Firebird, Not a Book

I. A Good Bad Movie

First, a mini movie review. bink and I went to see the new, final Star Wars (Rise of Skywalker) on Christmas-Eve day. I loved it!

It is not a good movie.
The first 100 of its 140 minutes follow a planet-hopping scavenger hunt. No ideas– or character development. The opposite, in fact:
Despite having shown us that the ranks of the white-armored storm troopers are made up of children and civilians forced into service, Our Heroes continue to slaughter them with glee.

Some of it is even execrable. Violence appears to be the only solution the Good Guys have, because, you see, the Bad Guys are Pure Evil.
A dead-ended and self-perpetuating pov.

So why did I love it?
The last twenty minutes wrapping up the whole nine yards were great and the conclusion was just what I would want.

VAGUE SPOILER:

***

In the resolution, the white-garbed hero, Rey, and the black-garbed villain, Kylo Ren, curl together into a yin/yang shape.

Let's see...
Yep, fan art is all over it (from way back):

But the union of male & female (etc.) is not the point--in the end, Rey has found/chosen her family, but she stands alone.

Rey reminds me of Red Hair Girl:
She is never secondary, never a sidekick, and she never melts into a puddle of need. She shows her emotions––she's afraid, confused, sad––but she's always dignified too, never the perky-quirky comic relief––no Hermione that way, or even Princess Leia.

(This reminds me of how I felt about Black Panther (2018):
surprised at how grateful I was for a story, even a not-very-good one, about a black hero--a black world--that is not a shadow, even an admirable one, of the white world. Big Boss had told me he'd cried watching that movie, and I can see why.)

II. Fly High Like a Fire Bird up in the Sky

Yesterday at the thrift store I bought a painted Russian box showing a red-hair girl being lifted up by (or turning into) a firebird. *
(The box is as tall as my hand, from wrist to extended fingers.)

I say "a" red-hair girl, but to me this is my Red Hair Girl, the one who left in September. 
A while ago, Low, who is in some psychic connection with RHG, let me know that RHG is in the Yukon (!). She traveled the Alaska Highway with the companionship of stoats and minks.

There was no mention of firebirds, but I wonder now if she has met one... Perhaps she will travel on as a bird across the Bering Strait to Russia.
Who knows? She is the most surprising of the girlettes.

III. Girlettes: NOT a Book 

bink got me the best Christmas present: a printed photo album of the girlettes!

bink was so smart to know the girlettes do NOT want to be characters in a storybook, as some well-meaning people have suggested.
"We are not characters," they say. "We are real."

Here's one of the interior spreads--from last Christmas, SweePo, Penny Cooper, and Red Hair Girl dressed as the Three Wise Men by bink, my sister, and me):

(Mz was wearing a Kirk T-shirt--that's where his face comes from.)
______________

* I found a reference for the scene on the box--the girlette is the prince from the tale "Prince Ivan and the Firebird" that inspired Stravinsky's Firebird.
From Wikipedia: 

"Ivan chases and captures the Firebird and is about to kill her; she begs for her life and he spares her.
As a token of thanks, she offers him an enchanted feather that he can use to summon her should he be in dire need."

Leon Bakst designed the costumes for Stravinsky. 
 Hm. Maybe bink, sister, & I could create a Firebird tableaux next...

Bakst's Firebird, prince, and princess, 1910:

These Russian boxes are expensive--this one has more complexity than the photo shows. The housewares dept. priced it $4.99. Usually when they've priced something way too low, I reprice it.
In this case, I bought it.

On Solstice, Onward

Penny Cooper (in two shoes!), roasting mini-marshmallows at the Winter Solstice bonfire

(This is maybe my favorite Orphan Red photo so far.)

Today is the day before Christmas. I'm going to see the last Star Wars movie with bink in twenty minutes.
The Rise of Skywalker is number nine, you know, in a nine-movie series. 

I'm not much of a Star Wars fan. I saw the first one when it came out in 1977, when I was sixteen, and then the next two. I dropped the ball on the prequels (and so did George Lucas).

I've liked these recent ones with the new hero Rey. She's sort of a Red Hair Girl...
This last one hasn't gotten very good reviews, but I want to see the end of a forty-some-year story cycle.  

Watching time move in real-time...
Last week I saw 63 Up, the latest in the British 7-Up series. The participants are five years older than me--close enough. I'd known one had died, but not that another one has a terminal illness.
I left the movie theater feeling sad, and also wondering (again) about how I am aging and how I want to be aging.

