The Corners of My Mind

A 7-day average of 23 new cases.
That's the weekly Covid-19 average in the county where I live among a million other people, 65 percent of them vaccinated.

That's the lowest average since this whole thing began in March 2020. *

So . . . is this it? Unlikely, with virus variants on the move. But it's a break for now. What a relief!

I ate breakfast with bink inside a busy, crowded restaurant on Sunday--first time.
I wear my mask around the public at work––still the workplace policy, though not everyone follows it. It's hot in the back work areas, so I take it off.

My friend Denise came over yesterday. I hadn't seen her since we walked around the lake late last fall, stopping on a bench for a while, until we got too cold.

We sat on the patio where I'm house sitting and finished an open bottle of Riesling the home-owner had left in the fridge, ate Skittles I found in the back of a cupboard, and talked about the past year.

Denise said she felt tapped out. Both her pre-teen kids had gotten Covid this spring, luckily mildly (one, almost imperceptibly), but still frighteningly.  Her job in the public schools is tough, and the administration is slip-shod, unsupportive.

But raggediness aside, for both of us the year confirmed and strengthened our core belief in the power of small, personal acts.
In lockdown, we could see the effects of personal acts radiating outward.
Did you bring groceries to someone?
Did someone bring groceries to you?

Denise said the girlette calendar from me cheers her up. I'm glad I made that.

A more dramatic example of the impact of a small, personal act:
Darnella Frazier, the seventeen year old in blue sweatpants (center, below, with her little niece in the LOVE T-shirt), filming on her phone Derek Chauvin killing George Floyd.
She was not a professional, she was not a journalist, she was a kid who thought, This isn't right.

Above image from Mpls police bodycam, via NPR

The man holding the other man back. . . I've heard some of my coworkers who are Black men discuss this––would they have rushed the four cops?

Would I?

Would you?

The thing is, the cops do this sort of thing all the time in this neighborhood, full of poverty and its attending demons. [I live a mile away, am house sitting four blocks away--on the other side, though, of the poverty watershed.]
Just usually the victim doesn't die. How do you judge when it's worth risking your own safety? 'Cause everyone knows, those cops will hurt you.
______________________

It's not just personal acts that impressed Denise and me––we were both impressed by science and public health.
This year proves an entire population can change direction, adopt new behaviors––and pretty quickly too!
Imperfect but impressive.

We both think the recipe for (and doses of) the vaccine should be shared freely with the whole world.
None of us is safe until the world is. This is not a Christmas song, this is bugs we're talking about.

“You know that I know how easy you get the virus.”
––The Honeymooners, Brooklyn bus driver Ralph Kramden to his wife, Alice

So... Have we learned anything?
How are we braver? Kinder? Smarter? More traumatized?
We may want to forget it all, but can we? Will we?

"Memories... light the corners of my mind...
Misty water-colored memories, of the way we were."

I am pondering these things in my heart.
__________________

And...
Are we still washing our hands?

I'm sad to think one of these days I'll get a cold or some other virus. I haven't been sick since December 2019, when a virus wiped me out for a week.

There are always new bugs brewing.

The last line of Camus' The Plague:

“He knew what those jubilant crowds did not know but could have learned from books:
that the plague bacillus never dies or disappears for good;
that it can lie dormant for years and years in furniture and linen-chests;
that it bides its time in bedrooms, cellars, trunks and bookshelves;
and that perhaps the day would come when, for the bane and the enlightening of men, it would rouse up its rats again and send them forth to die in a happy city.”

____________

*In December 2020, the county recorded the highest number of new Covid cases in a week: 1,750.

A couple months ago, in April, the weekly average was 337 new cases.

CHILDREN DANCE HERE

Trio: Sunday Morning at George Floyd Square

CHILDREN DANCE HERE

WE STILL DEMAND [list of demands (on Wikipedia)]

BREATHE THIS IS SACRED SPACE

Mint

Today was the first time I was at a farmers market in two years. The markets ran last year during Covid summer, but I didn't go.

Write for 60 years...

I'm on page 388 (out of 1,048) of Isherwood's Diaries, Vol. 1 1939–1960. First sentence of the intro:

"Christopher Isherwood wrote in his diary several times a week almost continuously for about sixty years––from the early 1920s (his teens) until July 1983, a month before his seventy-ninth birthday."

He saved his diaries, and in later years edited them, so I suppose he thought they'd be published one day.
At any rate, they are written for a reader. Perhaps that was just his orientation: writing is for reading.

We who blog regularly for years are in his company, if not his class.
I started reading my blog from the beginning last night.

I really don't know what I think of it!
I might wish I'd written a little more about daily goings-on? as well as writing about Star Trek (I'm in 2009--heavy on Star Trek. Not that I'm not enjoying that.)
Do I want to do that now?

Now, this Sunday morning, I'm going out for coffee with bink. We were going to go to the farmers market, but it's raining, which is good because we've been in a drought, and I like knowing the garden is getting a good soak.

House-Sitting Doll Duties

 They take their house-sitting duties very seriously.

First, they greet the house bears, Teddy & Squish Bear.
BELOW: Then, with bear help, they take care not to transfer invasive species from house to house.
(Also they like to push the pump.)

Note: Teddy, above left, will be getting restored––at the request of my pal, Stef, whose childhood bear he is.

This morning, they wrestled with the garden hose and lost--they got soaked.
They loved it!
But honestly, the hose spray is too strong for them. They can use watering cans.

They are doing well. I, however, failed the intelligence test.

