Isherwood & Party Climb Under a Wire

From Christopher Isherwood, Diaries, Volume One 1939–1960, 48-49.

"November 5. [1939, Picnic at Tujunga Canyon, outside Los Angeles, CA]

"After lunch, most of our party wandered a little further up the canyon, to a place the forest rangers had built a high wire fence, right across the riverbed, with notices warning against trespass.
...Somebody said it looked like a barricade around a concentration camp. Anita Loos suggested we should burrow under it, like escaping refugees. It was rather a sinister joke, and the laughter was a bit forced, as several people began to dig, with their hands or pieces of rock.

"I remember Bertrand Russell holding forth to Aldous [Huxley] on some philosophical topic and digging as he talked, with the air of a father joining in a game to amuse the children. Only, in this case, he was both parent and child.

"Inside a few minutes, there was quite a large, shallow pit. Most of us got into it and wriggled under the wire. It was funny to watch how, having done this, people became grown-ups again and strolled off in twos and threes, talking about the war. I don't know why they had taken all this trouble, for they paid no attention to the scenery. Berthold [Viertel] especially––that born city dweller––might just as well have been walking down Fifth Avenue."

And that's why I read Isherwood, even though I don't love the man himself. NOT for the famous people––though it is funnier to imagine Bertrand Russell* wriggling under a wire fence than some unknown person)––but for that glimpse Life As It Happens, including the mention of concentration camps in the first months of World War II.

_______________

*Isherwood's not name-dropping, though this is a star-studded picnic, he's not the host: as an expat British writer in Los Angeles, those are just the people he knows (or the people the people he knows know).

Unnatural Acts

I posted some photos on my IG this week, and I'll probably continue to do that, here: www.instagram.com/frescadp.
Among other things, that's where the #Madelinedoll pictures are--mostly from Asia (Korea & Japan).

I'm such a written-word person, it hadn't occurred to me that people would think blogging without pictures for a month was a bad idea.
Several commenters weren't too keen on going picureless, however.

I love pictures myself. When I was old enough to start reading chapter books, I was sad they weren't illustrated. When I was a kid and my family went on trips, my mother gave me the camera to take photos.

Pictures are easy--a natural visual language, unlike the alphabet.
Reading and writing are unnatural acts.
In the span of human history, they're new adaptations (only five-thousand-years old).

Biologically, we're not even coded for those behaviors:

"Speaking is natural. Learning to read is a cultural invention. We have to build a neurocircuitry... to pull words off the page. [Having a hard time doing that] has nothing to do with intelligence."

--Literacy expert Margie Gillis, Why Is Reading So Hard?

I'm not usually one for challenging myself. Writing is maybe the only thing I do not because it is easy but because it is hard. My brain likes it, but I don't work that hard at it, even so.

Blogging photos made me slack off––it's like, "You can have all the marshmallows, now, but you never get steak"––and I didn't like that.

Learning to read was easy for me. Writing well, or to my satisfaction anyway, is not.

I don't even read well.
I'm a quick and messy reader, gobbling up the story (even nonfiction), swallowing chunks without chewing, and leaving the gristly bits on the side of the plate.

I'd loved the Murderbot quartet of novellas so much, when I finished reading them I started all over at the beginning.
I was shocked at how little I remembered. I'd forgotten entire scenes.

So I worked at reading the stories the second time. I jotted down notes, and I looked at and drew pictures to help me envision the character of the genderless, synthetic person.

Sloppy reading aside, age must be the cause of my memory gaps. I used to remember everything. Now I don't.

This week I listed "Bridget" (not her real name) for sale on eBay. She's a gold-haired girlette marketed as a Friend of Madeline.
(Her photo is on IG.)

Someone made an offer for her.
Luckily the seller is not obliged to accept offers, because as soon as I received it, I regretted putting her up for sale.
I rejected the offer and took the listing down.

There was much rejoicing among the Orphan Reds, who then informed me (why didn't they say right away?) that she was the goalie on their soccer team.
(Soccer team?)

