Perquackey

Game donated at work, 1965
 

Nothing for it but to do it.

Instagram round-up. I swear I don't color-match the photos I post!
Or, maybe I'm starting to subconsciously?

_____________

Watercolor of Spike in New Mexico,
"Nothing for it but to do it."

I keep saying I want to paint the dolls, and then I don't do it.

So I'm going to try (again) to paint quick, throw-away sketches.
The idea being, to get around the fear of working hard on something that doesn't work out.
(Know that one?)

Of course my brain sneakily wants the quick sketches to turn out to be keepers, and sometimes they do.
This one entirely pleases me, the first of five I painted this afternoon. It's from a photo Marz took of Spike sitting in the rim of some machinery on the goat farm.
(Spike had that buzz cut when I got her.)

Public Sign

 My coworker who grew up in Communist Hungary asked me,
"Why does this cross have clapping hands?"

Clapping hands emoji:

Another Public Sign

Another bathroom sign (at the arboretum):

WET PAPER TOWELS ONLY

Wet only?

Don't be too specific.

Into the 70ºs

Mercifully cooler this morning, with a ten-day forecast in the 70ºs. Cash has put on her bear suit. (They don't feel temperature really, but they like to change with the seasons.)

I feel more grounded this morning. I'd felt lost yesterday, after the news that my auntie is moving to hospice without ever going home again...

Penny Cooper was helpful:
"You are not lost," she said. "You are right here."

Thank you, Penny Cooper. That is correct.

Soon it will be Rosh Hashanah (Sept. 6), which reminds me––what a wild ride it has been since Ruth Bader Ginsberg died.
I had to double-check to make sure it really was only one year ago.
Crazy to remember Trump was president, there was no vaccine...

Let's see... what is happening?
I am giving up on Flannery O'Connor's letters.
She has one point I'm interested in--her main and maybe her only point--that grace takes the form that suits the circumstances, suits the person.
I appreciate the reminder in the weird circumstances of these times.

But I don't share O'C's belief (her insistence, really) that God will sort things out (in eternity).
That belief seems to restrict rather than enrich her imagination.  (Not sure I'm saying that right...)

Racism is a sin, she says, but I am not in sympathy with her "God will sort it out" attitude. I mean, wouldn't that be nice?
But I don't believe it.

It's not as simple as saying, "FO'C is racist."
Hers is an attitude that's sort of like our attitude toward cars.
In the future, people might well look back on us and say,
"How could they keep driving cars knowing it was killing the planet?"

To us, driving cars is so normal, seemingly so inextricably entwined in our economy (like slavery was?), we barely think of it;
or, we may make exceptions for ourselves: I commonly hear people say, "My actions don't matter––corporations are the main polluters".

The helpful thing in that is,
We (I) could use this understanding of how we navigate the challenges of our times, our world, to understand how people in the past navigated theirs.

A good historical question:
What did people in the past think they were doing?
Not, "What do I think they were doing?"

And, in fact, it's exactly that question I DON'T hear FO'C asking--what do other people think they are doing?
It's all, "This is how I see God acting in the world."

Again, I like her perspective on the weirdness of God, but it's extremely limited.

I've read Flannery O'Connor's letters before, and I've gone as far into understanding FO'C as I need or want to.

Oops--gotta go, bink is here to go out for coffee!
XOXO everyone!

Tumbles

^ Book at work (1965)

Life continues in tumult here this summer. We've got a tornado watch this afternoon.

Yesterday, detectives were in the thrift store's parking lot--leaning on their car observing the "business" across the street, which ranges from harmless socializing to drug-addled, brain-blasted behavior (stumbling into the street with no account for cars) to actual murder.

I was hoping for a more John Snow–like approach: get to the source of the problem; take off the pump handle.
But no, it's like living in The Wire, where everything ends up the same as it started. That's my prediction in this case anyway.

Not to be hopeless: Big Boss said one of our neighbors, as he calls them, got himself into a treatment program.

There's a lotta ways a person's individual story can go.

Then, this morning Auntie Vi called to tell me she's going into a residential hospice.

She is happy about it, she says, and content: she needs care, and drugs (she's in pain). We'd taken her home from the hospital a couple weeks ago on her ninety-sixth birthday, but living alone is not proving possible.

If she's happy, I'm happy. It's a smart move.
I am also deeply sad.
My auntie has been my only Family Home for most of my adult life. Even if I'm not saying good-bye to her right this minute, not yet, I am saying good-bye to that home now.

