Penny Cooper wants everyone to know: "Don't be upset, it's ONLY PRETEND."
Also, it could never happen because, as you can see from her Red Cross pin, she is an Intermediate Swimmer! And will be going for her Lifesaving badge too.
So, here is their first rendition of "The Raft of the Medusa". (Original follows.)
The most coveted role was the one with the falling down socks. My favorite touch is the birdbath (a ceramic pie tin) for the ocean.
BELOW: "The Raft of the Medusa", by Théodore Géricault (1818, France)-- more info at The Louvre. (It's quite big--the people are near lifesize.)
I'm not sure we'll do another version. Our raft is too small, and I think this rendition is actually pretty great. (Though the grass bugs me—I should have put down a blanket.) _______________________
Making a raft was the first project of their summer Doll Camp 2025, way back in early June--but I wasn't blogging so I never posted it!
(Penny Cooper says the blog is important: "It's where you show what we do". That's true enough.) They assembled the raft...
...but the final steps were human-sized. I tied off the sticks (at some event I attended at the lake but wasn't interested in):
The tins sold the next day. Maybe some baker happened to want madeleine tins? But in the past they have not sold from the Baking Aisle...
Finally! Besty-Tacy books with the original illustrations by Lois Lenski! I wish they were hardcover with dust jackets, but even the Harper paperbacks from 1979 are rare donations. THEY ARE FOR ME. (Also, I pinned a Thing (2) to my apron--chaos agent from the Cat and the Hat, you know.)
Maud Hart Lovelace's girls are like Girlettes--rolling on with Being, without the brakes of self-judgment. In a few years, if they were humans that would be gone, but they never age--the girlettes or the early Betsy-Tacy. (I don't read the later books when they're older.)
Debating Wagner, book below. Tangled up in blue.
Birds mingling with composers. The busts have been around for weeks---will they sell now?
That green glaze juice-squeezer set ^ has also been around for weeks. ($15) Made in Japan, 1950s-60s. I'm amazed it hasn't sold.
More birds. Brn Birds on Wire 30¢ listening to St Francis preach.
"We like him, but we know all that stuff. Does he have any bread crumbs in his robes?"
I
do believe Linda Sue sent me this diptych frame. A prayer was pasted on
the right side, but the birds didn't like it. B-O-R-I-N-G. words, words, words
Doing Nothing.
I'm pretty well this summer. I'd gotten off all social media six months ago, after seeing those 'net moguls on Trump's inauguration platform woke me up: This is not playing with in the garage anymore! This is world domination.
After that, and then stopping blogging a couple months ago, I had a lot of free time! What I should do?
And it came to me--(was it Penny Cooper who said it?), Why don't you try DOING NOTHING?
So I have been doing that. Close to nothing, anyway. Sitting with my amber prayer beads with my coffee in the mornings. Trying to count to ten breaths without interrupting myself. Very amusingly bad at it.
Then, being human, my brain wanted to investigate Nothing. I've been reading and listening to things about/from Hinduism--mostly American-style, like Ram Dass. "Be here now," from my childhood!
And Christopher Isherwood's 1980s memoir of his 40-some years as a disciple of an Indian guru in California: My Guru and His Disciple.
Very comforting to me that after decades meditating, Isherwood doesn't seem less self-obsessed. (Though, what would he have been like without it?) And that's not the point. Doing Nothing, dropping the self, is NOT A SELF-IMPROVEMENT PROJECT. And yet, it sort of is? More of a Self-LIBERATION project: Drop bits of yourself like bread crumbs for the birds.
It's a slippery one too--the harder you grasp, the more it eludes you. Very appealing to this Pisces. Frankie says, RELAX.
I have been liking Ravi Shankar's Morning Raga: Lots of nothing happens. And then... the sun!
Anyway, a friend said she missed my blog and I thought, maybe I do too. Let's see how it feels... If I leave comments off, I won't get so entangled in judgment (my own!).
__________________
I've been more friendly with food this year, after dropping added-sugar last Halloween. Sort of trying to release myself there, too. I think this is all to do with AGING. Release, release--turn into a helium balloon...
When I was young, being fat was my friend! I didn't exactly see it that way--but I did suspect that it kept me safe, out of the eye of sex, where I didn't want to be. It worked! But at a cost, that as I age becomes more evident: the physical weight of weight.
Can I lighten up? In every way?
Maybe, a little anyway.
Below, left: On Camino, 2011. Fourteen years later, right, this summer I am finally the same weight again. After years of enjoying the ice-cream and beer diet! That was great, but oddly, I don't miss it. Or, not much.
I do feel better, lighter, but no Camino this summer--my knee is still healing--and every time it gets better I think, I can bike now! And that always sets it back. So: no biking or hiking until fall.
I am taking the bus instead, and sort of enjoying it: I envision cartoon rays of light coming off all the other bus riders. The bus to the thrift store is often a little village of people staying out of the heat in the a/c, napping, doing business in the back... (I bought some ankle socks the other day.) I am sometimes the only white person. (Notable here in Scandinavian-settled territory:
who has money; who has cars?)
Still setting up side-by-sides.
And the Toy Bridge has expanded to another ledge too. I've been putting cool pictures in little empty frames.
I’m really enjoying Christopher Isherwood’s “My Guru and his disciple” – – his memoir of living monastically with a Hindu swami. This entry from December 31, 1944, made me laugh in happy recognition.
Snap out of it!
“Everything, including your scruples about your conduct, is vanity, in the last analysis. Never mind what other people think of you. Never mind what you think of yourself. Stop trying to tidy yourself up. Stop making vows – –you’ll only break them. No more tears, I beg. Come on, Saint Augustine – – amuse us. And let’s make this a happy new year.”
————
BELOW: Lucinda is entirely redoing their upstairs bathroom, after a pipe broke – – with help from their neighbor Christopher:
ABOVE: They are singing independence day songs they wrote themselves. (I can’t quite make out the words. It may have something to do with getting Popsicles out of the freezer by yourself? Or maybe it’s nothing like that at all.)
Penny Cooper’s RedCross badge shows she has achieved intermediate swimmer status!ABOVE: I read this quote last night that reminds me of my temptation for GLP-1 drugs that silence food “noise” as they are calling it. It’s in a memoir by Christopher Isherwood – – he’s talking about his Hindu guru, who told him that being released from desire would mean missing “all the fun of the struggle”.
(Not always so “fun” – – and I certainly think people like Maura’s brother who are chronically, morbidly obese are smart to take Ozempic.)
I read a thing about rats in labs – – they are bored! And so they are more susceptible to fighting and to addiction.
They did this experiment where they gave a bunch of rats a playground – – all the things rats like to do – – and these rats were healthier and friendlier!
I think we are, as a book title says, literally “amusing ourselves to death“ – – because we are bored and we are not spiritually struggling— that’s where the fun comes in!
It is fun to be in the playground of our own lives.
BELOW: cover of a book about a Buddhist take on the Jewish holy days. Always applies, but with a special emphasis after Trump’s “big beautiful bill” passed this week.
BELOW: I set up a 4th of July end cap at work …
… and pinned a Thing 2 to my work apron. It’s a tilt-a-whirl world.
