Line Up

The girlettes have inhabited the dining room table where we're house sitting.
When I came home from work today, they were line dancing!

We had a good meeting this morning--Big Boss had printed out the article I'd emailed about Team Formation and read parts aloud.
Ass't Man was not pleased. 
I don't get him. But I don't care.

More later. I'm going to watch Star Trek with Marz---Day of the Dove, the episode where Spock says he has not enjoyed working with humans.

Serving with Humans

I'm packing up this morning to go cat/house sitting for seven weeks.
Even though I'll just be staying across town, I feel like I'm going on vacation!
The big house  in a quiet neighborhood has central air-conditioning and a shady front porch--I cat-sat there last summer too.
It's like staying in a nice airBNB except you have to care for two cats. Very nice cats; I like them, and  luckily it's no trouble to give them their medications.

It's farther to bike to work, but I can use the exercise. Last summer I took the bus, but I'm trying to stay off public transit, for health reasons. 

I'm going to work on--and I hope finish--my film/photo-montage , Undaunted: Penny Cooper in the Blitz.  I've packed most of the Red Hair Girlettes. A few want to stay home with the bears, to hold down the fort.

I'm extra happy to have a personal project to occupy myself.
Work was almost beyond belief this week. I won't go into the details--they were piffling. 
But the emotions they called forth went ricocheting like bullets around the store.

Is everyone losing their minds?
I'd have to say, yes. Me too, a bit.

I would be floundering if I were a store manager trying to repair and refresh a broken store that wasn't in good shape to begin with. But I know myself well enough to have refused a "promotion" to manager.

[deleted rant about a coworker]

At the end of a hard day, I thought about looking for another job.
Maybe I will. I really should earn more money before I get too old!

I came to my senses though. I'm not going to quit my job over this coworker, who is nothing to me, personally.

I quoted the logical Mr Spock to a coworker:
"May I say that I have not thoroughly enjoyed serving with humans?"

I'm one too, of course.

____________________________________

* Along these lines:

Penny Cooper, Undaunted

This time of violent tumult––plague! murder! fire!––puts me in mind of the Blitz in WWII Britain. 
For perspective and help, I've been reading about home life in Britain during those war years.

I came across this quote, below, that a young bride at the time took as her guide after she heard King George read it in his Christmas speech of 1939. He also said in this speech that everyone hoped for peace in the coming year, but if it did not come, "We shall remain undaunted"*.
(Quote and audio are in a Guardian article about wartime marriages.)

I like it. No need to believe in a literal god to find it helpful–– there never is a known, safe path into the unknown:

I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year:
‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.’
And he replied:
‘Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.’

The Penny Cooper Project

I've been wanting a big, creative project to occupy myself with, ever since Covid-19 began.
Nothing presented itself to me until the other day, when Penny Cooper was given a time machine.

Funnily, it was Ass't Man who asked me if I wanted that old bike speedometer at work. 
I turned it down.
Then I remembered my old idea to make a movie called Starship 379, made with objects that cost no more than $3.79.  Something clicked, and I took the speedometer.

(The idea is old, alright--I first posted about Starship 379 at the end of 2008.)

I showed the speedometer to a friend who shall remain nameless. 
She said, "It's like the chronometer on Star Trek that spins when they travel back in time."

And again, . . . CLICK!
I can make a movie--built out of still images--about Penny Cooper traveling back in time to the Blitz.

To rescue a little girl who is being evacuated from London... whom Penny Cooper has seen in danger, in some sort of vision.

Who turns out to be her own self.

That time loop is from La Jetée, an amazing 1962 short film made of still photos about a man who time travels and witnesses his own death. It's made of still photos, but it doesn't feel that way.

Oh--you can watch the whole 27-min. film on Vimeo.
https://vimeo.com/309034119

I first got the idea of making still-photo films not from La Jetée but from Mortmere's 2007 Star Trek slash fan-video, which inspired me to make my own vids.

"Kirk/Spock: The Prize (or, The Whipped Cream Maneuver)"

The idea of still photos is such a good one for the girlettes. 
Stop-motion filming them would take forever and in my hands, probably not turn out very well.

