"Have something to say, say it, and sit down. "

This  bit of interview with Native Spokane-Coeur d'Alene writer Sherman Alexie from 1998 could be said of the new series Reservation Dogs (on Hulu) too:

Sherman Alexie wanted the film [Smoke Signals] to break with tradition.

In an interview with the Oregonian (July 7, 1998), he says that Smoke Signals “challenges the cinematic history of Indians.”

His Indian characters are virtually new to the big screen, posing a contrast to the stereotypes of Indians as “stoic and alcoholic,” as “depressed poor people.”
According to Alexie, “Indians are the most joyous people in the world.”

He says, “The two funniest groups of people I’ve been around have been Indians and Jews. So I guess there’s something to be said about the inherent humor of genocide.”

Via copdei.extension.org/smoke-signals

Reservation Dogs starts with a nod to Smoke Signals--like that film, it opens with a shot of the reservation and a radio announcement of the weather.

Trailer for Reservation Dogs:

What's Behind an Apology?

I thought of Alexie watching The Chair too.
When some women spoke publicly about Alexie's sexual improprieties, Alexie proved incapable of making a good apology.

He released a statement with an apology, yes, but most of the statement was his counter accusations, blah, blah, blah.
I was so disappointed. I've loved Alexie's work so much--Smoke Signals is a favorite film––and I thought he'd get it and be different than the other predators revealed by #MeToo.
But he was just the same.

Tip: Guilty of hurting someone?
Just say, "I'm sorry", and take a seat.
Save the explanations or self-defense for other people in other places.

I've tried to implement this simple & sometimes difficult art myself, since seeing people do it so badly.

A while ago at work, carrying a pair of scissors I walked past a young Black coworker who has dreadlocks.
I made a snipping gesture toward his hair, jokingly.

"Don't do that," he said, deadly serious. "I mean it."

I apologized, but added in self-defense that I was joking, of course I wouldn't have done it (though I'm sure that was obvious).

He said nothing.

The next day I said to him,
"I apologize for threatening to snip your hair. It was stupid, and I won't do it again, not to you or to anybody."

He said, "Thank you."
_____________________

The whole first season of The Chair revolves around a likable professor (a middle-aged white guy who was culturally hip when he was younger) making a stupid mistake and being unable to bring himself to say he's sorry.

The prof's mistake in context is minor––he gives a Nazi salute while talking about fascism; it blows up because it's taken out of context on social media.
But the point is, he can't just say, Yes, I'm sorry. Period.
Sort of like Al Franken.

There's power and grace in being able to say, "The buck stops here", and then actually saying it.

_______________________

Related: Eleanor Roosevelt wrote:

"When I first began to speak, which was soon after my husband had polio, his very wise adviser, Louis Howe, told me that as a beginner it was well to write the opening sentence and the closing paragraph and in between never under any circumstances do more than put down headings.

"His cardinal principle was: have something to say, say it, and sit down.

"I have tried to remember that ever since.
He used to say that beginners often went on talking, repeating themselves over and over again because they did not know where to stop or, as he phrased it, they had no terminal facilities. That was why he told me to write an ending as well as a beginning."

"My Day", February 19, 1955
www2.gwu.edu/~erpapers/myday/displaydoc.cfm?_y=1955&_f=md003097

P.S. I've always been curious about Howe. There's a bio (2011)--it gets mixed reviews but is his only bio, so I just requested it from the library:

"To be small and to stay small."

Michael of Orange Crate Art sent me this quote,

"To be small and to stay small."

It's the motto of a character in the 1909 novel Jakob von Gunten, by the German-speaking Swiss writer Robert Walser.
["Still Small Voice: The fiction of Robert Walser", New Yorker, 2007.]

The motto sounds to me like a guide to living a kind of expansive life.

I'm starting to gather girlette photos for a 2022 calendar.
I think this quote will be the title.
("Dolls Help" was the title of the 2021 girlettes calendar.)

Journey On (To the Laundromat)

I'm listening to Journey's Greatest Hits on uTube for some unfathomable reason this Saturday morning... I've never listened to them on purpose, but they were on the radio all the time when I was a young adult.
Is it something about the change of season? And how I've been feeling a touch impatient and out of alignment?
Rock-n-roll in the face of death!

