Map: Where it is; where I am (work & home)

I'm safe at home this Sunday morning. I think there's a daytime protest later at the Government Center downtown. I'll bike there. I'm not much of a one for group protests, but this is ridiculous.

I want to be repeat:
I place the destruction in this & other cities at the feet of the "law enforcers", from the individual cops who killed George Floyd all the way up to the enabler in the White House. 

A friend in Finland emailed that she looked up where I live and where events have unfolded since ... when was it? Only Monday? Monday.

Looking at the map, my friend said, brought home that I'm RIGHT THERE.

Indeed.
So I made a map: The thrift store is top, left. I live bottom, right. 
(That's the Mississippi River, top right. Downtown is up the river a mile or tw .
L& M and Mz live one or two miles west of the Thrift Store--protests and fires there too---and extend in every direction from the Third Precinct.)

Last night the police cracked down hard [Guardian article] on anyone out after curfew. TOO HARD:
Shoot [tear gas/flash bombs] first, order to disperse second, or not at all.

Last night Mz was at a peaceful protest; HM's sons were out on neighborhood patrol half the night.

 --from "The Observer View on the Killing of George Floyd"  

.
If one smidge of justice for George Floyd comes out of this, I cannot regret the "collateral damage" of material things. . . .
My fear in recent nights, my sore throat from toxic smoke--these are NOTHING compared to the need to make the words "liberty & justice for all" REAL.

Broken glass swept up by kind humans and put in a trash can along Lake Street:

This has all been brutally and stupidly handled by the authorities, from the local police to the Supreme white-supremacist in the White House. 
Trump's reign has encouraged the sort of thugs who live here or who came to my city in order to burn it down.

And they still haven't arrested ALL four police who participated in the killing of George Floyd.

Did you see the latest video to emerge shows three cops kneeling on the man:
www.cnn.com/videos/us/2020/05/29/george-floyd-arrest-video-minneapolis-dp-orig.cnn

Night Four

Almost midnight on Saturday, May 30.
Another weird night. Maybe where you are too?

^ This is a gum ball in a broken dispenser. It was lying on the ground by the burned-out shopping mall yesterday.

I want to be clear: I place the destruction in this & other cities at the feet of the "law enforcers", from the individual cops who murdered George Floyd all the way to the White House. 
Yeah, destruction is not good, and it's not a sustainable political movement--I hope we move on from here. 

I took today off from The Thing That's Going Down Here.
[#SayHisName  . . . I mean, the uprisings in response to four police murdering George Floyd on Monday.]

My throat was sore from toxic fumes yesterday. I went to the nearby creek instead. Lying in a secluded spot, I fell asleep in the sun for a couple hours.

I woke up feeling better. I went home and cooked up the wild morel mushroom Ass't Man had given me yesterday after our day on Lake St.

So that was nice, but now it's another super freaky night here.
Marz called an hour ago. She'd just been in a totally peaceful march ("it couldn't have been more peaceful," she said)-- when the State police pulled up in cars, jumped out and started firing tear gas and flash-bangs into the crowd, with no warning.
Luckily she and her friends could get away without being gassed.

It was 8:30 p.m. (quite light outside)--half an hour past the curfew of 8 p.m. The authorities had warned they would come down hard on people breaking curfew.

I get the need for curfew.
Here's the thing:
the Twin Cities mayors and the gov said that last night, 80 percent the people arrested for violence were NOT from Minnesota. [NBC article]

I'd thought claims that outside agitators were among us was conjecture, or a conspiracy theory (to make us look good, like"we wouldn't do this"]--- but it is legally verifiable---and some are white supremacists.
HOW SCARY IS THAT?

So, I get the need for curfew, but 
THIS IS NOT THE WAY TO DO IT!!!
Firing tear gas with no warning, no order to disperse, just instantly attacking peaceful marchers.
I HATE this.