Now she goes by the name Satisfied.

Anyway, the thing is, I cannot remember how I came to have this gold-haired doll in the first place!
Did I buy her by herself?
Or--more likely--did she come paired with a red-hair girlette?
It can't be that long ago--she hasn't been here long--but I CANNOT REMEMBER!*

Age & intentional attention affect memory.
Can't do anything about age. "Age is just a number" [that indicates your proximity to death].

Could pay more attention. For me, that includes slowing down and taking in less. Same thing I'm practicing in gym class: to move with more deliberation, which usually means more slowly.

With most people I know being vaccinated, social life is starting up again, and I've instantly felt overwhelmed. I'd said at the beginning of Covid that I didn't mind staying home alone (mostly).
I want to pay attention to my rate of intake of people-energy too.

I'm taking today off--canceled a plan with a friend and am staying home. With Satisfied.

Love ya'll! Be well!

* Oh! I just remembered, days later! where gold-haired Satisfied came from. (Geez. )
She came with a couple red-hair girlettes as a bundle I bought on FB marketplace. Also with a Miss Clavell, who went to live with Linda Sue.

Writing about it helped me remember.
Thanks, brain.

Retrograde to the Basics

I just saw on Instagram (there are the pictures!) that Mercury is retrograde in Gemini from May 29 (today) to June 22, 2021.
That matches up pretty well with the month I set aside to do Picture-Free Blogging.

I'm always saying I don't belieeeeve in astrology, and I don't.
But I do find it soothing when it fits my needs---which it always does, if you twist and turn it enough. It's endlessly mutable.

Sometimes it fits specifically well.
In this case, it matches my feelings about putting down my camera/phone and focusing on words:

"You could be going back to the drawing board...
Although we're conditioned to gather and disseminate information and go, go, go 24/7 — as fast as humanly possible — the planet that rules all that mental energy and communication [Gemini] actually urges us to take the occasional time-out from that exhausting pace."
--via Shape

There is so much coming at me, at us all––this past year of shutting down, and these recent weeks of opening up––it takes a lot of energy to take it in and process it.

After work yesterday, I went to IKEA for the first time in more than a year, to look for a duvet cover to replace the one I washed with an ink pen and then stained with wine.

Sitting in their cafeteria alone, eating dried-up salmon balls and mushy broccoli––(they're not very busy so the food sits in the steam table too long)––I felt a wave of tenderness and sadness.

Tenderness, that so many people have made such heroic efforts to take care of one another---even efforts on the part of corporations like IKEA count.

Sadness, that we've lost so much--some, simply the natural passage of time.
I felt the absence of people I've been to IKEA with--my father, who liked the Swedish meatballs there and has been dead four years now--and the loss of people I don't even know, for instance, the mothers of two people who died of Covid.

And the young woman who was murdered on the corner next to the thrift store this week. 

Not that I went to IKEA with her. 
She was a sex worker who regularly came into the store for tiny little clothes.
She was rather a pain to deal with because she was always scattered, high on something. I liked her a lot though––she was perky and bright, like a little bird–– and I always gave her stuff for free.

After she was killed (no one knows why--anything from totally random to something to do with business), it turned out all the cashiers gave her stuff too.
I'm glad there was that tiny kindness in her life, anyway...

I am tenderized by small acts of patience.
The worker who assigned me my table, at a good distance from others (Covid-saftey measure) sweetly explained how the system works--though he must have said it a million times already.

We are being humans together, sometimes better than other times.

I bought a duvet cover in neutral colors: beige, cream, soft blue & gray.
It looks great next to my white walls. Calming.

Unplugged

I hear you, people who don't like posts without photos.
I like illustrated posts too, but I tell ya, I go around with the phone on my hip, and I feel freer without it.

Not only am I not recording for the blog, I'm not shooting for the store, either.
A couple times at work I've seen something fun & photographable, realized I didn't need to (need to?) take its picture, and felt... relief.

Put your phone down, ma'am, and back away slowly.

