Old Sheet Music & Vintage Friends

Update on Plums

First to say, someone else must have been watching and waiting for the plums along the bike path to ripen. When I biked to work yesterday, I intended to pick them to make compote (thanks for the recipe, Kirsten!).
The trees, however, were stripped bare of all but the hard yellow fruits.

I'm glad someone foraged them, anyway, and they didn't just fall to the ground and rot.

Sheet Music & Friends

Donations of sheet music are fun to look at, but a pain to sell at the thrift store. I have no good way to present these ephemeral items.
If they're modern, I put them out in a plastic tub for .49/each, where they get rummaged through, and quickly bought or torn apart.

If they're vintage, they're even more fragile, but they aren't worth much more. It's more trouble than it's worth to put them in protective sleeves, which, at any rate, I don't have.

I keep them until they're piled up, thick with dust, and then I take them to my friend, Allan, at the art college library where I used to work, who digitalizes images of sheet music before 1924 (copyright free). Allan posts the images on a university's website--I forget where, I'll have to get the url.

Allan photographs all the ones I bring him for the university site.
He keeps choice ones for his personal collection;
passes the most astonishing examples of race and gender on to an art historian professor friend of his who specializes in the history of presentation of race and gender;
and puts the rest in protective sleeves and gives them back to me to sell at the store.

Below--examples of the classic face-off of black face and lily white.

I've known Allan since I started at the art college library when I was twenty-eight. He and I took a couple big trips together: Sicily and Turkey.
We go for long stretches without seeing each other, but I'm always happy to see him.

Allan is in his early 70s. My friend Sophie, who had a stroke three weeks ago, is 78.
It's weird to realize friends around my age (61)--vintage friends--will start to die from natural causes associated with old age...
I want to make more of an effort to keep in touch with Allan. I'm taking a pile of sheet music to him next week--first time we've seen each other since before Covid.

Book Puzzles

 I am reading three books at once--all three about bookstores.

In Praise of Good Bookstores by Jeff Deutsch, the director of Chicago's Seminary Co-op Bookstore. Published in 2022 by Princeton U press, which should know better than to give it such an unattractive cover. Hello, Marketing?

Sixpence House: Lost in a town of books (2003, Bloomsbury), by writer Paul Collins--about moving with his family to Hay-on-Wye, a town that has made bookselling its lifeline.

And my favorite, which I am gobbling up:
Confessions of a Bookseller, (2019)--a year in the life of the author, Shaun Bythell, the owner of a second-hand bookstore in Scotland.

I'm surprised by how much I'm liking Confessions because while his tales of bookselling held me, I didn't like Bythell himself in his first book, Diary of  Bookseller.
Has he become a better writer?
Maybe a bit.

Did someone point out that his one-way sour view of humans was a bit of a turn off?  (It was to me. I only read his second diary because the topic interests me.)
Maybe so.
Or, at least, he now includes himself in his assessments, writing, for instance, about how it was his limitations, his terror of commitment, that ended his relationship with the woman he loved. He goes light on the self-reflection, which is good, but it rights the score.
The focus is still on the day-to-day running of a bookstore--with plenty of attention given to the annoyances.

I share some of his annoyances--including the physical labor involved in book sorting. (He has a bad back from it.)
Here's my workspace on Saturday--at the end of the day, after I'd sorted and priced many boxes. (Toys and games on the left, mostly.)

Unlike Bythell, I rarely face annoying customers--that's our cashier's problem. The customers who talk to me are almost (almost) all appreciative.

Though there is the occasional sour puss.
One woman was always complaining to me--"you should put the puzzle pieces in bags/this book is in the wrong area"--until I suggested she volunteer and do it herself.

And she did!
She--Abby--is only the second person to take me up on a suggested solution.

