Protection against ostriches?

 On vacation—practically unheard of! I’m at a B&B with bink in a river town a couple hours away, where I’ve never once been.

I was inspired by our room’s pale green and pink – –one of my favorite color combinations – – to make this Love’s eye for my art gallery—the fence by  work. It makes me laugh – – like Phyllis Diller meets the Eye of Sauron:

At work, Volunteer Art had hung another Japanese paper umbrella – – he does this whenever one gets donated – – I think there are six now. It’s the gorgeous square orange one:

 He and I both love when they’re tattered and you can see their inner architecture. BOOK’s feels like a magic umbrella forest. It’s the best section in the store.

Hm, I see Amina turned The DaVinci Code face-forward, which I would never do. We’re still getting that best seller donated, but I don’t think a copy ever sells. I should stop culling them and see how many copies we could collect.

Traveling has shown how ‘no-sugar’ is not the norm. Breakfast here is at 9, but there’s a self-serve Keurig coffee maker and cream—but the cream is “French vanilla “, which is like ice cream. And there was a complimentary bottle of local wine in our room, “semi-sweet” red—so syrupy, it could have been Mogen David. I drank a glass anyway and fell into a torpor…

However, even the drive-in we went to last night had two vegan options—black bean or walnut burgers.  That’s an interesting development. I had fish fry. 

Love’s Eyes

 To hang on the fence around the park next to the thrift store – – I’d hung a couple of my lino prints, (“You are made of stars”, “Don’t be afraid” in English in Spanish); and some adapted toys, but for the neighborhood they felt a lot too “artsy” or ironic.

Recently someone has been donating all sorts of odds and ends of scrap art making material – – including 30 prepared for-craft natural sticks, and a bunch of almost used up skeins of yarn so I’ve been making yarn eyes to give away on the fence.

Abbondanza!

 Harvest season! Sunflowers at the bus stop…. I made sweet corn and baby red potato soup this morning to take to work—all donated farm-overflow. I don’t use a recipe – – I just sauté everything up – I also had celery, a few carrots, onion, and threw in some capers from the Niçoise salad. 

Today I am carrying around one of pope John 23rd’s “just for today” intentions:

“Just for today… I will not seek to improve or instruct anyone but myself.”

Good luck with that, Self! 😂

Corn Season and the Balloon Game

Saturday morning. I am cooking up a ton of fresh vegetables––
a midwestern ratatouille of tomatoes, green peppers, eggplant--and corn––
cooking on the stove before the day becomes unbearably swampy. 
When the veg are done sautéing, I put the pan outside to cool off, so the whole apartment doesn't heat up for too long.

The temps aren't too bad––in the 80s––but the humidity is right up there. (91% at this moment--but that's because it's raining.)

Botanists say we feel the corn sweating!
In August the huge crops pump so much moisture into the air, even the cities feel the effects. Most of the crop is field corn--for animals and corn syrup, but the corn for eating fresh is so sweet and tender right now, I ate it raw off the cob for breakfast.

 
ABOVE: Cooking Nicoise salad for dinner in my backyard the other evening. Though the salad is French in name, I felt very Sicilian---fitting for what would have been my auntie's 100th birthday.

And they harvest tuna in Sicily too. 
Vintage photo of Sicilian tuna fisherman--those arms! That cigarette!

BELOW: K's birthday-eve dinner. The wrought-iron table & chairs belong to the upstairs neighbors. They almost never sit out though and have said I should use it anytime.

(Marz took the photo.)

_____________

Books displays from the past week. 

A bunch of books in French came in. I especially love the soft pink Penguin cover. 

Native-themed books mostly sold right away:

BELOW: I'd wondered if our city newspaper from Sept. 12, 2001, would sell (for $2.49). 
It did. 
Or, it wasn't there the next day, anyway...

Shoplifting is rampant at the store. It used to bother me a lot; 
now I more or less accept it. 
Mostly, if anything, it bothers me as a management issue: 
though we ask shoppers to check their bags behind the counter, often no one walks the floor to keep an eye on things. It's an honor system.
Most people do line up to pay for things. But it seems sort of optional.

My pet peeve is cleaning up empty DVD cases, torn open boxes... “Take the packaging!” I want to say, but I suppose it's a matter of making it less bulky to slip into clothes.

At least with books, they have to take the entire object--no packaging! And I have a fondness, too, for anyone who wants books––even if they don't pay for them.
But the store doesn't make much money, and we workers earn minimum wage, no benefits, so it'd be nice if that income didn't walk out the door...
________________________

I think stealing may be (?) something of a social norm in the US now, as we have been forced to see that our business and political leaders (et al.) lie, steal, and cheat.
For my generation, that was evident in Vietnam, Watergate . . . then Enron, etc. And Bill Clinton... Man, he looks far worse in retrospect.