Not only did Auntie Vi die two weeks ago, but a regular at the store who has become a friend, I'll call her Billie, recently found out she has cancer, with probably only months to live. She's a few years younger than me.

Billie's going to be starting hospice at home.
She's cleaning out her apartment in preparation--wants to simplify, she said. She lives near the store, so I volunteered to help with practical things like cleaning and packing.

(She insists on paying me. I'd said I'd do it for nothing, but it is nice to be paid for hard work--good boundaries. I told her if she needs money later, I would insist on giving it back!)

Yesterday I took her blankets (too big for the apartment building's washing machines) to the laundromat down the street.
With nothing to read, I took photos of the laundry tumbling.
I added this quote from Paolo Coelho:
"The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion."
(I've never read Paolo Coelho, but I met lots of Brazilians walking the Camino because of his book about the pilgrimage.)

Obviously our opinions do matter. But the older I get, the more I see actions (examples) as the flowering, seed-producing fruits.

I'm tired of people complaining and not doing something. Any. little. thing. (I hear a lot of that.) I'm impatient with it, and with myself too:

Do your life's laundry!

"Walk around and look at things."

A hip-looking young man at the thrift store yesterday asked me if we had a copy of The Canterbury Tales.
Usually we have a copy or two, but we didn't that day.

"I'm looking because of a Netflix show I just watched," he said.

"Oh, The Chair," I said. "I just watched it too!"

"That professor made me want to read it," he said.

"That was the best scene," I said.

Holland Taylor plays Joan Hambling, professor of medieval lit, who  (with the help of the IT guy behind her, below) hunts down a student from her Chaucer class who's been posting nasty comments on Rate My Professors, and confronts him:

The Chair takes on the current culture wars with surprising and welcome compassion for and insight into all parties involved---including the old white profs teaching Dead White Guys, like Taylor's character.

And it's funny, in a mild way:
"The world is burning, and we're worrying about our endowment," says the chair, Ji-Yoon Kim (played by Sandra Oh), in defense of student outrage––meanwhile her English department is bowing to a big donor's pressure that actor David Duchovny present the key lecture of the year.

OMG, David Duchovny! I know him as Mulder in the X-Files. He really does write books: We got one in the store recently, and it sold right away.
I was surprised the man himself was willing to appear on The Chair and let the script poke fun at him--good for him!

And, good for The Chair for taking on material that's so touchy it seems untouchable--mostly around race and diversity; they don't even get into gender identity--maybe if there's a season 2?

I recommend The Chair for reflection on the political climate. It's very of-the-moment.

Better yet: Reservation Dogs--on Hulu--I got a free month trial so I could watch it, but it's even worth paying for. It follows a group of Indigenous teenagers on a reservation in Oklahoma as they walk around and stuff. [Newsweek article]
(Also, lots of visual references to other movies, like The Deer Hunter.)

In the sixth of eight episodes, Willie Jack (Paulina Alexis) goes deer hunting with her father Leon (Jon Proudstar).

Her father tries to talk her out her idea of moving to California.
When she asks him what there is to do where they live, he says,
"You know, just walk around and look at things.”

Which is what this show does. It's so good, and funny, and not making any political points in particular, except by virtue of existing.

Grumblebum

 Happy Fall Equinox!
My favorite season, with a ten-day forecast of temps in the 70s.

Marz and I are going up north for a couple nights this weekend.
Not to our usual motel in Duluth, which was booked (it's peak leaf-viewing season), but to a Tiny House airbnb--cheaper, surprisingly--on the south side of Lake Superior--there the shore is sandy beach, not rocky bluffs.

Glam shots from the site:

I'm feeling dissatisfied and a bit bored with my life––boom!––after Auntie Vi's death.
Death (grief) can shake you upside down...

Nothing's particularly wrong with my life, or nothing that wasn't wrong before.

I haven't complained about store management recently, for instance, but––ha!––it's as inept as ever.
Yesterday one of the best workers was storming around saying,
"Could we have some systems around here??? I want to walk out and NEVER COME BACK!"
The manager on duty said nothing.

