Tuesday, December 28, 2021

2021 Year in Review

This was the weirdest year of my life...

This looked normal (more or less):


The year went from (among many things)...
> a Trump-inspired attack on the US Capitol on January 6
> to the jury finding Derek Chauvin guilty of all counts for the murder of George Floyd in April
> to a happy break from Covid in the summer, between the vaccine and the arrival of Covid variants Delta & Omicron
> to trying (and failing) to get the City to provide sanitation for people living next to my workplace all summer
> to being at George Floyd Square (38th & Chicago) during July, and helping tend the community library there
> to the death
in September of Auntie Vi ––my last grown-up
> to losing my iPhone in October and happily replacing it with a flip phone, and taking a long break from blogging too
> to my workplace (finally & unexpectedly) raising minimum wage to $15/hour in December.

Oh yes, and also, I turned 60 years old.

With so much going on, I decided to use a lot of photos.

 JANUARY 2021
A few months away from a COVID vaccine, Julia gives me a respirator to wear working at the thrift store;
snow covers remnants of Lake St. buildings burned in the uprising after the police murder George Floyd;
Jan 20, celebrate the inauguration of Biden/Harris


 

FEBRUARY
Meet up with Marz outside Half-Price Books (outside for Covid safety);
Stuff at work (I'm still doing social media for the store);
Participate in [due South] Fandom Flower Day with Eeva


MARCH
At Minnehaha creek: bink & I regularly take selfies to email to Auntie Vi;
the City prepares for the trial of Derek Chauvin for murdering George Floyd;
The library reopens after one year;
March 25: my first Covid vaccine (Moderna)

APRIL
Two Harbors Lighthouse & Duluth for Marz's 30th birthday;
Celebrations at George Floyd Square (GFS) at the verdict of guilty, guilty, guilty for Chauvin

MAY
Orphan-Red Circus-Costume Day w/ bink & Sister;
 Annette threw me a 
(belated) 60th birthday party w/ Maura & bink--we take off our masks but stay outside;
Marz at GFS

 
JUNE
Domenica's 62nd birthday at the Arboretum, w/ Marz;
baby bink;
Coffee outside at "The Nut" with John & Jill
 
JULY
Plant dyes class at the Duluth Folk School w/ Sister;
Tending the
George Floyd Square Community Library (w/ Neal Baxter), while house-sitting Stefanie & Jim's a few blocks away


AUGUST
With Jesse, Big Boss, OPE, & Sara at work;

Astro eats a cicado!
bink & I celebrate Vi's 96th birthday--her last--with her neighbors Lance & Cindy;
I bring books & make Broken-heart Bear for GFS


SEPTEMBER
Mr. Linens in the alley next to the store;
The City fenced the park to keep people from living there;
Bicyclists drop off donations at the thrift store;
Violet B. Konkel, r.i.p., Sept. 10, 2021;
bink & Maura play chess on bin
 
 
OCTOBER
Bear Repair;
At the George Floyd Square Free Library;
OPE, BJ, Darwin in the alley behind the thrift store;
Day of the Dead altar at Mexican grocery store by work;
Cat-sit Cleome


I lost my iPhone in October. Relieved not to have the Internet on me 24/7, I replace it with a flip phone. Takes a while to get a working digital camera (from bink), so I don't have many photos in Nov & Dec.

 NOVEMBER
City Elections: "There could be something new about this moment."
...But the mayor is reelected, and the proposal to establish a Dept. of Public Safety to incorporate the police dept. is defeated.

 
DECEMBER
Golda Bear lights the Hannukah menorah;
Me with bears to give to kids at work;
Penny Cooper trims the tree

Comments are off. Emails are welcome.

Saturday, December 25, 2021

Merry Christmas!

bink gave me my favorite kind of pencil: a woodless graphite stick, and I sketched Penny Cooper this Xmas morning, with the girlettes' little tree.


Merry Christmas, all!

Thursday, December 23, 2021

What I have to say about conspiracy theories...

What I have to say about Covid conspiracy theories (or any conspiracy theory)... is what Neil deGrasse Tyson said about NASA faking Moon landings:

 “Do you realize what that would take?
It would be so hard to fake a Moon landing, it’s easier to just go."


Wednesday, October 27, 2021

Public Announcement

Seen last night after work, sign in the entryway of the busy liquor store near the thrift store.
(Lake St. is a very busy street.)