She refused exploratory surgery. Something complicated  is going on--but she pointed out she might not even survive doctoring. Her doctor agreed.
Vi has always been clear-eyed about practicalities.

I'm feeling sad and contemplative, but not bad. I'm proud of my auntie.
Courage and cheerfulness have been her lifelong guides. She's got her flaws (oh, yeah), but her strengths are strong.

It's good here, otherwise--especially since the temps are cooling off.
Well, today is looking to be a steamy stinker, but generally the temps are dipping into the 70ºs, and the days of rain feel (and are) replenishing.

I have the weekend off again, and I'm doing restorative things such as washing the couch cushions and pouring baking soda & vinegar down the drains.

You can't untangle the world, but you can clean the fridge.

Boldly Odd Weather

I'd mentioned yesterday grace working in grotesque ways to meet the requirements of a grotesque world––in Flannery O'Connor––and then I wondered what "grotesque" really means.

"Boldly odd"? I love it!

Etymology of grotesque (adj.):
"wildly formed, of irregular proportions, boldly odd," c. 1600s,  ... from Italian grottesco, literally "of a cave"...

The explanation that the word first was used of paintings found on the walls of Roman ruins revealed by excavation (Italian pittura grottesca) is "intrinsically plausible," according to OED.

Originally merely fanciful and fantastic, the sense became pejorative, "clownishly absurd, uncouth," after mid-18c.

This is a  boldly odd stretch of history here, wouldn't you say?

__________

Quick weather update.
My friend in Texas says he knows about the weather up here from reading my blog, so I have a duty to maintain.

I'm taking the bus to work in half an hour--it's been raining for a couple days now and I am a wuss about biking in the rain.

It's not that hot, but you can see an actual haze of moisture in the air.

After a summer of drought, now we have flash flood warnings, which feels about par for the course. It'd have to rain for days to catch up, so we're still in drought too, but the rain helps.

My southern grandmother, Meribel, and my mother wrote letters to each other their whole lives, and the letters almost always started with a weather report.

Meribel didn't like me––I wasn't ambitious and hardworking like my sister, she preferred my sister.
Once she witnessed me closing a skirt with a safety pin before going to a sixth grade birthday party, and she told that girls who were so sloppy didn't get asked back.

I pointed out that my shirt covered my waistband and no one would know.

But I wish I had some of my grandmother's letters.
Reading Flannery O'Connor's letters reminded me of her, though she was in no way literary, she was of the same world--probably the age of F O'C's mother.
Meribel's letters are mostly parochial news--concerned with her ladies' garden club and her garden and what's happening at Cousin Maud's old place...

She was good at sitting on a porch and chatting through hot afternoons. She did her hard work early in the morning. When you'd visit, she'd stand at the bottom of the stairs about 7 a.m. and clap her hands and call Rise and Shine--I hated it--she'd have been up for hours already. 

She really would fit in a F O'C story--the matron who believes she's in God's good graces because she kept a clean house.
And in her eyes, I would be the foreign, incomprehensible child (boldly odd, without even knowing it).

I'm liking F O'C but her offhand comments on race are painful--accurate reflections of an ugly reality.

Gotta go!

Period.

I. "We've got you. Period."

A well-worded sign! They exist!

"Roosevelt Library has supplies for people who menstruate."

The sign is on the bathroom wall at my branch library (a block from where I live), directly across the street from a big high school. Kids hang out there after school.

The sign could read, "We have menstrual supplies" or something neutral like that, but by saying "people who menstruate" the library actively acknowledges in a few, simple words that not all people who menstruate identify as female--and it supports those people without leaving anyone else out.

And "We've got you. Period." is a good pun: "We've got you, person having a period, no matter who you are--don't be afraid to ask us".

Kids who are trans or non-binary could use such supportive language--and offering period supplies is great. At the same time, the poster's main point is not political, it's caring for the body.

Not that caring for bodies isn't political! I mean, the sign is not harping on political points in a superior tone.
One of my favorite examples of that superior type, at more than one  establishment:
"Please address staff in gender-neutral terms."
WITH NO SUGGESTIONS.
Like, if you don't know what a gender-neutral term is, you have failed the test.

I notice that people who are so intent on being inclusive of one difference often exclude others. (Another reason the library sign is so good--it doesn't do that.)
In the "please address" sign's case:
Can't read?
Poor vision?
Don't read English?
Failed the test again.