Below: A protestor holds a US flag upside-down while confronting the National Guard on Lake St. yesterday afternoon:

The previous [Friday] night's curfew did not hold AT ALL--there was no protection and, among other things, rioters burned down MY POST OFFICE---the one I went to for 17 years where the lovely, patient clerks helped one of the most diverse communities who needed the most amazing range of services...
Once, a customer came to the window with a handful of stuff not even in a box, and they showed him how to box it up and address it....
I used to love to go there even though you always had to wait in line forever...

Meanwhile, all day gangs are roving the streets armed with brooms and dustpans and garbage bags.
This is the underlying spirit.  May it prevail.

"History in Making"

Night 3

A good day painting the boarded up store windows, but it's not a good night. 
Smoke & Helicopters

A few blocks from the store--This is what one burned building looks like the next day.

I took a lot more photos walking around with Ass't Man who may be turning out to be a good ally. I stand humbly reminded that people can change and not to write them off too soon.

Too zonked to write more tonight.
Love you!

It's that simple.

Thank you, all who've commented or contacted me in the past couple days, as my city is rising up in love and rage. 
Never before has a simple message mattered so much to me.

I'm trying to reach out to people too, and I know I'm missing some because I can only do so much, and I'm frazzled.
This has been one of the weirdest days of my life. History and theory have squiggled off the page and out into the streets around me.

I told Big Boss I wanted to bike over to see our wounded store this morning.
"The street's not safe," he said.

I was going to go anyway. 
Then I thought, what good would I do? If I even got a flat tire biking over broken glass, it would drain my emotional energy.

How would that help anyone?

I biked to the grocery store instead and bought massive amounts of ingredients for lasagna. Cans of tomato sauce. Tomato paste. Chopped tomatoes. 
Five pounds of shredded mozzarella. Two tubs of ricotta. Eggs. Parmesan.  Organic ground beef.
Garlic.
Onions.
Parsley.
Eggplants.
Red bell peppers.
Zucchini and summer squash. 
Two boxes of lasagna noodles.

During the stay-at-home, a nearby community center has been giving away full meals in single-use aluminum pans. I've picked up several. What use will these ever be, I'd wondered as I washed and saved the foil pans.

This afternoon I baked lasagna in three of them. 
I asked bink to drive me, and together we took one pan of lasagna to BB, and one to Ass't Man. 

The two men are about the same age. They have children about the same age.
BB is black.
Ass't Man is white. 

When Ass't Man had started at the store, he'd said a hundred ignorant things nice white people say about race. (I've said them too.) To wit, "I don't see color."

Today he said, "Now I'm seeing my white privilege. That could have been BB the police had on the ground for nothing. And he's the best person I know.
But they wouldn't have done that to me."

It's that simple.  

❧ ❧ ❧

 
Now it's bedtime. Helicopters have flown overhead, but not incessantly like last night. 

I'm not going to look at the news before I turn out the light.* 
Here's how much I need to know:
enough so I am motivated to move, and in the right direction.
Too much more, and I'm paralyzed.

If the store's street is quiet tonight,  tomorrow we can go clean up.

❧ ❧ ❧

* I lied. I just checked Facebook. Despite local organizers' pleas for nonviolence, protestors occupied the Third Precinct police department, a mile away, and set it on fire an hour or so ago.  [Later, arsonists were caught and charged for this and other fires--the arsonists were mostly white, mostly not local protestors.]

The National Guard is coming in. 

And the police who killed George Floyd have still not been charged.

There's the whopwhopwhop of the helicopters again. 

I don't usually talk in these terms, but if you're inclined, now would be a good time to pray for peace.
Or write a letter. 

Or... bake some lasagna to share.

Love you all! XO Fresca

Where are the peacemakers?

OH NO!!!
Big Boss just sent photos of the store---it's broken! 
BB said exactly what I'd posted last night: 
"Hurt people hurt people."

I blame the police and the leaders in power in my city:
I know this is a fantasy, but they IMMEDIATELY should/could have (and still should!) set up Listening Sessions to meet with the protestors. 

The protestors have every legitimate right to be angry and frightened and to seek justice, after four police participated in the killing of George Floyd.