Stef gave me instructions on almost every thing in the house. Almost.
I had to google how to use the can opener.
I'm not alone, at least––it's the first search term that comes up when you search, How to use OXO ___.

Biking Through George Floyd Square in the Evening

Derek Chauvin was sentenced yesterday to 22.5 years in prison for murdering George Floyd.*
[NPR article]

In the evening, I took a wobbly video––holding my phone on my handlebars––as I biked home through George Floyd Square**.
A crowd had gathered earlier to hear the sentence, but by the time I biked through––after 8 p.m.––the square was almost empty.

I'm biking east (toward the Mississippi River), so you can see my shadow on the street as the sun sets behind me. (You can also see that though the city forced the square open to motor vehicles earlier this month, it's quite an obstacle course.)

The whole 1-min. video makes me seasick, so first I'll post two short clips.

PART I (13 seconds) Biking into the Square

The graffiti on the concrete barriers reads:
SACRED SPACE   . . . GFS [George Floyd Square]

#WINSTON SMITH Was Assassinated"
[Amazingly, the latest Black man to be murdered by Minneapolis security forces shares a name with the main character of George Orwell's 1984: Winston Smith.]

WE KEEP US SAFE

PART II (14 seconds) Biking up to the statue of a fist and the waving Black Liberation flag in the intersection of Chicago Ave & 38th St.

The graffiti on the surface of the street includes a list of demands for justice.
The billboard to the left is a picture of George Floyd with the word
REMEMBER.

If you can stand the wobbling, here's the whole 1-minute video.

* Chauvin deserved the max sentence (40 years), but it's sure not nothing.
I celebrate the historic victory––it's practically miraculous a cop got anything at all, much less ten years more than the minimum.
Chauvin is forty-five––he could get out on parole when he is sixty (my age) after serving two-thirds of his sentence.

I like what the Rev. Al Sharpton said [NYT] about Chauvin's sentence:

“We got more than we thought only because we have been disappointed so many times before."

**The square is the site where Chauvin pinned Floyd to the ground with his knee until Floyd died of suffocation on May 25, 2020.
People spontaneously blocked the intersection soon after.

BELOW: Improvised barriers two days later, on May 27, 2020.
This is my favorite thing I photographed at GFS, even more than the library that went up in a bus stop. That someone on their own initiative dragged that chair out there is one for my Humanity Is Not All Bad file [now 22 posts].

Books Side-by-Side

Harold and Maude: "Go and love some more."

Rhinoceros: "Oh, a rhinoceros!"

Otherwise, quite similar.

Nettles & Ice Cream

Good morning (afternoon, evening), darlings!
I'm writing in the cool morning of what looks to become a pleasantly hot day. Even if it's unpleasant, I will be in a/c, . . . cooking nettles.

I go to my six-week gig this afternoon, sitting a house where nettles grow, and a garden, which I'll need to water daily during this ongoing drought.

The home owner told me that nettles are good for arthritis, knowing I have a touch of it. (Good news: mildly; bad: in my fingers.)
I looked it up and it turns out nettles have all sorts of healthy properties, heated in tea, soups, stir fry...
So, I'll try that.
(Wearing gloves to pick!)

I'm working on drinking less alcohol, and that's going well.
During Covid, I got into the habit of drinking every evening. Usually just one beer, but who needs it?

Beer is cake in a can.
(A  5-ounce glass of wine has 1 or 2 grams of carbs.
Add a zero for beer: 10 to 20 grams of carbs in a 12-oz bottle of (5% alcohol) beer.
Other than that, beer has some health benefits.)

Unless I'm stressed (See, Covid; also, Workplace), I crave the carbs more than the alcohol. I made a deal with myself:
I can eat or drink anything I want, as long as it's nonalcoholic.

Wouldn't you rather have a nice cup of nettle tea?

Well, no.

But ice cream?

Yes.

So that's my health plan: nettles & ice cream.

Also, I'm going to try a strength-training class this coming week.
For the past six months, I've met  with GT (the gym teacher) for
private half-hour sessions. Meeting––talking!––one-on-one helped me through the isolating winter.

Now we've got a break from the pandemic (until the Delta variant arrives?), I think I'll like being around other people.
Plus classes are cheaper, and I expect I'll work harder too.
We'll see...

GT rents a mid-century service station (below) for his gym (those cool slanted front windows!).
He and a crew of gymsters planted flowers in the packed down ground behind the building and put in raised beds. 
I want to sit at that iron table (front, right) they just added:

Speaking of Instagram, which I wasn't . . . I'm liking the IG Sew Over 50 community: "Ageism is never in style".
It's almost all clothes (and sewing tips), not toys––and soooo many dresses––but there's quite a range of people my age, which I love to see.

(I don't really like to sew. I only do it to help the toys.)

Here're Sew Over 50's top nine posts of 2020:

Bottom right square:

"If it's a choice between not doing it at all or doing it and getting it wrong, get it wrong. Learn from it. Do better next time."

St. Lucy Bear, Restored

This is my hundredth post labelled Stuffed Needy Animal Rescue Project (SNARP). That's one hundred posts, not one hundred toys, but still . . . Neat-o!

The first SNARP post was six summers ago, in 2015.
I was volunteering at Steeple People Thrift Store (since closed) and started pulling needy stuffed animals out of the trash, where they'd been discarded.

(The first Orphan Red doll––Red Hair Girl––came four summers ago, when I was working at Goodwill. I bought her for 49 cents. Her first appearance, July 7, 2017: "New Little Animal Person" (so named because I'd never had dolls before).