Called someone ma'am or sir?
*TRAP DOOR OPENS UNDER YOUR FEET*

Hm. There's a small glitch in the library's sign: It doesn't say the supplies are free. But it's implied, I'd leave it.
Also, the hands are pinky-white, and lots of the high school students are not.
But, still, well done!

II. Blood on the Street

At work, you know how the City fenced the little park next door, where people were living (. . . and dealing)? And did nothing for the people themselves?
The City even took away the trash bins they'd supplied at my request.

The results were about like I predicted. I say "about" because actually, they're worse.

People moved across the street, squeezed into an alley and on someone's lawn, and in the road itself, where they are openly dealing drugs and sex, visibly using (nodding out, or dancing around in a daze), and fighting.

One murder so far.

Needless to say, there are no Porta-potties or handwashing stations.

The clear-eyed people I'd talked with in the park, the ones who were just hanging out socializing, have moved elsewhere it seems.
It's all hardcore business now.
Really hardcore.
Like movies about New York City in the 1970s.

Mr Furniture told me, "Don't go over there, San Francisco," and I don't.
I have taken to parking my bike in the back and going in and out the donations bay.

It's hard to know what to do with such a snarl, when the people with power in the City do nothing, or make it worse.
I'm stumped.
One of the volunteers set up a Free Ice Water dispenser, when temps were in the 90s, which was a great thing to do.

The City's actions––and inaction––are beyond the scope of my understanding. (By "the City", I mean members of the city council, the police, and other so-called public servants.)

Big Boss himself, he who grew up in Crack City, said he can't believe the situation.
He continues to talk to the City, so far to no effect.

Big Boss contacted a non-government program that works with sex trafficking and sexual exploitation. They supply packets of supplies for "people who menstruate", and he requested some.
(I've complained he doesn't take practical steps. Here, I am proven wrong.)

The contents of the package are well thought-out--obviously this program knows what it's doing--a pleasure to see.
There's a bar of soap. And a washcloth. And gentle wet-wipes (for tender bits).
Socks and panties. (Underthings are always in high demand.)
Shampoo. Deodorant. Menstrual pads and tampons.
Toothpaste and toothbrush.
A comb, wide-toothed for all hair types.

All in a plain, plastic grocery bag, with nothing to flag it, nothing to make the receiver a target.
And no sneaky agenda, nothing about God.
(Sometimes bags of stuff for people on the street come with a "God Bless You" message.)

Only thing--the flier inside with the number to call if you want help to get out of sex work, it is wordy.
Big Boss was waving it around in the air:
"No one's going to read all this!"

I took the wordy flier and cut out the main points. I Xeroxed that section, zoomed up big, and put the copies in the bags.

So, I did that.
As time goes on, maybe I'll see more I can do.

III. Periodic Dark Nights

Big Boss says the people on the street need Jesus (that's what saved him):

"They need to know they are not accidents. Your life has meaning, there's a reason for you being here."

In this case, where political organizations can't do anything for you––say, even if you leave the streets, then what?––I agree with him that could help, for sure.

This is a good time for me to be rereading Flannery O'Connor's letters:
"Right now the whole world is going through a dark night of the soul," she wrote a friend in 1955.

O'Connor is not much interested in social conditions, so far as I can tell. The social message of scripture is not her concern.

However, she is radical:
The world is grotesque; therefore God's grace works in grotesque ways and through grotesque situations and people.
Grace, like water, seeks its own level.

I see that.

In her stories, the complacent, the tidy-minded, the well-meaning do-gooders are not damned, certainly;
but neither are they... neither are they the, um, the weighty saints--the uranium on the periodic table of grace.

Pic(c)ards

 It's a cool morning, heading into a most welcome cool day--high in the 70s--and rain! Still in drought, and it's my day off too, so all the better, I don't have to go out in it either.

I'm back to working 24 hours/week, at least for a little while, the idea being I'll catch up on backlogged donations––unusual or vintage stuff that I set aside "to look up later", which is a lot of fun but takes time.
Later is now.

Three summers ago we got a box of leftover sale items from an ancestor of the future Captain Jean-Luc Picard of Star Trek: The Next Generation, the real life Don Piccard, of the Twin City of St Paul––a box of materials such as certificates, vintage photos, bumper stickers for rallies, and other ephemera, all related to Don's famous hot-air balloonist & scientist family, including his parents Jean and Jeannette Piccard.
Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry named Capt. P after Jean.*

I sold a batch of ballooning magazines on the store's eBay to someone in New Mexico, a hot bed of hot air balloonists, but never got around to posting the other stuff.
Finally hauled out the box and posted it on the store's social media---someone's coming to look at it today.

