Explore, and Have Fun

My upcoming new neighborhood is much more residential than my current one. One of my favorite movie theaters is nearby, however––the nonprofit Trylon Cinema, a "microcinema" with 90 seats.

Volunteers work the tickets and concessions counter, so last night when I went to a movie, I signed up to volunteer. 
"There's a two-year waiting period," the manager told me.
So, who knows. It's not like I need more to do, but I want to get connected to my new area.

Meanwhile, Sparkle and Bounce got right on it, setting up their own stand. They're from Las Vegas––they know all about the entertainment industry.

 .  .  .  "GAMERA WANT DOT."  
 
 The Trylon puts together series of old films--this summer, all around the theme of the 50th Moon Landing. I was there to see the 1989 documentary For All Mankind--unnarrated footage from and voices of lunar astronauts.

This clip starts at my favorite part--an astronaut says gravely, 
"It's a fundamental truth of our nature: Man must explore".
Another astronaut comes on, "Make sure to have fun, too," and they go bouncing off like bunnies, singing.



Walking through the neighborhood afterward, thinking of how I'll be living there, I felt alien. I knew where I was, but I have little personal relationship to the area.  It's just a place.

I'll go on exploring with the Orphan Reds soon--that'll help. There's a lot to explore. For instance, I'll be only a few blocks from the old Hiawatha Ave. grain elevators. 

I don't know the history of the area, so I want to look into that too.
I'm moving into the Standish neighborhood---named after Myles. Why?

Oh--of course--because "The Courtship of Miles Standish" was written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and the larger area is named for that poet, and his works--because it's near Minnehaha Falls, named for Longfellow's "Song of Hiawatha".

Wait. What? That poem is not the sweet pastoral I expected at all! 
It's a song of the grief of the hunter Hiawatha, who cannot save his young wife, Minnehaha, "Laughing Water", from death in a winter famine.

Well, there you go. Exploring already. I had no idea.

Catstronauts

I'm house/cat- sitting for a couple more weeks. I'm liking being here, and I like taking daily photos of the cats. (I send them to the home-owner.)

This morning the girl cat, Anna, was playing with my dangling shoelace.

I start my third week cashiering at the thrift store this morning. It's going well. Like every other part of the store, it's mostly un-managed, which makes it easier--and harder (like every other part of the store). I mean, it's easier because I can make my own policies, set my own prices, give people deals, etc.

In contrast, at Goodwill everything cashiers did was scrutinized, which was no fun.

BUT... it would be nice to have some good management. Someone left two kittens in a box in the vestibule last week, and the two managers on hand took NO action, made no decision--just left it up to the cashier on hand (not me).

I helped––I gave them water, put them on FB, and contacted a regular customer who lives across the alley, who I know takes in rescue cats.

She came right over with food and checked the kitties out. Very young but healthy, she declared. 

After they ate, they turned into tiny explorers--so cute! and so easy to step on. We found a donated cat carrier for them, and luckily an experienced cat owner whose cat had died recently came within a couple hours and took both of them. 

Off I go to work. 'Bye for now!

Do Not Cut Toward Yourself

There's a profound message in the teaching:

Don't cut toward yourself.

I learned that as a young cook, and yet, forty years after my first grill-cook job, I did just that: in a hurry to make sangria for a friend I'd forgotten I'd invited over, I sliced an orange while holding it in my hand...

I'm house sitting, so I don't know the knives, and it just so happened I was using a new Chicago Cutlery chopper...
The resulting sliced finger could advertise the knife's smooth slicing action.
Truly!
Because while the cut was deep, it was so beautifully thinly sliced, it closed up quickly, with surprisingly little bleeding, 
and while maybe it could have used a stitch or two, I decided to forgo a trip to the doctor and trust in nature's healing powers.

Which, I'm happy to say, have done their magic. Two days later, I can even type with this wounded finger, tender (and ugly) though it still is.