My main challenge will be finding a stunt double for Penny Cooper---to play the girl she rescues who looks "just like" her...

I've started looking for source photos of children evacuees at train stations. (I think the girlette may be in danger of falling under a train.)

I'd misremembered such photos as sweet. In fact, they're as painful as any photos of refugees on the move. 
But you do see amazing expressions on the faces of the children, who do remind me of the Orphan Red girlettes.

 Photos above mostly from the Getty, www.gettyimages.co.uk/photos/evacuee?family=editorial&phrase=evacuee&sort=mostpopular#
___________________

* Etymology of "daunt" (v.) c. 1300, "to vanquish, subdue, conquer," from Old French danter, ... "be afraid of, fear, doubt; control, restrain," from Latin domitare, frequentative of domare "to tame".
Sense of "to intimidate, subdue the courage of" is from late 15c. 

Penny Cooper is definitely the type to remain UNdaunted.

A package has arrived

A package arrived, to be inspected by Penny Cooper.
(All packages are naturally the property of the Orphan Reds, should the contents prove to be desirable. )

What's this?

It is clearly for us.

This is one of four perfect, and perfectly doll-sized, salt-glaze pots made by blog-friend and artist GZ of "ook?!".

Let summer nest in my hair!

Me reflected in a mural a few blocks from the thrift store:

A favorite movie for this time: Ingmar Bergman's Smiles of a Summer Night.
I was delighted --by a sense of fellow feeling---to read that Berman made it when he was deeply depressed---it was either make this film or commit suicide, he said.
(Or did he always feel that?)

Looking for stills from the film, I stumbled upon a quote I've searched for for ages---I couldn't remember it exactly, and I'd mistakenly thought it was in Wild Strawberries.

"One can never protect a single human being from any kind of suffering."

Seeing this old woman say this had helped me when I was young. 

(I'd clarify that we can save people "pain"––we can, say, catch a hand reaching for a hot stove–– but "suffering" is an internal condition we cannot directly protect one another from.)

I also love the young man who is trying so hard to be sin-free for God––inspired by Martin Luther's “You cannot keep birds from flying over your head; but you can keep them from building a nest in your hair”
–– but finally gives in entirely: "Let the birds nest in my hair!"

"Cream of Wheat" by Lucille Clifton

I take heart from Quaker Oats' announcement, after the police murdered George Floyd, they are going to rebrand their Aunt Jemima pancake products. Owners of Uncle Ben's and Mrs. Butterworth's brands quickly followed, and Cream of Wheat is being reviewed.

When multinational corporations decide it's worth a bucket load of money to rebrand their products, something has changed.

 

“Cream of Wheat” by Lucille Clifton––from Voices (2008)

sometimes at night
we stroll the market aisles
ben and jemima and me     they
walk in front     remembering this and that
i lag behind
trying to remove my chefs cap
wondering about what ever pictured me
then left me personless
Rastus
i read in an old paper
i was called rastus
but no mother ever
gave that to her son     toward dawn
we return to our shelves
our boxes     ben and jemima and me
we pose and smile     i simmer     what
is my name

 __________________

Bear & Forbear

My forbearance has been eaten by a bear.
 I have several examples of me being (or at least feeling) bearlike from this week. Here's the latest.

A Grown-up Person (who really is a Very Nice Person) told me that today is the equinox.

"Oh, yes," I said. "The longest day--so neat! . . .You mean the solstice, though."

The Grown-up Person was pretty sure it was equinox. 

 "Well," I said––BECAUSE I AM THE LIBRARIAN––"I always remember which is which because equi-nox is when night equals day in length."

They remained unconvinced. So they googled it up (yay!) and read me the definition: equinox is when the sun is closest to the equator. 
"So it has nothing to do with the length of night and day," said the Grown-up Person.

I thought of a section in the bio I'm reading, The Knox Brothers, by Penelope Fitzgerald.
Fitzgerald writes about her uncle Wilfred Knox when a young Anglo-Catholic priest joining a religious brotherhood called the Oratory of the Good Shepherd (OGS).
In the group...