I met my coworker smoking by the dumpster. "I'm sorry," I said. "I feel that way too sometimes. You're a good worker--have you thought about a different job?"

"I hate changes," he said. "And I love it here."

Yeah. The people who choose to stay stay DO love it, usually... and hate it too. It's very Best of Times/Worst of Times.

And then, a month ago Big Boss had asked me to take photos for social media, and email them to him to post on FB (since I deleted my account).
I just checked and he hasn't been posting most of them on FB.
(I post them myself on IG.)

"Shall we revisit this plan?" I just emailed him.

Meanwhile, Ass't Man (AM) is––praisethelord!––far BETTER than before––ever since around my birthday in March.
AM has been making slantwise apologies to me:
"I grew up being taught this wrong idea about 'color blindness'", he said the other day; and, "I had a chip on my shoulder and grandiose ideas about improving this place when I came here ...".
 

I reserve full trust.
But he hasn't gone off on anyone in six months, and he's been fun again!
I mean, I invited the guy to volunteer in the first place, a couple years ago, because he was lively and interested.
Then he became a dictator ... and now he's been back to his chill self, enjoying showing me weird donations and speaking in funny voices.

He also--wonderfully--gives all the workers super great deals on stuff. As a middle class white guy, he isn't grateful for our store credit, (unlike some of my coworkers who think management is "nice" (!) to give us anything); he sees it as offsetting our serfdom-level pay.
And it does--especially the generous way he doles it out.

So in that way, he uses his power for good, and it's true that I almost never spend money on anything except dolls--the Halloween pumpkin doll costume was and even most presents I give are from the store––which means I live pretty well on minimum wage.

So, the thing is, I'm just antsy.
I haven't learned anything new in ages.
(Geez, Self, that ^ is totally NOT TRUE.)

We've all been knocked sideways the past couple (eight) years, and it's not like everything's right-way up now either.
But it's not that, I don't think. Or, it's that, but it's other stuff too.

Sometimes dissatisfaction is an opening, an invitation for Change to come along. And sometimes it just passes.
I don't know which this is.

Pumpkinette

 She says she will wear it till Halloween.

Nuts&Bolts

Nuts&Bolts aftershave––(at the store)––plastic & glass jar, designed by Massimo Vignelli, 1969.
1969 was the last year of Star Trek, but this has already entered Starsky & Hutch territory.

Pluck, Humor, & Do the Laundry, FOREVERMORE

I. The Mailbox, Forevermore

Ever since I was a kid, I wrote letters back and forth with Auntie Vi.
I sent her a new mailbox once, but it was too big and she returned it. She painted flowers on her old one instead:

I thought about taking her mailbox with me, but I really don't want or need anymore things, so I took its photo.

For the past six years, Vi and I emailed almost daily. This past year, she started signing her emails, "love FOREVERMORE".
And I do feel her example will always be with me--including her model of facing extreme old age and its ills with pluck and humor.

The pain did make her mean and crabby sometimes, but considering, she was pretty darn nice through it all.

Considering what?
Well, once she was in her eighties, she refused most diagnostic tests, but it's pretty clear she died from bowel cancer, which was pretty unpleasant for a long time... But she got up, showered, dressed, made breakfast every morning, and tried to keep going all day. 

Neighbors helped with heavy chores--though she put in her own air conditioners last summer.
(Thankfully she had plenty of morphine at the end.)

I'd usually e-chitchat with Vi first thing in the morning--maybe I'll do more of that here.

II. This Morning's Chit Chat

Today I'd start, as I often did, with the Weather and Health Report:

Thank goodness it cooled off overnight, after a hot & humid day yesterday. It's still humid, but only in the low 70s, and supposed to drop during the week.
Sure is nice to see everything green again after a month of rain--amazing how grass that looks brown and dead can return refreshed.

I feel refreshed myself, now it's autumn--or nearly--equinox is on Wednesday. I hope you are feeling energized too, Vi, and can get out for walks again, after the summer heat.

Just now I  heard the bell of the highschool one block away--classes must start at 9 a.m. Never heard it last year, during Covid of course. Not that we don't still have Covid...

