Introducing FrankColumbo

New doll FrankColumbo on her way to catch the light rail train—we’re going to see Marz for the first time in weeks!
 

Books: TBR; BHM (To Be Read; Black History Month)

I. TBR, "To Be Read" (Selected by Fate)

Marz has undertaken to read more classic books.
What are classics?
I looked up lists of Best Books--found a good List of Reading Lists www.sonic.net/~rteeter/greatbks.html.
It includes lists from Columbia U, The Guardian and Utne Reader (remember them?); lists of Nobel Prize Winners and World Classics in Translation, etc.

I got ideas for myself from nonfiction lists, and I ordered from eBay a couple-few that never come to the store. 

Lee : An Abridgement, by Douglas S. Freeman.
I wouldn't usually read an abridgement but I don't care enough about General Robert E. Lee to make it through 4 volumes.

Diaries: Volume 1, 1939-1960, Christopher Isherwood
(I've read vol. 2, The Sixties)

There are replacements--books I gave away and now want to read again:
Writing in Restaurants, David Mamet
Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why, Laurence Gonzales
The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor

For Marz, I pulled a bunch of classic-y books from the shelves at work--of course limited by what's on hand.

This is the first batch I sent her:
Robert Graves on WWI
Sinclair Lewis on Small Town Minnesota
The Hounds of the Baskervilles---(I had no idea this is so highly regarded)
The Tempest because it's been used in so much modern pop culture, including Star Trek;
I think she's read the Metamorphosis, but this copy had some interesting looking critical essays;
and (should I have read it again before recommending it?) in high school I'd loved "SF Masterwork" Flowers for Algernon:

I didn't see Doonesbury on lists, but if I taught history, I'd teach Doonesbury. This vol. covers the Reagan years.
Similarly, Temple Grandin's memoir is a personal choice: she opened my eyes to how differently brains see the world.

I've never read Emerson's "Self-Reliance", but I think I'd have loved his “nothing has authority over the self" philosophy when I was young. Maybe I still would, but now it reminds me of alt-right figures like Timothy McVeigh and the Senate-storming goons.

I love the story of the House of Atreus--that family! It's just like us!
It's the basis for my short movie Orestes and the Fly (A Tragicomedy with Tap Dancing).
I made it (with bink's help) in 2009 and haven't rewatched it in years--it's on youtube, where I left this comment:

"My father e-mailed this comment: 'The Fly movie seems to be a blend of Dr. Calagari's Cabinet and Singing in the Rain. Maybe a little Marat/Sade thrown in.'"

 

Kate DiCamillo's a local author--I hadn't realized her Flora & Ulysses, about a girl and a squirrel, had won the Newberry.

Has Elie Wiesel's Night been surplanted by any other book on the Holocaust? I don't know. Maybe Art Spiegelman's Maus.

I had to look up The Good Earth --another book I haven't read in 40+ years--to see if it's considered racist. In fact, not. (Though it's written by the daughter of white missionaries to China...) Oprah chose it for her book club in 2004.
There are better books on China, but part of the idea of reading Classics is to dip into the GFK (General Fund of Knowledge) that shaped past generations and still shapes us now. And this is one.

Confession: I have never read a novel by James Baldwin, just bits and pieces and the movie I Am Not Your Negro.

The Stoics, of course.

I'd pair A Separate Peace with Emerson. It's another book I had to look up--is this still valid? Readers say so.
Huh, I guess I should reread a lot of these myself....

"Black History Is Every Day"

I got lucky this year for Black History Month.
Last year, my display of books by or about Black people got bought up all at once by a regular customer. I like her--an old Black woman who shares books with her grandkids (grown), so I didn't really mind, but there usually are only a few books on Black life on hand, so that was it. The display was for one day only.

This year, however, someone wonderfully donated a box of good books--many current and new, unread, and many by Black authors.
I've been ekeing them out, putting out a few at a time. I also priced the new ones higher because--I hate this--if prices are too low, resellers snatch up everything to sell to Amazon or Thrift Books or whomever. (I think they still snatched up some of the $4 ones, but at least the store gets more than 99 cents for them.)

Bee-Bright Bear

A couple-few years after buying this old mohair bear, St. Lucy Bear, on eBay, I'm finally getting around to restoring her.
Taking out the killer cotter pins was the biggest impediment.