__________________

* From Wikipedia:
"Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry named Picard for one or both of the twin brothers Auguste Piccard and Jean Piccard, 20th-century Swiss scientists.^[2][3]"

A couple books

They are very interested in the topic... My beautiful display was short lived: someone came and bought both dinosaurs within minutes.

I'm rereading Flannery O'Connor's letters.
It requires some brain gymnastics to enter into her pov:
Christ as the ultimate reality, (and the Catholic Church as his body), which is her real interest, and her attitude toward race, which is not of primary interest to her--she sees "Negro suffering" as in some ways Christ-like (some talk about George Floyd that way)--but there's a crucial difference in being God as victim with (presumably) some choice in the matter, and being an entirely powerless human victim, which she seems to miss? Or, she sees all humans of all races in that category? She doesn't really go into it... (that I can see).

She says the situation is a Southern sin, but Redemption is way more her interest.

I never cared for her fiction.
Her letters are fascinating (partly because they’re near and yet so far—the brain likes to do gymnastics !), and they’re worth rereading (so far).

Penny by Lamplight

 Could I be tired partly because some “super little girl” got me up at midnight to go take her picture singing in the rain?

We’ve had almost NO rain this summer (it’s scary), and she was eager to wear her raincoat.

The drizzle had stopped by the time we got outside, but we discovered that the neighbor’s solar lights are like little lampposts.

Penny Cooper is eager to try again (she is never tired).

Until then…

Super, Tired

Penny Cooper announced the other day, out of nowhere, “ I am a super little girl.”

When she saw this photo of me in the priority seating on the bus, she said that I am a “super senior”.

I am out of steam, which shows, I think. Luckily the enervating heat & humidity broke last night and it’s in the low 70s.

That’s a relief—as is having the weekend off with absolutely nothing to do.

A la Mode

Unless we wear masks forever (not a bad idea), in the future we'll be able to date photos from Covid time by our masks––here, mine is oh-so-fashionably dangling off my ear.

The 3rd Avenue bridge over the Mississippi River behind me and bink is being repaired (for two years).

Speaking of fashion, I love the top I'm wearing: $3.99 from the thrift store (my main source of clothes)––or, actually, free, on my store credit. It's ultrafine merino wool, from Eileen Fisher.
For fun, I looked it up: it originally cost $198.00. Does anyone actually pay full price? I suppose some people do.

We're with friends from out of town at a fantastic new restaurant downtown: Owamni, by the Sioux Chef.
They use only precolonial, indigenous ingredients.
No wheat flour, cane sugar, beef, etc.
Yes, bison, wild game, greens, corn, blueberries, maple syrup, etc.

I had smoked trout with white beans and a blueberry reduction; my favorite was sweet potatoes & scallions roasted in chili oil.

Penny Cooper is checking out the blue corn mush. Actually, she's hunting for garnishes for her hair--that's where her fir spray (cedar?) came from.

Covid & Cholesterol, and other sticky things

I prefer to sit outside at restaurants. The staff were all wearing masks, but of course people eating inside were not. The county where I live has seen a slight uptick in Covid cases this August.

And there are so many other diseases out there--I like not getting sick. As I keep saying, I haven't even had a cold in almost two years.

Our friends were visiting from Texas, which is like another country. The governor there has forbidden state agencies from mandating masks.
Here in Minnesota, after Labor Day, state employees will have to be vaccinated or get tested weekly.

Oh! I just looked up the name of the Texas governor--it's Greg Abbott. It was just announced he has Covid! He's fully vaccinated and showing no symptoms: that should be an advertisement for getting vaccinated, right???
Meanwhile new Covid cases in Texas are as high as they ever were.

Let's see.... what else is going on?
August has been busy and eventful. Visitors, seeing friends, auntie continuing to recuperate--yay!

Not so yay: Covid, cholesterol, and the ongoing, intensifying drought... Dust-Bowl level in some parts of the state.

HouseMate has wonderfully installed a gray-water system: a bucket by the kitchen sink. We pour the dishwater into it, and use it to water the garden.