I took the photo for the coworker who makes "15 minutes till closing" announcements. He's taken to hamming them up:
"Customers who remain in the store will be put to work."
Or,
"Customers in the store after closing will be eaten."

Inspired to post it here by Orange Crate Art & Tororo posting funny signs.

(I've turned off comments but feel free to email me.)

Sunday, October 24, 2021

Edmund Burke: "The fault of human nature is not of that sort."

This made me laugh (in recognition). Burke is talking about the American Colonies (the lesser power) and Great Britain (the greater power ):

"When any community is subordinately connected with another,
the great danger of the connexion is the extreme pride and self-complacency of the superior,
which in all matters of controversy will probably decide in its own favor.

It is a powerful corrective to such a very rational cause of fear, if the inferior body can be made to believe, that the party inclination or political views of several in the principal state, will induce them in some degree to counteract this blind and tyrannic partiality.

There is no danger that any one acquiring consideration or power in the presiding state should carry this leaning to the inferior too far.
The fault of human nature is not of that sort.

Power in whatever hands is rarely guilty of too strict limitations on itself."

What I hear:

People-in-charge decide things in their own favor, mostly. (Their pride and complacency, which leads them to do this, is dangerous to everyone.)

Among the people-in-charge, some might be "a useful ally" to people who are not-in-charge.

But those allies won't go tooooo far in their support, because that's not how people are.

The lesser party may "obtain influence" through giving favors that the rulers feel obliged to return, sometimes.

"Every hot controversy is not a civil war."

But some are.

Monday, October 11, 2021

Breaking & Mending

 Murals have been going up all over in the past couple years. Often they're political. This new mural a few blocks from the thrift store continues on the other side of the building with a celebration of cultures, picking up the multi-ethnic patterns on the bottom.

I. Breaking

I'm going to stop blogging here--take a break, at least for a while.

I'm trying to hash out what's going on in my city, to the people around me, and to me, and to figure out what my role is.
This just isn't the place for me to do that.


II. Mending

There's lots going on right by me.

1. I'm thrilled that a new sewing & mending store--Rethink Tailoring––has moved into a nearby empty shop (it used to be a quilting shop).

They're "new" in a way that reflects the times:

"We opened our storefront on March 14th, 2020 and had to close the next day due to the pandemic." [blog post about their history]

"During this very unique year, our community helped us help people. We donated over 700 masks to hospitals, homeless shelters, the Sanctuary encampment, George Floyd Memorial, childcare facilities, and to the community in our free mask box."
Their emphasis is on recycling and environmental sustainability, and they hold classes to share knowledge about doing that.
Their mission: "
to keep as many garments out of the landfills as possible".

The owner says:

"There is only so much one person can do alone, but by building a community around reuse and upcycling we can do so much more, together."
I've signed up for a couple classes with them--first one is tomorrow.

I'm hoping besides making personal connections, I might be able to link them to the thrift store--
soooo many clothes there go to textile recycling that could be repaired or remade instead.

(I've also long thought I should teach a class on repairing stuffed animals. Maybe this would offer the space)


I get the feeling it's a very "give your pronouns" place, so I'll get ("get") to deal with that IRL too.
Oh, joy.
But, you know, it's one of the conversations of our age, so I'll do it.

I need and want to do some mending and restructuring . . . of myself.


2. Also, the guy who'd written the Guide to George Floyd Square that I'd edited contacted me about another round of it...

LOL. This is classic human behavior--the square is going to get taken down at any minute, but the guide is still being rewritten.

3. AND, I've joined the Friends of Lake Hiawatha, who clean up the lake shore every Saturday morning. Turns out that this lake a few blocks from me is the final repository of storm-water runoff before it hits the Mississippi River.

Every year the Friends pick up by hand hundreds of pounds of plastic stir sticks, snack wrappers, golf balls from the lake's golf course, cigarette butts, etc. etc.

REAL LIFE IS SO ANNOYING!
But, . . . it's where I live.

Penny Cooper approves. "And you could repair bears in coffee shops again," she suggests.
Well, okay then.

I'm turning off comments on this post, but email or snail mail me, blogfriends, if you want.

Love you! Best wishes to you all!
XO Fresca

Sunday, October 10, 2021

Look for the helpers (wearing florals?!)

Just got home from ten days of condo/cat sitting.

Coming home, I had so much stuff, rather than bike home loaded lopsided, I put my bike on the bus--all buses have a rack on front for bikes.

I felt a surge of gratitude for people who do that sort of work---getting bike racks on buses.