The toy photographers group had discussed if any of them ever play with their toys without photographing them.
Everyone said no, but they'd like to.

I took the girlettes to the creek and didn't take pictures.
Penny Cooper said she appreciated "a bit of privacy".

I'm surprised how odd it is, though, not having the support of photos here. I'd started to blog yesterday, felt awkward and exposed, and stopped.

It's just me, in nothing but words.

That's what I want.

Due to a Blogger glitch, GZ blogged without photos yesterday about a day trip to Dundee on a foggy morning:
too many drivers driving "without lights . . . imagine grey car on a grey road in fog".

There's a picture.

Now, Without Pictures!

 I started reading the first volume of Christopher Isherwood's diaries, 1939–1960, last night. I've already read the second volume.

I'm not fond of Isherwood.  I'm not sure why all not. He's too . . .  maybe, fastidious? (about things I don't care about, like his meditation practice and his weight) to be inviting or entertaining.
As I read this volume, I'll pay attention to why I don't actually care for the guy.

I'm reading his journals because he's a writer and an observer, and over time his observations pile up to be interesting. His record keeping over time is inspiring. 

I was saying to Marz that Isherwood wrote in his diary regularly throughout most of his adult life, and with no pictures.

When I first blogged (the deleted Flightless Parrots, 2003–2006), I didn't know how to add photos--the "insert image" icon came later. I only ever posted text.
Now I rarely post without a picture. I like pictures, but too often I rely on them instead of words, which I don't like.

 Marz said, "Why don't you blog for a month without photos?"

So I'm going to try that, starting now.

Picnic (in Paris)

I have seen more friends in the last ten days than I saw in the last fourteen months.
Full face, in person!

Minnesota is among the US states that have fully vaccinated at least 50 percent of adults. Half the states have.
That's not enough for herd immunity (per Mayo), but it's enough to have a picnic!

Sophie (below, center) threw me a belated sixtieth-birthday picnic party in her backyard yesterday, with Maura (left) and bink (right).

Iced tea in stemmed glasses... fruit salad, avocado & lox toasts, and all sort of desserts, including raspberry and mango macarons.

The girlettes were invited too!
"Under the Linden trees in Paris," they say.  (!? It was a crab apple.)

Annette made them croissants ^ (out of clay).
Pensive Bear prefers chocolate chip cookies because they look like polka dots.
(Close-up photos by bink.)

 Good thing they were still wearing their Circus costumes:
"There was even a miniature Eiffel Tower for acrobats."

They checked out the people food too.
"Unwieldy," Penny Cooper declares. "Ours is nicer."

I'd had to stop for the picnic, so this morning--back to painting my walls white.
I am not tidy. But I did follow protocol--washed the walls (as you quite rightly say, River) and everything.

"You have to clean the filter first."

 Penny Cooper is advising me on Doing Things Correctly the First Time.

It's like a sauna here, this Sunday morning, after days of rain and heat, but I am super eager to get painting my room white. With the the newly opened-up transom windows, it'll be like a light box.
Super excited for that!

So I looked up "How to Paint in High Humidity" and read that it's okay to paint inside walls if you turn the a/c on. The a/c pulls moisture out of the air.
(Not possible outside, obviously.)

I set my window unit up, and turned it on.

Penny Cooper became agitated:
You have to clean the filter first! She even found where it is:

Thank you, Penny Cooper!

Penny is like the more rational side of me.
She would wait fifteen minutes for two marshmallows (rather than eating one, immediately, which I would do).
Not because she's a moral athlete but because IT WOULDN'T BOTHER HER.

It's not that she'd be a martyr and suffer for the pleasure of an extra marshmallow, she just would be truly chill with waiting:

"I don't mind waiting.
And I would share the extra marshmallow with the others."

That's the ticket---to work WITH yourself, not to punish yourself into trying to be someone else. (Like, that works?)

Anyway, I am someone else already:
Penny Cooper!