Moving house was hard---but shaking off seventeen years of inertia has been good.

Are there other things I want to shake up? Or, maybe I'm good going on as I am? I think maybe yes, I am good.

And so are you! Good!
Merry Christmas and everything to you and yours!
XO Fresca

The Windmills of Trump's Mind

Did you see Trump's latest rant, about windmills? 

“I know windmills very much, I have studied it better than anybody.”

bink said, "It is beautifully deranged. Too bad about the deranged part though."

It reminds me of the trippy song "The Windmills of Your Mind", sung by Noel Harrison (Rex's son!), from the 1968 movie The Thomas Crowne Affair.

"And the world is like an apple whirling silently in space
Like the circles that you find in the windmills of your mind!"

As Trump says, "You know we have a world, right?"

What I'm Reading (Or Not)

When I was sick last week, I took these photos of the books on the shelf next to my bed. Mostly I just read World War Z, but it was comforting to know I had plenty to choose from.
Most of these are from the thrift store, which I use as my personal lending library.

The Memory Keeper's Daughter is one of those past-its-sell-by-date bestsellers we get donated in heaps. I brought a copy home thinking I might give it a try. (Haven't yet.)

Some I've already read. I heard about The Salt Path on GZ's blog, I think. It's a travel memoir by a woman who, with her husband, walks England's 630-mile South West Coast Path after her husband is diagnosed with a terminal illness and they become homeless. 
I don't usually like travel memoirs; I started to skip the travel part and look for the personal reflections.  Worth it, though. [Guardian review]

^ Diary of a Bookseller's author Shaun Bythell enjoys portraying himself as a curmudgeon––he shoots a Kindle and mounts it in his  store, ha, ha. I found his book like his bookstore, as he describes it:
damp and chilly, with little natural light.
I still found his reflections on the trade interesting, but the only ray of sun I remember is when a man brings a Latin schoolbook to the counter, pointing out a schoolboy's signature inside--the man's father's. 
The man asks how much the book is, and Bythell gives it to him.

Roger Ebert's book should be called Good Movies. (A Christmas Story has it's charm, but "great"?) I enjoy reading the reviews, which are good.

A customer recommended Wild Trees, and HouseMate recommended Lamb, by "Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal" (I am sensing she and I have a different sense of humor). 

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is one of my favorite books, and I reread it every few years. It's been a few--maybe I'll pick that up next.

Poor Frodo--I left him stuck in a marsh somewhere... I submit Lord of the Rings as a good candidate for abridgement.

From Goodwill to Grunge is about thrift stores. Sounds fun, but it's academic, so it's got a lot to prove.

Heh. Never thought I'd be reading books like Fundraising Strategies for nonprofits. But I am. Because it crisscrosses with doing social media for the store.
The psychology of it all is interesting.

Need a Light?

Sometimes there is help for pain.

I. Ask, and it shall be given (sometimes)

I've been suffering from The Crud and I didn't go to work this whole week: the idea of handling dusty books in a cold warehouse was horrible. But yesterday I did go to the opioid training I'd registered me and Big Boss for (free, open to the community). 
It was excellent!

I've been saying––even before I called 911 for the guy od'ing in our parking lot––that the store should get Narcan (naxolone = blocks the effects of opioids). 
Big Boss had told me, "That could be difficult...".

The first thing the trainer did was to dump a boxful of Narcan kits on the table and tell us to help ourselves.
Any individual can get Narcan at the pharmacy, she said. You have to ask for it, but it's over the counter, not prescribed, and your insurance should cover it, even though it's not for yourself (to keep on hand to help others).

"What about getting it for my workplace?" I asked.

"I will come and do a training at your store and bring all the Narcan you need," she said. 

So, yeah. Another case of something being deemed "difficult" because NO ONE ASKED.

Ya go around as if you're living on Dover Beach, where there is "neither joy, nor love, nor light/ Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain"
. . . and then someone says, "Hey, want a match?"

This happened to a friend the other night.

II. Offer, and it shall be received (sometimes)

This friend bikes home from work at night without lights on her bike. Hers got lost or stolen or ran out of batteries, and she hasn't bothered to replace them.
Every so often a biker will yell at her, "GET LIGHTS!" which, she said, makes her feel more resistant to doing so.

(Isn't it funny how yelling at people doesn't win them over?)

The other night when she was biking home in the dark, a biker coming toward her yelled, "Hey!" 
My friend braced herself...

"Do you need some lights?" the biker called out.