Feeling wobbly about the world?
"Look for the helpers," as Mr Rogers's mother said.
________________________

I. Stand in the Place...

Someone commented that they're glad they don't live here, what with the crazy police on the loose, crime on the rise, and all.

Yeah, it's wild, but I don't feel that way (that I don't want to live here).

I WANT to be in this city, which is my home...
I don't want to ignore the bad, sad, and scary things in my city, my country, the world;
I don't want to move somewhere calmer. (Well, maybe sometimes I do...)

I've never understood Americans of my class & race (relatively safe, that is) who've said they'd move to Canada or New Zealand if so-and-so got elected.
Unless you're in active danger yourself, don't you want to stay and help?

And also, while it can be scary and wearing here, sometimes (not that I'm in active danger, I hope, but there are a lotta guns & frayed nerves around)––not to sound like I'm cold blooded (I might wish I were...!)–– but
it's pretty damn interesting. I've got ringside seats to History.

When I read too much political philosophy about the downfall of democracies, however, I do feel stunned, deer-in-the-headlights. It helps to remember to take heart from the helpers.
Keep 'er movin'! **

II. Cottagecore Revolutionary

One of my favorite helpers is Marcia Howard, one of the main helpers (organizers/leaders) at George Floyd Square.

She is brave. On her Instagram www.instagram.com/marciahoward38thstreet
she offsets the scary stuff with inspirational/educational stuff and... COTTAGE CORE!!! ("
Nostalgic countryside scenes and peasant dresses with eyelet lace", like at the Renaissance Festival.)

OMG, so unexpected, it's hilarious...
Like, Marxist Jane Austen frolicking in a frock.
Screencap of MH from one of her videos (her TikTok is here), from today's IG:


"Cottagecore", from Architectural Digest:
"While the activities and aesthetics that cottagecore embraces are wide-ranging and complex, covering everything from fashion to gardening, cooking to frolicking, so too are its origins.

"It’s in part a reaction against capitalism and our increasing time spent in front of a screen, but also related to ongoing interests in wellness and sustainability, and more broadly the idea of social consciousness."
And from yesterday--Marcia Howard reporting on being pointed out by name by "mercenaries from CRG* with AMs" [automatic weapons] at a vigil for Winston Smith.

*CRG is a private security firm, like private cops who operate with few checks and balances--like how the army more and more hires private firms...
I know little about this, except it's happening--here's a blog post with an activist's POV on CRG.


III. Help the Helpers

I haven't tidied the George Floyd Square Community Library for a few weeks.
The city DID try to force the square open in early September, as expected--sent in bulldozers.
I'd gone away expecting it would end, but the people held it!
Put homemade barricades back up. The city doesn't push it--doesn't want a flare up.

I'm so proud of the people holding GFS, and a little ashamed that I'd gone away. I'd felt I couldn't stand the heartbreak of it...
(Well. I have my limits, but not being there wouldn't have made me feel better.)

Now I'm back home, I intend to start tending to the Community Library at the square again.

I want to be a helper too.

Saturday, October 9, 2021

Goodness adequate to actual events

NOTE: I'm sorta in the middle of this post, but I have to go to work, so I'm posting it as is, a bit jumbled, but it's important to me to be thinking this stuff through--
that, is:
how should I, an ordinary person, think and act well in extraordinary times?

(Or, How to be good in bad times?)

History is always happening, every second is new––but there are times when social change is so, um, momentous, we know we are in History with a capital H.

I feel that now, especially living in the town where the police murdered George Floyd. But everywhere there's climate breakdown, Covid, and of course the everpresent ordinary moral and political challenges of being a human being.

Thinking About Thinking

Obviously, no one needs to read or comment on these posts--I am hashing this through for myself.

I am thinking and writing this stuff out because I am living in a city where the social fabric is... mmmm... how to put it?
. . . rearranging itself?

We will be voting in just a few weeks on whether to throw out the police force!
What?
Like, how am I supposed to know if that's a good idea?

Obviously THIS police force is rotten, but what will we replace it with?
Got Ideas?

A couple people recently have said to me that I am overthinking things.
(I asked Penny Cooper, the lead doll, about this and she was flummoxed. She had never heard of overthinking!)

Thinking in itself is no guarantee of action, or right action, that's true enough!

But for me, relying on old habits of thinking ,or relying on intuition based on input from the past, is not adequate in these changing times.
These BIG change times.

