Fancy a brew?

I. How to Trump-proof Hamilton

I've come to the sad conclusion that if the white characters in the Broadway musical Hamilton

(= every character who speaks, that is) were played by white actors,
Hamilton would please Donald Trump.

Hamilton is the story of a "self-starter, who worked harder, was smarter...", which is how Trump sees himself--and he too is the son of a Scottish immigrant.
(Trump's mother, Mary MacLeod (1912–2000), immigrated to the United States from Scotland in 1930.)

How to remedy this?
Easy.

1. Include a a running commentary from a Black character. There’s no existing candidate, so write the part ––say, a Hamilton family "servant" [code word for slave].

2. Cast a white actor as that non-white character.

There.
Solved it, to my satisfaction.
___________________

II. Fluff 'n' Stuff

I have no deep thoughts on Downton Abbey.
I watched one episode and thought it was "empty gorgeousness", as Hilary Mantel called such historical dramas. That gives a lot of pleasure, it just isn't my thing.

But it did promise to be gorgeous--like these Royal Doulton plates.
(I photographed them, below, as I was leaving work yesterday, and the afternoon sun obscures their details.)
They are perfect for the end-cap where I display pretty things.

They didn't sell at $10 each, and I doubt they'll sell at $5 either, but I like it when displays stick around.
I bet I'll eventually have to mark them down again, but if I priced them $1.99 now...
Poof! There'd go my display.

The last DA movie is in theaters now, so I suggested,
"For your Downtown Abbey dinner party?"



We get gorgeous antique stemware ^ too.
Etched crystal, cut glass, etc. Bowls, plates, and vases too. It barely moves, even priced 99 cents a piece.

Tea cups don't sell either.
Nobody drinks out of 6 oz. cups. I did for a minute, then went back to mugs.

I recently brought home a mug from the state where I grew up (below).
And I'm starting a book set in the year I was born (in a different state)--the year the Berlin Wall went up. (I'm still reading the history of sugar book too.)

I haven't had to bring in my Boston fern yet. It's chilly at night, but days have been unseasonably warm here--hot even, in the high 80ºs in the late afternoons this week.
Hard to believe it's October tomorrow.

III. Recharging. Without a Nice Cup of Tea.

I was surprised how drained I felt after hanging the God's eyes three days ago.
I said that to a friend, who commented,
"Well, you expended a great deal of chi!
Time to recharge your battery."

Yes, that's it.
For a month, I wove a lot of life energy into those eyes.
I thought I'd roll right on with making them, but oof--I'm out of steam.
I'm taking a break.

Yesterday after I left work, I was admiring them on the fence. Only a few have been taken.
A man, woman, and their two little kids came walking by.
The kids ran ahead and stopped and were handling the eyes.

"Do you know what these are?" the man asked.

I explained ("like guardian angels")
--and I added that they could take one, if they wanted. "I know the person who made them."

"We can?!" he said. "You know the person?"
He seemed impressed, and I left them looking closely at the eyes.

I suppose I should put up a sign, Take One.
But, like the plates, I don't mind if they linger.
Also, I kinda don't even have the energy to make a sign.

I'm done.
For now.
But probably not for long.
I have lots of beautiful yarn--a friend just sent me more!--and I have one hour’s listening left of Smoke and Ash, the audio book about tea and opium in China.

The thing that most amazes me is that the plant material that drove all of this-- European colonial drug smuggling, enslaved workers growing sugar on plantation --is now an everyday item you can buy for a couple bucks at any grocery store:
TEA.

Tea!
I have a box in my cupboard from a year ago.
A year, because that's when I quit eating added sugar,
last year around Halloween.

Like the Brits, I like sugar in my tea, with milk. A lot of sugar.
One lump or two?

Actually, six.

Funny, because I dislike sugar in coffee. (Luckily.) But they're different brews. I would probably engage in illegal trade to get coffee.

Pekes, Tea, Blue Willow, and Alexander Hamilton

“There would be no opium trade
 if there weren’t a tea trade before that.”
--"How opium, imperialism boosted Chinese art trade"--Harvard Gazette

. . . ALSO, no Blue Willow dishware (like the vintage stuff recently donated to the thrift store), no Pekingese dogs, no Caribbean sugar plantations (maybe), and no Broadway play about Alexander Hamilton.

So good! So dubious...

ABOVE: Creator Lin-Manuel Miranda as Alexander Hamilton, with Jonathan Groff as King George III. 
Photographed by Annie Leibovitz, Vogue, July 2015

I went looking...

I. First--I know you know, but my god, do NOT BELIEVE A.I.!

I just googled, What year was 2600 years ago? 