Turns out this biker keeps cheapy LED bike lights with her to give away. My friend said she did need lights, and the biker stopped and helped attach them (they wrap and snap: no tools required), with no accompanying lecture on safety.

These two examples are how I want to be.

I want to practice being the sort of person who can...

1. Ask for help.
There may be help available, there may not be. If you don't ask the answer is no.

2. Offer help. 
Try to make it help that people actually want.
(Unasked-for advice or information is often not help; it's control.)

Both asking and offering and  can be risky. I hate being shamed or yelled at, and that can be the response.

The opioid trainer talked about that. 
"After they come around," she said, "people might be mad at you for interfering. I don't care if people are mad at me. I care that they're alive. If you didn't help, they'd be dead." *

III. Try, try again

Before I got sick, I mailed out a lot of Christmas cards. (Then my head filled up, and I couldn't handle addressing the rest of them, so if you haven't gotten one, I apologize.) I wanted people to have my new address---after 17 years in the old place. 

I decided to contact a few people I don't usually--in particular an old friend out of town who'd drifted away a dozen years ago. 
I think I'd hurt her in some way, but she never said, so I never knew. I wasn't sure she'd welcome a card, but I thought I'd try.

Yesterday evening, I stepped outside to check the mail, and on the stoop was a package from this old friend.
She is a chocolate maker and owns a chocolate house, and the box was full of her chocolates, including a tin of Sicilian Hot Chocolate––"dark chocolate blend brightened by orange zest"..

Some people who live here think all things that come in the mail belong to them:

___________

* P.S. A few good things I learned about helping someone who's overdosing:

1. Narcan only works on opioids. If you mistake a heart attack or something for an overdose and give narcan to the unconscious person, it won't hurt them.
When in doubt, use it.

2. Call 911 also.

3. The Good Samaritan law protects you, the helper, AND the person in need of help from legal repercussions. 
(But not the other people around:
"If the person has friends carrying drugs, tell them to go walk around the block when the cops come.")

4.  Narcan is temporary. (I didn't know that!) The person can slide back into an od 20-30 minutes later. Don't leave them alone or let them go off alone.

Today

I posted this on my workplace's website.
Quote from Frederic Ozanam, the founder of the society of St. Vincent de Paul (via vincentians.com):

And on my own, something I put together in 2017.
Spock's words are from a Star Trek episode from 1967 ("The Lazarus Factor"):

Spock also said: 

"Jim, madness has no purpose, or reason, but it may have a goal. He must be stopped, held, destroyed if necessary. " 

--from the Star Trek episode "The Lazarus Factor", 1967

What I'm Doing: Pondering Zombies

What I'm doing is being sick, my fifth day––with a cold, I think. Or is it a touch of the flu?
I'm not sure, but the treatment in my long lasting but mild case is the same––rest & fluids.

I'm eating oranges, drinking Breathe Deeply tea, and reading World War Z, by Max Brooks, for the third time––marveling that it's just as good this time around.  

I put this photo ^ on FB, and a friend commented that Max Brooks is the son of Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft.
I had no idea!
That explains it--whacky classy brilliance.

This time I'm noticing how well this story of a worldwide zombie plague lines up with our realworld problem of climate change--especially the beginning of the book about how the early signs were ignored.

Speaking of climate change, did you see the cover of Time magazine naming Greta Thunberg Person of the Year?
I immediately thought of the painting "Wanderer above the Sea of Fog" (c. 1818) by Caspar David Friedrich, which I first saw as a  book cover for Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

Like Nietzsche, this painting is interpreted all kinds of ways--
is the figure the conquering hero of all he surveys?  [according to an article in History Today, Hitler saw the painter's works this way];
or is he insignificant compared to the grandeur of nature, seeing only through a glass darkly/ a sea of fog?
The Time cover designer must have meant the latter...
(Don't you think they HAD to have known the painting?)

I've been wondering, why is THIS girl, Greta T.––out of all the young people speaking up about climate breakdown––the one who has most caught the public's attention?

Ideas, anyone?

I don't know, but I wonder if part of it may be that she has a rather bland young face--like my Orphan Reds, or Tintin. (Amazingly, Tintin is literally Greta T's middle name.) People (including me!) often are surprised that the girlettes' expressions seem to change in differing circumstances, though their simple faces remain the same–-so, they work so well to tell stories.
Of course Greta Thunberg makes some famously great expressions, like her "death-ray" glare in the direction of Trump. 