For me, thinking is part of/preparation for taking action.
I don't like to be motivated primarily by emotion or unexamined biases, because I've seen how unreliable they can be.

Call me Spock. (Ha, not really, but he was a big influence, with his insistence on rationality as a basis for action.)

I appreciate that Hannah Arendt
"attempted in her work [writing/philosophy] to shine the light of intellect on the extreme darkness she lived through [Nazism]".
--New Yorker article, "Beware of Pity: Hannah Arendt and the Power of the Impersonal"

Her essay I wrote about yesterday (and here)––"Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship" (1964) PDF here (about 30 pages)–– wrestles with the way people in Germany went along with
Nazi atrocities, even though they didn't believe in them.

“The more you realize that war criminals might be ordinary people, the more afraid you become,” wrote a journalist about Bosnian atrocities.
[––same New Yorker article as above]
Ordinary People

And those "ordinary people" aren't necessarily OTHER people, they might be us (me).
Oh, (probably, hopefully) we're not war criminals who would come to trial in The Hague;
we're more likely to be the little people who look the other way, or not.
Guilty, if guilty, more likely, of inaction than action.

As an example of an ordinary person in extraordinary times, I want to use Big Boss, who is certainly a Good Person.

IN NO WAY here do I accuse him of anything bad in response to Our Times, not even of inaction to the point of badness.
[Heh. You know I have accused him of being a bad retail manager, but that's not a moral badness!!!]

No. Big Boss is good, and he does good things.
He is, in fact, already extra-ordinary:
he is such a good orator
[and a very tall and good looking Black man, too (people have a bias to grant tall men authority--almost all US presidents were unusually tall)]
he has been talking all over town to groups (school, church, journalist, political) about the need for social justice.

But... I see in him something I see in myself:
A gap between belief and action in extraordinary times and places.

In extraordinary times, we may be called on to do things that are waaay out of our comfort zone. His comfort zone is already bigger than most people's, but it has its limits, and that's where I find the example/mirror.

Yesterday, under the influence of Arendt's article, I asked Big Boss--a fervent Christian––if he had talked about God to any of the people who were living next to the thrift store--people he called "our neighbors."
I said to him,
"You told me our neighbors on the street needed to know God has made them FOR A PURPOSE. 
I think that kind of awareness--that 'I matter, my life has some bigger purpose that I don't even know'––can be a huge protector against despair, which a lot of people on the street are especially prey too.
You don't even need to believe in God to believe that.

Did you talk to any of them about that?"
And he said no, he hadn't, though he'd wanted to.
"I don't know why I didn't," he said. "I guess I didn't have the nerve."

"Me either," I said. "Not that I'd preach like you, but you know... I didn't do anything more than little things, like give them a chess set.
Not that that's worthless.

"I think the problem was," I said," there's been such a breakdown of social order that the problem is so big and complex, we feel overwhelmed."

"Yes," he said, "If people had done the little good things all along--shared water or chess sets, or even like you, call the city council––we wouldn't be in this situation."

But we are in "this situation".
And it's ongoing.
SO WHAT DO WE DO NOW?

Big Boss said someone had recommended that he read about George Whitefield, the preacher of the Great Awakening in the 1700s. (Wikipedia)

Uh, weird choice, but okay...
Along with examples of everyday (banal) evil we need examples of everyday (banal) goodness,
but ALSO of extraordinary goodness.

(I don't know if I'd call Whitefield good, but he certainly was extraordinarily ACTIVE among ordinary people.)

What's a good mirror?


I really don't like to use Nazi Germany as an example of anything, because it's become so Hollywoodized--that is, it feels so extreme, the evil is glamorized, and the heroism too––it doesn't seem to apply to us.

But while the end was extreme, the mechanisms in play are things I see around me and in my own self---including how hard it is to see one's own biases--and to think one's way into new information... new ways of thinking and acting.

Like seeing one's own elbow, you have to use a mirror.
Nazism is something of a fun house mirror, too distorted by Indiana Jones Nazis as Evil to reflect our times;
but the reality of it was built up of little, everyday actions, or inaction, not by Hollywood Halloween ghouls.

How do (did) people conduct little, everyday actions--there's a useful mirror.

I've always appreciated Hannah Arendt's phrase "the banality of evil" to describe Nazi funcionaries,
because that's where I see most evil happening--in banal decisions, not Hollywood heroism.

Goodness, too, can be banal--obvious, boring, unoriginal... like I found my auntie boring when I was a teenager.