Four summers later, 299 posts are tagged "Orphan Red Dolls".)

And now, St. Lucy Bear is restored!
Washed, mended, restuffed, and joints reattached, here in the front yard among the Queen Anne's Lace:

Few antique bears end up at thrift stores. I got this bear (from the 1930s, I think) on eBay in 2018.
She cost under ten dollars, one of a bunch of antique teddy bears in dreadful shape (dirty, smelly, threadbare), including Firefly, who is still with me,
and Tulip (restored, below), who lives with Krista:

St Lucy Bear, Before and After:

I removed the old stuffing (smashed flat), wash the dirty bear in mild dish soap (Ivory), and air dry.
The golden mohair fabric is threadbare but luckily is sound (it's not got dry rot, which continues to erode fabric).

Then I restuff bear---here with kapok, the seed-pod fluff of a tropical tree, a traditional material. Soft but solid, not squishy and mobile like modern stuffing:

If a bear is jointed, their cardboard discs can't be washed.
That's the worst part of bear repair:
removing old joints, because the discs are held on with spiky cotter pins--I cut them off with a wire cutter.

I replaced those pins with rubberized wire here--you can see the white wire below. (Because these old bears are rather fragile, they don't need indestructible replacement parts.)

St Lucy Bear can walk again. She really trundles along too:

New Bear to Repair

Old bear donated to the thrift store with button eyes pinned to ear:

UPDATED: Frequently Donated Books

What was once so normal in one's culture that it was not remarked upon eventually becomes obscure.

So, I want to record these currently "unremarkable" books commonly donated to the thrift store.

Self-help/pop psychology books must be one of the most time-sensitive kinds of book.
The thrift store gets tons of the "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff" and "Chicken Soup for the ____" series. (Hm, I haven't seen one of the "Everything I Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten" series in a long while...)
I keep one of the main titles around, but I don't think they ever sell. (I should start noting if they do.)

 

Pop bestsellers are time-sensitive too. Copies of books that people read in book clubs or give as gifts get donated in waves as people finish with them.
Before everyone's read the bestseller, the first wave of copies sells. After that, you can't give it away.

There are exceptions.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo books––Stieg Larsson's super popular Millennium Series (2005–2007)––continue to sell.

QUOTE: “Capitalists' wet dreams is to be involved in charity.”
So now these books are.

Another set just came in yesterday:

Books about politicians are hot while the politician is, and cold as yesterday's mashed potatoes afterward.
Books about former US president Trump, such as Michael Wolff's Fire and Fury (2018), are piling up since his defeat, and soon I'll move them to the 33-cents Bargain Book shelves.
(We get lots of Malcolm Gladwell's books, and they sell slowly and steadily.)

Lot of copies of books with movie tie-in covers, such as Jumpa Lahiri's The Namesake and Ian McEwan's Atonement:

The store almost always has multiple copies of...

The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren, pastor of evangelical  Saddleback megachurch
QUOTE: “The best use of life is love. The best expression of love is time. The best time to love is now.”

These novels that look the same and have geographical titles:
Plainsong, Kent Haruf (1999)--family in eastern Colorado;
Peace Like a River, Leif Enger (2001)--family in Dakota Badlands;
and Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier (1997), about the US Civil War

Loving Frank (Nancy Horan, 2007) is a fluke--the store usually has one copy, but not four.
I'd say its representative of some book club finishing a book and everyone dumping their copy at once.
It's a fictionalized story of the love affair between Mamah Borthwick and (married) Frank Lloyd Wright.)

Eat Pray Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia, by Elizabeth Gilbert
QUOTE: “I want God to play in my bloodstream the way sunlight amuses itself on the water.”  

What to Expect When You're Expecting: The Complete Guide to Getting Pregnant (Heidi Murkoff, the series)

Strengthsfinder––I think people get these at job hunting/workplace classes? And then give them away.

The Shack--A Christian novel that the author William P. Young says is about "the house you build out of your own pain". (--Wikipedia)

Other books we usually have multiple copies of:

The Kite Runner, by Afghan-American author Khaled Hosseini (2003);

Mitch Albom's Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson.

The Twilight Saga by Stephenie Meyers, vampire-themed fantasy romance novels, 2005– . (Every once in a while someone buys a set of them.)
Ditto The Hunger Games series (2008–) by Suzanne Collins.

We usually don't have copies of Harry Potter because they sell immediately.
______________

NOTE: I took down what I'd posted here about JK Rowling's comments on trans people after I talked with a non-binary friend.
My friend agreed with me that JKR raised some valid concerns about the medical treatment (heavy duty chemicals (hormones), but they said JKR communicated those points in a divisive and hurtful way.

Rather than extensively revising my comments, I'm posting a link to JKR's communications;
if you haven't read them, you can decide for yourself:
"A Complete Breakdown of the J.K. Rowling Transgender-Comments Controversy" in Glamour, May 2021.

Some People (without masks!)

Is it nice to be seeing other people? in groups? without masks?
Is it ever!
You too?

I went to a party yesterday. A party! First time since early March 2020. I talked to people there I didn't know, and I saw their lips move.
We were outside, but still.

It was the high-school-graduation party for a coworker's daughter.
Here's a photo I took of that coworker (left) and two others. This is one of the strengths of my workplace---the people I work with.
(The T-shirt reads "Don't Worry, Saturday Is Coming". It was Saturday.)

Earlier in the week I had gone out to coffee with Crabby John (below, left, making his crabby face) and our friend Jill (right), who has just retired.