But still:

I went looking for info on the phenomenon of the appealingly bland face and found a New Yorker article "The Comfort Zone: Growing Up with Charlie Brown" (9/21/04), by Jonathan Franzen mentioning the comfort of such faces:

"The most widely loved faces in the modern world tend to be basic and abstract cartoons:
Mickey Mouse, the Simpsons, Tintin, and, simplest of all—barely more than a circle, two dots, and a horizontal line—Charlie Brown.
"It’s precisely the simplicity and universality of cartoon faces, the absence of Otherly particulars, that invite us to love them as we love ourselves.
"Our brains are like cartoonists—and cartoonists are like our brains, simplifying and exaggerating, subordinating facial detail to abstract comic concepts."

Someone on FB responded with a sad/crying emoji, but no comment--I'm not sure what they meant, but perhaps they saw this as meaning we see "The Others" as unlovable?

I didn't take it that way (though of course we are biologically wary of the unknown)---rather, that these are the blank pages in which we read ourselves. Like emojis, their existence doesn't deny complexity (though if all we had were emojis and cartoons, that'd be a problem of course).

People read Greta Thunberg all sorts of ways--from heroic Joan of Arc to a demonic Midwich Cuckoo--so she's sort of a mirror of the viewer––but I don't think they find her baffling.
Unlike, say, Emma Gonzalez with the bafflingly short hair, she doesn't confuse some people of my generation who get confused by things like gender complexities. Though Greta T. does talk about things like indigenous rights, they are secondary (though related) to the climate emergency:
Your house is on fire, she says. Haircuts are irrelevant.

Another attractive quality, if you find it attractive, is her lack of irony, in this age of irony. There are no sock monkeys in Greta T's speech. You might not agree with her, but you can understand her single-mindedness. 

I've liked her fine, but I'm already onboard with her message--though I admit she challenges me to do more. Or, to do less, like to eat less meat.

What made me begin to pay closer attention is the way she has twiddled Trump's tweets attacking her. I am in awe of how beautifully she's done this.
As you know, she has simply absorbed his (and others') inane descriptions of her into her own Twitter bios. 
(So, there's a bit of irony I guess.)

This whole scenario--a Twitter battle between the leader of the free world and a sixteen-year-old girl––is out of some dystopian novel alright.

My favorite tweak was Greta T's silent correction of Trump's errant capitalization. After he tweeted that she has "an Anger Management problem", she changed her bio to read, "A teenager working on her anger management problem."

Tweaking aside, she is refreshingly plainspoken about Trump's attacks:

"I honestly don't understand why adults would choose to spend their time mocking and threatening teenagers and children for promoting science, when they could do something good instead. I guess they must simply feel so threatened by us."

I guess so too. That, or zombies ate their brains.

Hutchette, and the Limits of My Nimbleness

Two blondie girlettes have arrived.
I got them because they remind me of my Finnish friend, a fan of Hutch (of Starsky and,), plus they also look like baby Hutches. 
Also because one has dog-bite marks on her foot and a chunk of hair missing, and I like those signs of life. (Also, being damaged, they cost a lot less. The blondies usually cost more, but these were two for $12.)

They were made as part of the Madeline dollworld, but I wasn't sure if the Orphan Reds here would accept them, or vice versa, since these girlettes are not Madelines (so they tell me).

The hand of friendship was offered and accepted. (Mir the Cosmonaut is the envoy here.)

One haircut and a jeans dress later, we have Hutchette.

Penny Cooper admires her pearly snap.

The other blondie is considering if she'd like a makeover, or what.

I discovered on Instagram that #madelinedolls have a fanbase in South Korea, where they get to wear tiny handmade sweaters--these by instagram.com/cookiememory

Do you ever feel pain when you see something you wish you'd done?

Pangs of envy, I guess. 
The thing is, I wouldn't be able to knit (or crochet) such tiny patterns. My fingers have never been nimble, and now I have a touch of arthritis, which handling books all day doesn't help.

If I could, would I?
Probably not--it's not really my personality. 
Best to go with what I do naturally. 

Like, I didn't write fiction in November as I'd intended. (I did start writing a Penny Cooper ghost story, but it quickly fizzled out.) 

"My brain is not nimble enough for fiction," I sighed like Eeyore.

Better to stick with my skills as a documentarian.
"Tree Decorating Day" is not fiction; it really happened––I was there!

Fiat Lux: Santa Lucia

[One of my all-time favorite toy creations, from 2017]

For Saint Lucy's Day today, December 13, "the year's deep midnight..."

"I am every dead thing,
         In whom Love wrought new alchemy."  