We would not have looting and fires--which I can smell this morning––if the legitimate demands for justice had not been met with force and distance--riot gear and tear gas.

And why haven't the perpetrators been arrested? For god's sake, after that video, what proof do you need?
 
This is what I posted on the store's FB:

Helicopters

It's 1 a.m.
Having a hard time getting to sleep because of helicopters circling for hours now.

I live near the precinct building of the [now former] policemen who killed George Floyd. Demonstrations calling for the arrest of the four men involved in the killing have turned violent. Cops shooting teargas and standing  on top of buildings,  civilians looting nearby stores and setting an auto parts shop on fire.

Hurt-people hurt people.

What I Posted About the Murder of George Floyd

My workplace has no social media policy. I'm never sure how far my authority extends on our Facebook. Mostly I post pictures of stuff. Easy.

But sometimes something happens outside my usual purview.
Like, the police murder a black man a mile from our store.
[New York Times article contains a video of a cop kneeling on the neck of George Floyd, while Floyd pleads for his life. I can't watch it.]

What do I do?
I use our Mission Statement as a guide:

“A network of friends, inspired by Gospel values, growing in holiness and building a more just world through personal relationships with and service to people in need.”

A network of friends building a more just world would say something about the murder of George Floyd, right?
I posted this, using  the photo I'd taken at the protest last night:

As FB posts on this topic go, this was milk-toast. No "F.T.P." or anything.

Who would object to grieving violence and injustice?
Who? Well, ... have I mentioned we have a troll, "Thom"?
He lumbered out from under his bridge to object.

 The replies --many good ones, but some started to bicker about the meaning of "racism". I wasn't sorry to let those go.

Some people have emphasized that George Floyd was a good man.
It's good that's going public, for Floyd's family, friends, and his reputation.

But in larger, more impersonal social terms, whether a person murdered by the police is a good person or bad is beside the point:
Even if a person is a monster, the police are not exterminating angels. 

We do not want State-sponsored Death Squads.

Again?

 

Again.

At this evening's protest of a police murder by asphyxiation of George Floyd, a black man, about a mile from my house.
It was raining.

Back to Back

  . . . Hello!

bink & I back-to-back hugging (no arms) near my place, during a break in the rain yesterday. (I'm wearing the one-layer SVDP mask because all my masks were in the washing machine.)
.

Aaaand... now it's Tuesday! One more week till the store reopens.

No one worked yesterday because it was Memorial Day. 
"I just had 60 days off," I told Ass't Man. "I'd rather come in."

"Me too," he said, "but Big Boss told us not to."

Cool Old Books

I took photos of books for eBay on Friday, and I listed them from home.

Now I don't have to share my workspace with Mr Linens, I have room to store eBay items, so I hope to list regularly again.

Three sold right away.

I was especially happy The Good Shepherd by C S Forester sold––it'd been out on our shelves for almost a year, at $1.99. 

It's an ex-library copy, but it's still a nice hardback with dust jacket, from 1955--worth ten bucks. ($14 w/ "free" shipping (media mail costs about $4.)

I'd rather our customers get a first shot at cool old books, so in the past, I've mostly listed books I don't think will sell at the store (or not for much).

The Italian-German dictionary from 1874 wouldn't have gone for more than a couple bucks.

(I'm a little surprised it sold so fast on eBay, in fact.)

Billie Burke played Glinda the Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz, you know, so her signed memoir might have sold.
We're still closed though, so I went ahead and listed it, and I'm glad it went right away.

Oh, here's a cool find (not sold yet):
the 1925 dues-paid slip in an 1892 Freemason's manual, Ritual of the Eastern Star. We got two copies of this book––the other from 1900––so one I'll put that one in the display case at work.

COVID

Maura is now in her eighth week of low-level Covid. 
It's not lethal (pleasegod!), but it's a bit scary to see it drag on and on---like chronic fatigue.
She tested negative for Covid, but her doc said they were sure she has it. She even went in for blood tests to make sure it wasn't something else, and it wasn't.