Often, moral choice is on the level of the question,
Do you change the toilet roll when it runs out, or do you leave it for the next person?

Little stuff, that builds up habits of thought and action.

Though is goodness ever "unoriginal"--one of the definitions of banal?
Um. Yes. Goodness can be automatic systems set up for the general good--like traffic laws. People have to think them through, so they are helpful and so other people will follow them, seeing their helpfulness.
And they have to be enforced, by people whom everyone (or most everyone) agrees are reasonable and acceptable agents of the law.

And what I'm seeing now (or, actually what I'm hearing) in my city is that the traffic laws are starting to fray.

I CAN HEAR THE FRAY

Here's what:
I'm house sitting in a busy area.
Sometime after the murder of George Floyd, people started to drag race in the main avenue, late at night.

This drag racing has continued, as the police force has dwindled. The police now prioritize 911 emergency calls, and often don't have enough staff to do banal policing.

Last night, Friday, roaring motor engines kept me awake until 2 a.m.

So it's unexpected fall outs like that--who knew the cops murdering George Floyd would lead to drag racing?
And people selling drugs & sex in the open outside my workplace.

And of course we have Covid and its effects---container ships backed up--the other day I noticed the grocery store shelves were a bit scant of supplies...

And climate change...

The breakdown of public order can let all sorts of cats out of all sorts of bags...

It is also a time of OPPORTUNITY.
When fabric frays, other patterns can emerge from behind--like ...what do you call a hidden image behind another image?

Anyway--a GOOD new order could emerge. But not automatically.

I am in no way up for creating a good new order!
Geez. Who is???

But at any rate, I am thinking about it.

____________________________________

Resist Early, Resist Often

Arendt wrote about people going along with the demands of a dictatorship giving the reason that doing so would avoid worse things happening,  ". . . with the argument that refusal to cooperate would make things worse––until a stage was reached [in Nazi dictatorship] where nothing worse could possibly have happened."

She wrote:

"We see here how unwilling the human mind is to face realities which in one way or another contradict totally its framework of reference.

Unfortunately, it seems to be much easier to condition human behavior and to make people conduct themselves in the most unexpected and outrageous behavior,
than it is to persuade anybody to learn from experience, as the saying goes;

that is, to start thinking and judging instead of applying categories and formulas which are deeply ingrained in our mind, but whose basis of experience has been long forgotten and whose plausibility resides in their intellectual consistency rather than in their adequacy to actual events."


Friday, October 8, 2021

What I'm Reading

 I say I don't like politics, but then I was ALL EXCITED to see this book at the library: Writing Politics: An Anthology.
(Well, liking to read about politics is different than doing politics.)

Because I like the publisher, New York Review of Books, and their Classics series, I guessed it would have great entries.


I checked it out, took it home, and immediately read the last essay:
"Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorships" by Hannah Arendt (1964, the year after her report
Eichmann in Jerusalem).

You can read it online--it's only a few pages.

Upshot:
Arendt says you may get a legal pass for doing bad things under a dictatorship, but you don't get a moral pass.

Do I agree?
I should think about it more, maybe, but yes, I do.
I always thought the Catholic Church's teaching that you shouldn't choose bad things for good ends was wise.
(Arendt says that the Talmud says the same thing. The "lesser evil" is a trick.)

I mean, I’d say maybe you (we) do sorta "have to" do a lesser evil sometimes, say, the classic example: 

You steal medicine for a child who needs it to stay alive;, (or, you don’t have money so you steal tampons for a friend so they don’t bleed all over)… 

but that doesn't make it (stealing) morally right.

If we do such things, and we may, and for very compelling good reasons,
we still have to live with the wound to our moral conscience.  

The right thing to do may be a bad thing, which doesn’t mean it’s not a bad thing.

Not said in this essay of Arendt, but this is one of the main reasons it's good to work to create healthy societies—so people (we) don't have to make such bad trade-offs.

Free menstrual supplies for all! (see post below)

Opt In, Options for All


I. Public Library Signs

Another nice example from our public libraries:

Signs on the walls of the public restrooms at the library near the condos where I'm cat sitting read:

FREE MENSTRUAL SUPPLIES

              Ask at desk.

So clear & simple. AND SHORT: The best signs say the most with the least.

I'm guessing all our county libraries are offering free pads & tampons now. Nice move.

What? You say Scotland got there first?!

In 2020, "Scotland has become the first country to allow free and universal access to menstrual products in public facilities, a landmark victory for the global movement against period poverty."