Another woman complained to me about our price stickers--they don't come off easily, and sometimes, if you don't soak them off, they tear the paper. Same as Goodwill's stickers.
But most of our books have no stickers at all, because for ease, I set standard prices:
99 cents paperbacks, $1.99 hardbacks--OR AS MARKED.
Maybe a quarter of the books are individually priced. And a lot of those have shiny covers that don't tear when you pull the stickers off.

Anyway, I told this angry woman that I agreed with her, our system isn't ideal. But we don't buy our price stickers--we're a poor store, and I handwrite the price on whatever odds and ends of stickers are donated. (Right now, they're big round pink ones.)
We don't often get easily removable stickers, and anyway, like Goodwill, we want our stickers to stick so that people don't peal them off to get the cheaper price.
 
I told her all this and suggested that if she'd like to donate some peal-off stickers, I would be happy to use them. (Honestly, that would make me happy.)

Her response?
"I am never coming here again."

And so far as I can tell, she hasn't. Which was the other possible but unsaid solution that would make me happy.

I'm sorry, I say to people who complain, but this is a thrift store––and not a nationally coordinated one either. We don't have automated pricing equipment, we don't have inventory of our stock.
Do we have a cord for your particular food processor? Or a certain phone charger?
I don't know--we have a box of cords, you can look for yourself.
(I do tend to know if we have any particular book though.)

Anyway--volunteer Abby has come in once a week to sort and price games and puzzles for more than a year now.
She's still kind of sour, but she's a huge help.
(Come to think of it, she's of Scottish descent. Is that a Scots thing, sourness?)

Abby's special love is puzzles. (I don't like puzzles, and I don't care, and I don't have time to futz with them. I don't mind doing the other toys.)
Abby takes some home to do for fun, and to check if all the pieces are there. She marks the box if a piece or two is missing. People will buy puzzles with missing pieces, if they're not in crucial spots--say, not the lips of the Mona Lisa. 
She counts puzzles with just a few pieces, like the 26-piece floor ones for kids.
And she bags the pieces of all the puzzles, so they don't spill when customers open the boxes (which they tend to do vigorously, sending the contents across the floor, until Abby began bagging them).

Puzzles are her specialty, but she gives games a lot of care too. She bags little pieces, counts cards, and makes sure the instructions are there--and if they're not, she finds the instructions online and prints them up!

Because she does all this, she charges a bit more for the nice ones---like, $2.99 to 4.99. Given that new games and puzzles sell for around $25, and more, this is a great deal.

If I had to do games & puzzles, I'd glance inside their boxes and if they looked more or less okay, I'd slap a "99 cents, as is" sticker on them and call it a day.

And... now I'm off to work.
Have a good whatever-time-of-day it is where you are!

The word for cow is cow.

It seems to be Brain Injury Summer round here....
First bink bonked her head, and now Sophie, one of bink's oldest friends--and my friend too--has had a stroke.

Luckily both injuries are relatively mild--there's absolutely no change to personality! Thankful.
But with brains, "mild" is bad enough: in both cases, it means NO READING, temporarily.

Spring 2021, L to R: me, Maura, Sophie, and bink (in sunglasses)

bink can't read much because her eyes are out of synch, and the close focus makes her nauseous--(though she's better, yay!).
Sophie can't read because she can't---her brain refuses to form meaning out of letters.
It's TEMPORARY, and it's spotty--the ability flickers off and on like a bad internet connection. Mostly, it's off.

It's so weird! Sophie's brain has the ability to read, it's just too busy building new pathways, to detour around its injuries --I picture major road works--it doesn't have the energy to process written language. She can name the letters she is seeing--she can spell words in front of her--but for the most part, they mean nothing.
Reading is NOT the brain's priority.

Sometimes, though, it's not just written language--it's spoken.
Sophie is staying in a rehab center near me for a few? weeks.
I visited her on Sunday--(a boring day for patients, with no PT, OT, language specialists)--and at one point she could not come up with a word every toddler knows.

"Oh, you know...,"  she said in frustration, "that animal that makes milk."

"Cow?" I said.