[Because I am dim with numbers, and this involves counting backward, I wanted to double-check. 
The Chinese invented porcelain 2600 years ago, and I figured that was 575 BCE.]

But AI answered (How can I turn this feature OFF?):
2,600 years ago, the time was the 26th century BCE (2600 BCE - 2501 BCE).

Thank you, we are not in Year Zero.

Here's a BC to AD Calculator, and yes, of course 2,600 years ago = the 6th cent. BCE.

 I was checking because I was looking for a link between Blue Willow china and the Opium Trade (Because of reading (listening to) Anita’s Ghosh’s Smoke and  Ashes). 

II. But also first, dogs! 

Above: Queen Victoria's Pekingese dog, Looty, by Friedrich Wilhelm Keyl, 1861 [via CNN, "Looty"]

I'd just mentioned plants (tea, opium poppies) as agents in history--specifically, British smuggling opium into China leading to the Opium Wars--and this morning I read that Pekingese dogs were caught up in that too: 

"Pekes entered Britain amid the nineteenth-century Opium Wars, after conquering European forces ransacked Beijing’s Summer Palace in 1860 for art and other valuables. 
Among the loot of the destroyed palace were five Pekingese dogs. 

"Toy-sized, these 'Chinese spaniels' were considered appropriate for women. 
One was named Looty and given to Queen Victoria. 
The rest went to the duchesses of Richmond and Wellington, whose plans to breed their new pets sparked a market for peke imports."

--daily.jstor.org/the-surprising-imperial-history-of-the-pekingese-dog

III. As for Tea, Blue Willow, Sugar, and Alexander Hamilton

1. Tea first arrived in Britain in the 1650s via the Dutch East India Company. Tea consumption in Britain increased across the 1700s, imported by the British East India Company. . .

From the London Museum:
londonmuseum.org.uk/blog/steeped-in-history-tea-drinking-in-britain/

2. . . . Leading to a fourfold increase in sugar consumption. Used to sweeten tea in Britain, sugar was produced on Caribbean plantations using the labour of enslaved African people. 

3. Alongside tea’s rise came an increasing desire for Chinese porcelain tea sets , etc. In 1734, the British East India Company imported over a million items of Chinese porcelain. 
Europeans learned to make fine china and blue glazes, and in later 1700s, the Blue Willow pattern was designed in England.

4. And that's all why Alexander Hamilton was born c. 1756 a British subject in the Caribbean (British West Indies, the island of Nevis, site of sugar plantations):
His Scots father, James Hamilton, was a trader. 
I can't find out what he traded, but sugar is a good bet. 

Ah--yes, here, from the Smithsonian Magazine:
The Hamilton family owned a sugar plantation and processing plant on Nevis.
(It stayed in the family until the 1950s.)

5. Meanwhile in the 1700s, the opium trade in China had begun when the British East India company found that the drug, mostly produced under their auspices in India, would be a competitive commodity in trade for tea. 

Outlawed by the Qing dynasty, opium was sold through a network of European (and American) smugglers and corrupt Chinese merchants.

IV. White as Sugar

Sugar isn't naturally white (it's processed--sometimes with "bone char"––burned cattle bones–– as a carbon filter), but the Founding Fathers were.

Yeah, so... I got rummaging around because I went to see the film of the Broadway musical Hamilton for the second time yesterday.
And this time I saw beyond its enormous creative energy (really, it's so good!) to its very dubious portrayal of the Founding Fathers.

Depicted by actors of color, in reality, of course, they were white men, and mostly enslavers--including Hamilton.

A Chicago documentary filmmaker Arlen Parsa put red dots on 34 faces in the painting Declaration of Independence (1818, by John Trumbull), which hangs in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol.

These 34 (of 47) signers of the Declaration were slave owners.

“This is one of the most famous paintings in American history”, Parsa said. “Next time someone puts them on a pedestal and says we can’t question their judgement on guns or whatever, show them this image.”

Fact checked here:
"We found strong evidence to back the claim on the 34, recognizing there is no one definitive source on the question.
We rate the statement True."

illinoisanswers.org/2019/09/10/fact-check-evidence-shows-most-of-the-men-in-famous-declaration-of-independence-painting-were-slaveholders

Was Alexander Hamilton an enslaver?
 (He was a Founding Father but not in the painting as he did not sign the Declaration.)
Smithsonian Magazine, again:
Yes. 
smithsonianmag.com/history/new-research-alexander-hamilton-slave-owner-180976260

And he opposed slavery. 
It's socially and economically complicated (if not morally). 

