from nothing, this is enough for noticeable improvement, and it is starting to build as I get strong enough to be able to get stronger, if that makes sense?

 I mean, being injured and in pain, it was hard to start to exercise, and it takes a while to get feeling better, and then it all starts to take hold, become possible… gets easier, even if I’m actually working harder.

So that’s cheering! 

I just got back from a nice evening walk with bink and her dog, Astro – – we went and sat at the park on the Earth – – she’d been feeling a little disembodied, and there’s nothing like sitting on the planet to be literally grounded.

It’s good to be in our bodies.

I have three more PT appointments, one every two weeks – – I hope that now I am in less pain (a lot less!), I will be able to focus more on getting stronger.

Take good care of yourselves, as you are able.

Head in Hands…

I’m seeing so many photos of people with their heads in their hands since the imposition of senseless, reckless tariffs. RM sent me the “Burghers of Calais” by Auguste Rodin – – saying this seems to be the gesture of these times …

Above, cropped, from the Hirshhorn Museum 

hirshhorn.si.edu/explore/auguste-rodin-the-burghers-of-calais

“ Auguste Rodin, The Burghers of Calais,(1884-1889/cast 1953-1959)

“Rodin’s monument commemorates the end of the terrible siege of 1346-47, when the conquering English accepted the town’s surrender without punishment if six prominent citizens (burghers) would offer themselves as permanent hostages. 

Unlike traditional art of heroes striding forward proudly, Rodin depicted the mens’ anguish at leaving their homes and families. …their sunken eyes express heart-rending torment … a novel depiction of heroic deeds performed at great sacrifice by average people…”

mindless, driveling, delusional/ The beautiful ideal

i. a bad man 

And here's why I spend all that money subscribing to The Economist--the way they deliver bad news weirdly cheers me up. Usually rather dry, they aren't afraid to juice it up:

"It's hard to know which is more unsettling, that the leader of the free world could spout complete drivel....
Or the fact that... spurred on by his delusions, DT ... committed the most profound, harmful and unnecessary economic error...."
[italics mine]

I met the Economist when I was writing geography books for middle schoolers, because they cover nations the US press never mentions. (My second book was on Zimbabwe.)

I decided to subscribe for myself after reading their obituary of Milosevic, which concluded with a simple sentence along the lines of,
"He may have had some good reasons for what he did,
but he was a bad man."

I won't be renewing in August, though I'd love to-- it's now more than $300. I could/should read it at the library--at least the obits and the book reviews.
In fact, I often don't read (or, not carefully) the front half, where the hard news and economics is.
_______________
ii. “ everybody's right to beautiful, radiant things”

Two people have told me that Saturday's protests were not "effective".
I entirely disagree.
There are lots of ways to be effective. The protest rallies weren't about direct action, they were about gathering strength, socially and emotionally--and simply displaying our numbers.
BODIES count.

k sent me an article that makes the point:

"Broad, nonviolent, nonconfrontational protests aren’t likely to overthrow fascism on their own.
But this kind of mobilization helps to build power and solidarity for a range of ongoing battles—in universities, in the courts, at the ballot box. Protest isn’t the whole fight; neither is voting, neither are lawsuits. But every little bit helps—and the massive protests yesterday [April 5] were more than a little bit."

-- everythingishorrible.net/p/yes-protests-matter
(Thanks, k!)

Further, I would say, FUN counts.
As Emma Goldman almost said [paraphrased here],
"If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution."

I may have had the button in the Reagan 1980s.

What Goldman actually said, from her 1931 autobiography, "Living My Life" [bf mine]:

At the dances I was one of the most untiring and gayest. One evening a cousin of Sasha [Alexander Berkman], a young boy, took me aside.
With a grave face, as if he were about to announce the death of a dear comrade, he whispered to me that it did not behoove an agitator to dance. Certainly not with such reckless abandon, anyway. It was undignified for one who was on the way to become a force in the anarchist movement. My frivolity would only hurt the Cause.

I grew furious at the impudent interference of the boy. I told him to mind his own business, I was tired of having the Cause constantly thrown into my face.

I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from conventions and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy.

I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement should not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it.

"I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody's right to beautiful, radiant things."

Anarchism meant that to me, and I would live it in spite of the whole world--prisons, persecution, everything.
Yes, even in spite of the condemnation of my own comrades
I would live my beautiful ideal.

[Emma Goldman, Living My Life (New York: Knopf, 1934), p. 56] 

Restored! Suzy & Pink Elephant

 Before & After: Suzy & Pink Elephant 

Bathed, brushed, and restuffed. A very gratifying transformation---old artificial fabrics don't always brighten up this much.
And I lost one of Pink Elephant's button eyes so looked for a replacement pair--slightly smaller--which I think suit better!

I especially like that Pink Elephant was locally made:

I found the original ad for the sleepy dog, from 1954--her name was Snoozy, but I think she likes Suzy better.
Suzy has a potato-sized rubber squeaker inside.
Weird ad copy:

"Snoozy" gets noisy when you disturb his snooze...
yelps when you pick him up...
yelps no matter how he's touched!