("A Noctural upon St. Lucy's Day", by John Donne)

Bear by me, after "Saint Lucy" painting by Francesco del Cossa (b. Ferrara, Italy), c. 1473, National Gallery, London, UK:

P.S. The round box on Lucy Bear's chest is the broken squeeze-box I discovered un-stuffing the bear. 

Other toy re-creations of art/images: "toy tableaux".

More Light

I'm trying to decide what to do with cool but very beat-up old books that get donated to the thrift store.

The ones in good shape sell, but the ones with, say, covers coming off usually don't. I'd thought they'd sell to book artists, but that's not really our customer base. I could try to sell them online, or buy them myself and reuse them (bind them as blank books)...

Some are rather plain. 
And some are crazy wild, like this book, LIGHT, from 1930, published by the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society (Jehovah's Witnesses). I see copies on ebay for about ten bucks.

We got some Tennessee Williams movie-tie-in Signet paperbacks from the 1950s-60s the other day. 
They were pristine for pulps (high-acid paper = brittle and yellowed). I put them on Facebook ($5 each), and a customer who saw them came in the same day to buy all of them.
"For display," she told me.
Yes--they're wonderfully lurid.

Information Retrieval Charges

It's my day off, and I have the house to myself: 
HouseMate has gone out of town to see a woman whose husband ICE sent back to Liberia yesterday, where the husband came from ten years ago. This American-born woman has two children with her Liberian husband...

ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] seized this guy almost two years ago and this whole time has detained him without charges... 
HM has headed up efforts by her Catholic social-justice group to help the couple file multiple requests for a stay and other bureaucratic matters. This cost thousands of dollars, which the group raised from parishioners and friends.

The whole thing is so much like a dystopian novel or movie, it's sometimes hard to believe it's real.

I won't go into details, except to touch on the least emotional aspect: 
the financial expense of it all. 
The government takes a working man away from his family, and now his wife (who works) and kids require government aid to make ends meet.
And holding this guy must have cost a fortune.
All because he had some legal misdemeanors when he first arrived in the United States as a twenty year old.

Ah--here's the solution to the expense, in the opening of the movie Brazil: Information Retrieval Charges--people found guilty pay for their own detention and interrogation.
[This guy wasn't "found guilty" since he was never tried for anything.]

Listen to the Minister of Information from 1:30 on--we've been hearing this sort of rhetoric since 9/11:

Social Media

I'm beginning to take up working my new 4 hours/week doing more social media for the thrift store.
I already post on our FB almost daily:
facebook.com/stvincentdepaultwincities

Big Boss wants to see more posts about What We Do--what our customers are supporting when they shop at the thrift stores.
I do too.
There's a ton of stuff we do that I don't even know about--supplying free winter coats to parishes, for instance. I can't post about it if I don't know about it--that's going to be the biggest challenge--getting in the loop.
Because there is no loop.
Or, the loop is closed: we are spinning our wheels.

The society as a whole suffers from a lack of communication--one hand does not know what the other is doing. This lack keeps us functioning at a low level.

This isn't all bad--there's a lot of the personal touch--but if we could get more traction, we could do a lot more of what we want to do––feed the hungry, build a more just world (that's literally in our mission statement, which says we are

“A network of friends, inspired by Gospel values [feed the hungry, clothe the naked], growing in holiness and building a more just world through personal relationships with and service to people in need."

Next up: starting an Instagram for the store--I need our password from Big Boss, who has not got it... (He will create a new one.)
It's like that.

Lots to do. Lots to think on.

Now I am going to bundle up to go catch the bus in the cold: only 1ºF!

Seven of Hearts

In the Dumpster at the thrift store. I didn't set this up! One of my coworkers must have, because when I'd first noticed the toy soldier (broken), he wasn't in the shrubbery.

Advent #2

 Yesterday afternoon, bink, Mz, & I went to see Ninotchka (1939, Greta Garbo) at the nearby micro-cinema, which is having a Ernst Lubitsch film fest--culminating with The Shop Around the Corner on Christmas Day, which I haven't seen in many, many years.
Last Sunday was To Be or Not to Be (1942), a comedy about World War II made during WWII. Fascinating. It sort of reminded me of The Producers (1967)--I wonder how much Mel Brooks was inspired by it...

The first half of Ninotchka was great--Garbo throwing zingers as a strict Soviet emissary. I could have skipped the second half--once she falls in love in Paris, who cares?

We came back to my place for a bonfire, this second Sunday of Advent, with HouseMate. Only a few of the girlettes could be bothered, but my friend Julia came over for the first time.