And the regular flu is here. Sister had it for three days last week--got tested for Covid, but it was "just" the regular miserable old variety.
Have you had your flu shot, Vi?

I got mine on Friday after PT for my Achilles tendinitis.
I love my pt, you know. I call him Captain, which he really is:
besides having his PhD in PT, he is also a captain in the army. He's one of those rare people who are kind & understanding (at least with his patients) and also happen to be overachievers.
Instead of feeling like a loser in comparison, I feel encouraged by him to keep on doing my little things--like stretching my calves at the bus stop.

"Only about 10 percent of people do all their pt exercises," he said--seemingly not upset about it––when I told him I only did about half of them.
(Vi, I know you are one of the 10 percent!)

III. Be NEAT!

I told him about you, Vi, and how you'd stayed active up till you died at 96. "But she never went to a gym," I said. "She gardened, did constant housework, walked--walking with her walker to the grocery store even in her last summer."

He said you got it right:
"That's called NEAT," he said: "Non-exercise activity thermogenesis".
It's the calories we burn when we go about our daily business that isn't planned exercise or sports (or sleeping, breathing, and eating).

Neat, huh?
Captain said studies show that doing desk work produces the worst health outcomes--EVEN if you are athletic outside of work.

I told him that one reason I decided to stay in my thrift store job, even though it pays poorly, is because I am NOT physically energetic. When I was writing for work, I went to the gym 3 times a week--but that's only three hours of exercise--almost nothing set against hours and hours and hours at the computer.
I'm in constant motion at the store. Lots of NEAT.

"I figure staying active is worth more than money," I said.

"That's a good decision for the long run," he said.

I figure PTs must see the outcomes of the worst decisions--(as well as bad luck, of course--I KNOW I've been lucky so far)––so I take his judgment seriously.

Keep 'er moving!

OK--going to make breakfast now: OATMEAL with walnuts and blueberries, for lowering cholesterol, and also I love oatmeal, and it's oatmeal season.

Find joy in your day, auntie--I know you always do!
Love FOREVERMORE, Fresca

P.S. I'm doing my colon at-home iFOB test this week.

bink's Birthday Outing with Dolls

A birthday outing for binky!
Same as last year, we went to Big Stone Mini-Golf & Sculpture Gardens. Big Stone says,
"The gardens display unique sculptures throughout the grounds of rolling hills, organic gardens, life-size games, picnic areas, ponds, and an open pasture that also serves as home to a variety of grazing animals."

(A round-up of photos of bink's life I posted for her birthday last year.)

Marz, bink, & bink's partner Maura play golf while Penny Cooper strikes a pose in her new socks. It was (probably) the last hot day this year––91ºF/33 C–– BUT THE SOCKS STAY ON!

And again... (w/ shadow of Marz):

(I think lots of guys must be involved in the park--there are lots of sculptures of dinosaurs and naked women (no naked men).)

No State Fair for us this year, but a church near the mini-golf was having a fair.
No fair! the girlettes say! I get sick on rides, so I couldn't take them, and they were deemed too small for the rides, even on tip toes:

But they enjoyed the Midway anyway. Even with "wholesome" cleaned-up art, Midways are weird...

Socks!

 Posting from my phone—I don’t like that, (slow & awkward), but I’m happy little miss marzipan is here and she’s on my laptop. So…

When I came home from Wisconsin last week, a package from London was waiting —from the place where girlettes Racer & Minnie Sutherland went to live!

I decided to wait till I could open it properly with the dolls, and that was today, at the coffee shop—we had presents for bink’s birthday (it’s tomorrow), and Penny Cooper and SweePo and the lion from the dumpster opened theirs too. 

Wow! Sarah at Circles of Rain knit perfect tiny socks:
They are fitted, with flat soles and proper toes and heels, and in beautiful colors—Penny Cooper got the striped ones because they match her dress she says (?). The dolls LOVE them!!! 

Lion wore them as mittens. 

The coffee cup says, The world needs more explorers.

Feeling Okay

It's been one week today since Auntie Vi died and bink & I went down to the Milwaukee-area to say good-bye to her home and friends there.