"There were to be none of the 'quick of harsh judgements that harden differences' on anything or anybody, and this charity [––Fitzgerald adds––] would be hard to put into practice, because other people are not only infuriating, but boring. [bf mine]

The O.G.S. faced this from the beginning.
'It is fortunate for us that loving and liking are not the same thing. We are not called upon to like our neighbour, but to love him.' This comment by one of the Superiors, George Tibbatts, shows how practical unworldliness can be."

Oh so admirable. I would like to adopt that.
I confess here that I failed not to make a quick and harsh judgment on the Grown-up Person who told me that the relative position of the sun and earth has nothing to do with the length of day and night.

I didn't entirely blow it though. 

I did not bite the Grown-up Person. 

_________________________

Illustration from book donated to the store, Bear and Forbear:

Mornings

Good morning!
Probably it's not morning when you read this, but there's this temptation to say good morning, first thing in the morning––which it is right here and now, as I type in the shady front yard. 

I love how quiet this street is: one single car has driven by since I came out here at 6:20 a.m.
Would I like to live alone?
I can't afford it, but if I could? I honestly don't know...
I do know I'm much happier living in this quieter neighborhood.
I'm making an effort to get up earlier for a bit more quiet time alone--and--extra motivation--cool temperatures. It's 68º at the moment, but it's supposed to rise into the low 90s...

Happier, too, that work has settled down--it's mostly rearranging now, not cleaning up broken glass and turned-over desk drawers. Yesterday I relisted on eBay the books that I'd taken off because 
1. I couldn't get into the store to mail them
2. the post office was burned down

Luckily, that's not entirely true. The post office in my neighborhood burned (and the one in my old neighborhood), but the one closest to the store was only damaged and has now reopened. 

Of course the lines are long, since everyone's going there.
Still, I like going to the p.o.--it's sort of like going to the airport, in the old days when you could go to the gates and watch planes taking off: a reminder of the wide world.

Anyway, I put the books back on and one immediately sold, which was heartening––a signed copy of Wanda Jackson's autobiography Every Night Is Saturday Night. 
I didn't know who that was--she's a singer/songwriter known as the Queen of Rockabilly. Rolling Stone compiled videos of her 10 essential songs, including "Hard Hearted Woman".

I think I'll be devoting the next couple weeks to eBay? It's that or move furniture, which I am not expected to do. I like it, so that's good. It's also a reminder of the wider world--this book is going to California.

Working with books lifts my mood. It's what I love and want to share. 
But I like vintage stuff too!
I listed my first non-book item in ages: a Parker roller-ball pen & mechanical pencil set. 1982? I love the arrow/airliner look and the brushed metal.

Does the "5 Accident-Free Years" make it more or less desirable?
Where I'm sitting, it seems hilarious.

Meanwhile, the MN legislature is in Special Session since last week, dealing with the fall out––financial and otherwise––of the "civil unrest" [after the cops murdered George Floyd], including considering changes to policing.
For instance, the Commerce committee is holding an "Informational Hearing on Liquor Licenses being granted to temporary locations in Minneapolis and St Paul".

Looking at the calendar of the legislature... I marvel people can stand to do this work. Even to write up the descriptions of the meetings---so painfully persnickety.
Here's an agenda item:

"Public safety peer support activity admissibility of statements and critical incident stress management services limitations."

What?

Oh, wow--talk about public safety: 
a blue jay has been fluttering under the house eaves the past couple minutes. Turning around, I see it is plucking grubs(?) out of a wasp nest, flying up to the roof and eating them, one by one, out of a big hold in the nest! 

Bookplates, for use

Susan cleaned up a couple bookplates I'd photographed in old books--took out the handwriting, so they can be printed for use. 

I'd posted this sower on FB, and people had guessed it was by Rockwell Kent. Finally found the artist this morning---the somewhat similar printmaker Lynd Ward created this bookplate in the 1940s. I found it and several other Ward bookplates in this blog post from the Smithsonian. (It's in their collection.)