We talked about when you can take your social security... Old people talk, lol. It was helpful---maybe I will take mine in a couple years and keep working at the thrift store and work on the art of being an poor old person...

Everything At Once

On the ten-year anniversary of walking into Santiago, Spain, I'm remembering the beauty and kindesses of Camino. . .
[River had wondered: here's the link to all my posts on Camino]

I always say it was long and boring and painful, and it was. (Blisters are open wounds!)
It was FUN too.
Here's a 20-second video of Marz and me doing the goofy "King of Glory" dance (from Stephen Colbert) in front of the cathedral on June 18, 2011, filmed by bink:
gugeo.blogspot.com/2015/10/blog-post.html

At the same time I'm aware I'm living in a kind of ongoing civil war, one that simmers, cools, heats up, explodes...

Currently, it's heated up.

Photo from yesterday--billboard at the corner of 38th & Cedar, one block from the indie gym I go to, and a mile from where I live:

"We're in a 400-year long war with no end in sight"

Here's the thing with life: it's EVERYTHING, ALL THE TIME.

"So shines a good deed in a naughty world"

My mother used to say, "a good deed in a naughty world"––she thought "naughty world" was a funny way of putting it.

I always thought she was quoting the Bible. All these years later, this morning I looked it up.
It's Portia's speech in Merchant of Venice, Act V, Scene 1, as she returns to her house, victorious:

"How far that little candle throws its beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world."

There ya go--when in doubt, guess the Bible or Shakespeare.

The quote reminds me of ... the girlettes. They are little affirming flames, and also sometimes naughty, in the jelly-baby sense of the word.  (Well, not Penny Cooper, she is never naughty or in any way jellylike.)

I figured Shakespeare didn't mean "naughty" in the mild sense, as we'd say of a child.
Right:

Etymology: naughty (adj.): late 14c., nowghty, noughti "needy, having nothing," also "evil, immoral, corrupt, unclean," from nought, naught "evil, an evil act; nothingness; a trifle; insignificant person; the number zero"

The mitigated sense of "disobedient, bad in conduct or speech, improper, mischievous" (especially of the delinquencies of children) is attested from 1630s.
[After Shakespeare (1564 –1616).]

So we could say,  A good deed in a needy world.
But that's not as fun.

___________________

I should blog every day because when I take a break, it's hard to start up again. It's not that I don't want to write, but things pile up and I feel overwhelmed––where to start?––and don't.

Here, to get started again, I'll list a couple few things:

1. I'm going house sitting for SIX weeks, starting in a week (Friday June 25–).

Not, alas, the big, beautiful house with two cats I've sat the last two summers, but still a nice, little house to myself, with a patio. No pets, but a garden to water every day.

Most importantly, the house has central air.
We've had a hot June so far, and while it's cooling off now for a bit, July is sure to be a stinker too.

2. June 4 was my third anniversary of becoming Book Lady at the thrift store. (I'd volunteered in housewares a few months before, too.)

I continue to be soooo much happier at work since resigning from social media. Free from the political mire there, I just do the little things. I'm better at those and enjoy them more, even when they're hard.

3. I'm over the moon that Marz is moving back across the river in July and taking up a new job--a promotion!--at the co-op (the one she'd left for the New Mexico goat farm last fall).

4. Ten years ago, tomorrow, Marz, bink, and I walked into Santiago, Spain, the end point of the Camino.
There we met up with blog friends Annika & Eeva, and walked on to Finisterre, as far west as you can go. I got back home on July 3.

Speaking of little things, on June 18, 2011, I wrote that thoughts on Camino are mostly about food! And kind actions too.

"Spiritual things?
What?
Oh, yes.

Here´s the scoop:
You can find the fruits of the Spirit in the roadside cherries a non-English speaking pilgrim picked, washed, and plunked on the table in front of us at an albergue, and then walked away.

This sort of kindness happens all the time on the road."

And why not? Food is one of the easiest ways to be kind.

Speaking of food & Camino:
Marz (right) and I playing catch with an orange outside an albergue on the way to Finisterre (photo by Eeva):

5. My month of picture-free blogging is almost over.
I loved it. It was sometimes hard to write instead of using a photo, which was the point: 
I want to post pictures, but not as replacements for writing the thing itself.

Huh--I'd written about that when I returned from Camino:

"I miss blogging but haven't been able to get traction to really get started again. I came out to Bob's [coffee shop] today at noon intending to blog then did everything but for six hours.
Including posting some Camino pics--which, while fun, doesn't count as blogging for me."

6.  I'm going to give strength-training classes a try after next week.

I'd worried about giving up my weekly private class with Gym Teacher, which was like talk therapy through Covid winter;
but since Covid vaccine spring, I'm seeing so many people again I don't need that.

Over the past six months, I've gained confidence that I'm strong enough to work to get a bit stronger.

MY GOAL:
To be able to walk to the toilet and wipe my own butt for as long as humanly possible.

Also, in the meantime... I'd promised myself I wouldn't walk the Camino again when I turned sixty (I'd walked it at forty and fifty)because it is painful and boring. And I didn't--because of Covid.

But... I had a dream about walking it and woke up with longing to do it.
Maybe at sixty-one...?
Even if I don't, I want to be strong enough to know I could walk 500 miles. (I am now, I think, as long as I went slower.)

Also, thinking about helping one another, it helps if you're strong enough to do the deed.
Deliver the cherries, throw the orange.
Light the little candle.

Ten years ago, I wrote:
Not to worry. The Camino never really ends.

Snapshot: The Verdict, "We hugged each other and cried."