"Cow!" she said. But then a few sentences later, she couldn't pull up the word again.

Oddly, she can write! In her usual fluid handwriting.
But after a few minutes, she can't read most of what she's written.

The neurologist says bink's vision is mending as expected--slowly. She can read for longer and longer periods of time--though still measured in minutes, not hours.

Sophie's brain is expected to recover the ability to read too. Perhaps not 100 percent, but enough.
"I'm lucky, lucky, lucky," she says.

Life without reading... That scares me. There's television, music, pictures, audio books even (though that's too much language for Sophie's brain to process too, right now)...
But no books?

I AM WEARING MY BIKE HELMET.

What are these fruits?

 Whoops-/posted sideways… (I'm on my phone.)
GZ, or anyone know what these fruits are? Look like plums? They grow on a bike path public park and I could forage them… but what are they? What would I do with them?

Birds eat them…

Tiny Plates, & Tiny Villages

Tiny Plates

And... the benefit of working at a thrift store:
Pussy willow bread-plates, 49 cents each. I bought all six out of the cart of priced goods going out on the floor.
Hand decorated, each plate a little different; stamped Winfield--a California pottery from 1929–1962.
Online they go for a few bucks each, so, like the pastel milk-glass plates I also got for .49 each, these could have been priced a bit higher.

The placemat was in textile recycling because there was only one, but I'm pretty certain it's from the Scandinavian imports shop down the street--Ingebretsen's. Still owned by the original family, they've been on Lake St. for more than a hundred years--selling items like Swedish cloudberry preserves for $16--in the 21st century, mostly online.
They're personal friends of the thrift store!

The tiny kitty-face plate is modern, made in China. For my favorite food: tiny snacks!

Tiny Village

Yesterday I went to a meeting with the city council member and reps from the police and homeless task force. It was a listening session: mostly frustrated neighbors talking about people living in their yards, doing all the kinds of business you most would not want in your yard.
So so troubled, all the way around.

I don't feel in danger working at the thrift store, but we close at 5:30 PM. I sure wouldn't want to live on the block!

The city reps could only keep saying, "We're working on it."
Essentially their hands are tied by lack of funding (and, of course, laws--you can't just haul people away).
I was happy to hear that the councilor is pushing for a Tiny Village model--where everyone gets a private little shelter of their own, built inside a bigger building.

Such a great idea, but currently only in the "talking about it" stage.

There is one such successful village in another area of town:
"Avivo Village, an indoor community of 100 secure, private dwellings or “tiny houses” in Minneapolis, provides shelter and wraparound services to individuals experiencing unsheltered homelessness."

Funded by government sources and private corporations and individuals.

In which I quit therapy. (That was fast. :)

Thanks for weighing in, everybody, on my first meeting with a therapist. Blogging it through helped me get clear:
I hated it.

I lay awake last night, fuming. I had come to this therapist through a grant specifically for people working in the area where George Floyd was killed, but the therapist NEVER once said his name. I said it repeatedly.

I also talked about people living in poverty and dying of drugs and crime on the sidewalk outside my workplace--I talked about my personal distress and my concern for them and our city.

She made appropriate noises in response, but again, she never SAID any of the words that would reflected back to me what I am dealing with:
heroin, guns, bullet holes, overdose, police, prostitution, despair, fear, danger. etc.

Or: joy, meaning, connection, hope, City Council, public health...

Most importantly, we didn't seem to be living in the same HISTORY.
She seems to be living in a different time than I am. The nineties, maybe, when the plight of the Gifted Child was predominant?
 

[She'd recommended I read The Drama of the Gifted Child, by Alice Miller. This was big in the 90s, which is when I read it. It's been somewhat discredited since then. And at any rate, my issues with my family of origin are only slightly relevant, if they are relevant at all, to the issues I face at sixty-one years old.]

This morning, I wrote a fairly neutral email to the therapist, trying to be pleasant but also informative about why I was not going to continue seeing her beyond this one time.