 

[UPDATE: Eventually Maura was diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder unrelated to Covid. But for a long time the doctors just kept saying "Covid" without doing any tests for other things.]

Here's a recent article  about this manifestation (long-term Covid):

"Revealed: the long-term severe effects of Covid-19 that could go on for months: Wide-ranging and often 'bizarre' symptoms can persist weeks and even months after first falling ill"

Being run-down for so long has its own effects, so last week I gave Maura some holistic meds---the kind Marz had brought me to boost my immune system:
a good ($$$) brand of probiotics, tinctures of mushrooms and elderberries...

Meanwhile, I see people acting as if reopening the economy means the disease is lightening up.
I feel it too and have to remind myself it's quite the contrary!
I want to be MORE careful, as more people are out and about, and letting their guards down.

Still, I think the governor here was right to let some things reopen because social pressures were pulling the seams too tight.

For instance, the Catholic bishops announced they were going to allow churches to reopen in defiance of the gov's reopening guidelines.
As a Catholic, I am empowered to say the archbishop and his minions are

STUPID FUCKERS.

It clearly was a power move on their part. 
They met with the governor AFTER their announcement, and the gov. agreed churches can open... with no more than 250 people.

The gov went on to say gatherings of 250 people "terrify me".

Anyone who attends such gatherings had better feel they are right with the Lord, because they might be inviting a lot of other people to be meeting him face to face.

Or maybe just back to back, which is bad enough.

There is no upside-down in space.

I was low all day yesterday, and so was the barometric pressure––which, I don't even know what that means.

LMGTFY, self:

"Barometric pressure indicated the weight of a column of air. Approaching storms and wind cause barometric pressure to decrease. Rising pressure indicates fair weather."

How did I live to almost sixty (me, almost 60?!?!) without knowing that?  Ergh. Even if I live thirty more years in my right mind, I will die NOT KNOWING so many things. 
"Wait! I can't die! I don't know which way Earth rotates!"

Okay, no, I checked, and I did know that: as everybody knows, on a human-made globe, Earth rotates left to right (eastward).
Looking that up, I also stumbled upon Science Focus from the BBC, which is busting with things I need to know before I die, such as,  
"How many bananas would I need to eat to become radioactive?"
 
Not that directions apply to outer space. "A Cartographic History of What’s Up"
[scroll eastward to see entire map]

Marigolds

Penny Cooper helped our friend Stefanie plant marigolds this afternoon

Real Life Girlettes

These are girls, not girlettes, but they remind me of the little reds. Those faces!

1905, on Mississippi River Harriet Island, St. Paul, Minnesota

Inside

Inside some books donated to the thrift store...

Math binding religion

Emilie to Evelyn, Xmas 1903  
"Xmas" always looks like modern styling to me, but it's not.

"Fandom's Corner", from Super Science Stories magzine, May 1950: "We Go Forth in Boots Alone"

 

 Dental pain is universal...

 

The Right Stuffette

The triplets who arrived without clothing a few weeks ago have now procured coveralls.

They are ready to GO!

Into the Peruvian wild...

"We come in peace."

 

Abort mission...
 

(Guinea pigs courtesy of HM's son (they do not live here).

Dolls on the Rise

When I was little, I had an old (even then) composition doll called Blinky that I liked, but I've always cared much more about stuffed animals. Until now. 

So many amazing, old dolls get donated to the store. The sorters usually throw out anything dirty and broken--the best ones! I've started to rescue some.

(The sorters save the non-alive, pristine porcelain ones--scam collectibles--the sort you see advertised in women's magazines:
"Only three payments of $39 each!")

Here are some of the ones who've come home with me. 

The Mars explorer is not a reject.

Below are some of the toys and things on my desk at work--all things donated to the store, except the Flying Tiger, who I brought in.

Do I like Captain America?
I admit, I do.

Book Displays, Home and Away

Books at Home (on the floor next to my bed)

I don't read mysteries, but I love the graphic on the green Penguin.