I always say that it's sorta like us owning cars but opposing climate change. I don’t own a car but I benefit all the time from friends who do, and from mass transportation, including flying on airplanes and consuming goods transported around the world. A German beer the other day!

We all do – – benefit from and pay for carbon fuels. You could say it’s our collective karma. I’m not aiming for purity, I’m aiming for awareness. And maybe harm reduction. 

The play Hamilton is a weird whitewash––like filtering the brown out of sugar with the ashes of bone–– and if we weren't still suffering so much from the history or slavery, it wouldn't matter. 
Maybe LM Miranda thought that was behind us in the Obama era?

As the Trump era quickly proved, it is not.
Sugar, opioids, and the tentacles of slavery are very much with us. 

Hamilton is terrific, if you see it as the AU (Alternate Universe) fan-fiction that it is. 
I highly recommend it!
Also the film To Kill a Mockingbird.
Good stories, well done, but not Get Out of Jail Free cards.

_____________

I have to go to work now--
I found a couple essays critical of Hamilton--I'm putting the links here, to read later:

"Review Essay: Race-Conscious Casting and the Erasure of the Black Past in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton", by Lyra D. Monteiro, The Public Historian (2016) 38 (1): 89–98.
https://online.ucpress.edu/tph/article/38/1/89/90687/Review-Essay-Race-Conscious-Casting-and-the 

Also:
'Hamilton: The Musical': Black Actors Dress Up Like Slave Traders . . . and It’s Not Halloween”, by Ishmael Reed, CounterPunch, August 21, 2015:

counterpunch.org/2015/08/21/hamilton-the-musical-black-actors-dress-up-like-slave-tradersand-its-not-halloween

Wrap Arounds

I. Wrap Around Eyes

I could've used double the 125 God's eyes, but by spacing them out, we did wrap a line of them all the way around the fence yesterday morning. 
They glowed in the sun, and caught the breeze.

The monarch mural ^ had gone up in happier days, before George Floyd's murder, when the park was open to the public.
photo ^ by bink

BELOW: KG photographing God's eyes she helped hang

BELOW: Photographed from the alley that borders the thrift store. A glimpse of L & M hanging eyes.

So, that's done. 
Not sure if I'll keep making eyes to add (or to hang on utility poles around the neighborhood).
Maybe...
Especially since I've started to listen to audio books, free from the library on the Libby app.

Do you use Libby? 
You just sign in with your local library card!
libbyapp.com/interview/welcome#doYouHaveACard

II. Secret Agents 

I've always preferred to read than to listen, but as I've wrapped the sticks, I've loved listening to Smoke and Ashes: Opium's Hidden Histories  (2023) by Amitav Ghosh.

So interesting, history connecting our opium troubles today--which damages the neighborhood where I work--and is why I hung the God's eyes. 
It's all connected.

It's largely about the history of the West (starting with the British--an "imperial narco-state" Ghosh says) smuggling opium into China.
(What I previously knew about the Opium Wars was that they happened.) 

But more--it's about the role of non-human agents---plants!--in driving human history. Not just opium, also tea--and flowers.

I've just started reading Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (1985) by Sidney W. Mintz (on paper, not available on Libby). 

Sugar and opium and tea are easy to see, still very much in our lives--
but nutmeg was a huge deal in global trade too, leading in the 1600s to Spice Wars between Anglo-Dutch colonial powers over control of Indonesian spice trade. 
I had no idea!

And get this:
The Dutch traded New York City for nutmeg:

"In 1667, the Treaty of Breda was signed, bringing an end to the Second Anglo-Dutch War. The treaty is perhaps most famous for one of its territorial exchanges: 
the Dutch agreed to cede control of New Amsterdam (which the British promptly renamed New York) in exchange for the tiny island of Run, one of the [Indonesian] Banda Islands and a key source of nutmeg."
--Eats History

III.  SWIRLS of History

So many things we haven't seen, refuse to or cannot see...

My coworker Teeter photographed the top of my head after my super-short haircut yesterday (free in the thrift store parking lot), to show me my cowlicks.
And when I got home, I took a photo of the front, where a badger stripe of dark hair is now clear (badgers are inverse white and black):

Weirdly...
1. In my entire life, I don't think I've ever seen the crown of my head like this;

and, 
2. Last week, I'd gone to see  Yi Yi (2000, dir. Edward Yang, Taiwan--this is the 25th anniversary re-release of the film--on Criterion), 
and in it an 8-year-old boy, Yang-Yang, photographs the back of people's heads to show them a part of themselves they cannot see.