Squirrel Watch

Low is concerned about marauding squirrels digging up Frederic, the thrift store potato. She has installed squirrel guards: herself, and an old grill grate.
She is out there day and night. (. . .Also, she likes listening to the roots growing.)

Peony Season

Dunning-Kruger

(Michael, have you seen this?)

"The Dunning-Kruger effect is a type of cognitive bias in which people believe that they are smarter and more capable than they really are.
Essentially, when people lack the skills needed to recognize their own incompetence."

Yeah, . . . And it's not only people we disagree with who have this cognitive bias, eh? We walk among us.😉

"How to Avoid the Dunning-Kruger Effect"
--from Psychology Today
"To avoid falling prey to the Dunning-Kruger effect, people can honestly and routinely question their knowledge base and the conclusions they draw, rather than blindly accepting them. As David Dunning proposes, people can be their own devil’s advocates, by challenging themselves to probe how they might possibly be wrong."

The Creek and the World

"Beyond the Wild Wood comes the Wild World," said the Rat. "And that's something that doesn't matter, either to you or to me.
I've never been there, and I'm never going, nor you either, if you've got any sense at all.”

--Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows, Chapter 1, "The Riverbank"

I'm going to the creek this afternoon, to meet (at a distance) with a friend I haven't seen since before Covid.

Running water is restorative.
I could have used that yesterday, a day off work, but I didn't have the energy to go even half-a-mile. I did manage to tend the potato with the girlettes, but otherwise I was mostly reading in bed. *
Work the day before had been so heavy, I felt like a squashed bug. 

Here was the nadir of that workday:
I was cleaning the office. Looters had dumped the contents of the desk drawers onto the floor. I'd swept the carpet, but couldn't get up all the many individual staples. 

I was picking staples out of the carpet when my coworker "Lead Cashier" (LC) came in.

She is originally from Hungary and had given an interview about the police murder of George Floyd to a leftist newspaper there. 

Hungary, you may know, is in the hands of leaders, starting with Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who support the view that Nazi Germany and its Axis allies (including Hungary) in WWII were the "heroic defenders of Europe".
[Article "My SS Uniform Is Just My Heritage"]

LC wanted to read me a couple comments Neo-Nazi Hungarians had left in response to her published interview.

Did I want to hear Neo-Nazi comments while kneeling on a filthy carpet picking up staples dumped by looters after a lynching?

Why, no. I didn't.
But what can you say to someone who is being targeted by such people? "Go away, that will ruin my day"?

If we're in this together, as the current saying goes, then we have to bear it together, right? If we can...
At least Lead Cashier and I were wearing face masks, so we couldn't pass the plague to each other!

And it did sort of ruin my day.
Not the comments so much, which were what you'd expect––almost laughable, in fact, if they weren't so scary––but seeing their effect on LC. Not just the personal attacks, but that her homeland has been taken over by such people.

It's like if Trump wins in November and Makes the Confederacy Great Again.

Whatcha gonna do?
If we're lucky, we can go sit in a pleasant spot and take a break from the Wild World.

"The Riverbank" illustration by E. Shepherd

 *I'm reading The Knox Brothers by Penelope Fitzgerald, a biography of her father and his brothers, one of whom married the daughter of Ernest Shepherd, Mary, who illustrated the Mary Poppins books. Or was it Penelope Fitzgerald's brother who married Mary Shepherd?

I don't have time to check right now--I'm off to the creek!

Protector of the Potato

Low, in the blue shirt, has been named Protector of the Potato. Here, she adds more dirt to Frederic, the potato that survived three months in the thrift store. Low's assistant, Penny Cooper, is waiting to spread the dirt with her rake.

 

Big Boss passed my request for a raise to his boss, E.D. (exec director). BB said to me, "I don't see why we can't do this."
Fingers crossed.
So, yeah, I should have asked a long time ago... especially since the store doesn't have standard operating procedures or personnel policies.
Lesson: Make a fuss!


 

"Don't worry, it might never happen."