What is it like to grow up in the 21st century, shaped by 9/11? 
And the exposure of child rape in the Catholic Church, and #metoo, and, and, and... The Big Orange Lie.
Of course bad things always existed, but they weren't on constant display like now, Lit Up On Your Own Screen for Your Viewing Pleasure.

What are society's moral standards?
I don't even know.
'Of course everyone steals'?

Maybe.

But you don't have to accept that.
I don't have to.

When the larger culture frays and leaders lead you to quicksand, I think maybe it's like Antigone, or the fictional Article 15 of Congo's constitution:
Figure it out yourself.

I feel that way--that it's between me and me.
Last month I was so mad at Big Boss doing something grossly unfair, I felt like stealing from the store--to right the balance emotionally. I had to talk myself down! 
You don't want to be that person.

I don't. It's not about me & BB, or me & the larger culture, or me & some Spiritual Being. 
It's about me & me, who does of course intersect with all those other things.

Keep the Balloon Afloat.

Writing about this sounds so serious, but really, it could be frolicsome!
Like keeping a balloon that's inflated with air (not helium) from touching the floor. If it does touch the floor, that's okay--it will not explode, it will bounce.
But the idea is to keep it afloat.

With that lightness, I can say that I want to play out the rest of my life inching toward being the best person I can be--
keeping myself buoyant enough that I don't fall to the floor and drift in a corner to wither like a dusty old balloon--or, not until I have to. 
(I don't mean physically, primarily, though that too.)
 
This feels like a grandiose thing to say, but isn't it a natural desire, to inch toward being our own best self? 
I am not claiming to be an Olympian.

What does "best" even mean, and how do we practice that?

No solid answers; I'm musing here...

I'm thinking that for me, it's a matter of noodling along in centimeters, not taking giant leaps forward. 
It's more like harm reduction than like aiming for sainthood or Bodhisattava status.
(Ha! No.)
'Do No Harm' or the easier-sounding 'reduce the harm you do' actually takes a lot of self-awareness.

I mean simple but not easy stuff like not snapping at coworkers when I’m hungry and they are annoying. (I DO need to eat; they ARE annoying.)

I'd say it's mostly about continuing to LEARN & Practice to see with the eye’s light touch.

This donated Olympus Infinity camera will not help, despite its name:

I like the idea of practicing Unconditional Positive Regard* toward self and others:
"Positive" here doesn't mean judging as Good, 
it means seeing clearly, plain paying attention to What is there. (Not what is not there, the "negative".)
"I see you, I see me, as we are." 

It's not pretending everything is fine! 
It might mean, "I see that you are doing something evil." 
Or, that I am doing something harmful.
And it's not pretending you don't care. The balloon game is: you DO care, but with love not judgment. You don’t slam the balloon or tie it up. 

. . . And, then what?

Well, there's the art of it, isn't it?
Figuring that out.

My summer of Doing Nothing is feeling pretty helpful for me, though the effects of not-doing are kinda hard to gauge.

Of course I do plenty--I'm writing this, for instance-- but compared to many people around me, it looks like nothing.
My sister, for instance, who is retired, stays so busy with volunteer, social, athletic, travel, and cultural activities, she almost seems frenetic to me. 
She suggested doing something with me, but... "I can't make plans till the end of August."

Gee. I'm free today.

Also, I have to deal with feeling Unimportant.
I am not getting all the lovely dopamine/endorphine hits of social praise--especially since getting off social media and then coming back to blogging with comments OFF.
 
(I know dopamine/endorphine hormones are different but I don't remember which does what. 
But, you know--some activities like looking at the phone are like giving a lab rat a hit of sugar. When maybe what the lab rat wants is to play on the jungle gym.)

The rain is supposed to lighten up, and I will go to the library to pick up a DVD of Ram Dass I'd put on hold:
Becoming Nobody.

 There's a balloon!

___________________________

* Unconditional Positive Regard is a phrase from psychologist Carl Rogers--I read it in a book by Gabor Maté, MD, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction (2008).
This book was super helpful to me, working around a lot of people who struggle with or are destroyed by addictions to heavy substances-- and by society's treatment. 
And I deal with my own (less destructive than fentanyl) 'hungry ghosts' and unskillful responses to life.

Maté writes about working as a doctor at the Portland Hotel for people who are addicts, in Vancouver's skid row district:

Overwhelmed with absurdity, beautiful clutter, and vegetables

 Just a quick blog – – I’m about to cook up ripe tomatoes, green beans, zucchini, and green peppers: farm produce overflow donated to the food shelf – – I need to cook them now so they don’t go bad.