A friend emailed me about having gone to George Floyd Square a couple months ago (April 20) to hear the verdict read on the State of Minnesota v. Derek Chauvin.*

She was responding to me saying I was baffled that some people I know in town never went to the memorial site during the year it was blocked off. We live near the epicenter of a piece of history--like being where a giant meteor fell––so that seems a bit odd not to go–– to witness or pay respect or even just to take an historic selfie, "I was there".

I asked my friend if I could share what she wrote--it's such a snapshot of history--and she said yes.

This is what my friend, a white woman, wrote.

 

Re: George Floyd Square

I went a handful of times. Most notably, the day the verdict was read for the Chauvin trial.  It was surreal.

I was getting my first [Covid] vaccine in a huge temporary structure--think an airplane hangar--by the fairgrounds. I was marveling at the military, honestly.

When is a well-organized military good to have?

During a public health crisis, that's when.

I was impressed.

So I was sitting there waiting my fifteen minutes (watching the delightful absurdist play being performed in front of me) when [my teenage daughter] texted and said they would be reading the verdict sometime after 3:30.

I looked at my watch and it was about quarter to 3:00. I lurched up and hustled toward the exit.

A National Guard was by the door--a Black woman.
I said, "The verdict will be read after 3:30."
Her eyes widened behind her mask and we both stared at each other for a moment.
Then I bolted.

You'll remember, of course, how tense it was and how anxious we all were. I know I was. 

I drove directly to George Floyd Square. I called [my daughters] on the way and told them to just stay where they were. Not to leave the house.

I got to the Square right at 3:30 and stood there just paces from where he died. The atmosphere was like nothing I had ever experienced.
Stress, stress, stress in the air.
Waiting, waiting.

Then right before 4:00 there were murmurs and shifting movement and people all started looking at their phones. I remember a group of people were off to my left and they spontaneously all went into a big huddle.
Silent.

Then the convictions started to be released.
People were crying--I was--and praising God.
A woman--a white woman--came up to me and asked if she could hug me. We hugged each other and cried.

Then I left and drove home.

 

____________________

* The State of Minnesota v. Derek Michael Chauvin was a US criminal case in the District Court of Minnesota in which former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was tried for the murder of George Floyd during an arrest on May 25, 2020.

On April 20, 2021, after deliberating for about 10 hours over two days, the jury found Derek Chauvin guilty of second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter for the killing of George Floyd.

--via The New York Times

What you name it…

 Just ran into a pal on the bus who is involved in the George Floyd Square … what do we call it?

Community.

Uprising. 

“Rebellion,” he said. 

I hadn’t actually heard that name yet—to me, it has interesting echoes of the US Civil War… a counter example.

The city opened the square in a ham-handed show of force—went in at 4:30 in the morning and removed the barricades. 

I’d imagined a community led transition—a ritual re-opening with everyone invited —kids helping cut a ribbon or something. This could have happened. 

But it was a power show, not a creative action. And so we go on… in the Uptown area now… This is a long term movement—been going on for generations.

How to prepare for and carry on for a long haul?

Pace yourself, bring water. 

Just saw this:

“Let’s take care of each other so we can be dangerous together.”

The Colbert Questionert

Oh, how fun! I just found "The Colbert Questionert" via Michael at Orange Crate Art (his answers).

Please, take it too and share your answers, okay?

1. Best sandwich?

   BLT, on thick sourdough toast, with a slab of cold iceberg lettuce, tomatoes warm from the garden, (mayo, of course, but not too, too much), and bacon spitting hot fat--
   possibly needing to be eaten while standing over a sink to catch the drips, or outside by the hose to wash off.
   
   On the side, a beer, or an orange pop. Or water from the hose.
   

2. What's one thing you own that you really should throw out?
   
   That one pair of underpants... Why do I still wear it? What if I'm in an accident!?!?!
   I am going to throw it out NOW.
   
   [Honest--I went and got it out of my underwear drawer. The waistband is worn down to the elastic, with a gaping hole on one side. It will make a beautiful rag.]
   
   Also, I would like to throw out my attachment to sugar, which seems to own me.
   

3. What is the scariest animal?
   Well, obviously, humans.
   
   But after that, bears, ever since watching Grizzly Man (2005 documentary about a guy who gets eaten by a bear). To a bear, we are just a larger-than-average salmon.
   

4. Apples or oranges?
   
   Oranges! Oranges, oranges, oranges!
   
   "Does Christmas smell like oranges to you?" --Nashville
   Indeed it does.
   

5. Have you ever asked someone for their autograph?
   
   Um, I think only for pay––at a Star Trek con.
   I paid for George Takei (Mr. Sulu, the navigator of the Enterprise) to sign a photo, and I asked him to inscribe it to my sister and her soon-to-be wife in 2008, when California legalized gay marriage. They were going to be married in San Francisco, and Takei and his partner were to be married that fall too.
   

6. What do you think happens when we die?
   
   We become soil. Life goes on.
   

7. Favorite action movie?
   A couple of my favorite movies happen to be action movies: The Seven Samurai, and Galaxy Quest.
   

8. Favorite smell?
   Oranges!
   

9. Least favorite smell?
   Febreze & its ilk (Downy Fabric Softener, etc.).
   

   "The Floral & Sweet Collection from Febreze removes odors and fills your home with scents straight from the garden."

   Yes, The Flowers of Evil, from the Garden of Capitalist Hell.
   
   My answer may be influenced from staying in an Airbnb that washes its sheets in this carcinogenic neurotoxin.
   