The Little Wooden Doll is very satisfying:
an old doll is scorned by some horrible children, so the doll's spider friends spin beautiful clothes and hair for her, and her mice friends take her to live with a little girl who is alone all day. 

BELOW:
Can't get into A Gentleman in Moscow--too much description of hotel amenities.

Librarian of Auschwitz & Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right (2016) were good, but their subjects were too anxiety-producing for this anxious time (Nazis and big corporations dumping toxic waste, and the Tea Party people who argue against environmental regs).
Will return to them some day, I hope.

Bringing Columbia Home  would make a good New Yorker article, but this book is way too reverential toward NASA (written by a NASA guy)--it's hagiographic.

Chuck Palahnuik's Consider This on writing is fun.
Reading about writing is a treat and a swindle:
you feel like you're writing better,  . . . without writing!

The Library at Night is a big disappointment. It's where Iturbe, the author of Librarian at Auschwitz, discovered his topic, so I ordered a copy. It's full of half-baked assertions.

Let's Make Something from 1953 is for children: it includes how to make a dart from a piece of wood and a nail--you sharpen the nail with a file to make a good sticking point!

AWAY

As I've started to sort donated books, I'm assembling a "things to do at home" display, for when we reopen June 1. 
With a slight macabre twist...

Asking Questions

So, here are a couple questions:

Have we been employing our time prudently?

 . . . Have we been eating:

❧ ❧ ❧ 

I've been thinking about why I love Big Boss––we're so different––and the main reason is, I love talking with him. 

He takes questions seriously, going deep with his answers.
He asks other people questions with big curiosity.
And––key––he doesn't take umbrage easily. (Not in one-on-one conversation anyway--he can be touchy about his honor in groups).
If I said that to him, he would probably ask, 
"What does 'umbrage' mean?"

[Huh. It just occurred to me, since it's from Latin umbra ‘shadow’, like umbrella, you know, the concept of umbrage is related to throwing shade (MW: a subtle, sneering expression of contempt for or disgust with someone). * ]

Yesterday BB asked:

Is Mayberry a real place? [I said, only in some white people's minds**]

What sort of magazine is the New Yorker? [it exposed Harvey Weinstein's sex crimes]

How're you getting along with your roommate? 
[I'm practicing Mr Rogers' "I like you just the way you are". At which point, BB told me he'd watched the Tom Hanks Mr Rogers movie A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood with interest because I'd recommended it, and he really liked it.]

Also yesterday, I asked him:

Where in the Bible does it say Bathsheba is one of Jesus' ancestors? 
[Matthew]

Would you be good, even if there were no heaven or hell? 
["I hope so!" etc.]

Are you a better parent than you were ten years ago? [yes, and he explained why] 

❧ ❧ ❧

When I graduated from college, people asked me what I would do with a BA in Classics. I said, "I want to lead a life of conversation."

An older friend said, "The trick is finding someone who can hold a conversation."

I thought he was being snobby, but in fact, I haven't encountered a whole lot of good conversationalists in person (or, not that many I can converse with, anyway). 

I don't enjoy conversation as a competitive sport, like some people do. I like the mutual exploration of wondering/wandering together. Asking stuff like, Why do you think the Bible lists Bathsheba as one of Jesus' foremothers? (Only a few women are.) 
BB & I both thought it was that it shows Jesus is like us--heir to the whole mess of being human.

"What is truth?"
_______________________

* On "shade", in Paris Is Burning (1990)


* On the death of Andy Griffith, Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote (in the Atlantic):

"Sheriff Andy Taylor was better than Mayberry and that's the thing people don't get.  People are nostalgic for Mayberry, but Andy spent most of the series (after the early years when his character was a silly hayseed) trying to improve it.

"To be nostalgic for it is missing the point. To be nostalgic for it is forgetting that Mayberry was based on a town where Griffith grew up on the wrong side of the tracks and where he was called 'white trash.'"

[Not me]: "I thought about killing myself, but ... you have to be patient."