(I guess that's true?
But Penny Cooper doesn't feel like me to me.
That's why she's such a useful friend:
I can ask her for advice.
What she advises is different than what I'd usually say.)

Now I'm going to go wash the smudges off the walls.
It's the correct procedure, you know, before painting.

Home Improvements Weekend: More light!

I'm back home from cat sitting, and HouseMate is out of town on a bike trip.
I'm taking the opportunity to make some changes to my room/area that I've wanted to do for more than a year that are easier to do on my own.

This is the first opportunity since  Covid.

I loved being at the condo this past week because it had huge bay windows, so it was bright (even though north-facing), and it was clean and tidy.

So, first and most exciting change here:
I got up at 6 a.m. and knocked out the board nailed across the transom/piano windows of my room.

You can see, they now open into the east-facing front porch.
Morning light!
I'm also going to paint my walls white (perhaps slightly tinted gray).

(I don't know why anyone would board up these beautiful windows, but they sure did a thoroughly thorough job of it--I had to break the board with a sledge hammer.)

So... You can see the open interior windows are intact, and they close nice and snug.
But I guess I need to replace the board with a screen?
A series of three storm windows that slide open?
(Ideas?)

I'm happy to pay for whatever. I guess I'll wait and see what HM wants.

This is the view from the porch side, with a bit of the board still attached (top, left).
I can only do so much to tidy up, since it's HM's stuff, but I will clean it.

I am sitting at my little orange tile table right now, typing this post.

Aging Woo-sah

Good morning, world!

It's 6:15 a.m. as I sit down with my coffee to blog chat.
I've been getting up early, with the sunlight––5:30 a.m. today, though it's gray rain-light this morning.

It's been a dry spring, so the rain is welcome, but I hope it stops later because I bike home this evening, from a week of condo/cat– sitting.

It's as if I've had a week at an Airbnb, plus cat, with room to invite people over. Which we can do again--and UNMASKED! Everyone I know is vaccinated.

It's been a social week:
almost every day, a friend came over, or I went out with someone in the busy Uptown area, where this senior condo building is.
(I used to live near here, now I live in a quiet, residential area.)

(I could invite people over to HouseMate's house too, but she's almost always there, so I don't want to spread out like we did for Circus Day.)

Here's another photo of Costume Day, with humans:
bink, left, and my sister. (Marz came later.)

(Can you see ^ bink's shirt pattern is tiny terriers.)

bink and I are going to drive down to Milwaukee to see Auntie Vi in three weeks. We'd been to visit six months ago on Election Day; we'd stayed in an Airbnb down the block from Vi, and kept our distance.

We'll stay at that rental house again, rather than my auntie's, but we'll be able to show our faces!
She will be 96 in three months and said it's more relaxed not to host guests in her little house. Also, she doesn't go out much, so visiting us at the nice Airbnb is like a vacation for her.

Covid isolation was extra-hard on my auntie. She doesn't drive anymore, and she likes to walk (with her walker) the half-mile to the coffee shop, library, and stores which, of course, were all closed.

Winters are always isolating for her anyway.
I wish she lived in a senior complex, like this condo where I'm cat sitting, but she chose not to--I think she prefers the total independence.

For me, I think aging around other people (in the same building) would be better than being isolated, living alone or living in a quiet neighborhood with only one roommate.
I imagine at some point (when I'm eighty, in twenty years?), I'll move into a place for old people. Not an expensive one (like where I'm house sitting), but some place for low-income seniors.

Weird to contemplate one's decline. At this point, aging is more an idea than an impediment. I've had gray hair for more than a decade, so I'm used to that--and I'm lucky that I'm still healthy and strong.

The other day at work, one of my coworkers hastened to help one of the volunteers carry something heavy--this volunteer is not much older than I am.
My coworker never hastens to help me carry anything!
Ha. Not a bad thing, that I don't need help.

I could use some help losing 20 lbs, but not from Noom. A while ago that I'd signed up for a free trial membership on this weight-loss app.
I didn't like it at all.
It's designed for people who like pictures of lemurs on their kombucha = the communications are written in cutesey Sock Monkey Voice. "Let's say, Kale yeah!"