Anyway--the two library restrooms have toilet stalls, and the restrooms are sex segregated, with signs saying Women, or Men.

The entry doors to both restrooms were propped open, with a sign saying "Door Must Remain Open For Covid Protocol".

(Why? For air circulation?
Oh, no, I checked--it's to "
Remove as Much Surface Contact as Possible", per park & rec guidelines.)

As I passed the men's bathroom, I could see the same sign posted in their entry:
Free Menstrual Supplies.

A while back I'd blogged about signs in the restrooms in the library near my home.

Those restrooms are gender neutral, each with a single toilet in one room. (I must check on what the signs on the doors say.)
A sign on their walls reads,

"We have supplies for people who menstruate."


In the library by the condos, the placement of the signs––visible from the hallway––makes the same point:
"Biological functions don't necessarily align with gender identification. We want to help you with those functions."
Nicely done!
(Also, the library by the condos improves the message by making it clear the supplies are free.)

I can get behind this:
Clear public information making things/freedoms open or available for anyone who wants or needs them.

Some people might not like the point being made, but no one's rights are infringed upon.
No one is made to say or do anything, or asked to sign up or actively give their assent.

II. IF YOU CHOOSE....

So, yeah: after thinking a lot about it, I still don't like when groups tell you at introduction time to give your "name and pronouns".

As with extra thingamabobs on a website (for instance, email notifications forever after), the "give your pronoun" option should be to opt in, not to opt out.

And, I think places that serve the public should to do as much as possible to make full options Clear & Easily Available, for those who want to opt in.

It would be better if we said at introduction time:

"Give your name and, if you choose, your pronouns."
Because social pressure to SAY something in public is very different than reading a public sign about services available.

Yes. I've thought about it, and that's what I think.


If you think I'm missing a crucial point, let me know.

III. Good Design; Or, How to Roll Your Toy Across the Street

P.S. A very great thing about making Good Things widely available is that all sorts of people can take advantage of the good--more than the designers might imagine.

When U.S. cities made curb cuts at street crossings after ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act), for instance, the intent was to serve people in wheelchairs, but unintended benefit went to people with all sorts of wheeled devices--baby buggies, bikes, grocery carts--as well as the curb cuts making it easier to step into or out of the street without stumbling.

(Oh, I didn't know--looking for an illustration, I learned that this phenomenon of the Unintentional Benefits of Good Design for the Public Good has a name:
The Curb-Cut Effect!)

Good design is a blessing in all directions.
Signs could be considered Speech Design.

Putting signs offering free menstrual supplies in all bathrooms may serve unintended people too.

Say a friend or family member of a menstruating person knows the person needs supplies but is too shy to ask, or doesn't have any money, or is simply waiting outside.

Now that friend or family member (who may use either bathroom) knows the supplies are available and can get them for their menstruating friend.

Or, for that matter, someone might need a menstrual pad for some other use. When I was walking Camino, a man had placed one under his backpack's shoulder strap, where it was digging into his flesh.

Very super.

Thursday, October 7, 2021

"trying to demonstrate respect"

 I want to show respect for a person (the same respect I would like to get) by using their proper pronouns, and also by learning their name, if that's fitting.
I often ask regular customers their names--it signals, "I see you."
(Some people don't want engagement, and I leave them alone.)

Sometimes I'm scared to talk to people (far less often as I get older)--What if I do something wrong? There's a fear of hurting others inadvertently + a fear of being embarrassed oneself.

I've taken heart from something writer/ organizer/theorist and transgender right activist Leslie Feinberg said about pronouns:
The pronoun itself matters, yes.
It also matters how the speaker uses a pronoun, even if it's the wrong one. With respect?
Or not?

So, cultivating respect for individuals (and their right to self-determination)--that's key. Pronouns/names follow.

From Leslie Feinberg's obituary on hir website (2014):

[Begin quote]

Leslie preferred to use the pronouns she/zie and her/hir for hirself, but also said:

“I care which pronoun is used, but people have been respectful to me with the wrong pronoun and disrespectful with the right one.
It matters whether someone is using the pronoun as a bigot, or if they are trying to demonstrate respect.”

In a statement at the end of hir life, Leslie said zie/she had
“never been in search of a common umbrella identity, or even an umbrella term, that brings together people of oppressed sexes, gender expressions, and sexualities”
and added that she/zie believed in the right of self-determination for oppressed individuals, communities, groups, and nations. 