I made a vegetarian Indian meal:
potato-apple-coconut milk curry, and bell peppers and kale stir fry, with lentil dal, and rice. 
I've been eating way more meat, and way more food in general, than I like, in the past few months since I moved. A big pile of greens is so welcome.

Today I am writing up a Social Media Plan for the store. 
I don't know why Big Boss wants such a thing all of a sudden, after declaring he wants "no written policies" in the spring. Maybe he's working off some hidden agenda. He doesn't tell me half what's going on.
It's a great idea. I'd written up a preliminary plan a year ago... which he'd ignored. It's not worth finding again--now I've been at the store longer, I see it differently: 
much more about building community and serving needs, and much less about trying to entice shoppers for vintage items. 

Researching thrift store marketing, I read that poor shoppers will go to thrift stores all over town, but richer shoppers won't go into poor neighborhoods. 
I can see it's not appealing to middle-class shoppers to shop somewhere where people shoot up in the parking lot.
Nor is it appealing to poor people, of course, but if they live there, that's the way it is.

The Christmas Giraffe/ Home

Lots of houses in my new neighborhood are decorated for Christmas. This light-up giraffe is my favorite decoration so far.

I'm working on my Christmas cards this weekend. 
I need to start a new address book--my old one is full of crossed out addresses. I feel melancholy paging past aunties and uncles dead and gone. But most of the x'ed-out friends are former friends for a reason.

Since Facebook, like lots of people, I've been in contact with friends from the past I'd lost touch with. After a quick flare of interest––"Where've you been all these years?!?!"––usually those connections have flickered out.
The ones that existed in the first place because of circumstances, not mutual love, anyway. 

Those reconnections can be fun, however long they last. 
Recently a man contacted me (through this blog, actually) whose mother used to date my father. Last time this man and I saw each other was forty-some years ago, when I was eighteen and he was ten. 
Now he's working in outer space! Well, not exactly, but he's in space research--how cool is that?

Other reconnections are painful. 
I'd mentioned last year [here] that Mary, the love of my mother's life, had contacted me on FB. It'd also been about forty years since we'd seen each other. 
At first it was wonderful to revisit the past with her--it was like one of those dreams where you see someone you loved who is now dead. 

Then I started to have bad dreams. Some of the bad things stirred up had come from Mary, but she couldn't/wouldn't admit that. My subconscious just wasn't having it, so with some regret, I said good-bye.
Still, I'm glad we talked.

_____________

It's the season to socialize, and I'm having a housewarming Solstice bonfire here in a couple Sundays. (If you're in town, come!)

At Solstice, I'll have been living here about four months––one-quarter of a year. 
It's going well (spores notwithstanding). Living with a housemate is an ongoing adjustment, but I LOVE the neighborhood––light-up giraffes! 

Sometimes I strongly want to go home. It's weird that I have no other home. But I do have people. Last week I spent a night at bink's, and last night I slept over at Marz's. 
Both times I came away feeling at home in the world.

Standing in the Place Where I Work

A quick hello before I head out to help at a printmaker friend's annual studio sale.

Things are progressing well at work, after the overdose in the parking lot. A volunteer found an Opioid Education event being held in a couple weeks in our neighborhood, and I signed up Big Boss and me to go.
BB said he was very interested: "This is not like the crack epidemic I grew up in."

And the new cashier and I have been emailing about poverty and charity. I sent him the SVDP quote by Jean Anouilh, adding that while I love the quote, one thing I hate about the SVDP attitude is how it talks about "the poor" as if they're someone else–– as if "the poor" can't advocate for themselves or perform works of mercy.
(In fact, I see poor customers (and coworkers) helping one another out all the time. )

The new cashier emailed that he tries to find the absurd and the humorous sides of things. This helps me too.

I've been reading Dorothy Day's autobiography The Long Loneliness. I have not once laughed, but it did help me to read that she differentiated between poverty and destitution.
Yes.
My earnings put me below the US federal poverty line, so technically I could be considered poor, but I am not destitute.

And this differentiation--between being a little lacking and being stripped bare––be applied to the spiritual, mental, and emotional plane too.
Dorothy Day, you know, advocated voluntary poverty, a richness that is the opposite of spiritual destitution.

“We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.” --Dorothy Day

I sort of hate community--it's so annoying--but at work I seem to have found a place I can stand happily, at least for now.

Me, far left, with a couple coworkers

The Skating Girlette

My sister went to a Jungian Grief Workshop recently and told me it had included "symbolic work with totemic objects".