Ugh. When I canceled I suggested they write two tracks--one Cute-Speak, and the other, Just the Facts.

There are free food-tracking apps... I just... I don't know.
Food is all tied up with difficult emotions from my early years, and it is resistant to change. Intransigent.

I'd love to lighten the load––the weight weighs me down, of course––but I think I'll do best by focusing on other healthy things . . . like gym class!

I just read a book review in the New Yorker about how life expectancy in the past was thirty-five years old.
Well, actually, the article is about the end of life--dying well.
I'd like that--which is one reason I keep thinking about aging well--what is that, for me, trying to cultivate a good old age, a good death?

Aging (and living in general!) is bound to include dwindlement and pain and general annoyance. How to do that well?
Time to practice that now.

I get lots of practice with annoyance at work! 
Yesterday was zooey, and I was angry at the customers who were making messes and at some of my coworkers who weren't helping at all.
As I was wheeling away a load of dirty clothes someone donated (they go right into the trash), I caught a coworker's eye.
I could see he was in high-annoyance too, so I grabbed my earlobes and said WOO-SAH, and we both laughed.

(Woo-sah is what Mr Furniture always says--it's a made-up anger management mantra, a running joke in the movie Bad Boys II.)
It HELPS. (If only because it makes you stop and take a breath.)

Martin Lawrence demonstrates:

Anyway, in ten years, at seventy I'll have lived twice the number of years many people in history got.
Comparing yourself to other people isn't always that helpful, but in this case, it does give me some perspective:
My troubles are not too bad!

Blogging: an anthropology of ourselves

Reading The Splendid and the Vile about the London Blitz– a couple days ago at the coffee shop across from where I'm condo/cat-sitting.

The  frontispiece: the library of a bombed residence, Holland House, Kensington, London, 1940.

And now Israel is blitzing Gaza, bombing civilians... Round and round we go.

“There is no safe place in Gaza, where two million people have been forcibly isolated from the rest of the world for over 13 years,”
said the U.N. emergency relief coordinator, Mark Lowcock.
--www.nytimes.com/live/2021/05/19/world/israel-palestine-gaza

Mass Observation

The Splendid and the Vile quotes from the journals of ordinary people living through the Blitz––part of a project called Mass Observation that started before the war.

"Founded in 1937 as an “anthropology of ourselves,”
the Mass Observation project was meant to record the mundane details of British life across every level of class and location." [Time]

Blogging these past 14+ months has been a Mass Observation project!
Someone could condense what we all wrote since March 2020 about daily life during the Covid-19 pandemic;
the police murder of George Floyd and its aftermath;
and the US elections & Trump's downfall (and/or other countries' political upheavals).

There's other social media, but I don't see people chatting about the details of their everyday lives there, like we do here. What we eat (and how much we drink), our boredom, our anxiety, our gardens, etc.

I've felt I should have written more!
It all was happening so fast.

It's still happening, of course. Here in Minnesota, Covid is dwindling, but there are still 112 people in ICU today, and 14 people died.

The state doesn't require mask-wearing, but Twin Cities still do, which I'm glad of--especially at work, in a crowded & impoverished neighborhood.
As I said to my coworkers, there are a lot of infectious diseases out there--I think we should all wear masks forever.

A sign of the change:
an ad on Facebook for 50-percent off handmade face masks.
The end (or something) is near...

One day (soon?),  I will not leave masks hanging off the handlebars of my bike, like so:

Meanwhile, the city feels calmer since Derek Chauvin was found guilty of murdering George Floyd (and the trials of Chauvin's accomplices has been put off until 2022).
But the uprising for social justice continues, as does the violence--daily gun deaths, addiction, massive homelessness.

Delicate Salmon Paté

Yesterday a guy came in the store asking if he could do some clean up around the store for some cash. 
(The store doesn't usually do this, but sometimes.)