[End quote]

Feinerg novel
Stone Butch Blues, "is widely considered in and outside the U.S. as a groundbreaking work about the complexities of gender."

Feinberg made PDF copies of hir novel available free, online. You can download it (or order an at-cost print copy) here: www.lesliefeinberg.net


"The complexities of gender"--I love that!
I sometimes have to dial up my bravery––including the willingness to get it wrong, or to feel disrespected myself (ugh)––to enter into the complexities.

Offering my pronoun FIRST in an introduction could signal respect.

I keep coming back to an experience I had with a group of people (young, white, cis women--I know because they said) who were so set on the group Getting It Right, that their concern in itself felt like it was about their own self-protection,
NOT respect for one another's self-determination.

Self-determination.
That is key.
Who wants even the most knowledgeable, well-meaning person to come into their house and tell them––
without being asked ––how to fix it up?

Wednesday, October 6, 2021

No, I am ...


Just wanted to say clearly that I'm totally behind the idea that sharing pronouns in groups shows a sort of "I'm Spartacus" solidarity with trans and gender nonconforming people:

"I stand with whoever faces the biggest risks in pursuit of freedom for us all."
What I can't get behind is the vinegarish, policey feel of groups that pressure everyone to give their pronouns, and how people go along so they fit in, not necessarily because they  agree.

I suppose you could say that that social pressure is a good thing, it's how we exert group pressure on one another to Do Good, to Behave Well--it's the mechanism behind manners and civility, and healthy behaviors such as wearing masks.

I suppose. But the thing is, while I do love the overall aims of the gender revolution (to loosen bonds), I also have some questions about the methods; and I've seen that questioning is seen as (possibly) traitorous, and gets shut down, and that is NOT good.

Like when my dental hygenist told me she was unsure about Harry Potter because J K Rowling was anti-trans (which she isn't, she just questioned some aspects of it).
OMG.

So, I'm just not keen on the group-think aspect of it.
LET'S TALK, PEOPLE! (I know there's a lot of talk going on too.)

On the other hand, when I see the hateful responses to gender freedoms, ("We'll crucify you all" in Spartacus--and they really mean--and do--physical violence, not social disapproval),
I'm definitely happy to stand and give my pronouns.

What I should/want to do is resist the group think, and take my lumps (social discomfort) for doing so.
And at MY workplace, that means bringing up the question of gender and pronouns!

II. Age

River asked about the server at the hip café calling my older women friends and me ladies, "What is wrong with being called 'ladies'?"

Exactly.
My point was that the server calling us by a gendered term (ladies) points out  a generation gap:
The server was young and I doubt she would have used such a term with her own age cohort, because that--gendering someone––is seen as wrong.
Like that sign I see in some places like this café:
"Please address staff by gender neutral terms."

I expect it was just a slip on this server's part, but what it illustrated for me was that young people don't see older people as being in their camp, or as being like them.
Calling older women "ladies" is ...mmm... well, it can be polite, but it can also be condescending. "Aren't you cute old things, out of the political loop."

There is sometimes an age divide in feminist attitudes toward gender.
Which, right now, is not the question dearest to my heart.

My workplace may be behind the curve with re-imagining gender, but we're REALLY behind the curve with recycling:
Aside from paper and metal, we recycle nothing.

III. Climate Don’t Care


I've tried to find a way to get recycling going at work, but the management won't pay for organic recycling, so we throw away huge amounts of food (including rotting or squashed leftovers from food give-aways, etc.).

I asked someone about neighborhood gardens taking our food for composting, and they said it was possible, but I never pushed and made it happen.

Susan Art Sparker sent me this, from Amitav Ghosh's The Great Derangement:
Climate Change and the Unthinkable (2016):

"Climate change has not been a significant political issue... instead political energy has increasingly come to be focused on issues that relate... to identity: religion, caste, gender rights, and so on."
So, again, I WISH we would discuss and debate gender and identity, yes, those are good things that matter. And they COULD go hand in hand with changes in how we use carbon (cars, garbage, etc.)

At root they're all about seeing ourselves as having power to affect each other for good or for bad, and choosing how we use that power.

AND they're about how we deal with change.
Change IS happening, whether we like it or not.
How are we going to adapt to it?

My workplace is pretty great in many ways.
Because we're such a diverse group of people, in age, national origin, race, etc., there isn't a lot of group think.

Most of my coworkers mostly don't talk the gender talk, but they are all about the individual, and if someone were trans, I think some  might be uncomfortable, but they wouldn't ostracize the person--the way they treated the person would depend on whether they LIKED the person or not.
So, I like that model.