Speaking of injuries, bink is up at a lakeside cabin, and after she jumped off the dock into the water, she temporarily lost her hearing--due to something I'd never heard of called "ear barotrauma"---caused by unequal pressure on your ear drum and all that.

Which reminded me of a favorite line from a comic opera from Adult Swim based on Star Trek IV: The Wrath of Khan:
"My ear! I'm not supposed to get eels in it!"

A Card for Princess Ilhan

bink came over yesterday (to my house sitting vacation home), and we watercolored thank-you support cards for our Minnesota representative in Congress, Ilhan Omar, who is under fire from evil forces.

It seems absurd to put it that way, but on one level––the level of the presidency of the United States!––politics have deteriorated to childish good-and-evil plot lines:
"The princess has been captured by the Death Star".
(That's Star Wars, not Trek.)

Luckily Rep. Omar is like fearless leader Princess Leia facing Darth Vader. I couldn't do it. I looked at her Instagram and people leave the most vile comments.
So some pretty cards might be welcome--if only seen by her staff who have to wade through the filth too.

The dolls helped:



I remember thinking in the early days that Trump & his ilk might run out of steam, but far from it.  
"What can we do?" . . . I haven't done much since bink and I made Baby's First Resistary in 2017. 

I always think that if it all goes to hell, at least there should be a piece of paper somewhere with my name on it saying, "I don't agree to this!"
And others that say, "Thank you for standing up!"

Sunday Morning, Rich Girls on the Porch

I'm near the end of the first of four weeks sitting two cats and a big house in a wealthy enclave of town. At first I steamed up about the wealth––several families could live in this four-story house! 
Then I chilled out. (Because every floor is air conditioned.)

It also has porches. Orange Sparkle and Bounce are keeping me company on the front porch this Sunday morning, on their new, old handmade doll furniture (from the thrift store).

With twenty-three days left to go, the other evening I was feeling like an underpaid employee* ––(the cats' designer food costs almost as much as I'm paid for dishing it up--I looked it up) ––
and wishing I could go home.
But ten days ago, when summer-roommate was in a bad mood, I'd been so desperate to get away from my hot and noisy apartment, I'd even wondered about renting an air bnb for a break.

So it came to me to think of this place as my vacation rental. As soon as I did, the weight of judgment lifted, and it's been nice to be here. (Wealth is nice. That's the point, eh.)

Fuming in moral judgment doesn't help anything.
I biked to my place and got some art supplies to make postcards to send to Congress, including to my representative Ilhan Omar, who Trump and his minions are threatening. (Hometown support for her made The Guardian!)

Meanwhile, Sparkle and Bounce LOVE the house. There are so many places to play! 
They say they are rich anyway: "We always have plenty".

Besides the doll couches, I brought some handmade doll clothes home from work yesterday. Bounce doesn't want to take off her gold jumpsuit, but Sparkle tried on all the clothes.

The blue romper isn't handmade--the label reads "Francie 1965".

(That's a Saturn peach ^ Bounce is trying to roll.)

* I was feeling underpaid because I cut my fee in half because the house-owners are friends of friends, and they told me they couldn't afford the fee I first quoted because they have high medical costs, for cancer treatments. 

Of course I was sympathetic. Also, I totally wanted to stay in their central air-conditioning! So I didn't mind taking less.

Win/win!

But then I had to adjust my emotions when I saw, once I was living here, that the high costs include the Gerson therapy diet, which calls for juicing 17+ lbs. of organic produce a day, administering three coffee enemas to yourself a day, and taking supplements ($$$).

Gerson also suggests you buy a $2,400 Norwalk juicer and a second refrigerator to store your freshies.

Gerson has no scientific basis,
but I can believe you feel better if you're actively doing something––the ongoing shopping, juicing, and dosing––
the theater of placebos works!

That's worth a LOT.

And you know, as Captain Kirk says to Dr McCoy,
"It's not our business, Bones."

[That line doesn't actually go with this screencap, but, you know... We needn't be pedantic here.]