Which is what stories can do, right? 
This was one of those immersive movies that leave you feeling when you exit the theater that you are playing in a movie of your own life. 
(What are the ingredients of making that happen?)

Not at all like Yi Yi, but also related to MY HAIR:
 Seven Samurai (1954, dir. Akira Kurosawa, Japan), which I saw on the big screen a couple weeks ago.  (It is my favorite movie, every time I see it.)

The lead samurai (Kambei Shimada, actor Takashi Shimura)* gets his head shaved so he can imitate a monk in order to save a little boy.

It's a big deal for a samurai, to lose his top knot, but he does it calmly. Because he's like that. 
I'd like to be more like that too. (Maybe in another lifetime. But in this one, maybe the haircut will help. 😆)

 As the bandits start to attack the village, he says:

I should print this out and plaster it everywhere, or get a tattoo or something.
___________________

After all, WHO KNOWS where history is going.

On a day when many bad things were happening (could be any day), Marz, who is studying international relations and diplomacy this semester, called me all happy about a Syrian president speaking at the United Nations for the first time in six decades. 

More drugs, and not nutmeg...
NPR article:

"President Ahmad Al-Sharaa said that the new authorities in Syria have destroyed the drugs business that Assad used to fund his government.... 

"Assad's fall revealed industrial-scale manufacturing facilities of the amphetamine-like stimulant Captagon, also known as fenethylline, which experts say fed a $10 billion annual global trade in the highly addictive drug."

If sanctions are lifted, perhaps Syria could get their economy together...

Who knows.
But good things are possible.

_______________________

* It's not necessary to rank them, but here are all seven samurai described (spoilers):
https://collider.com/seven-samurai-characters-ranked/

They’re up!

Field of Stars

Today’s the day! Going to hang the God’s eyes. The longer I’m with them, the more I see them as stars.

ABOVE: Marz had said I should take a picture of myself lying with my God’s eyes like Morrissey with his Oscar Wilde books.

I had to look that up. Obviously his was not a selfie…

God’s Pencils

 First God’s eyes made with pencils instead of sticks. I’ve also used chopsticks—I love the variety, but also, I’m simply running out of natural sticks—I’ve harvested my yard… 😆

125!

Tomorrow’s the day! I’m hanging the God’s eyes on the chain link fence by work.

With MsChocolate’s and a dozen from bink and a couple other friends, I’ve now got 125!

Only yesterday did I realize it’s better to focus on stripy effects than  trying to get polkadots onto a square form. Especially pleased with the center of this black-and-white one—it looks like the yin/yang swirl. 

God's Eye Mushrooms

My coworker Jester is a horticulturist specializing in mushrooms. 
He leads foraging outings throughout the summer on a friend's wooded land; teaches classes; cooks, grows, and paints pictures of mushrooms.

I showed him my God's eye in the colors of a monarch butterfly (at end of post), and he suggested the purple and grey Laccaria mushroom would make a nice God's eye too--and the popular red-with-white-spots Amanita.

This morning I made them. 
I have variegated purple yarn, and the Laccaria was easy enough to approximate. (Hm, should add some dark brown.)

Laccaria Ochropurpurea

But I haven't yet found a way to spatter dots across this square form... A fun enough first try, but more experimentation is needed to produce a proper Amanita Muscaria.

 
Monarch butterfly (same problem with dots)

Behind the Scenes/ Stick stuff together...

I. Behind the Scenes

Photographing the girlettes at the Source of the Mississippi River, 
Itasca State Park, Minnesota. (Above photo by bink.)

Pants tucked in socks for tick protection. 
Plus we sprayed ourselves with poison to repel mosquitoes--because, M's cousin here in town recently got West Nile Virus (from a mosquito)! It turned into encephalitis and caused a stroke.
 Luckily she's okay after 3 weeks in the hospital and rehab. 

Anyway...
Another angle on the photo I posted the other day.
All that climbing around on rocks twisted my dodgy knee, but it was worth it!

It's been so long since I photographed the dolls in public, I'd sorta forgotten how people come up and ask, 

What are you doing?
I love that. 
I always say, I'm photographing my dolls.

Sometimes there's more conversation.
Below: This woman was on Day One of an RV-camper caravan trip downriver to the Gulf of Toys! (–of Mexico, that is.) They will travel for a month.

"Do you want a doll to go with you?" I said.
Without hesitation, the woman said, "Yes!"

"She can ride in my bag", circled ^ in pink.

Can you see? The girlette, Marco, is beaming with happiness to go.
She said she wore her sailor suit JUST IN CASE.