And because most of my coworkers are poor, they take the bus, or bike (like me), and they live in shared housing. Those who drive cars usually own one car per family.
It may not be by choice, but they (we) don't use as much carbon as your average middle-class person with one car per person and large, free-standing living spaces.

So, it's complicated. Lotsa X-factors. And it's interesting.  Lotta stories out there. I like that, uncomfortable though it can be.
Enter the story!

Tuesday, October 5, 2021

Orange October

Blog's birthday is on October 7, but this is the SEASON, so I'm marking it here: Blog is 14!

I don't have enough books specifically on Halloween, so I went with colors and moods
: today I turned books at the thrift store with autumn-colored covers face-out for an Overall Mood Board effect.

Here's some of the fiction + the main display:


More to come, but first, an update: The staff meeting this morning was good!
Whew. You just never know.

Big Boss invited everyone to talk about how they felt about the situation with people living/dealing by the store for four months until the cops chased them away a couple weeks ago (the people are literally two blocks away now).

It was good to air feelings about it. Our meetings are so short, there's not time for discussion, and I think that's weirdly helpful.
People have to speak briefly, and there's no time for responses--sort of (accidentally) like 12 Step meetings.

People's responses were varied--everyone's relieved that we don't have to wade through blasted people and traffic, but most people are concerned that nothing changed, there was no real HELP.

Before the meeting, in the breakroom I'd said I wanted to talk about pronouns at the meeting. "Let's put it on the agenda," I said.
I WAS JOKING, (there is no agenda), but the response in the breakroom was interesting.

Big Boss obviously resents having to do the pronoun introduction.
He said that he just says, "My name is ___" and doesn't give his pronouns.

I am with him-- not because I'm opposed to pronoun switcheroos--I think mix-and-match is GREAT---but because I want the Naming of Pronouns to be a choice, not an obligation, not a Test of Political With-it-ness.

If it was a test of with-it-ness, I would say half my coworkers failed. LOL.
But they were honest, not pretending to toe the line.

I wish gender were no big deal. I saw a bathroom signs... now, where...? Oh--yeah, in Burrito Union in Duluth--their bathroom signs say:
WE DON'T CARE.
I don't care either. I will call you whatever you want.

But I sense it wasn't that Big Boss "doesn't care" so much as that he doesn't like something about the gender stuff---not sure what. (I can guess.)
I probably shouldn't probe further--I might well not like what I discover. It felt like a tense subject with him. I was laughing, but he wasn't.

But some other folks had fun with it, though, including Ass't Man, who'd had a great trans coworker at a previous job who was happy to talk to Asst Man all about the whats and whys and wherefores.
COMMUNICATION.
That's the thing.

The other thing Big Boss said was that people should think about setting aside time to do a special project during their shift.
This is SUCH a good idea.
Otherwise there is always too much to do--you have to block out your time and ignore the flood of donations to do anything.
My old friend: Set Your Intentions.

I had already intended to do an October/ Halloween rearrange & display. I have been neglecting displays, feeling overwhelmed with incoming books, and I think it's a mistake.

OK--back to my Halloweenish book display.

BELOW: Georgie's Halloween is from 1958--for only $2.99.
(It's adorable, but it had pencil scribbles on it.)

BELOW: Side-by-side: Look at those compatible profiles!


BELOW: I can't believe that ceramic aardvarky thing (next to the papier-mache giraffe) hasn't sold.
I marked it down from $1.99 to .99.


Some fiction:


BELOW, top shelf, left: The Invention of Hugo Cabret is one of my favorite modern book covers. I don't even know what it's about.
[googles]
Oh! It's about French filmmaker Georges Mélies.
WHAT? AND TOYS??? Per Wikipedia:
"
At the end of his life, Méliès was destitute... He sold toys from a booth in a Paris railway station, which provides the setting of the story." Well, now I must read it!

Mysteries often have orange & red covers anyway, so this section was a breeze:


Not visible below--a pile of ten Playboy magazines from 1991, hidden on the bottom shelf of Cool Old Books, priced 99 cents each.
Customers complain if there's anything racy on display, but I didn't want to throw these out. The nudity, such as it is, is stupid and objectifies women, yeah, but it's so mild, it's like what's on billboards now. And the articles truly are interesting--an interview with Spike Lee, for instance.
I'm hoping someone will buy all ten at once---and quickly, and no one will even see them to complain.