Moon Landing

I saved donated books about space all year to make a display for the 50th anniversary of the first Moon landing, July 20, 1969. 
(There were more books than these too.)

(Annika, thanks for Starman! I enjoyed it and was happy to pass it on--it sold right away.)

I was surprised that while I was setting this up, many people told me the Moon landing was fake.
I can understand why some people are attracted to conspiracy theories against the government (e.g, they feel disempowered and used by powers beyond their ken or control).
It's odd to me, though, that these people thought going to the Moon was so hard, we couldn't do it for real, that it wasn't just an extension of what we humans always do:
People have been getting in crafts and launching into the unknown since we discovered wood floats.

You have the Internet in your pocket, and you think driving to the Moon is unbelievable?
  
There're plenty of reasons to disapprove of the use of resources––you know Gil Scott-Heron's great "Whitey on the Moon"?
"A rat done bit my sister Nell,
With Whitey on the moon..."



And I can understand why people feel NASA doesn't represent them; but it's sad that we all can't claim it as part of our ongoing human drive to explore.

Some people don't, can't? enter into the science of it... and maybe can't judge the relative feasability of things. Maybe the Internet seems on par with going to the Moon to them?
They didn't grow up, maybe, watching things like this educational TV clip, "The Size of the Universe" from 1957, presented here on The Rewind by Ben Leddy, son of Michael of blog Orange Crate Art.
 

My parents were big on mental exploration, so it's hard for me to enter fully into the mindset of people whose curiosity and imaginations weren't encouraged, or were actively discouraged. That's like a cold and arid planet...

I drew this, "asternot" in 1967, when I was six. My father laminated it, and when he died fifty years later, in 2017, it was still up on his bedroom wall. 
In fact, it was practically the only sign of my existence in his house.

If I'm going to be represented by one thing I did, this one's fair.

Cat Bite

Bounce extended the hand of friendship to Anna, one of the cats I'm house sitting. It did not have the intended effect.

 
(Bounce is wearing the apron I made for her when she came to work with me.)

Side by Sides

A couple side-by-sides:

Shelves in the Literature/Fiction section.
Shakespeare, Not Stirred is a cocktail recipe book, with quotes.

I cull books every so often. The hardback Anita Shreves haven't sold in a year. Their next stop is the 33¢ Bargain Shelves; then they get boxed up and sold to a recycler.

According to Books4Paper, "The  current recycling process strips the books of their ink and turns them into a pulp that can be recycled back into paper." It's hardly green, but better than a landfill?

Not all books get culled. Those Trollopes haven't sold in a year either, but I keep classics like them on the shelf. Ditto the Star Trek books.

Gone, Tree.

I'm going over to my month-long house sitting gig after work today. I asked Sparkle Orange and Bounce if they want to come--I would like to get to know them better. 
They did want to. 

As I was packing them in the bike bag, they said they wanted to say thank-you and good-bye to the Japanese tree lilac next door, the one that was unceremoniously cut down last week. 

Of their own accord, they said the Heart Sutra for the tree. 
They weren't even here at the time of the Bee Burial, when Mz taught the others this prayer. The others must have passed it along.

Gaté, gaté (Gone, gone), Paragaté (Gone beyond), Parasamgaté (Gone utterly beyond)
Bodhi! Svaha! (Awake! YAY!)

Double rainbow!

I'm moving!

As I was biking home, I didn't recognize many of the streets I was on.

It's good I'm going house sitting for a month--I'll move on Sept. 1, or earlier.

I went out to dinner to celebrate. On the way home, I saw a double rainbow, which I've never seen before. 

Everything at Once!

What a whirl!!!
When things come together, sometimes it's all at once.

Saturday morning, I went into work and they asked if I'd like 12 more hours, working the cash register.
Yes!
I'd RATHER cashier than do more social media, etc---I love working front of house and meeting more customers, seeing what people buy.