The girlettes and I do that every day, I said. 

Yesterday [see earlier post], I really needed it.
After calling 911 for a guy overdosing in the parking lot at work, followed by an intense conversation with a new coworker about race and class, I went home and got Minnie ready for her photo shoot as The Skating Girlette.

I rushed on my bike down the icy streets three blocks to the lake to get there in time for the light of the setting sun.
The ice along the lake shore had formed just enough to support Minnie on her plastic stand. (I got very damp, crouched on the snowy banks.)

This is one photo from the shoot--I'm getting a different one printed as a Christmas card, but I couldn't wait to share Minnie. 

Based on "The Skating Minister":

Stay Curious

The store hired a new cashier––a college-educated white guy in his early forties. He's an artist, a musician, and a regular customer––he buys LP records––but turns out he's green in the ways of the store. (I sensed that--not sure I'd have hired him myself, but I think a lot of good could come of it.)

He gave me a ride home yesterday, his second day.
As I was getting into his car in the parking lot, the passengers in the car next to us became agitated. I could see through the open window that the driver of the car looked unconscious. 
His friends were yelling, trying unsuccessfully to rouse him. A woman got out and began digging through the full trunk of the car.

I'd noticed a syringe on the ground outside the car, so I guessed the driver was overdosing.
I got out of the car again and asked the friends if I should call 911.

"Yes! Call 911!"

Turns out, the friends had already administered Narcan ("naloxene", to reverse the effects of opioids), but the guy wasn't responding. The woman was looking for more in the trunk, but there was none. 
(And the store doesn't have any. This is the second overdose I've seen outside the store in 16 months. Maybe we'll get some now.)

I love 911 workers. They talk in a flat, neutral tone, which brings my blood pressure down. They passed me to a paramedic who stayed on the line with me till the police came into sight, which happened just after the driver snapped back to consciousness.

I'd hear Narcan works like magic, and, wow, yeah:
the driver went from looking like he was near death (as I suppose he was), to being wide awake . . . and eager to drive away.

His friends piled back in the car and they were heading out of the parking lot just as the cops were pulling in, blocking the way. 

My coworker had already pulled out of the lot, so I joined him. 
I didn't see any reason to stay. I'm assuming the driver knew not to admit to anything, and the cops had no need to help and no reason to hold him.

It looked like it might get ugly though. 
The driver was a raggedy, angry-looking black man [he'd been yelling at his friends], and the white cop was walking toward his blocked car like John Wayne––not conciliatory body language...
I thought, "This is going to escalate".

Sigh. You see it over and over--we make things worse when we respond with fear-aggression.

I wasn't thinking too much of all this, since it turned out OK. 
For me, the intense part was the drive home.
My new coworker was freaking out, reasonably enough.
"That was intense!" he said. "I've got to wonder, what have I got myself into at this job?"

I laughed sympathetically. "Yeah, welcome to the 'hood."

It's like there's a script for well-meaning, college-educated white people, and all the way home, he was reciting it.
"I'm not x/y/z, but...; 
Why don't they...?; 
I'm nice;  Where's the common human decency?; I didn't do anything to them..." 

Basically it's all like, "Why aren't they more like me? I am the standard bearer of what humans should be."

I get it! He was displaying his cognitive programming. I recognize it in myself, as a white person.

I'm super glad we could talk. I'm helpfully reminded of where so many of my people [white people] are coming from, and I get practice staying open-hearted toward a person whose perspective often makes me tense up, close down.

I like him, and even though he was using phrases from a script, I respect that he was talking in pain and confusion, trying to figure things out. He doesn't push my buttons like those people I've written about who don't realize that they see everything from a one-point perspective:
Their own.
[UPDATE: Sad to say, he actually got worse in the coming days...]

So, I offered things to him that have helped me. 
I don't know... I tried not to lecture. But I was pretty revved up... Still, I kept repeating that everyone has to find the way that suits them. (This guy is a Christian, so it helped I could use some of that language.)
"I see our customers like Jesus on a bad day," I said.
Everyone's vulnerable. Look at every one, and all our coworkers too, as vulnerable people. 
 
"Give it some time. Don't judge--go in curious. 
Stay curious.
Soften your heart.
You are the guest in this world--act like the guest, not a social worker here to 'fix' people. 
 
"Saint Vincent de Paul said, 'Go to the poor, they will be your teachers.'*
Don't be the teacher, be the student. Don't try to teach people 'how to behave'---they've been taught. 
They've been taught. 
Mr. Furniture knows what it's like to spend ten years in a cell about the size of your car.