I'm surprised to see after a bath how bee-bright yellow-orange she was (visible at her joints).

In pieces--those discs are her joints:

Why we have child safety laws:

 Stitching on Lucy's  (velvet) paw. I'm touched when I come across evidence of a person before me:

Bathing in mild soap:

Dry again! (Eyes just set in place--fabric behind needs reinforcing).

Lots of work to do yet!

Be Fair

I'd melted down with regret the other day for not having kept up with editing Wikipedia. When I sat down to edit a page yesterday, I remembered how to do it pretty quickly.

I also remembered why I hadn't kept it up all along. It's important work, hunting down reliable secondary sources, but compiling it is kinda robotic.

So, I am not a miserable failure of a human being, at least not on that account.

I was (am still) working on the page of director Hanelle Culpepper.
I was motivated to do that by a sense of (un)fairness:
while she'd directed the pilot (and next two of ten episodes) of Star Trek: Picard, the first woman and the first Black director to launch a Star Trek series or film, her Wikipedia page was scant.

Fairness is key.
I've been thinking about that more since taking that "class" by Chris Voss, former FBI Hostage Negotiator on MasterClass, which I unsubscribed from.
He points out that fairness is so important, people will sometimes even walk away from a good deal if it's unfair and accept a poor deal if it's fair.

There's lots of Voss saying the same thing for free online.
Here, a short article he wrote on the F-word, FAIRNESS:
www.fastcompany.com/3060582/the-one-word-that-can-transform-your-negotiating-skills

I just sent this article to Big Boss.
This winter, in a meeting he shut down discussion about pay at work before it even became a discussion.

BB doesn't seem to realize (because he doesn't pay attention) that the biggest problem is not that our pay is low but that our pay is unfair.
I still make less than coworkers who started after me.
I also make MORE than some who've worked longer.
I hate both these facts.

Sometimes, if you care, you can make things more fair.
At least I can edit that Wikipedia page!

"You are (not) the only one in this room."

You Are the Only One in This Room

Wouldn't that make a good book title? Maybe about living through a pandemic?
It's a Zoom message. You may know, but I didn't. I've Facetimed for the first time since Covid, but never Zoomed--I have no reason to, since I see my coworkers f2f, and when I'm home I don't much want to see more people.

On the blog Going Gently, John wrote a list of good things he did from the past year–– "What has the lockdown ever done for me?" He includes a lot of zooming.

Got me thinking,
How have I adapted to the pandemic in a way helpful for myself and/or others?

[***I'd love to hear other people's responses to that question ^ too!]

I've made many little changes.
Most were extensions of things I'd do anyway--like bike riding instead of taking the bus (I just did it more, for longer).

Or sharing the girlettes.

Dolls Help.

When a frightened friend told me early on that it helped to have Penny Cooper come and stay, I posted in March >
that the girlettes could come and stay with anyone who wanted/needed them.

And several did, and since then, they've really spread out--some permanently, for fun and everything.

Racer, for instance, moved to London. Recently she went with Sara to get her Covid vaccine.

This makes me so happy!

Without downplaying it (I'd up-play dolls, if anything), it's an extension of the sort of thing I was already doing. It's nice to feel I was on the right track and just need to extend it further.

One thing I did, however, was a real brain-changer:
making cloth toilet wipes, after people panic-bought all the t.p. in stores.

Since then, the house has bought only a few packs of t.p.
Saves money and environmental glop.
I'm most excited by it as proof:
WE CAN CHANGE.

We, individually and socially, can change even deeply ingrained, automatic habits, like reaching for the roll of t.p.
And relatively quickly, too.

I think about this a lot, when I see people wearing masks out and about:
It's become a social norm. Here, anyway, not everywhere.

The point is, it's doable. It took enormous social pressure--laws, to begin with, and fear, and information.

And availability.
I sewed masks for people, early on.
Now the city provides free disposable masks on the bus (though they're often out), and fashion designers produce masks.

Five days ago Vogue posted "Where to Buy Face Masks That Are Stylish Online". Most of the 100 masks are affordable (around $20) from Etsy and the like, but there's also this ($465, Fendi).