   I object to everything about it, including that the odor literally keeps me from sleeping--my body registers it as dangerous, and I keep waking up.
    I washed the sheets & pillowcases in the morning with no laundry products, and that helped for the second night.
   

10. Exercise: worth it?
    
    I don't understand this question.
    

11. Flat or sparkling?
    Flat. Tap water, room temperature is fine by me.
    In a glass.
    When and why did we start paying for water in plastic bottles?
    

12. Most used app on your phone?
    Safari.
    Hm. That makes me think, I should download Firefox or something.
    

13. You get one song to listen to for the rest of your life: what is it?
    
    "Islands in the Stream", by Dolly Parton, her duet with & Kenny Rogers.
    I love their harmonizing and the simple beat--Marz says it's the "baby rhino beat". (I don't know music, it's 4/4, plunk, plunk, plunk--it's great!)
    
    "This could be the year for the real thing."
    
    In real life, this would drive me crazy after a while, but I do love it and can listen to it over and over.
    Also, I love Dolly Parton.
    

14. What number am I thinking of?
    
    That number.
    

15. Describe the rest of your life in 5 words?
    
    Death, disease, destruction, horror, * conversation.

    Cheating a bit here. "Death disease, ...." that's Capt. Kirk describing war, which will stay with us in one form or another, (“The poor you will always have with you” (Matthew 26:11)),
    and we (I) will continue to (need to) rise to the challenge.
    How?
    In my case, by means of conversation, in the broadest, wildest senses (including blogging); conversations which is also [one of life's] greatest pleasures and redeeming features.
    
    Here's Seth MacFarlane doing a pretty good imitation of Kirk saying that
    :www.reddit.com/r/startrek/comments/bnasn/seth_macfarlane_does_an_impeccable_captain_kirk
    

Clover, Clover, Grass: BTS (Behind the Scenes)

 ABOVE: SweePo & Satisfied getting costumed (by me) to go see the sun set.

The laptop shows the reference painting. As some had figured, it's "Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose" (1885-86), by John Singer Sargent (at the Tate).
I'd mentioned it earlier but hadn't posted a photo.

I was going to try for an exact reproduction, but the field of white clover at the creek fit the girlettes better.

They walked there themselves, carrying their lanterns...

. . . but needed help positioning for the camera. (Marz took this photo.)

It was a beautiful evening. Marz read aloud from The Hound of the Baskervilles, a perfect book to read out loud.
FrankColumbo had come along too. As a detective she has a special interest in the doings of Sherlock Holmes.

More Carnation Lily Lily Rose

A Summer Night

SweePo and Satisfied took their lanterns to a field of clover at the creek, to watch the sun set.

More Carnation Lily Lily Rose

Isherwood, 1941: Thoughts on Acts

Christopher Isherwood, Diaries, Vol. 1 1939–1960, 132–133

tl;dr (Too long ; Didn't read):  Isherwood writes,

"Why do we fool ourselves that we can suddenly behave like heroes and saints...? The acts of 1941 will be the thoughts of the past ten years."

This is what I noticed soon into our Life in the Time of Corona: that in these new circumstances, we acted (and act, can only act) from the base of who we already were.

(And so, in the future, we will act as who we are becoming now. For me, that probably means dolls and bears, all the way down the line. 😊)

Here, below, is the context of the quote--Isherwood's entry for New Year's Day, 1941. (Near the end of the year, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, on December 7, and the US entered the war).

NOTE: I broke up Isherwood's long paragraphs for easier reading online.

1941

January 1.  I really must try to keep this journal more regularly. It will be invaluable to me if I do. Because this year is going to be one of the most decisive periods of the twentieth century––and even the doings and thoughts of the most remote and obscure people will reflect the image of its events.

    That's a hell of a paragraph to start off with. Why are we all so pompous on New Year's Day? Come off it––you're not Hitler or Churchill. Nobody called on you to make a statement. As a matter of fact, what did you actually do?

    [Went out with drunk friends. Went to the Hindu temple and listened to sacred readings.] . . . Then you came home and couldn't sleep, so you reread most of Wells's First Men in the Moon. [Etc.]
. . .
    People, on the whole, are ready to sacrifice their bodies in war, but most of them lack the other kind of courage––the courage by which the spirit survives––because they haven't been trained to it.
Here yoga comes in. [The Hindu Vedanta practice, not exercise classes at the Y.] It offers a technique of spiritual training.

Pacifist propaganda is useless in itself, a mere political gesture, and an ineffective one. [Isherwood was a Conscientious Objector.]
You can't make propaganda for the spiritual values. You can only demonstrate them by being. And you can only make such a demonstration after you have been properly trained. No use rushing unarmed into the struggle and trusting to luck. Gerald and the Swami are so right about this.
At the moment of action, no man is free.

Why do we fool ourselves that we can suddenly behave like heroes and saints after a lifetime of cowardly thinking, daydreaming and hate?
The acts of 1941 will be the thoughts of the past ten years.
   
[End Isherwood quote]

Last week I started  rereading Nothing Happened by Ebba Haskins (Norway, 1948). Its main character (mis)quotes Aldous Huxley saying something similar: 

“Everything that happens to one is intrinsically like oneself”.

(Huxley and Isherwood were friends. Not that this is an insight unique to them.)

Like; Don't Like

The New Year's Day quote catches some of what I like and what I don't like about Isherwood.

I like his observations, the large views mingled with the daily details; what he actually did set beside what he's thinking.

I dislike how he shames himself––"nobody called on you"––something he does for what he considers disgusting weaknesses, such as lying in bed too long.
And he doesn't question it, as if his harsh judgement were objectively true and he deserves it.