You've seen the IPCC's latest report, its sixth? (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change.)
Here are the basics as a slide show.
It's just what you'd expect: CODE RED.

Dust is everywhere at this very minute as I type at home:
giant machines are tearing up the street outside to install 5G Internet––"a new kind of network that is designed to connect virtually everyone and everything together including machines, objects, and devices."

So as the world ends, I can talk to my toaster!

GOOD NEWS:

I'm doing well on my first steps toward eating to lower cholesterol: avoiding red meat is easy, and adding oatmeal with fruit is pleasant. It's super helpful that it's not about eating less, but eating better.

I like eating well, but I generally suck at planning and preparing, so I end up eating donated crap donuts at work. (If I could eat at Owamni every meal, there'd be no problem.)

I'm trying to take food with me--I just got some KIND bars on sale--they're basically candy bars but with healthier ingredients, like almonds and "natural" sweeteners ( =  sugar, but not as much).

Kind bars made Time's list of 5 healthiest granola bars, while noting "you can get the same filling effects for fewer calories by eating a handful of almonds and an apple".

Yes, but will I?

I will try.

The Square Is There

Speaking of the world, here are the VISITOR MAPS at George Floyd Square:

I keep adding books to the community library, and I just proofread the pamphlet "A Guide to GFS", which is a great idea, but almost past its usefulness.

In a couple weeks, the square will be... well, who knows if it'll be anything except one memorial.
The guide could use a lot of work, but I advised the guy putting it together just to change the spelling errors and print it now.

At least it will be a historical document.
"For one brief shining moment..."

More books I've brought to and/or set up on view at the George Floyd Community Library

Fact checking the guide, I found info on the three billboards that are on rooftops facing the square.
They're part of the ongoing Social Justice Billboard Project.

This is my favorite, by photographer Patience Zalanga:
a man reads to his child a book from the community library:

Thrift Store Donations

Just a quick post, this Sunday morning---some things donated to the thrift store that caught my eye.
Friends are in town from Texas (yay!) and I'm heading out soon. (Penny Cooper is lobbying that we should go to Penny's Cafe downtown...)

^ I put these together. Things look like other things.

TO think someone kept these puzzle pieces together all these years:

BELOW: Vintage (1970s) thermal glasses. Fresca!
I did not buy them though---too ugly.

Take Heart, and Get the Right Bench

I was inspired by this quote Michael posted on Orange Crate Art to look up its author, Jacqueline Novogratz. (Thank you, Michael.)
Novogratz said:

"I think if there’s one thing I’ve learned in thirty-five years, it’s the opposite of poverty isn’t wealth.
The opposite of poverty is dignity.”

Michael found it on an episode of Alan Alda's podcast, Clear + Vivid:
omny.fm/shows/clear-vivid-with-alan-alda/jacqueline-novogratz-more-than-money-alone#description

I. Change the Engineering

At work, I'm always trying to say something like that about dignity. Like, for two-plus years, I kept saying,
"Hey, everybody, let's not leave free food for people ON THE GROUND, like  animal feed."

But what's most effective isn't inspiring speeches and insights:
more often, it's about supplying the RIGHT TOOL to hand, making it easy to do the right thing.

I was putting boxes of free food on plastic milk crates; the crates would get taken; the food went back on the floor. 
Tired of scrounging for a crate, sometimes I'd put food boxes on the floor too, even though I hate that.

Then a few months ago, my coworker Jesse cut down a long, heavy (donated) bench to fit in our vestibule.
It was my suggestion, but it was his elbow grease--he put in a lot of work, and it was optional.
Now everyone puts the free food up on the bench.

A public health teacher years ago taught me something that changed my life:
The best way to make change is to change the engineering of the situation. People will take a different, better path, if the path exists.

II. Despair Management

I need more encouraging examples like Novogratz.

I don't find them very often at work.
We are doing good, just by making thrift happen.
And Big Boss says the right things---he's an amazing, inspiring speaker, and he addresses a wide range of audiences around town--so I trust he does good that way.
But at work he's almost a non-starter at changing the engineering. He trusts in prayer. I kinda don't, beyond its role in despair management, which is, of course, crucial, if that works for you.

I'm sorry to say, though, a lot of my coworkers are so discouraged by the overwhelming needs we face, they sometimes (often?) blame the people in need.

I get it. If I let myself feel, really feel, what life is like for just one of the people living outside the store, I would curl up and die.
Or I would condemn myself for not giving my entire life away.