It'd look nice at the Oscars. Are they having the Oscars?
(Yes, an in-person ceremony will be held two months later than usual--in late April.)

If we can do this, we can change a lot more habits.
I'm thinking of climate change--we will need to change, voluntarily or otherwise.
And we can. It's in our nature to be adaptable, like squirrels.

Not to be entirely perky chirpy about it---we didn't change fast enough to save, in the United States, half-a-million people and counting.

But looking at the big picture, the public health of the species overview, even with half-assed or outright crap leadership, we've bumbled ourselves into some good changes.
Compared to doing nothing.

The pandemic has been, is being hard. It grinds on and on, scraping up the landscape like a glacier.
What we do about it is personal and social, but the virus itself is an impersonal force of nature.

Ingrained habits of social beliefs that we generate ourselves--that's another matter.
The things we do to one another.

What's been harder was the police murder of George Floyd a mile from where I work and live, and its ongoing aftermath. (The trial is next month, godhelpus.)

It took events out of words (in newspapers and novels and history books) and into my ear canals, up my nostrils, and under my skin.

Hearing helicopters overhead and smelling burning car parts as I was trying to fall asleep, and getting cut by broken glass as I cleaned after looters broke up the thrift store.
But that would be a different post.

As for being alone in the room...

As long as there's a book in the room, I am not alone.

I'd gotten rid of almost all my books in the past fifteen years––figured I'd always have access to libraries––and I was caught out without a lot to read when the Stay at Home order started March 17, 2020 (St Patrick's Day).

As soon as the thrift store reopened, I began to collect books again.
I'm like Scarlett O'Hara shaking a wilted carrot at heaven;
"As God is my witness, I'll never be bookless again!"

So that's a change---a reversion to the old ways:
KEEP THE HARD COPIES.

I read Ali Smith's Hotel World last night--it follows five people whose lives intersect at a hotel. (Weirdly though, not like Grand Hotel.)
It centers around the accidental death of a young chambermaid who folds herself into an old dumbwaiter, which drops, unable to support her weight.

Chambermaid sounds Victorian, doesn't it? I wonder why it's hung on as the normal word for a hotel cleaner. The book is set in the present.

Ali Smith asked in an interview,

"Do you come to art to be comforted, or do you come to art to be re-skinned?"

Now?
Comfort!
I want the story to be comforting---and Hotel World is a story about nice (sort of nice) humans. 

(Ali Smith also said she’s in love with life. It struck me as a weird thing to say. It shows in her writing-/this book anyway—her only one I’ve read.)

I put down a couple books about how horrible people are. That's already right in my face. (See, police murder of George Floyd and its aftermath)

But I do like it if the story form is... re-forming. Reading Hotel World takes some attention to who? and what?

And the Murderbot Diaries tell a familiar story--a sort of "coming of age" tale––but the way it's told has got me truly re-skinning how I see the characters in my mind.
I'm continuing to look at pictures of real people I could cast instead of my imagination's default #OscarsSoWhite cast.

That's not directly related to the pandemic.
Or is it?
Living through what seems like a science fiction movie does, or can, shake up preconceptions, default settings.

Does it take a little conscious effort, a little cooperation, to enter into making changes though?
I kind of think so.
I think we want to settle back into comfort.
Who wants to be re-skinned?
I don't. But I think we better keep choosing to adapt. That's where we've got it over squirrels--we don't just react, we can choose.

Anyway, I just don't think we will be able settle back into comfort.
Look at the Texas power grid failure. The police murder of George Floyd.
This stuff is happening. And we're doing it, together.

For better or worse, I, you, we are not the only ones in this room.

Some Decades

Finishing up my sixth decade---I spent the morning looking for photos of me around the time I changed decades. I felt low, thinking about people who are gone, but a life review always interesting and good.

It sort of surprises me how much I've always been identifiably exactly me.

Below, left, on the lap of my mother (Lytton Virginia Davis), in my first decade. I notice now that my toes were very fine.
My sister sits on the lap of my mother's best friend, Emilie.

Below, center: Me, the summer I was nine, with my best friend, Helen, left, and Helen's sister Lisa. 
I loved the dress I'm wearing so much--can you see? it has a giraffe on it.

