2026 Girlettes Calendar/ I Was a Victim of Charity

I. What Does a Toy Mean to You? 2026 Girlettes Calendar

I wasn't sure I'd make a sixth Girlettes calendar, 
but there were howls of protest here: 

"You have to show Doll Summer Camp/ the Boy King James/ our apple candle...!"

Let me know if you want one. 
They cost $17 each. 
(That's the Mixbook printer's T'giving 55%–off sale price.)
They are 11" x 8.5".

Postage has gone up. To mail in the USA, probably around $8? 
They're due to arrive here around Dec. 7.

You can email me,  frescadp@proton.me
(I chose Proton in my efforts to separate from the Tech Bros.)

 

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So, that's done--always a big undertaking, sorting and choosing, arranging... You know.
Plus, if I choose any photos from previous years, I have to check the old calendars to see if I've already featured them--I don't always remember.

I LOVE Penny Cooper & Low standing in the sink to wash their hands, for instance, and was surprised to see I'd never featured it. (It's from roadside stop on a car trip with bink to see Auntie Vi, before Covid.)
Maybe I thought a bathroom sink wasn't picturesque? 
But they're so darn cute there! 

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Busy week coming up. 

I worked on my Christmas print and the calendar this weekend, and I've barely cleaned or organized or shopped for Thanksgiving. 
Turns out Marz & her sweetie Q are not staying here though--
they are getting an Airbnb so they can have time together. 

Once again, I feel like such a mom, even though Marz is not my kid.  
"But you practically live with Q," I want to say (BUT DON'T). 
"Don't you want to spend all your vacation time with me?"

Ha-ha, guess not!

It's just what you want for your kid though, right? 
That they should go away and have their own life. 
Absolutely!
 100%.

 I'm a little sad and disappointed anyway.
Still, it gives me Wednesday to clean and cook!

Now I'm inspired to do more linoleum printmaking, I won't get rid of that set-up. 
Plus there're the yarn and sticks for God's eye makings.
And dolls and bears...

I am going to start thinking of the living room as a studio, 
and then I'll have different expectations of order there.

As long as it doesn't achieve the disorder of Francis Bacon's studio, which looks like it's about to immolate itself, I'll be okay.
I always admire his studio though. 
If I painted in oils, I expect mine'd look similar.

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A Victim of Charity

I had such an awful time at the Thank-You staff dinner last night, I kind of have to laugh.
I think I'd mentioned a rich donor had wanted to celebrate the thrift store staff with dinner at a fancy restaurant?

Well, this donor is one of Big Boss's Christian connections. As in the evangelical, born-again type.

Now, you know I love religions, 
and I count "good old Jesus and his family" as my friends (I love that Alexei Navalny referred to them that way)––along with many other wacky Black Swan figures in history and Story.

But there's a kind of Christian I do not do well with:
the "Jesus is my Lord" type that is more interested in
 Certainty and Control than Mystery and Muddlement. 

A very common type. Very much not Toyful.

And 'not Toyful' was the vibe last night. 
The dinner was for staff, but the host (not the donor, who wasn't present) was a local Christian leader, and he set the tone.
Basically, I felt like a Victim of Charity.

The attitude of people who perpetrate Charity is:

We are doing something for you, 
but we are not asking you what you want.
We are giving you what we think you SHOULD want.

This attitude to charitable giving is definitely NOT just Christian--
it is a common, normal attitude (American, anyway).

I'd been feeling a little worried about the dinner beforehand,
 and right off the bat I knew I was going to have a bad reaction. 
We each got one (1) ticket for a free drink when we walked in, 
but the bartender said he could not serve me a martini--only beer & wine--even if I paid for the martini myself.

He was visibly embarrassed to say it, standing in front a wall of liquor bottles, but those were the rules the hosts had established, he explained.
So I asked for a martini glass, and I poured my beer into it, with a lemon twist.