"Don't worry, it might never happen." 
This phrase can be condescending, often accompanied by an order to smile;
or, it can be a genuine, helpful reminder.

At my job, I should always call it to mind in the latter sense.
Today, the dreaded discussion of race never happened! 

This morning, Big Boss and I discussed the lists of "Things White People Can Do" that I'd emailed him.

He's especially unhappy with the churches' lack of response, and I always love discussing scripture with him. This is like the Good Samaritan, he said. It's not enough to wear a button, you've got to SHOW UP to help your neighbor.

Hear, hear.

But then, mid-afternoon, he left for the day without mentioning the meeting to discuss race with the other coworkers he'd requested yesterday.
I'm more than happy the meeting didn't happen--I'd already turned in my homework (because I AM THE LIBRARIAN).

 . . . 

Meanwhile, the store getting broken into is a weird boon: 
 we are cleaning and rearranging and repainting the closed store.
When we reopen (July 1? maybe), the store is going to be better!

Me painting bookshelves:

 

BELOW: "Lead Cashier" has been cleaning the cashier station---those display cases were smashed, and the area was covered in broken glass and strewn with jewelry.
"I am literally walking on pearls," she said.

Me with Lead Cashier:

Okay, so... this, below, is a boring photo I suppose, but to me it's an exciting development: 
You're facing toward my BOOK'S. The black shelves were moved from the opposite wall, across the room, where customers had to climb over couches to reach the electronics these shelves hold. 

BONUS: You can now see the exposed brick wall.
White people (like me) will love it!!!

Today a couple coworkers and I were messing around, putting on a long blonde wig and playing air guitar.
Aw, man, I hate my rule about not posting people's photos without their permission. I can only show you me.

BONUS: The people who messed up my desk looking for valuables did not take my toys! You can see Flying Tiger and others behind me.

A New Leaf

You remember I'd planted the potato that'd sprouted in the thrift store during Stay at Home?

This morning I saw its first tiny new leaf!

That conversation.

"That conversation" is the conversation about race.
Which Big Boss wants to hold at work today...
Lord, give me WOOSAH.

BB told me and my white coworkers he wants help because Concerned White People (CWPs) keep asking him, 
"What can I do?"

(I told him he could say, "Let me google that for you.")

Yesterday he asked us to think of responses and come back tomorrow for a conversation.

Lucky me, eh? to sit down again with a coworker who told me that "being nice" was key to racial harmony.
Guess they never read Martin Luther King Jr saying nice white people were more of a hindrance than the KKK...*

I want to be helpful though, so I went home and compiled a beginner's list for Big Boss to hand to CWPs. 

(I figure anyone who asks a black man for help with race--especially at this time--has not really considered their own place in the topic.)

I started with the most basic, nonthreatening list--from USA Today. It starts with "write a letter, make a donation" and works up to "educate yourself." 

I put together a reading list that includes links to online articles that people can read right away.
How many people are really going to read a lot of books? Also, books such as White Fragility––which helped me better see my white world--are on back order!

1. USA Today newspaper published this list on June 4, 2020,
"100 Ways You Can Take Action Against Racism"

www.usatoday.com/story/life/2020/05/29/george-floyd-death-donations-resources-justice-petitions/5282539002

It doesn't say it's for white people, but it's pretty basic and  non-threatening, kind of like a Starter Kit.

2. Other lists are more challenging, like:
"White People, You Gotta Get to Work NOW:

9 Things White People Can Do to Fight Racism Now",

from Luvvie Ajayi, a black writer (she's a Christian too):

www.awesomelyluvvie.com/2016/09/white-people-anti-racism.html

I also liked her 17-minute TED Talk--about speaking up, speaking the truth--how it's like skydiving, terrifying, but worthwhile: "Get Comfortable with Being Uncomfortable"
https://www.ted.com/talks/luvvie_ajayi_get_comfortable_with_being_uncomfortable#t-641112

3. Reading List for White People

(Includes newspaper articles)

BOOK: White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism (2018), by Robin diAngelo

***Newspaper ARTICLE also by this author: "White people assume niceness is the answer to racial inequality. It's not."

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/16/racial-inequality-niceness-white-people
.