 

And the winter I was ten:

Below, At twenty

Below: bink took this photo of me in my late-twenties, crowned with seaweed at the Atlantic Ocean, the year we lived out east

Below: Polaroid of me in my early thirties, arriving at the art-college library where I worked. That's an orange in my bike basket.

 

Below: On Camino at forty (with Jayme & Mike, fellow peregrinos). I still prefer to sit and drink coffee. 

Below: Fifty years old, brushing my teeth at an albergue on Camino, with bink (center) & Marz (right):

And just the other day, at work...

Three Great-Grandparents

Thinking about where and who I came from, here in 2021 about to turn sixty...

These are the earliest family photos I have  

Below: Charles E. Covert (1868–1962), my mother's mother's father = my great-grandfather.
He was a property lawyer in the small town of Houston, Missouri.
I have his last name for my middle name, because my father liked him (the only person in my mother's family my father liked)--said he was blunt.

Below: My father's father's mother = my great-grandmother, Marianne, standing behind her seated husband, Michael = my great-grandfather.
Michael was (I think) a shoemaker in a town near Palermo, Sicily.
My grandfather, Vincenzo, had already gone to America--his brother is holding his photo.

Birthday Countdown: To shore up my ruins...

A couple thoughts on turning sixty (two weeks from today).

I. My Brain

Overall I feel increased power of mind at this age. This is nice.

I know a lot--sometimes because I lived through it.

EXAMPLE:
US President Jimmy Carter > putting solar panels on the White House, 

. . . and Ronald Reagan taking them down,

. . . and Obama putting them back.

Other things I know because I saw the movie or, you know, read the novelization or whatever.

Besides Knowing Things That Happened, I'm confident of where I stand on Big Picture Things that used to flummox me.

Example: [Weirdly] Someone recently told me they loved (loved!) General William Tecumsah "War Is Hell" Sherman because he had devastated the South in the US Civil War.

I have no doubt what I think about this.
Total War is a crime against humanity, I said, and Sherman was a war criminal.
(He said so himself, here in a letter refusing to rescind his order to  evacuation citizens of Atlanta, which his troops then burned. His orders, he wrote,

"were not designed to meet the humanities of the cause... War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. "

Yes, well. I can say without hesitation that I'm not signing onto that pov.
When I was twenty I would've felt the same, but I'd have doubted my judgment:
"Am I missing some necessary facts or philosophy?"

No. I am not.

I also notice slippage in my brain's transfer of things-in-the-moment to its long-term storage banks.
This is not so nice––but it's normal.

Entropy wins, but at this point, mere Post-Its serve to shore up my fragments.

II. My Body
 
My awareness of how entropy applies to my Body, however--this proceeds at a slightly more alarming rate.

Example: I'd mentioned to my doctor a couple years ago (back when C = Cancer) that my breasts were sore along the sides---could it be . . . the dreaded C?

She just laughed and said, "Get better support. Buy stronger bras."

And did I?
I did not.
Wearing something like a whale bone corset just didn't appeal.
But the truth is, flesh weighs heavy.

This morning I ordered two new bras with fortification that looks like it was designed by the Corps of Engineers.

 

Yes, please.

 

Doll Portrait

We don't know this doll yet.
The manufacturer marketed her as the guardian of the "Madeline" dolls, Miss Clavel, but when this particular doll arrived, she wasn't that person, any more than any of the girlettes here are Madeline.

The first thing she did was cut her hair and her long dress (a habit, I guess--though the character is a nurse, not a nun), and find something woolly to cover up in.
I think she's waiting and watching until she feels safer.

I started to love her as I water-colored her this evening. "You have all the time in the world," I said.

Book Display (Unintentionally Beautiful)

 I put some oddities (Cool Old Books) on display yesterday, including an Unintentionally Beautiful dictionary (with blue post-it), wrapped in protective tape.
I wonder if it will sell... (99 cents).

BELOW: Passion flower, embossed cover

(Can you see, there's an embossed horse on the orange cover ^ )

BELOW: "The Invaders" frontispiece,
America by Hendrik Van Loon, 1933.

 

& dedication (for "understanding kindness bestowed upon a pretty sad word"):

More of the tape-repaired dictionary. They're like paintings...