I hate this moral policing and self-righteousness.
It's very human:
I see it all around, on the Left as well as the Right,  
and I often catch myself doing it--and I hate that too.

It is a killer of freedom as taught by Noam Chomsky ("figure it out yourself"), 
and Saint Paul ("work out your own salvation"), 
and Roger Williams (Soul Freedom), 
and the whole philosophy that 
YOU HAVE A RIGHT TO FUCK UP.

Indeed, fucking up is a way of learning.
Okay, within reason.
Societies have laws for Public Order and Safety;
parents set up gates so children don't fall off balconies.

But in Soul & Art, yes, we may benefit from help and learned-skills and teachings and stories,
 . . . and then we need freedom to PLAY.

And this kind of restriction through "Help" that is "good for you" is the opposite.

"We will only let you buy healthy things 
because we want what's best for you."

No you don't.
You want to exercise control.

Also, for God's sake, how stupid is a "no martini" rule?
If you let people drink beer & wine, what's the difference? 
They just drink more to get the same alcohol.
If they really wanted to control it, they should have let everyone know it was a Dry dinner--no alcohol at all.

Meanwhile, talk about unhealthy--everyone was chowing down on steaks and farm-raised salmon.
My vegan pasta was so greasy and gloppy, I didn't even eat it all. (I do appreciate they even had a vegan option.)

The restaurant was very cool though--
built in the 1930s, it had an F. Scott Fitzgerald vibe.
It had the sort of wall geegaws that Trump loves in gold, 
but in tasteful gray and white.

Side note: What's the connection between tackiness and autocracy?
They seem to go together. 
Trump's Oval Office:

As I say, the restaurant was old-school cool. The sort of place to drink a martini.

I would go back, except entrees run around $50.
I looked it up. It cost $250 just to rent the party room we were in, and food service is some-$75/person.

And there's another Charitable Assault:
I can guarantee you that my coworkers would rather have had $50 cash and fried-chicken at Popeyes or KFC. 
Or, with a rare exception, the whole $75, and skip hanging out with coworkers you see all the time anyway.
That'd be my preference.

And skip the after -dinner "entertainment"--
 an entertainer did magic tricks with clever patter. 
He was good, and it was okay––
but he ended with using a giant deck of cards to tell The Christian Story, saying every time he came to a "ten" card,

"This is the Truth. It is not pre-ten-d."

Oh, so clever. As told to the children.

I bent over my lap and curled into a ball.
I'd have hated the manipulation no matter what, but, worse, he was talking to two Muslims and one Jew that I know of on our staff, as well as plenty of agnostic/atheists--
and this dinner included our sister store, and there must be others on that staff too.

HORRIBLE.
More Charity as Control. 
The whole thing was a trap to lure us into a revival tent.

Honestly, I expect most of my coworkers didn't mind. 
To begin with, they probably didn't look up the prices.
(They tend not to be obsessive fact-checkers like me.)
But I minded.

Ah, well. It's sort of a good wake-up call, a reminder of reality for me. 
I am rarely around this type of Christian, and they are--obviously--quite numerous and powerful.

I do see the appeal.
A HUGE attraction:
togetherness, and protection from loneliness.

Also, predictability; safety (or, the illusion of it); 
the dream of a healthy individual in healthy families in a healthy society, even if it means giving up individual freedoms.

But... it all is so... kind of... stupid.
Not stupid to believe in Jesus,
 but believing that Other People are going to keep you safe, make good decisions for you, guide your life for you?
I have not noticed that Other People are well-suited to doing this.

I mean, Big Boss can't even figure out to order more shopping baskets.
(Will they suddenly appear and prove me wrong? I hope so!)

Well, I'm not sorry I went.
It was a good reminder of what I LOVE (more important than what I hate), and what I want to pursue---
what I do want to "stir into flame"--and that is. . .

 making my own mess,
 playing 
in my messy living room.

A Girlette-Approved Plan of Living!!!