He had stitches across his forehead. He'd fallen asleep in the sun, he said, become dehydrated, and when he stood up, he fell and hit his head.
He also showed me a couple raw blisters on his feet.

He's living in a tent in the woods along the river, he said--no running water (the river's not safe).
I got him a basin of warm, soapy water, a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, and some gauze bandages & medical tape, and some towels, and gave him a place to sit in the kitchen to tend to his feet.

(I always think of how people did this for me when I my feet were flayed from blisters on the Camino pilgrimage---
man, I'd had no idea before that how excruciating they are!)

Big Boss gave him ten bucks and told him to come back when his feet are better and sweep the parking lot.

He's on foot, so I also gave him a $30 bike. Pretty crap, but better than walking the four miles to his campsite.

Big Boss said I was giving this guy too much.
(BB is a penny pincher--not a good quality in a business person---he NEVER gets it that you have to invest in things to get returns).

So I paid for the bike myself, but made the executive decision that store should give the guy a backpack and some socks.

Then I went back to the condo I'm house-sitting and fed the cat her individually packaged dinner, "Delicate Salmon Paté".

BELOW:

I just ordered this Folio Society book from eBay ($27 incl. tax &shipping), Mass-Observation: Britain in the Second World War:

It wasn't the war that sparked the project, it was King Edward VIII abdicating the throne to marry Wallis Simpson, a divorced American.
(And then my generation got Charles & Diana;
and now it's Harry & Meghan--I even know how to spell her name!)

"In 1936 amateur anthropologist Tom Harrisson had become incensed by newspapers claiming to know what the British public thought about the abdication crisis.

He decided to find out by 'mass-observation' volunteer diaries a fuller picture of what the British were actually thinking and feeling."

 
What I'm thinking and feeling: Circus Girlettes!

"Dolls? I didn't knock over any dolls."

 "I don't see any dolls here."

The cat I'm house sitting was agitated at 5 a.m. this morning, crying and pacing.
I think maybe she didn't like the circus on "her" table?

But of course she is entirely and sweetly innocent of any and all wrongdoing, now and for always.

She is perfectly fine now.

Circus Day Troupe

 The troupe

bink made the two costumes and lion ruff on the left; I made the polka-dot dresses and noses; and sister made the hoop outfit on the right.

Circus Day: Pensive Bear

Circus Costume Day: Last Minute Prep

 It begins! We are listening to Nino Rota Music for Fellini Movies (on youtube)

The Girlettes Who Came in From the Cold . . . and Went to the Creek

I biked with the girlettes to Lock & Dam No. 1 yesterday.
Chain-link fence with barbed wire on top barred the promenade to the 1970s-ish Control buildings.
(Usually you can walk out. Is it closed just for Covid time?)

Facing a wall, the girlettes wanted to reenact the end of The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, (1965)  [last 2 minutes on youtube]

. . .  SPOILER

when Richard Burton and Claire Bloom try to escape from East Germany over the Berlin Wall:

It's a sad ending, so first,  something silly from the Blooper reel.

NO DOLLS WERE HARMED in the making of this tableau.
They kept laughing:

Also, a couple fire fighters came along an access path--to work on some equipment.
They saw the dolls on top of the fence and said,
"Are they stuck? Do you need a ladder?"

LOL.
I wish I'd said yes.

Instead I explained what I was doing, but neither young man had heard of the movie... nor, I sensed by their blank reaction, had they heard of the Cold War, or even the Berlin Wall?
Ancient history!

They also didn't know why the promenade was closed.
"That's federal property. We're city."

_______________________________

Here's our little reenactment.


The Girlettes Who Came in From the Cold

First, the spy climbs the wall to get to the other side.

Then the librarian climbs,

 

but is shot, and drops...

 

 

The spy goes back down to the librarian, knowing it means death.

 The End
___________________________

. . . And Went to the Creek

So sad! I was a little disturbed at the end, but they thought it was all a lark.

They got up, and we all went and spent the afternoon at the creek.

 Low was worried the water was too deep. She likes dirt.