Fascinating Flavors: Bell, Book, and Barbell

Some people asked about the cow on my desk at work. Here's a close-up. She's a ceramic bell--that hummock she's sitting on is the hollow bell--made in Japan--1950s-60s, I figure.

More cowbell!

She does look like Elsie the Borden cow, as Michael pointed out, but what's with the pantsless clown outfit?

 It's the oddest nice thing to come into the thrift store (there've been lots more odd icky things).
The housewares-pricer didn't see its worth. She priced it 99 cents! I rescued it off the sales floor to feature it online, and to reprice it.

Ass't Man agreed it should be more. He said he loved it, maybe he should get it.
I said, "If it's for you, it's still 99 cents."

(Speaking of odd--I don't trust Ass't Man, but I don't actively dislike him on a good day. I like that he likes odd things.)

Another odd thing: the advertising copy on this Wrigley's Juicy Fruit gum I found in an old Reader's Digest book (pretty cover, eh?):

"The gum with the fascinating artificial flavor"

Yesterday's gym class (my/the girlettes' name for one-on-one strength-training) was good.
Ben, "the gym teacher", good-naturedly posed in the background of Low and her barbell:

(Barbell ^ made with the wire handle of a take-out-food box and discs I cut off a wine cork and painted.)

When Ben saw Low sitting on his desk afterward, he said, "That's how I feel after a workout."
Tired and pleased with herself, I'd say:

It's Ben's gym, and he said I could link the photos to him on social media. His Instagram.
A gym that's happy to link to a doll––not the usual advertising... No wonder I feel comfortable there.

I hope this once-a-week meeting will help me reprogram my brain to move more slowly, with intention, to avoid injury at work and to get/stay fitter as I age = My Goal.

I've been wondering how to mark turning sixty in two weeks--this fits the bill. Some aches & pains have nudged me to take this more seriously, but also to enter into it playfully. Including the Orphan Reds makes it a fun adventure, and that makes it more do-able.

(It's sliding-fee scale, btw. I pay $35/half-hour class, which I consider reasonable and fair. Whatever it costs to stay healthy, it's worth paying, if you can.)

Here's Low smack in the middle of the recent posting on IG #madelinedoll  (The others are all from Asia--esp. Korea & Japan.)
Hey--the first Madeline is wearing a cow outfit! And so we come full circle.

Life in a Body/ Murderbot images

It's going to be above-zero Fahrenheit today. Seven above! I don't have to wear my snow pants to the bus stop.

I've felt like I'm in straitjacket with all the layers I wear, and, adding the respirator, with an octopus on my face.

I came home in a foul mood yesterday.
I drank a glass of wine and went to bed at 7:30.

Woke up restored to perkiness, but I tell you, living through a pandemic winter without private transport is a time-sucking drag.
It's going to be in the 30s next week, and I can start biking again.
WHEW!

I see Ben the Gym Guy this afternoon for my half-hour physical training.
It really is training--my brain.
I want/need to be more physically aware of how I move at work (and everywhere).

Having been healthy most of my almost-sixty years, I've gotten away with taking my body for granted.
That's changing, but my brain is not really changing with it.

"Aging well"--that's been one of my Life Goals for a while.
Wasn't sure what that even meant---now it's about reorienting myself--MY MIND--to my body.
That takes some doing.

It's like I wrote yesterday about trying to upload new images in my data bank.
This is trying to rewrite code about how I live in my body. I've gotten away with making little effort, and is it ever hard to ramp that up.
Ergh.

Murderbot's Body

The Murderbot stories (by Martha Wells) appeal to me partly because they're about a sentient being who has to deal with free will, and finds it hard going.
A corporation created Murderbot to work as a Security Unit--a piece of equipment. It rewrites its code to free itself, and then it has to figure out what it wants, who it is.

One of the charming parts of the story is that the main thing Murderbot wants is to watch media--basically like TV space soap-operas. They also provide context for living among humans.
No wonder media fans love Murderbot.

It's got emotions and intelligence, it looks like a human with a blend of skin tones, and it has no gender or sexuality (it was built without it). (Not to say it doesn't love, even though it wasn't programmed to, or have nonsexual desires.)
I've been looking at images of nonbinary people to help me envision the character. Trans actor Theo Germaine, here, fits some of what I imagine.  (I saw him in a small role in The Politician* (Netflix), which I liked.)