Article: "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack"
by Peggy MacIntosh. She says, "I decided to try to work on myself at least by identifying some of the daily effects of white privilege inmy life."

The whole article is here:

https://www.racialequitytools.org/resourcefiles/mcintosh.pdf

 ARTICLE: "Who Gets to Be Afraid in America? May 12, 2020, by Ibram X. Kendi: "Americans don’t see me, or Ahmaud Arbery, running down the road—they see their fear."

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/ahmaud-arbery/611539

BOOK: Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race, by Reni Eddo-Lodge.

Here is an excerpt from the book:

www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/30/why-im-no-longer-talking-to-white-people-about-race

BOOK: So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo:
"Oluo gives us--both white people and people of color--that language to engage in clear, constructive, and confident dialogue with each other about how to deal with racial prejudices and biases."

BOOK: The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander

ARTICLE "The New Jim Crow: How the war on drugs gave birth to a permanent American undercaste."

https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/new-jim-crow

❧     ❧     ❧ 

* From MLK's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail":

“First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate.

"I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice;
who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action’;
who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom;
who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a ‘more convenient season.’

"Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.”

__Via "The Part About MLK White People Don’t Like to Talk About",  www.yesmagazine.org/opinion/2019/01/22/the-part-about-mlk-white-people-don2019t-like-to-talk-about

Punctured.

Yesterday at work was hard. And sharp.

It was hard to clean up my desk after the looters had turned its contents over... Rummaging for valuables, I guess, they emptied drawers and the box labeled "EPHEMERA found in books".

My desk was strewn with old airplane tickets, handwritten notes, museum entrance slips, newspaper clippings, etc.

Of course I know what they did was not directed personally to me, but it is my personal workspace---

and I had just spent a couple weeks cleaning my desk!
They should have come three weeks ago, when it was a mess-- I might not have even noticed. Ha-ha-ha!

They took nothing, so far as I can see. I'd have been amused if they'd taken some books. Even pleased to have some sense of kinship: "Hey, they took that cool book."

Then, having told all my coworkers they should wear long pants and boots, I wore shorts! Because it was going to be 95º... 

I didn't cut myself as I knelt on the floor to take this photo for our FB:

I cut my leg taking out bags of trash, full of broken glass.

None of this changes my thoughts--that this uprising/looting after the cops murdered George Floyds was caused by prior injustices, and we that need structural changes, and a cohesive movement––but my emotions felt punctured like a bike tire.

And while I love some of my coworkers, I feel lonely at work.

To begin with, half of them aren't there--they are medically vulnerable to Covid. (Lung disease, old age, etc.)

Big Boss is doing everything from talking to a leftist newspaper in Hungary to organizing cleaning supplies. I don't want to burden him further.

Ass't Man graciously had already apologized for our dust up last week--he'd started it (and I had not taken the bait--something I was extra glad of when he apologized). That was nice, but I see now that he is not someone I can count on for support.

At least I don't have to take on volunteer organizing, as Big Boss had asked me to do. (OMG, that is the LAST thing I would be good at.)

I was wondering how to delegate it. The president of the church groups was in the store yesterday, and I asked if he knew anyone who could help.
"I'll do it," he said.

He's a successful business guy, (semi-retired), and I don't resonate with his Type A ways.  But those ways are perfect for this: as business guys do, he got right on it, set up an online sign-up, and started recruiting people.
This is all complicated by Covid---in another year, we'd have just invited everyone to show up. But the shifts and workers need to be spaced out.

Big Boss says God sends what you need, if you're receptive-- which is a way of saying there are resources to hand--but you have to activate them.

I came home feeling mightily put upon. I have inner reserves, I thought: Pump them up.

And outer resources too—so many friends including blog-friends have sent love and support. That matters hugely. 

This morning I feel restored to rights.
Maybe not fully inflated, but good enough to carry the weight and move forward.