THANK YOU, all who offered condolences.
Being connected to living people helps a lot right now (even if I'm not keeping up with responding very well).

I toast you with pumpkin-spice coffee in my new speckled ceramic mug--a gift from Vi's basketball coach neighbor, Lance, along with the scented coffee beans.

Vi's neighborhood is (was? is) potpourrish, even the guys. They'd like Mown Grass air-freshener. (One of her neighbor friends told me he mows his grass on Mon-Wed-Fri and sometimes Saturdays--mows a different direction each time.)
Her neighbors were the sort of people who might vote for Trump, some of them;
but (or "and") would help their neighbor die at home, including staying up all night nursing her through her final hours, as Vi's neighbor-family Sheri, Cindy, and Lance did.

This is the obit I wrote for Vi, with her friends in mind.
Some of the photos of Vi's life I screencapped from the funeral home site:

•  Top row, left: with her brother Tony, home from the Navy at the end of WWII
• Top, right: Marrying Gil, 1958
• Bottom row, left: wearing a green dress she sewed herself to a wedding, with an uncle and her mother, my grandmother
• Bottom, right: Last summer, 2020––pulling down her Covid face-mask––with sunflowers, the signature bloom of Leos
  

Anchored

 The first day back home, I was too wiped out to go to work like I'd planned.  But by mid-afternoon I felt floaty and unmoored. Luckily Marz came over later and pulled me down from where I was bobbing along the ceiling.

Vi had always been an anchor in my life--I'd visited her regularly since I was eleven--and since twenty-six, usually with bink, who Vi called her niece too.
Vi was a stable personality; when I was a teenager, there were times I thought she was boring. (I was comparing her to my mother, but who can compete with a charismatic, narcissistic Scorpio? Not an insult, just a description, or even a compliment...)

My auntie was a Leo--a steady supply of sunshine-y personality.
I miss that, even though I used to wish she could see more shadows and complexity.
We would email almost every morning, and I'm still getting flashes of what to write--usually something about the weather, which is plenty un-boring this time of year.

"Seems to be an early fall," I'd have written this morning.
"I'm sitting here on the porch wearing a jacket and scarf, covered with the lap rug you knit from yarn you spun yourself. It still smells like your house--sort of warm and woody, and I feel wrapped up in your love-–now and forevermore, as you used to sign your emails."

I worry this post could sound slightly insulting, but my point is it was exactly my auntie's predictable, protective love that I cherished so much, and I miss her in a way I've never missed either of my parents, with a plain old uncomplicated grief.

Socializing and working and generally keeping busy aligns me with life in the world. I have a bunch of things lined up, more than I'd usually like.
So that's good.

Vi always carried on, with cheerfulness and courage. 
I do that too. If that's a little bit boring quality, I am nothing but grateful I've inherited it.

Tidying Thrift

I spent all day yesterday tidying the thrift store with Ass't Man.
A.M. is (used to be) a graphic designer and he is good at displays, and so am I. He and I are working well together this summer, but we don't usually have time to faff around like this.
It was good.

We were tidying because the store was to host a Community Meeting yesterday evening with cops + city council.
We figure that's why the police cleared the encampment across the street the day before--now the neighbors can't point to it and say, "Why haven't you done something?"
Though they could still say, Why didn't do you anything for four months?

I was not tempted to stay. But I wanted to store to look inviting for anyone who'd never been before.

Among other things, A.M. lined up four vintage sewing machines--the front one is a Singer from 1958.

I cleaned up around the store (not clothes though), and focused on My Books section.
I set up this dinosaur and handmade clay aardvarkish thing in with Science & Nature:

 

A Walking Dead game on my glass display case, below. The characters are from Season 1, will anyone buy it?
I truly didn't realize it would match the picture that was already there, behind it.

BELOW: I hung Ivorex plaques of Charles Dickens, his books and his London.
("Ivorex" was made by Arthur Osborne in England, late 1800s--early 1900s. He carved a master plaque, then made a mold to make plaster-of-Paris plaques. These were air-dried, hand-painted, then dipped in wax. Not worth a lot, but cool.)

I also spruced up the Cool Old Books section a bit, below--including putting out a box of piano music--some of it quite expensive to buy new.