"This 'common human decency' you talk about---it's not so common, not to a lot of our customers. They're at the bottom of the heap. They've been hurt.
And hurt people hurt people, so keep being kind, 
but don't expect them to treat you well."

"Then what am I doing here???" he said.

"You want to be a saint, don't you?" I said. 
[What? Does he??? I have no idea! 
But he's an artist and a musician--in my mind, that's related.] 

"You want to experience all the ways of being human, right? You want to be able to write a song from their perspective, not yours? 
You know yours. 
Learn theirs."

He had to go pick his kids up from school, so that was as far as we got, but he emailed later to say thanks, I'd given him a lot to think about.
He also said he's surprised and chagrined to realize how much he has been "slumbering". "I thought I knew the score," he said.


So. Maybe I just offered a string of platitudes––a counter script to his––but applied to Life at the Store, both scripts do mean something. And because we share a similar class/race, I think we understood each other.

It will be interesting to see how we carry on.
________________

* Now I can't find that St. Vincent said that exactly, but he said stuff along those lines.

I was thinking, too, of his most famous "quote", which he also didn't say [it's from Jean Anouilh’s screenplay for the 1947 film, Monsieur Vincent ], but which fits perfectly.

"You will find out that Charity is a heavy burden to carry, heavier than the kettle of soup and the full basket. But you will keep your gentleness and your smile.

It is not enough to give soup and bread. This the rich can do. You are the servant of the poor, always smiling and good-humored.
They are your masters, terribly sensitive and exacting master you will see and the uglier and the dirtier they will be, the more unjust and insulting, the more love you must give them.

It is only for your love alone that the poor will forgive you the bread you give to them."

“A difficult and sophisticated manoeuvre”

Whew. Now that it's over, I can say November was a hard month.
HouseMate was not only infected with spores, but the side-effects of the antibiotics needed to kill them included depression and delusional thinking. 

Bad timing that this came up when we'd been living together only two months! HM lives with serious & persistent mental health issues anyway, which I knew. She has a support system in place for her usual life––but the meds knocked her sideways. 

She's centered again, thankgod. 

We went out for happy hour last night and had a good talk about what happened and how to go on.
Being in the house every day during this crisis, I was on the front lines, which I wasn't best prepared for. We talked about things like having helpful scripts to use––and names and numbers at the ready.

I also talked about needing boundaries for myself, including time alone in the mornings to write. HM is a big ol' extrovert who I think would  happily engage with people 90 percent of the time.
I'm more 50/50.

Anyway, life is more or less back to normal and I finally started preparing the girlettes for our next project:
a Christmas card.
Minnie is going to pose as The Skating Minister:

Here, Penny Cooper spots her as she practices skating in the position the Scottish Reverend Robert Walker used in the 1795 painting by Henry Raeburn: 
"The pose, as he glides across the ice, looks effortless, but would have been recognised by fellow skaters as a difficult and sophisticated manoeuvre."

It's so difficult, for the first time I'm using an artificial support--a plastic stand to help Minnie hold the pose--you can just see it, but I can put snow over the base when we're photographing, and maybe photoshop the stand out. I almost never touch-up the photos, and I've only ever used props that were lying around, like sticks and rocks. But I'm not a purist-- I'm more interested in creating a scene than in manipulating photos electronically, but whatever it takes to get the desired effect is OK.

I'm also dyeing the girlette's red coat with black ink. I hesitated because it was such a pretty bright red, but they voted for the somber mood of the original.
As it turns out, the synthetic red turned a wonderful dark-velvet color, not pure black--you can see the hat drying on the far left of the plastic pan--and the white tights dyed black too. I'm very happy with the color.

Now we just need the temps to drop! We've had snow but the lake is still entirely unfrozen... I may need to resort to artificial means there too, because I am eager to get these printed and sent out!

December Light

Yesterday I finished moving across the hallway. I swapped the room I'd moved into in September with what had been the guest room. Quieter and brighter--much better!

At 4:30 p.m., the girlettes, Pensive Bear, and I celebrated the first Sunday of Advent with an imprompu bonfire in the snowy backyard. (HouseMate knows how to start fires.)

I woke to a sunny morning.
Once again the girlettes have a nice set of windowsills to look out of, with a block of unobstructed sky.
The new room faces north, so the sun doesn't come in, but it does bounce off the snow and the light-colored house next door. 

Low took a reading and declares that the light levels read "Beneficial".