A regular customer was peering in the windows of the thrift store yesterday. 
He's a neighborhood fixture.  A bit of a scarecrow, he walks everywhere, and every day he brings us stuff he finds.

I ran out to give him my back copies of The Economist--his favorite magazine.
He handed me a stainless steel dog dish, with crud on the bottom. (Steel wool cleaned it right up.)

"How've you been?" I asked him.

"Oh, terrible, terrible," he said. "This has been terrible. I thought about killing myself, but I said to myself, 'You just have to be patient. This won't last forever.'"

"Oh, no!" I said. "We would miss you so much! This won't be forever---we're reopening in two weeks--June 1, and everyone will be so happy to see you.I can't hug you, but I can touch you with this dog dish."

I tapped his arm with with the dog dish.

I wish I'd hugged him.
I do.
I could have washed up in the mop room and changed into clean ("clean") clothes from the store.
  

Anyway, I can see how this is going to go. 
The neighborhood is crammed with people, many of them living rough. There's a tent city a mile away.
A volunteer told me he'd helped served 80 free lunches that day, down the street. "No one was wearing masks."

Stripped Down

 

My coworkers are stripping the floor.
First time in years.
The store's floor-buffing machine is a dinosaur (above), so the guys are doing it by hand––with toxic chemical stripper, long-handled scrapers, and mops. 
 
They don't keep apart. They don't wear masks. Or gloves.
They don't complain.

One guy told me the stripper was peeling his hands. We have gloves. (We have masks.) "It doesn't matter," he said.

Do I want to be here?

I do.
Waiting for us to reopen is literally one of the things keeping that regular customer alive.

I try to be careful.

Two Layers

Now I have fabric again, I'm back to making masks.

All staff will be required to wear masks when the store opens. I chose fabrics that my coworkers who are averse to cute things might like.
Who knows?

The girlettes don't need face masks. They are cheeky! They're singing,
"We don't care a jot/ We don't give a fig!"

E.D. (exec. dir.) ordered the blue, cowl-style masks ^ (above).
Made from one layer of spandex.
One? This represents my question "Why don't people google" in the flesh. Two layers are recommended, and one should be high-thread-count cotton.
I sewed a cotton square in each one.  

Here are some finished masks. I made cotton ties because I don't like the way elastic rubs. (Also, I don't have any.)
The green and purple are silk (best combo w/ cotton), from Kirstin who wrote,
"The purple with gold thread is a Hmong textile from Thailand that I bought way back in the 80’s, and the green is silk from India."

After I make enough for work (twenty?) I'm going to make some for friends. If any blog friends want some, let me know. You can choose your fabric from the ones you see here. (Except the seahorses embroidery piece.)

❧  ❧  ❧

Speaking of girlettes, I watched the first Harry Potter movie (2001) last night.
I was horrified:
The wizarding bankers look like caricatures of Jewish bankers. 
Fat-shaming abounds, and capitalism. (Ron is teased for wearing hand-me-downs.)
Social ranking too--sometimes determined by "blood".
Even the logical Hermione accepts this. Though she will be taunted as a "mudblood", she tells Harry he's a good quidditch player because "it's in your blood".

BUT... 
Penny Cooper loved it! She didn't see that layer at all.
She saw brave friends sticking together and doing good. Also, non-human beings shown as having real, independent lives.

Doll Conference

Penny Cooper is back and is holding a Doll Conference.
I have no idea what they're discussing. "It's for dolls."

The pink fabric to the left is a sari from Kirsten, I'd ordered the Dolls book, and "Stay hungry. Stay foolish." is the back cover of The Whole Earth Epilog, by Stewart Brand & team. 
A copy was donated to the store and I brought it home for a little while before listing it on eBay ($35).

It gets attention because Steve Jobs quoted it at the end of a commencement speech in 2005. Jobs said:

"When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch.

"This was in the late 1960s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors and Polaroid cameras.
It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: It was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

"Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age.

"On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: 'Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.' It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish."

Here's the video and full text of Job's speech:
news.stanford.edu/2005/06/14/jobs-061505