It runs the gamut:

A local sex-worker (the store is in an area with a lot of street business) bought a bag of broken jewelry to make her own (I think she sells them--I told her to bring some in), and another woman bought a copy of Stendahl and a vintage Paris ash tray, "for Bastille Day", she said.

So, that'll put me at 32 hours/week, which is perfect!

Saturday evening I came home to a message--could I house sit for a month starting in four days? 

A huge house and two cats in a quiet neighborhood--with---oh, blessed day--central a/c!

I've pretty much retired from house sitting, but we're heading into the hottest part of the summer, so this is great timing, and I said yes.
Also, living with Mz is tight quarters, and, as I've been saying, I'm unhappy with my neighborhood (noisy, tree killing, etc.)

So--this is a respite till I can move.

Finally, this afternoon I'm going over to the bungalow house (built 1923) to talk about how we might share the space!
We both say we want this to work, so I am hopeful.

A one-story variation on this:

Growing Up?

Left: Book cover of The Anything Box by Zenna Henderson, 1977
Right: oil painting donated to the thrift store, eyeglasses suggest 1980s

Mystery Teapot

I post a Mystery Item every so often on the store's FB. It has to be a donated item that I truly don't know.

This month:

Pick yourself up, dust yourself off....

... Start all over again!

An unexpected possibility has come up.
I messaged some people that I'm looking for a roommate situation, in case they know of anything. A longtime friend wrote back that she's been thinking of sharing her two-bedroom house, now her grown son has moved out.
This is the little house, in a neighborhood with far, far lower population density than my current one.

There are some issues (of course), but I'm pretty jazzed about this possibility. I'm going to go over next week sometime to talk about how we might share the space.

If I move here, I'd be oriented differently to the city and its waters. Ever since I moved to the city when I was nineteen, I've lived close to the chain of lakes not far from downtown.
This is away: close to the Mississippi River, and closer to twin city St. Paul (just across the river). 

She'd be happy to accept the same low rent I'm paying now, so I can afford to stay in my job! The thrift store is between us, so from her place, I'd only have to bike a couple more miles to work.

Stretch

I'm attracted to living in an unfamiliar neighborhood. 
For years after my mother's death, I didn't go much beyond a mile radius (if that! more like a five-block radius for a long time).

When Mz moved here eight summers ago, I was energized to go exploring with her, but when she moved out four years ago, I slumped back into my familiar routines. Working from home, mostly, meant I never had to go far.

The thrift store has activated my bounce again. Contact with people, physical work, even just biking the couple miles to work in a different neighborhood have all energized me.

I want to stretch gently into the city, into more life, like starting do to physical therapy exercises for frozen muscles.


 I'm holding myself back from getting too excited about moving because if this doesn't work out, I want to stay calm for what might be a long process. 

I want to cultivate patience and trust that even if this doesn't work out, something will, eventually.

But the excitement I do feel shows me that I am ready and eager to stretch.

A Pilgrim's Life For Me

I. Rest and Read
Wearing her scientist blue shirt,  Low is advising the bunny who has a tummy ache: 
Rest and read, and eat fewer powdered sugar donuts.

I myself have an infected tooth. I'm allergic to penicillin, so I have to take an antibiotic with a broader spectrum, which, the dentist said, means it kills more good things.Which is bad. After 24 hours, my stomach already feels sour, even though I'm taking the pills with yogurt & probiotics. 

Nine more days.
And then, a tooth extraction.
Oh well. 
Worse things happen at sea. Like, I could have an infected tooth and be at sea.

Cartoon from 1889, according to blog Words, words, words.

II. The Pilgrim's Pack

Meanwhile, I'm continuing to clear some of my belongings. When I walked the Camino de Santiago, I loved owning (for those five weeks) only the necessities that I could carry. A change of clothes, ibuprofen, and, most importantly, water.

I've always wanted to live in an almost empty room. In reality, I love some of my possessions too much to jettison them. I need my laptop and the Orphan Reds, . . . and a few essential Bears!!! 