I didn't realize until I saw the photo:
the pattern on the woman's shirt is US-flag peace signs.
I wish I'd asked her what that meant to her.

(The peace sign was "designed for the British nuclear disarmament movement in 1958"--Wikipedia.)

II. Sticks

BELOW: bink with another of the Trolls around Detroit Lakes--it's a game to find them all (you need a car of willingness to bike for many miles). 
I'd thought the trolls would be gimmicky, but the girlettes said,
"They are one of us".
Us being human-made things that have living spirit. 

Made of recycled and scavenged materials, by Thomas Dambo of Denmark. (Tree-bark eyebrows.) Held together with screws.

Also in the area--a woolly mammoth made of sticks collected nearby--created by artists of the Minneapolis-based Leonic Collective.
It's a tree house--you can climb up inside.
bink again:

Zach Shumack, lead artist, said the mammoth is named Mashaal, after an artist "who unfortunately passed away last year but was the person that taught me how to sculpt with sticks and epoxy resin. 

III. Looked up Tigre Mashaal-Lively... 
They created an interactive sculpture "Facing the Fearbeast" at Burning Man in 2022:
 journal.burningman.org/2022/10/burning-man-arts/brc-art/honoring-tigre-mashaal-lively

 TML constructing the FearBeast. Mixed media--
you can see old tires create a leg here:

Below: Completed. 
If you stand with the child, facing the beast, you hear audio messages of loving support from inside the FearBeast:

“Facing the Fearbeast” by Tigre Mashaal-Lively (Photo by Manuel Pinto)

"It isn’t about good vs. evil, beast vs. child. 
Within the beast, there is a wounded inner child that is often the source of destructive and damaging words and actions. 
...We have the power to shift our personal  narrative and heal wounded conditioning, quieting the cycle of pain."

Obituary for Tigre Mashaal-Lively, who  "left this world of their own volition to travel to the next realm of their being".
___________________________

How to "quiet the cycle of pain"
 rather than amplify it? 

One possible way:

* * * STICK STUFF TOGETHER! 
Glue, or nail, heat, paint, tie. . . think––or whatever––stuff together.
______________________

III. All of this encourages me.

*Sings, Stick it, stick it good...*

I've now made 50 God's eyes--more to come this week, plus, with several from bink, a few from other people, and the 38 from Ms Chocolate, I will have enough to line the park fence this coming Saturday morning. 
If you're in town, come on by!

The orange-black-white one, far right, was inspired by monarch butterflies.
It'd go faster if I made duplicates, but so far I like making each color combo different. 

 I aim to add broken glass or other trinkets, at least to some, and handwrite tags: 

God's Eye/Ojo de Dios
Protection & in-sight/ 
Protección y visión

A couple friends have sent yarn--this bounty of wool carpet yarn from K. Thank you--perfect colors! 

Must gather more sticks!

At the Source

Crossing the Mississippi headwaters

Stick art

On vacation —bink with one of the region’s trolls, by Danish recycle artist Thomas Dambo—

their hair is sticks!

Lots of oak trees here—they drop beautifully shaped sticks.

The efficiency of 100 People

This week before fall equinox*, I'm going to the Source (of the Mississippi River), and I am launching a One Hundred People year.
_______________

A friend suggested I alert local media when I hang the 100 God's eyes I'm making on the fence by the store.

Sweet of you, I said, but I am not interested in publicizing this. I want it (and me) to be small.
_________

Wrapping yarn around sticks seems to be something humans do all over. 
"God's eyes", the popsicle & yarn craft made in US summer camps, come from the Huichol people indigenous to Mexico.

Below, Greek thread frame for St. Barbara, patron saint of Greece, (donated to the thrift store)

___________________

We grew up as a species in small bands.
We evolved to handle small numbers of people… Our grade school class, family (plus extensions), the neighborhood...

We've added software to take in much larger numbers--Big Gulps! 
Can we handle it?

I don't want to live in a medieval village or a rural American town.

God, no!
I love the benefits of big cities. The economy of scale: the hot running water, the grocery stores, the city buses, the libraries and parks. Entertainment and education. 
I love the independence, not being dependent on or policed by my neighbors.

But psychologically, I feel equipped to handle knowing about 100 people. That's probably the number of people I do currently know by name--including a handful of blog readers here. 
Hello, you!

Thinking about efficiency... **
Doing useful work, and the energy required to do it well.

Depends what you mean by "useful".
Feeding a populace, you deliver food in trucks.
Celebrating a birthday, you make a meal for a small gathering.

Depends what you mean by "work".
The direct emotional work of trucking is lighter than the face-to-face work of a dinner party.