UPDATE: Later in the diaries, he does question his self-condemnation--says it's useless, egotistical self-loathing from his youth.

This makes me so uncomfortable; it's like watching someone hit themself.

So far as I've read in his diaries, he hasn't addressed this, but I'd bet his self-judgment reflects the "character building" that was taught in his English boarding school from eight years old, and the culture of the ruling classes. (He was the grandson and heir of a country squire.)
For instance, that you are morally weak and bad if you don't polish your shoes before bed.

Oh--here it is--I looked it up:

"With school friend Wystan Auden, he wrote three plays—The Dog Beneath the Skin (1935), The Ascent of F6 (1936), and On the Frontier (1938)—which clothed the psychological and political anxieties of their time in rackety schoolboy camp."
--"About Isherwood"

From an article on "Boarding School Syndrome" in the Guardian:

An American psychoanalyst who worked in a Bangkok practice, specialising in expats said,
"Middle-aged, middle-class Brits who went to your crazy private schools may just about be the most damaged social sub-group I’ve ever come across."

I get that damaged feeling from Isherwood, and it makes me squirm and want to avoid the man.
I like his observations too much to drop him, so I don't. I do wish I'd bought the paperback ed of his diaries though: a 1,048 page hardback is punishing to hold.

❧❧❧ P.S. Hey--"the doings and thoughts of the most remote and obscure people"--that's us bloggers!

Regionalisms

My Hungarian pal says that in Hungary, "Depression is in the soil."
. . . And in the songs?
Marz emailed me this, this morning:

omg here's the final stanza from the actual Hungarian national anthem:

Pity, O Lord, the Hungarians
Who are tossed by waves of danger
Extend over it your guarding arm
On the sea of its misery
Long torn by ill fate
Bring upon it a time of relief
They who have suffered for all sins
Of the past and of the future!

america: sea to shining sea!!!!
hungary: sea of misery.

Americans---we are such triumphalists (even when we haven't triumphed).

I'm not writing about what's happening at George Floyd Square here this week––the city's bumbled reopening of the intersection––because I can't stand it, the Powers That Be are so ill suited for the job.

I am not seeing good negotiation skills at play here.
Surprise, surprise.

Why are we humans so frickin' short sighted?
____________________

Speaking of geographical differences-- how bout this? The word frickin' is a regionalism. I did not know that.

“The map for this word shows the highest frequency in the Upper Midwest, especially Wisconsin, Minnesota, and North Dakota..."
--per Atlas Obscura.

What F-word substitute do you use, if you use one?

And, what do you call nonalcoholic carbonated drinks, such as Coca Cola?

I call it pop, which is also Midwestern.

It's soda pop in Milwaukee, where I am going this coming week.

. . . An actual VACATION!!!

I admit I'd sneered at people who complained last summer about not being able to travel because of Covid, saying things like, The worst of it is, I can't go to Belize.

That was not the worst of it.

But now after 15+ months, yeah, a change of scenery will be very, very welcome.
And a whole week away from my intense workplace:

"New disasters donations every day!"

Different Blossoms

My pal the Cashier from Hungary (CH) and I were talking about how we're torn about our workplace. She especially is in a tight place, being a single mother living on near-minimum wage.

She's looking for a better paying job, but she's sad to think of leaving the thrift store because, she said,  "I feel safe here", immediately adding, "well, not physically."

LOL. I feel the same, I told her.

The neighborhood is dangerous, and the cashiers are on the front line with crazed customers, but we can be honest with our coworkers, all of whom are down and out in various ways, trusting they will understand.

We who work at the thrift store are like dishware that gets donated:
Many are gorgeous pieces of well-designed pottery, porcelain, or even plastic (mid century!) that are cracked, scratched, and chipped on the edges...

Still serviceable, just don't wash them in super hot water—the glue holding them together will melt.

Price: 79 cents.

Everyone gets how wearing life can be, and nobody, not even Big Boss, tries to jolly you out of the pain of it.

"No one here is going to tell me to take a fucking bubble bath," CH said.

"Right," I said, "or light a candle!"

"A fucking scented candle!" she said.

"Why don't you take a walk?" I said.

"After being on my feet all day," she said.

"But... A nice glass of wine?" I said.

"YES!" she said

People won't try to minimize hardship, but there is a spirit of fun (especially since Ass't Man has backed off from trying to Improve Us).

Last night in the parking lot, those of us who worked till close––
(5:30 p.m., it's not safe for the store to stay open much later, as unofficial business on the street starts to pick up)––
we were all laughing about ...um, I don't even know.

Oh--yeah.
About “dog blossom" which, a coworker was telling us, is a phrase for a dog's butthole.

"This place is like the grade school playground," I said, and everybody agreed.

Instagram Round-Up

 A brief break in Pictureless June to share what I've posted on my IG:instagram.com/frescadp

"Gonna be a hot one."

I. The Weather

I don't need the weather app--sitting here on the front porch at 7 a.m. I can already feel it's going to be a hot one.
The texture of the air on my skin alerts me:
You'd better drink a lot of water today.

Sitting at the creek the other day, I had an entirely formulaic conversation about the weather (its changeability) with a passing stranger:

"They said it was going to rain," said the woman, gesturing at the dry sky, "so I took an umbrella..."

"Right", I said. "But if you hadn't taken an umbrella, then it would have rained."

"Yeah. And I'm wearing a sweater, but just a few days ago I had the air conditioner on."

"Wait a minute and we'll have snow."