I know this is partly behind my mother's suicide--her not being able to cope with the suffering of the world.
Despair means "loss of hope". (From Latin: de- ‘down from’ + sperare ‘to hope’.)
Despair kills.

So, you gotta watch out for that, the overwhelm that makes you useless not only to others but even to your own self.
I've got to watch for that, and not condemn myself for only doing little things. If I can keep doing those little things, they add up.
And importantly, they are a shield against cynicism and despair.

III. I take heart:

"Your job is not to be perfect, your job is only to be human."
Reminders like this give me permission to keep on doing the little things I can do.

Such as tidying, displaying, and adding books to the Community Library at George Floyd Square.
(Visitors come from all over the country, and beyond. Good books get taken within the same day I put them out.)

I have a small hope that since the library is on wheels (it's like a garden shed), it will survive whatever wreckage the City has planned for the quare in September.
But I tell ya, I am not counting on it.

Whatever a person does, they have to be able to weather the effects, which likely includes as much (or more) failure as success.

Krista reminded me (thanks, Krista) of a favorite quote from Capt Picard of Star Trek:

"It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life."

IV. The Blue Sweater Effect

Nvogorand's personal story involves thrift stores!
Here's a little more about her, adapted from a Guardian article:

"When Jacqueline Novograd was 12 years old, she donated a favorite blue sweater* to Goodwill.
Years later, she saw the sweater on a little boy she met in Kigali, Rwanda. It even still had her name on it.

"It really demonstrated how interconnected we are as people and how much our actions and inactions can impact others," she said.

"Inspired by this, she started Acumen, a  nonprofit social venture fund that invests in global businesses that serve the poor.

"Dignity is one of Novogratz's key investment criteria.
Dignity is more important to the human spirit than wealth, she says, adding that, ultimately, dignity is connected to opportunity and choice."

 *She titled her book after the epiphany:
The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World

Renounce and Enjoy

"You must not worry whether the desired result follows from your action..."

Must be pithy phrases week here at l'astronave...
Yesterday, "Be both lost and at home".

Today, "Renounce and enjoy" riffs on the same idea.
Be lost = to be without fixity in the corporeal world
Be at home = being at ease in one's self, anywhere

Both = and

I know the phrase from Gandhi famously summing up his life "in three words" by quoting the Bhagavad Gita.*

About detachment (related to renunciation), Gandhi said:

“By detachment I mean that you must not worry whether the desired result follows from your action or not, so long as your motive is pure, your means correct.
Really, it means that things will come right in the end if you take care of the means and leave the rest to Him.”

--Quoted in Gandhi the Man: How One Man Changed Himself to Change the World, by Ecknath Easwaran [PDF here]

(For me, that second sentence is optional: I don't have to believe things will come right in/via some Cosmic way to act as I think is right.)

No Toilets, No Park. (We Can Be Excellent)

I experienced such a lifting of expectations last week--it was weird, like gravity lightened up a little.

What happened was,
at my request, a few weeks ago the City had provided trash service to the mini-park next to the thrift store, where people are living, many also running (or caught in) dangerous and illegal businesses.

I was talking to the City, I thought, about the next step in Public Health:
TOILETS!
And handwashing stations, like at outdoor festivals.
"Covid, bad," I wrote. "Cholera, worse."

Instead, boom! They sent a work crew to fence people out of the park--a giant mesh cage went up in a couple hours, enclosing the little patch of earth shaded by pines.

Of course the City didn't provide porta-potties for the people, or give them any place to go. They moved across the street, to the shaded portico of a vacant building.

When I came to work and saw the fence, I cried. In rage and frustration and grief and DISGUST.
The fence went up during the Olympic Games, and I said to a coworker,
"Watching the Olympics, you see we can be excellent!
This! This is FAILURE."

I went away thinking maybe I'd just give up ever trying again.
Instead––weirdly––I felt lighter.
Cheerful, even.
When the worst outcome occurs, it may liberate you from expectations.

If you play this game––any game––expecting to win, you will be crushed.  Only one person gets the gold.

Sports are all about excelling and losing.
Life too, I think.

Heh, there's another pithy phrase:
Be excellent, and don't expect to win.

From George Floyd Square:

"You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world, and you have to do it all the time." --Angela Davis

(Or, I'd add, whatever you want to transform--it needn't be "the world", it needn't be political.)

Don't stop if that doesn't happen. "Possible" doesn't mean probable.