Being off social media makes me more efficient with the people I have direct contact with. 
For my One-Hundred People Year, that's where I'll direct my powers.
This isn't a new practice in my life, actually,
 but it's a new intention.

My crew at work:

____________________
* Fall equinox, Mon, Sep 22, 2025, 
1:19 PM Central US / 7:19 PM Greenwich

** Etymology of efficiency(n.)
1590s, the power to accomplish something.
From Latin efficere "work out, accomplish," 
(ex "out" + facere "to do").
In mechanics, "ratio of useful work done to energy expended," from 1858.

The Geography of Black Swans

I deserve a Gold Star for Effectiveness:
I set up a Football display at work.

Do I care about football? I do not. 
I even had to ask if it is football season. 
"Week two," Big Boss said.

My favorite touch is the casserole dish (top, right) in a raffia-fruit basket. Hot dish—sometime with green beans and tater tots?—should be served during the games.

     (Maroon and gold are local college football colors.)

I've been reading small doses of Peter Drucker on management. 
He says lots of people are intelligent, knowledgeable, and creative. (He's talking about "knowledge workers".)
But NOT many people are effective.

I am nowhere near as effective as I could be. 
When I look through photos of my end-cap displays, however, I see that I am effective there (working within the limits imposed).

I'm especially pleased with the football one because I transcended my own interests. I did it for the sake of the store, and in service to people who like something I don't like. (Except the casserole.)
I also had fun, because I like arranging stuff, and I like being of service. Win/win.

I'm reading Drucker partly for work, but more for myself. (Because management at work is so unstable, I've learned to focus only on what I can do on my own there.) But also, for my life outside work.

A lot of what Drucker says applies to the individual as well as organizations, to life as well as the workplace, and turbulence is one of his topics. That's us, now!

“In turbulent times, you cannot assume that tomorrow will be an extension of today.” 

– Peter Drucker, Managing in Turbulent Times, 1980
[originally ^ read "managers cannot"]

“To survive and succeed, every individual will have to turn herself into a change agent.”

– A Functioning Society, 2003
 ^ originally read "every organization... itself"

It's a cognitive bias to assume that things--that we ourselves--will stay the same. 
They will not. 

Black swans are improbable, unpredictable events with huge impact. [Wikipedia entry]
Each one is rare in itself, but one always comes along... eventually.
The black swan is always a surprise (by definition), 
but that such an event happens should not be.

The event may be good or bad––a shooting, a stranger handing you a flower––or, like the Zen story about the farmer, his son, and a horse points out, their effects are far reaching and ongoing and can't be judged.

For instance, my knee injury seems self-evidently "bad",
but the other day on the bus, I ran into a friend I hadn't seen in twenty years. We'd studied Classics together. 
If my knee had been well, I'd have been biking and wouldn't have been on that bus.
So, . . who knows?

On the other hand, that friendship hadn't lasted because I'd liked but hadn't loved the guy. 
We're going to get together soon and catch up. Maybe he's gotten worse. Maybe I'll wish I'd never seen him on the bus.
Who knows?

Best not to make a firm judgment before it's over. 
And is it ever over?
But we can say, I'm not liking this.
Or, I am. 
I like my football display!

What stops me from being effective?
A big one is my reactions to other people.
Being sensitive to other people makes me a good "servant leader".
Being too sensitive hampers me from taking action.

I would like to surf more gracefully on the waves of other people's reactions to/opinions of me, to discern more clearly when those waves merit consideration, and when I'm unreasonably afraid of them. Not to force myself to act when I'm afraid, but to let go of some of the unwarranted fear. 

Can't surf the ocean if you're too afraid. 
Also, don't go out during a hurricane.
_____________
What helps?

Stories help.

I was cheered that Alexei Navalny was sustained by "good old Jesus and his family", as he said, as he faced torture and death in a Russian Arctic prison.

Jesus says to Peter, "What's it to you, what other people are doing?"

A friend told me this, and I thought, surely Jesus didn't say the words What's it to you, did he? 
That sounds so modern, so slangy.

So I looked up the Greek, and in John 21:22 that's what it literally says:

"You follow me" = keep your eye on the prize.
Follow what you know is right and true. 
(KEY: Learn how to discern that.)

Anyway, I take heart that some amazing people managed to do this--to do what they knew was right in the face of some pretty severe reactions, like being imprisoned, tortured, and murdered--and that the story of Jesus helped them.

It helps me too. For instance, and I'm always saying this, I'm thrilled by the reminder that I AM NOT THE SAVIOR. And also the reminder that I could try harder. (I am also always saying, I hate the phrase "everyone is doing their best". I'm not!)