My mother always had those creamy-yellow ^ piano books.

 BELOW: Didn't have an overall theme for my front-facing displays though.

More photos of the bookshelves from yesterday, in post below.

More Thrift Books

The bookshelves are about as tidy as they're ever going to be, after yesterday's organizing.  Here's a sampling...

 BELOW: Cooking & Food

Self-Help (or Ryan Gosling Help) & Psychology:

BELOW: Movies & Media, and some Art

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR:

 Below (3 photos): HISTORY

Below, bottom shelf: "FACTS in Five" is one of the games made in 1960s by 3M --pairs nicely with Whose Boat Is That? Comments That Don't Help in the Aftermath of a Hurricane (2018). Whose Boat used to sell, but like all Trump books it doesn't anymore. We have 3 copies.

BELOW (3 photos): Fiction & Lit

BELOW: Spirituality & Religion (Non-Christian)

Preach.

The police came and cleared away the homeless people + people doing illicit business (and all their stuff) across the street from the thrift store yesterday.

One guy, a Black man, ran into the store to get away. A cop came looking for him.

Pointing to a Black man in the back of the store, the cop said to Michael, a white volunteer,

"That’s the guy.”

"No!” Michael said, “he’s one of the best employees.”

It was Mr Furniture.

Pointing to another man, the cop said, "What about him?"

Michael said, "That's our executive director!"

It was Big Boss.

_________
I didn't know that'd happened till I saw Michael in the parking lot at the end of the day.

Earlier, after the camp had been cleared in the middle of the afternoon, Big Boss had called me into his office and asked me what I thought about what'd happened.
(He's rarely sought my advice like this before--usually I volunteer it, whether he wants it or not...)

He was entirely calm, as he usually is. "I know you have an opinion," he said.

I was hesitant for some reason.
"Hm. How can I put this biblically...?" I said, since we often talk in those terms.

"No, just as yourself," he said.

"Well, what do you think?" I said.

"I asked you first. How do you see it?" he said.

"I see failure," I said.
"Failure of imagination ever since this started.
I don't mean any one person in this instance failed, but it was generations of trauma that led to it getting this bad. And [in biblical terms], I see generations of 'sin': failure to love one another and care for our brother.

"Now, because it got so bad, so dangerous, I'm glad they're gone. But I feel grief at our failure as humans."

Big Boss always says I'm a preacher, and I was full on.
After I went away, I wondered if I'd been too... much.
But when I heard how the cops had treated Mr Furniture and Big Boss, I stand by what I said:

This gets a big fat F.

Dress for the Season

 It’s an early fall, Red Bear has put on her new trousers.

What I’m Reading

Mrs. de Winter is a follow up to Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca by Susan Hill. Hill wrote the famous ghost story The Woman in Black—I liked that (but not much her detective novels with detective Simon Serrailler).

Hill’s made me realize I’d accepted  Du Maurier’s ending without question, hook, line, and sinker. (I was a teenager when I read it, but still).

But, wait, Hill says… What really happened here?

I sense her outrage that Max DeWinter gets off as a romantic figure, and that no one was outraged by the end of Rebecca. 

She obviously was. 

Hill imagines—realistically I think—what the new Mrs deWinter’s lot was really going to be… The book is too long (would be better as a short story), but worth it—I skimmed the boring bits. 

I’m sitting at a coffee and wine bar after work. The world has wobbled sine my auntie died, but it hasn’t fallen down…

My Auntie Vi, 1925–2021

Violet's gardening gloves and hand tools, on the bench outside her back door. 

She is no longer here. 

Like I Was Saying

Seen on my bike ride to work—complements what I posted this morning: 

“BABY I WUD BURN THA 3rd AGAIN 4 U”

(…the 3rd police precinct, that is—burned in the uprisings after the police murdered George Floyd)

See/Feel/Hear . . . & Act

Wow--reading The Warmth of Other Suns about the Great Migration of Black people leaving the South for the North (c. 1915-1975) is really filling in gaps in my understanding of my Black coworkers who have family roots in the South. (Especially my older coworkers, but younger ones too.)