[BEGIN email to therapist]

Hi, A.,

Thank you for meeting with me this week. It helped bring into focus what I want/need right now, and that doesn't include therapy.

I went out for a beer with a coworker after work, the day I saw you.
He and I had painted the boarded up windows together after the police murdered George Floyd. (I'd sent you a photo me painting "Faith Hope Love" on the boards. This coworker had painted "Justice 4 George".)

Talking about our workplace and Lake St., he said,
"Wouldn't it be weird if one of us actually got shot?"

And I thought, Isn't it weird that this is a normal question in my life?

Family of origin, Gifted Children, even Buddhism... those things you brought up affect my life, of course, but they are irrelevant to the spiritual emergency/state of civil unrest I live in.

The great thing, though, is that going to Mass does provide some helpful framework--for instance, the George Floyd angel painted on the pavement at 38th & Chicago, where Floyd was killed and which I bike past going to work, looks a lot like a crucifix.
Seeing you and thinking "not this" nudged me to take that step of going to Mass, so that was helpful.

In fact, the whole process of deciding to ask for help was helpful!

I am going to take more seriously the need to make some peaceful space at work, and to take breathing breaks, and to stop and have a cup of tea mid-afternoon, before irritation arises.
I'm also going to take first aid classes and continue learning Spanish (half our customers are Spanish speaking). If I were to explore any religion further, it would be Islam--lots of Muslim customers too.

Thank you, A., and my best to you, Fresca

[END e-mail to therapist]
_________________________

She emailed me back just now:

"Thanks for getting back to me.  I am glad our meeting was helpful in deciding what you need.  I will be happy to explore breathing techniques and yoga if that is what you are interested in.

If not, best luck to you.  I feel grateful our paths crossed."

*   *   *

Lady, you are not getting it.

Not one word of concern for me or the people around me.
And YOGA??? At $185/hour? I could do it for free on youTube, or anywhere in person for less than $185/hour.
But honestly, the offer of a bullet-proof vest might have been more appropriate.

I deleted her email and made no reply.

Am I ever glad I cut this therapist off right away.

Atoms and Angels

 "And the angel said, 'Come here.'"
--Book of Revelations, somewhere

Penny Cooper has been learning about atoms in her summer reading (she has a list of books), and this morning she was dancing around, singing a little song,

"I am dinosaur and fern juice. And if nobody knows I'm real, I'll still be atoms!"

I think she found that comforting.

I believe in atoms.
I don't believe in angels, not in the same way, as objective realities, but they seem to work anyway, as Agents of Serendipity and Magic Messengers You Never Expected, and the like.
____________

Did I say? I think I didn't--that the therapist gave me homework--to check out a Buddhist meditation center that does a lot of social justice work.

I feel like therapy is a sausage machine:
whatever you put in, a predictable shape comes out.
"Intimacy issues"
"General Anxiety Disorder"

And, Buddhism?
OMG, I am so not interested.

I WAS interested in Buddhism, off and on, over the years. The idea of mindfulness, which I discovered through Thich Nhat Hanh in my twenties, has been super helpful to me. I learned so much from and still love American Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron.
In my forties, I even sat meditation for a couple months at a place called Dharma Field.

(Did the therapist even ask?
She did not. I am not impressed.)

Anyway, in the end, meaning no disrespect, in this part of the country, Buddhism feels to me like Lutheranism. Quiet and tidy and sanitized, no bloody bodies on display. (And the meditation parking lot is full of Priuses owned by people who've gone trekking in Nepal.)

When the therapist gave me that homework, I agreed, but the last thing I said as the session ended was, "I miss Mass."

That night in bed, I thought, listen to yourself. You may not believe in God, but you miss him. Set aside your beef with the Church for a moment, and go.

The next morning--yesterday-- I went to the weekday 8:30 Mass at the church 2 blocks away. The first reading was from somewhere in Revelations:

"The angel said, come here."

Well, okay, then.