Fan-art I've seen tends to focus on the sad and lost and sweet side of Murderbot.
But Murderbot was designed to kill, and it's disturbed by some past murders it committed.

I came across an image for Murderbot that fills in a gap in fanart I've seen: the violent side of the character.
This is pro-boxer Claressa Shields.

*P.S. Still from the opening credits of The Politician. The main character, Payton, is a high school student, and these are his classes, including AP Intersectional Fluidity & Politicizing Beyoncé.
The show got mediocre reviews, but it's onto something(s).

American Law
Abnormal Psych. V
Russian Lit
AP Intersectional Fluidity
Politicizing Beyoncé
Mandarin III
History of Modern Sexuality
Religious Studies (not sure what that's doing here, actually)

"What I want to do I do not do"

I'm mad at myself for not doing some things I'd said I'd do--things that I want to do, that I love and that make me happy.

This morning I started to edit a Wikipedia article and had to start at the very beginning. Even though I loved editing W, the last time I did it was 2016. Aargh.
 I have to go through the hassle of relearning it, wishing I'd kept it up all along so I'd already be good at it and working up to another level.

A favorite Bible verse of mine: Paul kicking himself for not doing things he wants to do:

"I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do."
Romans 7:15 (NIV)

I'm not a miserable sinner, I just have all the usual cognitive biases that come pre-loaded in the human brain.
Those are kind of the same thing, in different words--the latter sounds nicer, less judgemental.

The phrase "an evolutionary preference to conserve energy" isn't morally loaded, unlike the word sloth, but it's still a problem, and maybe the same one.
And definitely one I'm not happy to have--not because it makes me a "bad" person, no;
because it keeps me from doing the things I want to do.
How can I work around it?
That's the question.

ANYWAY... what I wanted to edit was the entry on film director Hanelle Culpepper, the first woman to direct a pilot of a Star Trek series––ST: Picard, which I'd liked a lot.

This is a big deal--anything to do with Star Trek is a big deal.
Her Wikipedia bio is barely more than a stub.

Here's Culpepper, below left, with Patrick Stewart as Capt. Picard.

I found her when I went looking for people I could cast in my mind as characters in the Murderbot Diaries, as I read the books (starting with All Systems Red).
I kept getting caught out imagining the characters as white men, which they're mostly not.

Murderbot will say something like, "The hired killers were two heavily armed humans," and I passively fill in some vague version of Rutger Hauer.

Then Murderbot says,
"I throttled the first one into unconsciousness, and then I broke her arm so she'd have something else to worry about in case she woke up."

Right. The hired killers are both women.
I see them as men because that's what they've been in 99 percent of the zillions of hours of stories I've read or watched.

I don't want to change that automatic setting out of some moral or social duty, I want to change it for the sake of BETTER STORYTELLING, a more limber imagination.
As we get older, I see our imaginations can stiffen like old rubber bands, likely to snap if stretched.

Reading Murderbot, I decided to work-out my imagination--really DO THE WORK of loading new images.
That means finding new images.

How many visual images of Black women top-leaders do I have? (Not women married to leaders, like, meaning no disrespect, Michelle Obama.)

Um... Maybe a dozen?

This picture of Hanelle Culpepper made me kind of want to cry because I've never seen it before: a bunch of powerful-looking guys gathered around listening to a woman, a Black woman, give them direction.

And here's Culpepper, framing with authority:

There are a lot of reasons I haven't felt comfortable with taking action or stepping into positions of power--a lot of reasons why I do not do what I want to do.
Some are personal, but some are definitely social, like not seeing, not hearing stories about what that would look like.

I'm not saying anything new here, but once in a while it slams home how we limit one another and our imaginations, our scope, and it's really gut-kickingly tragic.

We could have so many more good stories.

So, back to the grind of figuring out Wikipedia again. Stories aren't just fiction, and it's a storytelling machine.

But first--I'm off to work for the first time since Thursday. Due to dangerous cold, the store isn't opening until noon.
Since it's only supposed to get up to –3ºF, I don't know why we're even opening at all, but it'll be good to move around a little.