Etcetera.
Minnesotans can go on like this for quite some time, since the weather here ranges from tornadoes to ice storms––"some of the widest variety of weather in the United States".
It's interesting to live with.

When I was sixteen, I spent the fall in Tucson, Arizona. I hated the weather: every single day was sunny and seventy.
I felt trapped in the same day.

Anyway, scripted conversations are normal in this low-density neighborhood, like I was saying the other day. 
On beautiful days, a slow and steady stream of people walk by the creek here;
but at the paths around the lakes in my old neighborhood it's a thick parade. Strangers there don't stop to comment on the obvious:
"Gonna be a hot one."

Commenting on the weather is a pleasant social exchange--like dogs sniffing each other's butts and noses?

II. The Wildlife

An unholy dog noise woke me up early this morning:
HouseMate had let the dog out and he'd interrupted a raccoon and her babies crossing the backyard.

HM ran out yelling at the dog to come back.
Luckily she caught him. The raccoon had gone on attack, naturally, and raccoons can tear dogs up.

The raccoons here are big and healthy--almost as big as HM's 30-pound dog. There's lots of garbage for them to eat, and fish from lakes, and few natural predators.
(Foxes live in the city, and sometimes coyotes travel along the river, only a couple miles away.)

With the warmer winters of recent years, opossums live here too now. I never saw one, growing up.

[I had to look up opossum--one P, two S's.
And its etymology:
"early 17th century: from Virginia Algonquian opassom, from op ‘white’ + assom ‘dog’"]

The weirdest animal I've seen in town are the wild turkeys that appeared last year. They're huge and ungainly-looking, and, unlike most wild creatures, they are not afraid to make eye contact with humans.

They look at you, but they do not connect with you:
"You are as a tree to me."
It's a turkey-centric world for turkeys.

Aaand... there you have it, the Weather and Wildlife Report today.

III. Books Sold

What else?
Let's see...

I'm going to the post office on the way to work to mail the third of the books I've sold on eBay (listed last week, when I also put the gold-hair doll up for sale, then soon took her down).

I'd paid cover price (!) for these new books and then didn't care for them. So I wanted to recoup a few bucks rather than donating them to the store or a Little Free Library,
. . . or selling them for a dollar to Half-Price Books––a rip off, but at least this brick-and-mortar bookseller is still in business, and a quick search doesn't turn up anything evil about them (unlike Amazon).

It's kind of fun to sell things on eBay, if you have the time.
These are the ones I've sold:

Fugitive Telemetry
(I was deeply disappointed in this, the sixth Murderbot book:
a formulaic mystery with a weak ending, it barely adds anything to the larger story world--it's as if author Martha Wells were fatigued.)

On Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous
(Ditto, disappointed--the author, Ocean Vuong, is a poet, but his metaphors get away from him here––I've already quoted raindrops peppering a scarf like typewriter strokes.)

Love in the Blitz
(Worse than disappointed--the letters of Eileen Alexander to her fiancé in WWII are so cloying, I couldn't finish them––a shame because the glimpses of life in London are good--someone should have edited these letters heavily. )

IV. The Pod Report

The boyette Pepito had sold on eBay right away, for $34, so I got a fraction of the hundreds I've spent on girlettes back.
In the past four years, I've probably bought thirty (or forty?) dolls at an average of . . . $15? (incl. shipping).
Not that I regret a penny of that! 

It started with Red Hair Girl, who I got for 49 cents when I was working at Goodwill.
Only two have ever come through my thrift store (99 cents each).

The most I've paid was $35, for a girlette who was looking desperately through the cellophane of her original packaging (from the 1990s).

Usually the toys are inactive when they're in packaging--I don't know why she'd woken up.
(It's like the premise of that movie about space travelers waking up from cryogenic sleep (or something) a lifetime too early. Passengers. It got terrible reviews so I didn't bother.)

This girlette (B84) was traumatized when she arrived and kept saying, "I was in a box".

She went to stay with the bears (on the bed) for healing, and after a few weeks she came out right.
Now she's totally blended in with the others.

I don't know how many girlettes I've bought, all told, because I've given lots of them away and can't remember to whom.* (I don't feel right about reselling them--Pepito was an exception.)

The pod here seems stable at around fourteen now.
__________________

*I'm always saying my memory is poorer than it used to be.
Can I remember which girlette went where?

Racer and Minnie Sutherland went to Sarah in London;
Valentina to a kid on the street;
Marina to Sister;
Sparkle & Bounce to Tracy;
Chrysanthemum to Kate;
Mir to Sara;
two to Kirsten; one to Crow;
Kiku, Bubble-Pop and [I forget] to Lisa in NYC;
one to a neighbor's grown niece named Madeline;
three to a customer and her two kids at the store;
Two to the kids next door to my house-sitting gig last summer;
a blondie to the daughter of a friend;
and Jayne is HouseMate's.

Ha. I guess I do remember things I care about.

Not sure that's everyone, but that's twenty-two.

(If you want one, let me know!)

Some have gone visiting and come back again.
Seven (that's her name) stayed with Jeff when he was sick, and various girlettes go and live with bink & Marz, but they usually rotate back in and out here.

(Spike went to the goat farm with Marz, but she's back here now, dressed as a space ballerina.)

Oh, and Bud Duquette stayed at the lake last summer, which made me sad, but I'm happy to think she's rocketing around with some kid who found her.

Finally, there's Red Hair Girl, who left on the bus a couple summers ago...
She walked up the Trans-Canadian highway, and we hear she's happy and well in the forests of Finland now.
I still miss her.