Noodling around (w/ Ambush Predators

I. It's Fresh!

Very fresh! Auntie Vi and I would be emailing a lot about the weather these recent days, if she were alive. 
It's snowing again this morning, and it's cold, 18º F ( –8º C) and dropping during the day, heading to below zero F tonight.

I've been feeling kind of bad and sad and mad. 
Fallout from work. Not all because of Big Boss 'n' The Christians--

I also mishandled a volunteer situation--my fault. But also not my fault: I shouldn't be put in the position I am. 
I do NOT want to "manage sideways" anymore to try to compensate for Bad Management.

Fretting in the middle of the night (eye roll), I realized:
NO ONE else cares if we don't have supplies, if we operate in chaos.
I really can, should, and want to drop this impulse to Fix Work.

And "fix" (do) My Own work!

Girlettes need sparkle ponies for their parade!

My go-to emotional reaction is "freeze"-- feeling low and slow, wary & watchful. So I had to make myself get Christmas decorations up from my storage closet in the basement, on my way to do the laundry.
  I didn't have the pizzazz to put the decorations up right away though.

 But then, walking home from the bus, I saw that the local florist had set on the curb a pile of pine boughs--trimmings from the bottom of Christmas trees he sells in his little side lot. (I got one from him my first year here, but they're around $75--and take up a lot of room.)

I took an armful of the pine trimmings home, soaked them overnight, and stood them in an aluminum flour canister (below).  The boughs are so fresh, my hands were sticky with sap, and they smell nice too.
So that's cheering. (Also, free. Which fits my budget.)

Penny Cooper requested the vintage Christmas balls (handmade from kits). Penny is always equanimous.
That's Frankcolumbo with Penny--like her namesake, she's also never flustered.

I'm standing in the living room to take this photo, facing into the kitchen.
You can see ^ the orange legs of my kitchen table (left side of the photo), and the black chair where I sit to blog in the cold weather, away from the chilly living-room windows.
 
(My bedroom is around the corner, right of that room divider.)
I should draw a floor plan--I loved when blogger GZ drew hers.)

II. Noodling with the Library Card Print 

I'm not so low I can't start noodling around with my next print--a library card. Yay! 
It's for my Childhood Tech series. A trio, so far: 
a typewriter, Joe Buck's transistor radio (my favorite), and a wall-mounted pencil sharpener.

First step, looking at old library cards. (I thought I'd saved mine from childhood, but I can't find it.) It looked much like the one on the right, below:

 

I'm thinking about what I want it to be. Not a literal copy.
Maybe like a prize on a cereal box--with a dotted line to cut out.

Child World.

III. Ambush Predators: Bad Pike

And I'm looking at other artists. I just discovered English printmaker Gertrude Hermes (1901-1983). Not that I'd even want to do the fine work she does, but she inspires me.
royalacademy.org.uk/art-artists/name/gertrude-hermes-ra

BELOW: Hermes's woodblockprint Undercurrents (1938)--in thirds, so the carving shows. (I didn't line the thirds up exactly.) 

That big muskie lurking at the bottom?
I think of that as a Minnesota fish. 

Yep... Looked it up [wikipedia]:
Muskellunge, the biggest fish in the pike family, are native to North America--the Great Lakes region and beyond.

They are ambush predators, and the top predator in any body of water they're in--eating animals as big as muskrats.
Only bald eagles and humans threaten them.

And the name is local (to me):

"Muskellunge" originates from the Ojibwe... mji-gnoozhe, maskinoše, or mashkinonge, 
meaning "bad pike", "big pike", or "ugly pike" respectively.

Oh, okay, but pike are in England:

"The pike, often revered as the 'water wolf' of UK waters, stands as a symbol of the cunning and strength. 
Ambush Predators, they known for their sudden and explosive attacks, often lying in wait for unsuspecting prey."
--via 

Hm, in 1938 Great Britain, why would Gertrude Hermes print water wolves  lurking in ambush under swimmers?

III. Ambush Predators: Anthropic Court Case

Another example of how we're Living in a Sci-Fi World. 

I'm dealing with Modern Tech Predators too:
 I got an email saying I can file a claim re the court settlement against Anthropic for pirating copyrighted work to train its AI, using without permission more than 7 MILLION copies of books--
 including, super weirdly-- three of my copyrighted books.

> > > The Weird GOOD Thing: 
I would get money from the settlement! 

It's a $1.5 billion (!) settlement, but it's not like they can't afford to pay for the works they use:

"Anthropic is in a good position to handle the sizable compensation. The company recently announced the completion of a new funding round worth $13 billion, bringing its total value to $183 billion."

More:
npr.org/2025/09/05/nx-s1-5529404/anthropic-settlement-authors-copyright-ai  

And the old world exists side-by side:
I also got a paper mail saying I'm called for Jury Duty at the end of December. I have to go in person on the first day.
 (I think after, you can call in? Not sure.)

IV: Ambush Predators: Panthers

Time to bundle up and go to work.
This week is both Big Boss's and Mr Furniture's birthdays, and there's a lunch today.
Last year I made Big Boss a three-layer chocolate cake.
That's because I'd forgotten I don't like him, but now I remember.