Another story I'm finding helpful is the rather preposterous story that our souls on the astral plane chose to come to Earth, here and now--and to meet up with the people we meet. (A Hindu-inflected Theosophy/New Age belief.)

(Jesus isn't preposterous, though some elements of his story may be. 
People like him are Black Swans--each one different, but they come around every so often and surprise us. Stories about them mingle fact, truth, and [sometimes preposterous] fan-fiction.)

Anyway--it makes me smile in a staff meeting to think,
"All the people at this table--our souls chose to be here with one another".
It's so funny! The humor brings oxygen into an airless room.
And it can be genuinely helpful to think of someone I find difficult: 
Is there something I have to learn from this person? This encounter?

Sometimes the lesson is, learn to . . . 
Say no.
Or, Leave.

Sometimes the best, most brilliant answer to "What's it to you?" is, 
"It is too much for me, and I'm stepping away."

Though I am not an admirer of abandoning ship when the seas gets rough, I do believe it’s our work to discern what’s right for us.

 It can be a hard call.

I feel bad that I left the autistic students in high school – – not that I could’ve changed the system, but I was a bit of a firewall for some of them, and then I left.

Sometimes we fail. Often, in fact.

For now, I'm noodling along at work, looking for ways I can be effective at the store without engaging too much with management.
That can be like the scene in Casablanca when Ilsa and Laszlo come into Rick's, and Ilsa asks to be seated close to Sam at the piano.
Lazslo adds, "And as far from Major Strasser as possible."

Rick replies, "The geography may be a little difficult to arrange." 
Of course he manages it. He's an effective manager.

Ha, Difficult geography.
I just realized, that's pretty much the theme of the movie.

We're in a spot of tricky geography ourselves. 
It'll be interesting to see how we manage it.

Lake Eye, Energy

 I'd run into a pal, Anita, at the lake path. She later sent me a photo of the view from where we stood-- inspiring a God's eye:

It's my first try at asymmetrical arms of color... I'll work more on that. 

Last night I took coworker Abby out for her birthday at our regular happy-hour place. I brought along the twenty eyes I've made this week and said she could choose one as a present. 
She chose four. 

She kept exclaiming over them---and I kept  saying, "you can have more than one", and suggesting she might want one for her daughter and her niece, both of whom could use a little extra divine protection.
 (Couldn't we all?)

The server who often helps was was showing us pottery she makes, and I asked her if she'd like an eye too. I had them spread all over the table. 
She took three (also to share).

I was glad to have proof that people want them, and now I must go into PRODUCTION mode to make enough eyes to cover the fence in two weeks. 
bink and I are going on another mini-vacation next week--to see the source of the Mississippi River!!! 
I'll bring along eye-making supplies and hopefully crank a bunch out.
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I'd gone to see Hamilton in the afternoon--a film of the Broadway musical with the original cast.

Two things especially struck me.
First, how important personal energy is. 
Obviously social, and physical, and other factors dominate our lives, but our own energy interacts with them, crucially.

The physical energy! Daveed Diggs as Marquis de Lafayette in Hamilton. 

Physical, mental, emotional, spiritual energy.
I mean, duh. Right?
But I've been thinking about this a lot, recently, after my summer of Doing Nothing. 
My energy is up---how and where to direct it?

Second, how violent American history is. 
Duh, again. All human history is. But this play shows the tapestry of US history shot through with political violence, and how it plays out in one man's life (and death), and it lands differently now than in 2016 when Hamilton opened on Broadway.
The play has a strong Obama-era vibe, and I don't think that message was as prominent then, but it sure stands out now. 
_________________

Clips, below, from an opinion piece in today's Guardian:
"Charlie Kirk’s shocking killing sets the stage for a dangerous federal crackdown", by Moustafa Bayoumi

"The Maga political strategist Steve Bannon told his audience, 'Charlie Kirk is a casualty of war. We are at war in this country. We are.' 

"I disagreed with Charlie Kirk on pretty much everything, but his shocking and morally repugnant assassination is deeply concerning, and not just because it’s another example of the lethality of our politics. 
Kirk’s killing is also sending prominent conservatives on a warpath, 
setting the stage for a dangerous expansion of federal government repression.

"Maga leaders blame a mythically powerful left for political violence. Now, they are bent on destroying anyone who opposes them.

"I find a lot of what Kirk peddled to be reprehensible, but he should still be alive to say it."

theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/sep/12/charlie-kirk-shooting-federal-crackdown 

____________________

I ask you, in these times, 
. . . Where are we directing OUR energy, personally?