Conspiratorial Thinking

I've always thought conspiracy theories made sense.
Not the theories themselves, which are generally nonsensical, but the fact that people create them.

Positive thinking is a kind of conspiracy theory too. (Ya got proof for that?) More benign on the surface, it can also be used for harm. (Stay in abusive situations, God is testing you... it's for your own good, etc.)
Both approaches––everything's negative; everything is a gift––are cognitive survival tactics.

When the world seems hostile by design, Satan isn't hard to believe in. Or maybe it's the Illuminati. 
I hear about both rather a lot at work, from people who are as smart as any others I've ever met, but much more disenfranchised (politically, socially, educationally).

It was fun to come across the Conspiracy Theory Handbook-- from the School of Psychological Science and Center for Climate Change Communication (in Australia). The handbook lays out how and why conspiratorial thinking works. 

We've all got unexamined beliefs, cognitive biases, etc.  Conspiratorial thinking isn't about intelligence, per se. It's about lack of control, choice, power.

Conspiracy thinking is associated with feelings of reduced control and perceived threat. When people feel like they have lost control of a situation, their conspiracist tendencies increase. 

The handbook is full of helpful descriptions--the word "self-sealing" for instance. Isn't that great?
Arguing with conspiracists can be futile if their beliefs are entirely enclosed:

The self-sealing nature of conspiracy theories means that any evidence disproving a theory may be interpreted as further evidence for the conspiracy. . . . Rather than basing their beliefs on external evidence, conspiracy theorists’ belief system speaks mainly to itself....

But it's not always futile. Ridiculing people doesn't help. But people with cred--people who've been there--can be effective.

Along those lines, this article in The Atlantic:
www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/08/conversation-christian-picciolini/595543
"A Reformed White Nationalist [Christian Picciolini] discusses what it takes to de-radicalize far-right extremists: Says the Worst Is Yet to Come"

"There are a million ways to make a better world."

My friend Kathy Moran died a couple years ago at fifty-nine (my current age...). I inherited from her this phrase:

"There are a million ways to make a better world."

I. In Order to Rise...

The local Star Tribune published a good article yesterday about my boss and the store's recovery in the aftermath of the police murder of George Floyd: www.startribune.com/wisdom-empathy-help-put-back-together-a-looted-minneapolis-thrift-store/571060902/#7 

Funny how expressive a half-hidden face can be. Here BB at the meeting I skipped because I wasn't feeling well):

My favorite quote addresses something important---the reason people smashed up their own neighborhood (leaving aside those who just want to see the world burn):

"Although he was dismayed when he found the store in shambles, he also understood how people would feel after witnessing an act Bugg compared to 'somebody being lynched,'
why they’d be enraged when the officers weren’t immediately charged.

After years of feeling their voices weren’t being heard, he said, 'people were mad and wanted to communicate their frustrations.'”

BELOW: New mural in response to the uprisings after the murder:
In order to rise from its own ashes a phoenix must first burn
--by #CreativesAfterCurfew, a loosely organized group of artists

II. Be Prepared

I've heard people condemn the violent destruction of property in response to police violence.
I condemn violence against people. But in self-defense, don't we wish German Jews (and their allies) had rioted farther and wider in the 1930s? 
. . . That more slave uprisings like Nat Turner's in the antebellum US South had taken place, and succeeded?
Yes? No?

I have my reservations about the American Revolution, but we Americans celebrate the extreme violence that led to independence every Fourth of July. Independence for white colonists, that is.

"African-Americans [mostly] supported the British, because often the British offered freedom in exchange for fighting — and the British, I might add, kept their end of the deal."
--www.humanities.org/blog/terrorism-fake-news-american-revolution

I used to think that oppression and despair for people of color arose more from poverty and class than race, per se. Then Obama got elected, and I saw how wrong I was. 
Poverty and class matter, yes, (and race is intertwined with those), but there is no doubt race stands alone. At the thrift store, I see that clear as day.

Also, I didn't realize for a long time how much time and work it takes to prepare and organize people into a nonviolent movement. A wounded, frightened, and angry populace responding to a murder is not going to spontaneously act all together nonviolently.

Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. studied long, of course, before they brought people together into a movement.
I really got that when I read the autobiography of Myles Horton, The Long Haul. Horton founded in 1932 of the Highlander Folk School for training people working for democratic and social justice change, originally to unionize workers in Appalachia––and later for Civil Rights everywhere.

I hadn't realized Rosa Parks had gone to a training at the school before she refused to give up her bus seat. 

She was prepared.

Here's a quote from the PDF of the chapter "Charisma" in The Long Haul [link to chapter]:

III. A Silver Lining for Everybody
 
I don't know if a nonviolent movement is starting to coalesce here, but I hope so... It needs nurturing, but I see seeds of it here at 38th & Chicago, the murder site, where there is "room for everybody".

As I was biking past the other day, I saw an artist I know--one who helped create the mural on the thrift store last year. I asked for and received permission to take a picture and share it.

This slogan "Abolish Police" used to sound like the lunatic fringe, but the City Council is currently looking at ways to take apart and re-form the police department, which is riddled with corruption.
I posted this photo on the store's FB and it got almost 40 likes (a good amount for our little page), and--this surprised me--no objections.

Here's final quote of the article about my boss:

“I see the silver lining in this — people coming together, white, black, Chinese, Hmong,” Bugg said. “I wish it was like this all the time.”

Yes. Wishing won't do it though, as I know he knows. We need to plan strategically. This is not my forte. (ohgono--committees) 

We do who we are. 
I'm okay with what I've done in the past couple weeks––mostly personal stuff, like giving people masks I made. Cooking lasagna for coworkers. Posting photos online of the hopeful stuff, while acknowledging the disturbing. Writing, thinking, reading, and talking about what's going on.
Even prayer––it could be called lovingkindness practice: calling people into my mind and calling up in myself a compassionate response. (NOT ALWAYS EASY!)
It's a kind of preparation.

❧     ❧     ❧

There are a million ways to make a better world.

Let us do some.

Class Photo 2020

Class Photo 2020

They are graduating from second grade. 
Penny Cooper (back row, center) got the idea for wristband name tags from children evacuated from the London Blitz. 

R & R

Not feeling that great today---not from Covid symptoms––just feeling shaky and icky from not enough sleep and water, I think.
Possible emotional overload too, you think?

I called work to say I can't go to the store meeting today.
I didn't mention this, but Penny Cooper advises going to the creek instead, to breathe moving air:

"Take along a sandwich & a piece of fruit & a bottle of water."

Penny Cooper also says to bring her along, but to leave my phone at home. 
She appears to have grown a halo.

Will this potato grow?

A coworker found this potato on the floor at the thrift store a couple weeks ago. It'd rolled behind a shelf when we closed mid-March for Covid.
I put it in this vintage, fluted, glass candy dish to be our mascot.

When we came back after the uprisings in response to the police murdering George Floyd, the dish lay in pieces on the floor. I picked up the undamaged potato, took it home and planted its eyes (with some potato attached).
Anyone know anything about potatoes? Will it grow?

UPDATE: OK--thanks friends, for the potato-growing advice!
I have covered most of the eyes-sprouts with soil, because that's where the roots come from. And I will continue to add soil as it produces potatoes (if it does).

What gives you strength?

Feeling a bit beleaguered this morning--who isn't?!
 I spoke too soon yesterday about things running smoothly. Bit of a dust-up with Ass't Man yesterday at work---just as I was feeling he might be an ally.
[Later he apologized. But this keeps happening--an apology is not an eraser.]

I was thrilled when I went to the superette for milk this morning to see St. Mane's–– my neighborhood maker-of-sports-apparel for schools––is now printing these shirts (they're still making their Covid versions too):

Something that's keeping my spirits up:
Watching Call the Midwife.
In last night's episode (paraphrased:

"Whether you call it faith or confidence doesn't matter---as long as it helps you be brave in the world."

Sometimes I feel a bit vulnerable about showing Penny Cooper or the other girlettes with me in public, but you know what?
They help me be brave in the world.