Relatively speaking, for a modern American I don't own all that much. I want to lighten the load considerably. Thinking about moving, which I am, I'm excited that that's an invitation to strip down my possessions. I'd like to be able to move house on my bike (mattress excepted). (Also, in this climate, you have to own clothes and bedding for a 100-degree spread of temperatures. That's a lot of warm wool and down, as well as sandals and flimsy cottons.)

Anyway, after writing that I'm only "sidling up" to the idea of moving, now I'm committing to it.
(I still don't want to commit to a timeline, so I'm not telling my house-owners yet.)

Remember the house next door to me, how there was a murder a few years ago? 
And then last summer there was a fire?
The new absentee landlord has a crew fixing it up now, and two days ago they cut down (murdered!) all the trees in the backyard––three of which shaded my apartment––one of them a big, beautiful Japanese tree lilac.
I wept.

I suspect this is in preparation for paving the backyard for parking... Because we sure need more cars and less trees, right?
And right below my window, too.

Even if that's not the plan, I've had it.
I've been wanting to move for longer than I've admitted to myself.
Money has been the biggest impediment (well, and inertia, partly emotional), but I had an insight: 
not only is it cheaper, but I think I'd actually prefer to live with roommates!

That can be dicey, of course, but living with Mz (for four years, and now again this summer) showed me that I can handle sharing my space and that the benefits can outweigh the annoyances, given the right person (or the not-too-wrong person). 
That's an equation I keep coming up with:

EVERYTHING IS ANNOYING!
Do what seems right/ good/ desirable to you anyway.

I've answered three roommate ads on CL. One was phishing, one turned out to be on an even more noisy street, and one I sent just a couple hours ago.

It's exciting, but it's all a bit nerve wracking too. I suppose, for instance, it might take me longer to find the right fit, as an older person. 
Most of the ads are placed by people under thirty-five. Some specify that they want roommates their age. 

I wouldn't want to live with some lifestyles more likely to be led by young people, such as the polyamorous twenty-four year old whose two partners regularly stay over. Talk about cognitive load! And emotional... Omg, the potential for drama increases exponentially with each lover.

So, again, I keep saying to myself, there's no rush, this is not an emergency. I say this because after seventeen years of staying in place, part of me wants to be moved yesterday.

Low counsels patience. "Calm yourself."

The New People's Physician: Deep Respect

The New People's Physician, 1941--at the thrift store 

(we have only volume 1 of the set)

From the last photo: "The feeling of deep respect and love and that brings men and women together..."

"Deep respect"––I like that.

Staying Put, Moving On

I. Sustainable Kindness

I was going to apply for that full-time editorial job today––the deadline is tomorrow––but the very idea made me clammy. So I'm not.

The positive reasons.

I don't want to give up my dream job. The pay and management are a bad dream, but I am basically running my own little bookstore!

I am still learning at and enjoying my job too much to leave.I've never laughed as much at any workplace.
Mr Furniture took this photo of me lifting a box of National Geographics for a customer. (Weight training!)

And I'm able to be helpful--always at least indirectly by passing on good books, cheap (w/ proceeds to worthy cause), and often face to face too--sharing information or a bit of chat.

It's what I've long wanted--a place and a way to practice sustainable kindness.

On the negative side, the idea of going back to a sedentary writing job frightens me. I love that my job keeps me active. 

The idea of being surrounded by all college-educated folks again worries me a bit too. I am one of them!––but I've become more easily agitated by that culture and its common assumptions.

The other day, for instance, a well-meaning person of my type commented with outrage at social inequity, "No one could live on minimum wage!" 
I cringed. 
I know what they mean––they support raising minimum wage––but I just don't know about reentering a workplace where no one thinks surviving on minimum wage is normal...

Not that all people at any workplace would be only one class, of course; but, you know––the educational department of a history museum––it's a good bet there'd be a preponderance of the publishing types I've worked with for years. (Lovely people!)

Here's a thing: 
I don't want to activate the "let-me-call-out-your-assumptions" part of me.