Lose Excellently

Here's another one:
Auntie's neighbor Lance is a basketball coach. (Could this guy get any more Wisconsin? I don't think so.) I was looking up his address and found his Twitter, full of coaching philosophy.
One was "Lead, even if you're not in charge."

I like that!
I've never been a leader, not in any official way.
I've always been scared of leading--scared of losing, partly, and feeling ashamed and powerless.
Or––the opposite of renunciation––scared of setting myself up with high expectations and not being able to handle losing.

Basically, I've been
SCARED OF UNPLEASANT FEELINGS.

When the city fenced the park, I "lost", big time. But, a little surprisingly, I didn't feel ashamed of myself, or even pointless.
To use Gandhi's phrase, my motives were pure. (Pure? well, kinda, yeah.) And my means were correct. (Correct? Well, nonviolent, anyway.)

I felt ashamed of and grieved for "us", the humans who can't think our way out of a paper bag.
We who are so limited in our imaginations, we can only think in terms of punishment and restrictions.

We who could be excellent but cringe in hidey holes.
I do this too!
No one comes out of safe hiding by being yelled at or because they're ordered to.

I think I'm following one possible classic trajectory of aging here:  Emergence.

Loosening up, lightening up.
What have I got to lose, at sixty and upward?

I don't want to make too much of this--I am no Gandhi!
Ha. So much not.
I am less afraid to speak up, and I'm thrilled about that, but I am no energetic activist.
I am reading in bed at 7 PM.

I still hate groups and committees. I am freelance, whatever I am.
Any kind of leadership effect I might have is tangential.
Also, tiny. (Though you never know.
That's another thing to let go of: knowing for sure what effect you have.)

I'm good with that though.
I appreciate people who can work inside the system;
I'm more of a handmade signs person.

This is another beautiful thing at George Floyd Square, which is enormously handmade. It is a traffic cone marking off sacred space, to keep traffic off.

The square is going to lose, for sure, when the City comes to take it down. (End of August?)
But it is being excellent.

__________________

Speaking of losing: did fencing the park help?
It did not.
On Sunday afternoon, less than a week after the fence went up, a man murdered another man on the street in front of the thrift store.

And still no toilets.
_________

*Gandhi's summation reminds me of Rabbi Hillel summing up scripture:

“That which is hateful to you, do not unto another: This is the whole Torah. The rest is commentary — [and now] go study.”

Be Both Lost and at Home

Sometime this past year, this phrase came to me:

Be both lost and at home.

That's where I find myself this year––in the familiar and the foreign.
Some of that is Covid-19, of course, making the whole world seem strange for many of us.

The uprisings after the police murder of George Floyd a mile from me physically changed my city:
burned buildings reshaped the landscape;
my workplace was broken;
seeing convoys of troops rolling down the street, I felt like I was in Beirut. (Beirut? Why did that particular city come to mind?);
closing the intersection where Floyd died and creating George Floyd Memorial Square changed the neighborhood around it for blocks--this is ongoing.

And I was already feeling displaced since I'd moved in Sept. 2019 to this neighborhood (quiet, residential, not far from the Mississippi river) after seventeen years in a very different one (busy, noisy, near the chain of lakes).
I still felt myself a stranger in new place when Covid hit here six months later.

But it's more than those exterior, public changes.
I'm not sure what all is going on. Lots, I'd say.

To Be a Pilgrim

When I'd moved, I'd said I wanted to live as I did when I was a pilgrim on Camino. It's about being--and wanting to be––less fixed in my orientation to the world. Traveling lighter. Being my own North Star.
That feels good and right, even though sometimes I am a bit scrambled.

Leaving, One Day

Aging is part of being lost and at home too:
at sixty, I am aware I won't always be here, now.

Social Revelations

At my job, I work with and am friends with people from a different social group than people I've known before. People who don't read books, and never have. At work, my social compass is off--my cultural references don't hit home.

I've learned new references, which is great. That's a big point of traveling, eh? It's eye opening.
Positively apocalyptic:

"The original word in Greek— apokalypsis —means an unveiling, a revelation.

'It’s not just about the end of the world,' said Jacqueline Hidalgo, chair of religion at Williams College. 'It helps us see something that is hidden before.'