BELOW: They played "Do you like butter?" with a dandelion.
(Did you play this when you were little?)
If there's yellow light under your chin, you like butter.

The thing is, the dandelion casts a yellow light--you can just see here--how does this work?

 

And they read up on the circus (not John Le Carré's spy circus) for Costume Day, coming up!

Unsnarling

 Hasn't it been a long winter? Time to brush the snarls out.

Aaand, time for the next Costume Day for girlettes!
I'm going house/cat sitting at a nice, bright apartment for a week, starting tomorrow, and this weekend I'll host Circus Costume Making there for bink, my sister, and Marz.

The plan is  later, at home, to set up a circus toy tableaux (tableaux de jouets de cirque, per google).

I don't seem motivated to get down to the lock on the Mississippi to set up a toy tableaux for a spy story. I'm not giving up on that idea, but I do better setting scenes up at home.

Having said that, it's my day off and it's supposed to be sunny & 70ºF this afternoon--maybe I will bike over to the river with Penny Cooper.

Working only 4 hours less a week (for a total of 20 hours/week) is opening up more creative energy than I expected.
I shouldn't be surprised though:
doing the store's social media never only took the time allotted to it--it spread out like water, soaking everything around it.

Asian-American Book Display

The book display I set up for Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month (May) at work.
I can only work with what we have, and the store had no books about Pacific Islanders, and a lot of books are by Asian authors, not Asian Americans.
Also, I stretched "Asian" to include writers from Turkey and India--countries technically in Asia, but then, so is a lot of Russia...

ABOVE: Michael Chow: Voice for My Father. Michael Chow, born Zhou Yinghua in Shanghai in 1939, was abruptly uprooted to England at the age of thirteen, where he lost his family and name. Voice for My Father illuminates Chow’s long journey, celebrating both father and son—the Beijing opera star Zhou Xinfang (1895–1975), and the artist and legendary restaurateur who has recently made a triumphant return to painting.

ABOVE: Wang Ping (Last Communist Virgin) was born in Shanghai, lives in St. Paul, MN.

 ABOVE: Photograph on cover of ARTFORUM:  Apprehension, by Seattle-based Chinese American Chao-Chen Yang, ca. 1942

more thrift store donations

 More thrift store donations. Since I’m not posting for the store’s social media, I’m enjoying doing it for myself!

BELOW: For some reason I really noticed the detail of the cats’ expressions in this print of a Goya painting I’ve seen many times:

BELOW: This is the Cabbage Patch doll I dropped off at the window of a pal’s apartment.
The girlettes were intrigued. “What is that? Is it alive like us?”

The Cabbie remained inactivated and no contact was established. 

BELOW: Cover illustration by Al Nagy, 1964

Never too many bleeding hearts (even though this one is machine stitched, I’m pretty sure):

BELOW A coworker knew who this baby dino is but I forgot (from Jurassic Park II)—

I put it in the tool room. 

We lose or undersell a lot of vintage stuff. These cool mid-century chairs, BELOW, were going to be thrown out...

New babies! Don’t they seem pleased and surprised? I suspect they’ve been boxed away. 

The Right to Bear Arms (& Legs)

 St Lucy Bear is armed again!

BELOW: You can see the bright fur-graft onto her eye (left), and the wool patch at her arm hole, where the bright fur was taken.
Those are the original cardboard discs--they are her movable joints—I replaced their wicked cotter pins with plastic-covered wire:

I restuffed her with kapok---you can see it sticking out, above---it's the seed fluff of the tropical ceiba tree, like milkweed fluff.
Kapok was commonly used to stuff toys before WWII. During the war, this lightweight, waterproof material was needed to stuff life vests for sailors and pilots.

HOORAY! (Legs to follow.)

St Lucy Bear Repair

 It’s happening!

I took bright fur from under her arm joints and grafted it into her threadbare eye areas. (Replaced it with wool felt.)

Lucy is an antique (1930s?) golden mohair, jointed bear with glass eyes on wire stalks (= why we have child safety laws).