It fills in the background of my coworkers' attitudes and behaviors that I've interpreted  (knowing I don't have all the info!) as admirable Zen-like acceptance, or, on other days, as frustrating passivity;
plus, on the other hand, smoldering rage and frustration--again, sometimes expressed in ways I admire:
Mr Furniture's collage art, for instance, is full of pain and rage... but in service of and hope for a better Black future),
and sometimes self-destructive (the people across the street from the store, killing each other).

It's so different from my immigrant ancestors who fled dire poverty in Sicily: They were proud, and free to express their pride without fear (mostly) of humiliation, or lynching...

(I know there was anti-Italian prejudice and violence--including the New Orleans lynchings of eleven Italian-Americans– but that wasn't my ancestors' experience in Milwaukee---though my grandfather chose to raise the family in German neighborhoods, to stay away from other Sicilians!
But my point is, he was free to do that.)

My mother's side was Scots and other northern Europeans (Dutch? Welsh)--they came early and crossed the Appalachians in search of land.
Again, while they were literally dirt poor, some of them, and low on the social ladder, they obviously felt they were worthy of climbing the rungs, and did.

If you feel you can change your circumstances, that's freedom.
If you (we) feel trapped, we do all these things like chewing our leg off to get free, or eating our young, or living with the depression of learned helplessness;
or cultivating belief in justice in the afterlife, so you can stand THIS life...

This city is segregated--often invisibly to most white people like me, until the uprising after the cops murdered George Floyd made us (some of us) see and hear and feel the range of it.

People who complain about the violence of the uprising aren't getting it--the violence is a gauge of the repression that pins people down, which the uprising was/is trying to LIFT OFF.

"DO YOU SEE/ FEEL/ HEAR US?"

The strength of the reaction (riots, blockades, artwork, etc.) is testimony to the strength of the conditions being pushed against (repression).

I knew that before I started working at the thrift store, in theory.
But I never really knew Black people before--just a little bit from having Black coworkers for a year in Chicago.
What I knew I knew mostly from books.

White Minneapolis likes to SEE itself as extremely progressive, as do I, and on some issues the city is (bike lanes!), but that's not the whole reality.
Racism isn't just an attitude, more importantly for people's lives, it's actions and physical realities, like having choices about where you live and where your kids go to school... And even feeling you can work and push for those things, which was not the case in the Jim Crow South... nor, necessarily, in the North, even now.

“Mr. Floyd’s death, and the cascading protests that followed, are especially painful in light of  [former US vice president] Mr. [Walter] Mondale’s work supporting civil rights measures, he said.
'I really worked really hard on that issue for 40 years, and here we are,' he said. 'About where we started, I guess.'
. . .
“Minneapolis has ridden this reputation of being progressive,” said Robert Lilligren, who became the first Native American elected to the City Council in 2001.

“That’s the vibe:
Do something superficial and feel like you did something big. Create a civil rights commission, create a civilian review board for the police, but don’t give them the authority to change the policies and change the system."

---From The New York Times, "How Minneapolis, One of America’s Most Liberal Cities, Struggles With Racism", June 1, 2020

Michael K. Williams: "smile through it all"

Aw, man, sometimes--rarely?--you feel a real thing for an actor, for their work, I mean, and it's a personal loss when they die.

I felt that way when Philip Seymour Hoffman died, and now again, Michael K. Williams, dead at 54. (NYT obit)
With both deaths, I feel the loss of their future work.

DO YOUR WORK now.

I looked up his Instagram, www.instagram.com/bkbmg. MKM seems like he was an amazing person--also, looked great in orange.

I screencapped a few of his posts:

I put this, below, on my work's social media today (I'm doing it again, temporarily). It seems trite, but you know coming from a hard place, it's true--lotta heavy stuff in life, but we can lift one another up.

DISTANCE YOURSELF FROM HATE

 Omar Little, from The Wire:

Cupcake-Go-Round

 Last day of the State Fair!

The girlettes reeeeally wanted to go. But…“It is not safe for the humans to take us,” they said, so they made their own rides in the front yard. 

8-second video of Penny Cooper and Cash on the cupcake-go-round:

Still photos from the doll midway:

Spinna Hamster

And Cupcake-Go-Round