Duty of Care

A friend misunderstood when I asked them not to tell me bad things about Charlie Kirk.
They thought I was asking them to show respect and not to  speak ill of the dead. 

That's not what I meant at all. 
I meant that in terms of the crime at hand--public execution-–it doesn't matter who Kirk was any more than it mattered who George Floyd was. 
Even if they were the worst people ever, guilty of awful things,
they should not have been executed in cold blood.
(Or executed at all.)

And if they were the best people ever, the crime is the same.

A juror in the trial of Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd said that she made up her mind of his guilt when she learned that police officers have a legal (not to mention moral) "duty of care"* for anyone in their custody.

Even if illegal drugs were involved in Floyd's death (THEY WERE NOT), he wouldn't have died if Chauvin had taken proper care of him.
Floyd did NOT die of drugs, but for the crime at hand, it simply doesn't matter if Floyd was an angel or an addict--or both.

"Custody" means protective care.

We are all in one another's custody. 

Discussing the virtue of a victim is a smokescreen for the real problem.

__________________

*duty of care (n.) a requirement that a person act toward others and the public with the watchfulness, attention, caution and prudence that a reasonable person in the circumstances would use.

"Mere", murder & murals/What are we doing to help?

 I. Mere / Murder

I've idly wondered what Yeats meant by "mere" here:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world...

"The Second Coming" (written in 1919, after the Great War) came to mind again with out most recent political assassination here in the US*––Charlie Kirk, yesterday (middle name, James, like the Star Trek captain, James Kirk).

So I looked up that use of "mere". Obviously Yeats didn't mean "piffling," but what was the deal?

via English Stack Exchange:

The OED says mere's meaning pure, unadulterated is long obsolete, but absolute, sheer was around in the 19th century. 
___________________

• The word ‘Mere’ means both pure and only,
   and the first section further emphasises the generality and absoluteness of the situation with words such as ‘everywhere’ and ‘all’. 
  
  The ‘Mere anarchy’ which is loosed (by whom?) like a plague or scourge then becomes a tide dimmed by blood, recalling the bloody seas of the Revelation of St John, the flood from the mouth of the serpent and the vials of wrath (Rev 8:8; 12:15; 16:1-4). 

• -- Yeatsvision.com

Well, that makes sense.
 __________________________

*The BBC reports there've been 150 politically motivated attacks in the US in 2025, so far--twice the number of last year.

Today is the 24th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks. 
These more recent attacks are carried out by our very own, home-grown people. 
__________________________
II. Murals 

Meanwhile, murals have been going up here on the busy street by the thrift store that connects the chain of lakes to the Mississippi River. 
They are part of a $8 million project to Beautify Lake Street. 
The already tattered street was further frayed by protests after the murder of George Floyd in 2020. 

Walking the five blocks to the bus stop after work, I took photos of a few of them (there are more!).

Beautiful! 
But in doorways, ravaged people huddle with nothing.

 Waiting at the bus stop eating a tamale, I saw a guy harassing a street walker. She was dressed in something like cling wrap and carrying a piece of birthday cake on a paper plate. 
A cop yelled out the window of his police car stopped at the red light, "Leave her alone!"

The guy muttered something and walked away.

 I thought, I feel like I'm living in the New York City of Midnight Cowboy and Taxi Driver.
 

This morning I had coffee at a nearby gas station--a great local business with a brew-to-order espresso machine--at their picnic table by this little mural--painted during the George Floyd protests:

                                        Yes. 
________________________

III. What are you doing?

I'm going to leave comments on.

But, please, I don't want to hear more about how bad things are. 
I see it too! I hear it endlessly, everywhere.
* * * I do want to hear about what I / we can DO, . . are doing!

How can we harness, how are we harnessing our power of love and light and smarts--politically, spiritually, in whatever CREATIVE, life-giving ways--to stem the blood-dimmed tide?

Above: William Blake, David Delivered Out of Many Waters,
‘He Rode upon the Cherubim’, c. 1805, Tate Gallery, London.

You know, I'm wrapping yarn around sticks to give away.
They are little Ninja stars to throw at the Vile Beast slouching our way. 
 Maybe the VB will stop and play with them.
Or maybe they'll be incinerated in a flash.
Who knows? 
They keep my head above the waters, anyway.

One more William Blake: "Los Enters the Door of Death"

"Los represents the imagination (the name is from sol, Latin for sun)... the soul of the animating principle of everything in this world. 
Los has to enter the door of death many times, taking his light (the sun of fourfold vision) into eternal death, in order to move out of 'single vision'."-- via