And I’m making Niçoise salad for my friendKG’s birthday-eve dinner here in the yard tonight—I had to go to the store to buy baby red potatoes and capers and lemon, otherwise I had all the nice things.

I went to the expensive grocery store that has really nice vegetables – – and I bought a cantaloupe and three big peaches too. 

As I was waiting at the bus stop to go home, a lovely and disheveled (homeless?) young man came up and asked me the time, tapping his wrist – – I was a little surprised that young person would still make that gesture. Has it become universal and timeless?

I told him the time, and then he laid down against the wall with his bags of possession and appeared to fall asleep. As the bus was coming though, I saw he stirred and looked around, so I took a peach from my bag and went over to him…

“Would you like a peach?”

He looked a little startled.

 “Yes.” 

And then he laughed a funny little laugh, which I heard as placing our interaction in The Realm of the Absurd.

It was like a frame around us, like a movie still: old woman at bus stop gives a peach to young man on ground.

“Thank you,” he said.

———————

Here is a doll rescued from death on a raft on the open sea. She was naked, so was given a new dress.

“I had a brush with death,” she says proudly.

————

And here, below, are some of the grab-bags I’ve been assembling from that certain art-scavenger donor’s decluttering… These are a great joy to me, but sadly the donor has been brung so low with depression, she has taken a break from her decluttering project. I have offered her help. She said she’s too fragile now but appreciates the offer.

“I will stand by”, I said.

Work Boards

Some stuff I posted in my work area—along with my coworker Sander, the young man who lit the Hanukkah candles for the Girlettes.

1958 French theater poster —Caligula is creepy but it’s such cool art… 

  

I posted my Faith Hope Love Thrift prints in the exit hallway (all taken now—will post more):

________

Side-by-Sides

________

Altered birthday card for a friend (“12” years old to 68)

June 14 & Navalny: Conviction, Faith, and Showing Up

Catching up, here...

A favorite sign at the June 14 "No Kings" march and rally. 
It was a Sunday morning...

She's smiling--there was lots of that--but overall it was somber:
On the morning of the protest, we had heard that a gunman had stalked and shot four people here, killing two people, state representative Melissa Hortman and her husband–– and their dog. 

Their dog! Gilbert, a golden retriever, "was with them again Friday when the Hortmans lay in state at the Capitol in St. Paul." [via PBS]

Political assassinations; and the gunman was still on the loose. 
It was too late to cancel the rally at the State Capitol, but organizers warned people to stay away. Many I talked to said they felt more compelled to SHOW UP.
 "It matters even more," I said to a friend who expressed concern.

I hadn't made a new sign--figured my cat could do another round...
Below, with bink and King Kong... 

More cat eyes, more smiles--it was good to be around others:

And Alexei Navalny... 
Talk about showing up. You know, he had returned to Russia after almost dying of an attempted assassination by poison, knowing what would happen.

Navalny predicted, in his prison diary:  

"I will spend the rest of my life in prison and die here. There will not be anybody to say goodbye to... All anniversaries will be  celebrated without me. I'll never see my grandchildren."

And that did happen. He was arrested and sent to an Arctic prison, where he died of maltreatment.

Why, people were always asking him, did he return, knowing that?

Because, he said,  

"I don't want to give up my country or betray it. 
If your convictions mean something, you must be prepared to stand up for them and make sacrifices if necessary.

"And, if you’re not prepared to do that, you have no convictions. 
You just think you do. 
But those are not convictions and principles; 
they’re only thoughts in your head." —newyorker.com/magazine/2024/10/21/alexei-navalny-patriot-memoir 

Reading the ^ New Yorker excerpts of Nalanvy's prison diaries, I was amazed at two things.

1. He's funny! 

Here he pretends to blame his wife, Yulia, for writing to him about "preparing crimes": 

2. Nalanvy was a man of faith.
Raised atheist, he had entered the Orthodox Christian faith.

This especially struck me because Stalin-era gulag survivor Varlam Shalamov noted faith as a factor in maintaining your humanity. 
(Along with listing survival skills of spite and indifference. (Spite, I love that.))

And it seems faith literally did help Navlany. He didn't survive, that was not possible, but he did maintain his humanity--and his sense humor.
About living/dying in prison, Navalny wrote: 

"You lie in your bunk looking up at the one above and ask yourself whether you are a Christian in your heart of hearts. It is not essential for you to believe some old guys in the desert once lived to be eight hundred years old, or that the sea was literally parted in front of someone. 

"But are you a disciple of the religion whose founder sacrificed himself for others, paying the price for their sins? Do you believe in the immortality of the soul and the rest of that cool stuff? 