Not sure what to do with these. They came from a friend of a friend, who said she doesn't want them back.
I'm keeping the two bears that came too--Pink Grapefruit & Honey Mustard.

"It was a bright cold day in April..."

More than 20,000 people gathered on "a bright, cold day in April" for the big Hands Off rally at the State Capitol.

"A bright cold day in April" is also in the opening line of George Orwell's 1984.

Everything was peaceful and generally jolly. Penny Cooper was maybe a tiny bit disappointed I didn't need the matches, but it proved my point:
I didn't need them precisely because I brought them!

Most photos by bink---it was very windy and I had my hands full holding up my sign. (bink didn't carry a sign because she needed her hands free to hand out her zines.)

Many signs referenced the founding of the United States, one way or another, or the Constitution--and there were lots of non-ironic US flags.

BELOW: "We the People ... HATE FASCISM.

If not dictator why dictator shaped?"
[take off on meme "if not friend why friend shaped?"–with a photo of cute but dangerous animal]


"How many Teslas should we throw into Boston Harbor"
[My "No Kings" cat to the right]


Lots of take-offs on NO KINGS---here with a hammer and sickle.


I love the highly local and personal.
"MN LOVES A FISH FRY
ELON MUSKIE"
"Muskie" is a game fish, you know?

BELOW
Team Zelenskyy
King of Dumbfukistan Not Here
Trump is a Traitor
[my Ignore Alien Orders]

Many people wore their pink pussy hats! From the Women's March in 2017.

I wish I'd asked this painter her name...

In summary:
WE FUCKING HATE DONALD TRUMP

Prep

I have not lived a McGyver life.
But I learned from a former friend who did:
She always had a jumble of things on hand.
Once she fixed my toilet tank with a paper clip.
Another time, she was over and I was wishing we had some Amaretto.
"I have some in my car!"

I try to think like her when I travel--even to a two-hour rally, this morning:
What might I carry to address any need that arises?

MOST IMPORTANT:
Curiosity, and an open heart
Extra rations of humor
An intention to Enjoy Life!
A willingness to be brave on behalf of others

Me being on foot (with a tender knee), my supply bag has to be light.
Two girlettes are the onboard limit.
Below: the most bold, Pearl Duquette, who lost her arm in a shark attack, and the most rational, FrankColumbo, who is not likely to lose her head. 

Snacks to share
bink's zines
Gauze pads and medical gloves? . . . people do trip ["over chickens"]
And people get headaches, hence ipuprofen.
Pen & paper
Tweezerman brand tweezers! Splinters happen.
rubber bands
Matches? I cannot imagine a use for them... But Penny Cooper has a Girl Scout attitude: "They are light. Take them."
(And I'm a little superstitious: if it occurs to you to take something and you DON'T ... then you will need it.)

A few more things to be added--
wet flannels in a plastic bag
face masks
a rain poncho (it's supposed to be sunny, but to sit on, and it'd make a good shield if there's tear gas, godforbid!)
keys, cash, phone
PHONE NUMBERS,written on paper

Hopefully all I'll need is the snacks, and the dolls.
And the phone, to take photos!
To come...

Have a lovely day, everyone!

Expect the Spanish Inquisition!

Nobody does [expect the Spanish Insquisition], and yet there they are, inquisitors popping out from behind the palms...

(Monty Python, donchaknow)

K. reminded me to be prepared—for all sorts and sundries at the protest tomorrow, and you know PennyCooper backs that up wholeheartedly:

“A tree branch could fall on you or you could trip on a chicken that got loose.”

(A chicken???)

If you’re going, you’re probably an old hand at this, but just a reminder:

at the very least TAKE WATER,

and a mask. (We’ve all got masks around now, right?)

Memorize some phone numbers, or write them on paper to take with you.

And maybe a book. I read that Emma Goldman always carried a book, for when she got arrested and needed something to read for all those hours. Their batteries never run down.

I found a basic overview of safety at protests from the HRC:

hrc.org/resources/tips-for-preparedness-peaceful-protesting-and-safety

And one on dealing with tear gas & chemical agents, from Physicians for Human Rights:

phr.org/our-work/resources/preparing-for-protecting-against-and-treating-tear-gas-and-other-chemical-irritant-exposure-a-protesters-guide

About PHONE SAFETY, k wrote:

“by the way for anyone going to a march this weekend, please read this on phone safety before going: privacyguides.org/articles/2025/01/23/activists-guide-securing-your-smartphone

“ i went in and did a few things such as making my notifications more generic when they show up on my screen -- not giving a preview of what it is. better yet get a cheap ass burner and have plans in place in case you get separated. not trying to scare anyone but i just don't trust anyone anymore. —k”

Very important: don’t forget your SENSE OF HUMOR. It’s a life preserver, and we’re sailing the Absurd high seas, folks!

Be careful out there—and have fun!!! Love ya! ❤️❤️❤️