I was at a dinner party once with a woman who worked with former offenders. She announced to the table, "I hate normal people."
(Ridiculous! All people are potentially awful!)
I don't want to become the sort of person who tells a table of people that I hate them. 

I feel much better now I've decided to stay put at work.
I'll keep looking for more paid work but not to swap out this job.

II. "Move."

I am sidling closer up to the idea of moving house.

I don't have to move at all.
I'm NOT committing to it, for many reasons (incl. my cheap rent), but if I let myself be honest, I'd like to live in a different neighborhood. The one where I live has the third-highest population density in the city. I'm looking in a neighborhood that ranks fourteenth.

For affordability, rather than getting a full-time, well-paying job, I wouldn't mind living with a roommate(s). 
Today, for the first time, I messaged about a roommate opening on CL. Most listings are by much younger people, and I know some wouldn't want to live with someone their parents' age, so I wonder how that'll go.
There's no hurry!
But I do like the idea of a fresh place, someday.

Cognitive Load

I read The Rosie Project the other night--a lightweight romance about a scientist on the spectrum who organizes his life in logical ways--including creating a questionnaire to find a wife.
Good for mindless distraction after a day of heavy cognitive lifting. 
That was the one thing in the book that struck me--the way the scientist factors cognitive load into his equation of daily living--how much sleep and food he needs.

It reminds me of how tired I was the first few months at BOOK's, and how my workmate Mr Linens helpfully resassured me that it was because I was having to make decisions all the time.
He wouldn't use the term cognitive load, but he knew how it works.

Starving for Books

My brain was tired after I volunteered yesterday for the first time at the Women's Prison Book Project. 
It was easy and fun work, filling handwritten requests for books (three per person) from women in prison from the donated books on hand. 

Often you have to make do, mix and match. 
Someone wanted esoteric books on UFOs and the like, but we only had something on angels. Not what she wanted, I sensed, but better than nothing, when you're sitting in prison.

One letter really got to me:

"Dear Good People," it read. 
"We don't have a library because there's no librarian. We are starving for books. Thanks for your kindness and generosity."

I was really hungry after the 3-hour shift. The WPBP is hosted by an alternative lefty bookstore that is near my first place of work in town, an alternative lefty restaraunt--Seward Café.
I went there for blueberry buckwheat pancakes after, to restore my brain's depleted glucose [not scientifically verified].

Roadside Wisconsin

I took this photo in Wisconsin, on my last trip with bink to see Auntie Vi. 
I never posted it because it's more intrusive than I want to be (I don't know the man and girl)––but now I look again, the background details make this a great snapshot of roadside America: 
the cheap-seat Megabus on its way to Chicago (the main option of people who can't afford cars––its documentary-worthy in itself); the gas station sign, TRY A BACONATOR; the half-obscured Wisconsin $ lottery sign.
So I'm posting it now.

Here it is, full-size. [Scroll right]

Books, Released into the Wild

Yesterday I took 8 bike-panniers worth of books to various Little Free Libraries in the neighborhood.

I love many of the books I gave away––the first two photos below show some longtime favorites––but I'm happy to think of them liberated, circulating.

The high humidity made my brain soggy, and I'm sorry I didn't photograph every book drop, as I'd planned.
 Here are just a few.

Only the ones on the right are from me:

Conan books are not from me, but I like the company they provide:

unintentionally beautiful use

A couple (unintentionally) visible mends, and a craft book used as a mat cutter/drop cloth...

Book Juxtapositions: "When you look inside, you see another world"

Some book pairs I set up at BOOK's speak to each other in their titles, others show pairs connected in other ways:
Signet paperbacks, in the first case, 
in the second, Nancy Drew inside-cover art (top orange, 1943; bottom blue, 1957).

 

.

That last one, above, is my favorite.

I didn't plan this display, below, and I didn't spot any pairings until I looked at the photo. The blurb on The Anything Box, top left of display, reads,
"When you look inside, you see another world".