"If you can honestly answer yes, what is there left for you to worry about?  
Why, under your breath, would you mumble a hundred times something you read from a hefty tome you keep in your bedside table? Don’t worry about the morrow, because the morrow is perfectly capable of taking care of itself. 

"My job is to seek the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and leave it to good old Jesus and the rest of his family to deal with everything else. 
They won’t let me down and will sort out all my headaches. 

"As they say in prison here: they will take my punches for me."

______________

To wrap up, a bit of wicked humor. You remember Trump said children only need two or three dolls and five pencils?

Books & Toys at Home

 (Thanks for the inspiration, ML!)

I don't think I've posted photos of my own book and toy shelves in a long time, just those at work. So here's an annotated round-up of some of my shelves where books 'n' toys 'n' stuff live together.

BELOW: Books from (mostly) my childhood. A few, like Toot & Puddle, I only read as an adult. I didn't keep any from childhood––I've slowly gathered them when they're donated to the thrift store. Amazing how many of the exact editions I had will come in.

The framed photo of the girl archers (at summer camp!), also from the thrift store.
I brought home the Penguin Michael Innes books (green spines) for their cool covers--thought I'd try one--my mother loved his books--but I don't really care for mysteries.

                 ^ Girlettes  Spike & Low

BELOW: I don't like GK Chesterton, I just love the painting on the cover of that book, "Landscape from a Dream" (1938) by Paul Nash (at the Tate).

Gold-framed artwork by my friend S. Barrett Newhall (1934–2011).

Far right: George Harrison's album All Things Must Pass--I remember my mother buying that when it came out, in 1970.

     ^ Girlette: Fight Club.

BELOW: Sixteen-year-old me took that square snapshot, below left, of 21-y.o. Chuck Harding driving on spring break to Alabama––with three little boys—his two cousins and my brother––in the back seat. Chuck was family of a woman my father was dating.

 I always hoped I'd see him again––it'd been several decades—and then I learned that he had died, at 56.
 

This spring it came to me forcefully what a good friend he'd been to me. In many ways because of what he didn't do. Mostly, he didn't do anything but be kind and calm and generous.
I was surrounded by adults who were driven by their emotions--looking back, what a cast of characters! We could have been a Fellini circus.
Chuck was the calm at the eye of that storm. 
I wish I could ask him now--how did he maintain that???

Anyway, if you feel unappreciated by someone you've been consistently kind to--just wait! A dozen years after you're dead, they'll weep and wish they could thank you.

(Thank you, Chuck.)

BELOW: TALK WeRK was donated that way. Inside, it's a normal dictionary. It reminds me of Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker, a favorite book I do not have a copy of! (I do have his Turtle Diary and one of his Francis the badger books for children though.)

Sticking out towards you is a conductor's baton in a narrow box--it belonged to my musician grandfather, presented to him at the birth of his daughter, my mother.

BELOW: Two of my favorite Edward Gorey covers for Anchor paperbacks. The pile behind them are all his too. (I've read the Aeneid but not A Hero...)
The little green bear was a present from Marz's friend Quill.
I almost never use recipes--I just eat sandwiches and like that.

BELOW: I love mid-century tins made in England, like this Byzantine one with the gold knob on the bottom shelf. 
I imagine Barbara Pym (or one of her 'excellent women' characters) strictly rationing confectionery or biscuits out of such a one, in a post-war London bedsit. 
"I allowed myself a caramel for tea."

BELOW: Framed photo of a fellow peregrino helping me get water from a fountain on Camino in Spain.
The reading rat was once the base of a lamp, but has come free.
What is Rat reading out loud? Sci-fi, like the books on this shelf?
I don't think so. I think... something about heroic bears.

BELOW: Firefly, the brown bear, is the first vintage mohair bear I repaired, and one of my favorites. Next to her sits Fog City, another top favorite.
The little black bears (also favorites!) were made in the 1960s in Japan for sale in Yellowstone (and other US National Parks). Decorations added by me.

 

BELOW: Fiction shelves, with, standing, my re-cover of the first of the Murderbot Diaries. (The soldier was a member of a UN security team.)
Several people have told me how good the current Apple TV show of Murderbot is, and I don't doubt it. But I'm not replacing my hard-won image of Murderbot as written: gender- and sex-less (pronoun: "it"). And of indeterminate race, but likely not Scandinavian (as the actor is).
I worked hard not to envision Murderbot as a white male storm trooper (Star Wars style), and to find images that suited it better, in my opinion.
And then they cast it as a white male, storm trooper style. 
This kills me, such a missed opportunity.

BELOW that--basket and suitcase of bears and friends look down. I'm pretty sure they all scramble down to play when I'm not around.