'Apocalypse is a flexible script'."

www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/us/coronavirus-apocalypse-religion.html

Some Books

Some books donated to the thrift store

ABOVE: Silent Spring, with receipt from Jan 12, 1971

BELOW: I Was a Black Panther, "Willie Stone" (pseudonym), 1970

"Time is running out. That's just the way it is."

Some Side-by-Sides

BELOW: 1950s Vintage De Toqueville; 2011, Greenwald

BELOW: at my July house-sitting house

Marz reading True Grit out loud––perfect read-aloud material (and so was The Hound of the Baskervilles, which we read out loud earlier this summer).

That Rockwell Kent Bookplate; "To All Facsists"

That Rockwell Kent Bookplate ^ in my IG round-up today has a fascinating history:
it's a variation of an illustration Rockwell Kent made for an anti-fascism broadside by the League of American Writers, re the Spanish Civil War, 1937 or '38:

“Fascism has been tried before–under many names. Each time it has failed–and each time its failure has marked an advance of the idea of liberty, equality, fraternity and economic security for all.

Not liberty, equality, fraternity and economic security for one group–or one race–or one religion–or one country–but for all mankind.
In your hearts, fascists, you know this–and in your hearts you are afraid. That is why you must torture and burn and imprison and exile.

Do you really believe that by burning books and imprisoning writers you can keep truth from the world? Do you really think that you can dig a grave or build a prison large enough to hold the spirit of democracy?

Fascists, the grave you are digging is your own. You know it. So do we. That is why we are not afraid.”

-Donald Ogden Stewart, President of the League of American Writers

More info on Kent's politics and this broadside: www.swanngalleries.com/news/illustration-art/2018/11/rockwell-kent-the-league-of-american-writers

Thanks, Art Sparker Susan,  for the nudge to look it up.

Instagram Patterns

I enjoy seeing patterns present themselves, unplanned on my IG.

Oranges

Serrations and fans

Activate Your Forcefield

 One more photo from Wisconsin---seen in Viroqua:

Books to the Community Library

Books I bought (used) or collected for the community bookshelf at George Floyd Square---thanks, blog-friends who contributed!

I'm going to take a few books over every day.
Once I'd taken a bunch of nice toys over, and I saw one woman take them all. It's not my role to police the library (godforbid!), but I want to spread out the good stuff.
(I haven't seen any resellers there---pickings would be slim, and I'd think the setting would be discouraging... "Don't steal from the Revolutionaries".)

You know I like to make little displays. Not all the books here are from me, of course. The Children's Homer? Yeah, that's been sitting there a long time.

I am gradually replacing some of the tattered old books that just take up space with books of higher interest and in better shape--books people will take away with them.

They don't have to be about race or by or about Black, Indigeous, Latinx, Asian American and Pacific Islanders, and other people of color, they can just be anything people might want to read.
Tolkien, possibly.
Or murder mysteries.
It sure isn't like everyone wants to read Educational Materials all the time! but we do seem to prefer clean books with covers intact.

"The New Yoga"

Just read the July New Yorker article on Ishmael Reed and laughed to read:

"He’s unimpressed by the recent Black Lives Matter-inspired wave of interest in anti-racist reading, which he dismisses as hyper-focussed on “life-coaching books about how to get along with Black people.”
Anti-racism, he said, is “the new yoga.” "

LOL. It's almost like Black is the new black...

From the Washington Post article, "When black people are in pain, white people just join book clubs", June 11, 2020,
by Tre Johnson (his first book, Black Genius: Our Celebrations and Our Destructions is due out in 2023):

"The confusing, perhaps contradictory advice on what white people should do probably feels maddening. To be told to step up, no step back, read, no listen, protest, don’t protest, check on black friends, leave us alone, ask for help or do the work — it probably feels contradictory at times.

And yet, you’ll figure it out.

Black people have been similarly exhausted making the case for jobs, freedom, happiness, justice, equality and the like. It’s made us dizzy, but we’ve managed to find the means to walk straight."

Old Milwaukee

ABOVE: The classic Leon's Custard, a block from the hospital where auntie was

BELOW: Across the street from Leon's: Oil painting of Frank Sinatra in Mazos Hamburgers "Since 1938"

Brunch, Wisconsin style

Auntie's backyard, after a night of rain (which we haven't seen in Minneapolis all summer):

Auntie is one tough biscotti. She came home on her 96th birthday and celebrated with her neighbors Lance and Cindy, bink, and me:

We hadn't planned on going down for her birthday, but it was touch and go for a minute, so we did.

On the road.