Mr F is the self-taught artist who collages suits of clothes with political images--some from his early days as a Black Panther sympathizer in prison.
I love him.

He had been very wary of me at first, but one day (I've written about this before) he, who does not use the Internet, asked me if I could find a book that the prison had taken from him, The Black Panthers Speak (1970).

"It had a yellow cover," he said, some forty years later.

I was able to find it online, in minutes. Seven dollars. He bought it.

Recently Mr F asked me to order some Black Panther Party patches for his clothes collages. Looking for them, I found these too--which he loved. I am giving them to him for his birthday.

Mr Furniture is torn about Big Boss. They are both Black men who came up the hard way, and Mr F is my age, old enough to be BB's father. But he feels ... I guess the word is, betrayed.
One day Mr F said to me, 
"We've lost him".

Meaning lost BB to white Christian culture. (Mr F and I come from such different worlds, but he knows I see this like he does.)

And the other day, I was telling Mr F how awful the 'thank-you' dinner was--which he was smart enough NOT to have attended!
Don't bite the hook.

And Mr F. said, 
"I told Big Boss, 'I love you like a son I would give away'."

Brutal. Panthers are another ambush predator. But religious bigots are like invasive species, smothering the entire ecosystem. 

Waiting to be found, or given.

ABOVE: Along the waterfront: my map of childhood water places
___________________

Ugh, I'm still feeling thrown off by work culture -- dampened.
 I suspect it's going to take some time to re-orient myself there;
but meanwhile, I'm filling the gaps where the rain gets in with Other Things, 
and I'm so happy that yesterday I made myself accept Volunteer Vikki's invitation to go to her Congregational church. 

I didn't want to, fearing emotional gloppiness, but it wasn't like that AT ALL.

An Ojibwe elder and Water Protector, Sharon Day, was giving the guest sermon, and beforehand she led a one-hour reflection on water in our lives.  
 I loved her. 

It's funny--Sharon did just what the Spiritual Director I'd disliked had done at the church I'd gone to last month:
she invited us to close our eyes and reflect.
But instead of feeling fake and syrupy, it felt REAL.
I thought, Okay, well, I'll just try that.

The prompt was to reflect on a body of water we have known well... 

Afterwards we could write a thank-you letter to the water.
Instead, I felt moved to start to draw a map of two lakes and the channel between them that I grew up near.
 [Map ABOVE (I'd like to fill it in more.)]

As kids, my sister and I spent a lot of time along the shore-- sometimes with the neighbor girls our age, but always unaccompanied by adults, because those were the days. 
We had our own names for places--the geography of childhood...

People read their letters, if they wanted.
Some of the reflections were about grand and powerful bodies of water, like Lake Superior, but at one point Sharon Day said that when she was in recovery, sometimes she would submerse herself in her bathwater and listen to her heart beat.

I was so filled up by that hour, I didn't go to the church service. 

Here, below, is a cool little story Sharon Day tells about a young woman who joined her for ten days on one of the Nibi (Water) Walks--walking the length of the entire Mississippi River--and what the young woman found, or, what found her.

"The Nibi (Water) Walks are Indigenous-led, extended ceremonies to pray for the water. Every step is taken in prayer and gratitude for water, our life giving force."
--More here: https://www.nibiwalk.org

BELOW: Clip from "Sharon Day: Speaking for the Water", transcript of Native Lights Podcast: Where Indigenous Voices Shine, Hosts: Leah Lemm, Cole Premo, Minnesota Native News, July 31, 2025,
minnesotanativenews.org/sharon-day-speaking-for-the-water

Sharon Day: "A young woman... had been in treatment, and she got out and drank that night, and then the next day, her mother said, 
'You’re gonna go walk on this water walk'. 

So she was with me for 10 days. 
It was kind of a struggle those first couple of days, and at one point that first night, she told me, she said, 
'I really want to drink, and I have $20 in my pocket and I could go drinking.' 

And I said,  'Yes, you could, but let me, let me tell you a story and sing you a song.'

 So I did, told her the whole story, sang a song, and she said, 
'Okay, I’m going to go to bed, but tomorrow I might drink.' 
Like, okay, fine. 

Well, she stayed with me for 10 days, and on the 10th day, she ran up ahead of us. 
We crossed the Mississippi River into Wisconsin, and there was a wayside rest up there, and she ran up ahead of us, and she came running back,
 and she had this eagle feather in her hand, and she said,
'Look what I found.' 

And I said, 'Look what found you.' 

And she said, 'It’s kind of like me. It’s a little battered.' 

And I said, 'But it’s still beautiful.'

She said, 'Yes.' "

[End clip from Sharon Day: Speaking for the Water]
________________________

(This reminded me of recently quoting from children's book The Story of Edward Tulane, by Kate DiCamillo:
 "Someone will come for you".)

And this all reminds me of Advent too, which started yesterday, the pregnant weeks leading up to Christmas.

At this time, the Magi are walking toward the Baby Yet to Be Born.
They are bringing gifts. But the Baby is the gift, like the eagle feather.

At this time of year, I am always reminded to wonder...

What gifts are walking toward us, which we cannot even imagine?

And, What gift are we, waiting to be found, or given?