The Catholic Church is a Bad, Bad Church, there's no doubt--but there's also no doubt, in this part of the world, they have the best toys!
(Tibetan Buddhism has lots of good ones too, but I am not Tibetan.)
And it's a bloody mess, just like my workplace.
And me.

I went out for beer with Ass't Man after work yesterday--the first time we've ever gone out alone together.
We're going to a meeting with the City Council member for the store on Friday, and we were talking--again--about the question of how to help––can we? do we?––and how to bear, how to stand the suffering we see around the store.

I was telling him about going to Church and how it gave me a place to stand--and help to withstand.
Like a lot of people who grew up Catholic, he doesn't like the Church--and who can blame him?

I was saying, a lot of people tell me they find the crucifix barbaric.
The crucifix is barbaric--that's the point.
It's like the figure of George Floyd, with angel wings, painted on the pavement where he was killed ten blocks from the store.

I said to Ass't Man that ever since Floyd's murder, I've been feeling pulled to the Christian story again.
While Floyd did not choose his martyrdom, unlike Jesus, there are similarities--both were innocent people killed in public in a show of force by the authorities; victims whose deaths served a larger purpose.

Ass't Man said he had never seen it like that... "I've only thought about how God can help me," he said. 

(Huh. Ask not what Love can do for you.
Ask what you can do with Love.)

I really, really liked going to Mass. The Church says,
"Yes, Life IS that awful.
So, here. Here's a magic cookie for the journey.
Now, go. Get out there."

I thought about quitting therapy after only one session, but now I am grateful for it: by it trying to squeeze me into the wrong shape, I found one that fit me better.
For the moment.

I wonder what other things I'll un/re/dis-cover through this therapist. She must be an angel! The angel of the wrong-fitting homework.

In Transit

See the girlettes peeking out of my bike bag? Two came along with me —(a combo of bus & bike)—and one of their calendars too—as part of my Show & Tell for the therapist. Also a restored bear, my amber prayer beads, a shell necklace from Camino, and a book about Borges and his translator. I offered the book to the therapist (because she grew up in Argentina), explaining it only cost 99 cents—and she took it! 

Which made me like her—that she didn’t refuse it on client/provider ethical grounds. (Can’t accept gifts).

She seemed very impressed with the “Dolls Help” calendar, so that was a good sign, and I liked her in general too—a relief. Mostly I talked about background intake info, but I did keep saying “yes, but…”.

“Yes, I hold tension in my neck muscles—but I’m stepping over people dying on the sidewalk.” / “Yes I’m hyper vigilant —but there are bullet holes in the windows at my work.” / “Yes, I was sleeping more—but there was nowhere to go during the pandemic so I went to bed.”

“You qualify as having General Anxiety Disorder” she said. (Insurance would cover this if I want to continue beyond the grant money, which I don’t think I do.)

“But who doesn’t?” I said.

“Right,” she said. “Probably everyone in town—in the country —would qualify.”

And we laughed. Nice.

I stopped at a fabric store near her office and the dolls got to choose a reward for coming along—they think therapy is “stupid for dolls”, but they’re always up for an outing. So they didn’t really need a reward, but I did—for Bravery in Asking for Help (BAH).

They chose two fat-quarters for the coming season: the season of joy naps! BAH not-humbug.

 

Supernatural Adventures

A few things have elevated my spirits (flattened by distress around the store) --including the day trip to the Great Lake with Marz...

...and a visit from my landlord yesterday.
He is the best!
He must have taken the Mister Rogers Course in Talking to Preschoolers Tenants. He is clear and covers all the bases when he talks to me. Like this: he said,

"Since the loose screen is functional, I would like to wait on fixing it. I'll come back mid-September when I will be doing other repairs and fix it.  You don't have to be home when I come. Is that acceptable?"

Genius, huh?

He's care-full too.
I showed him I'd arranged six bricks by the north door, so I don't track dirt in.
He went to his truck and came back with an outdoor doormat:
"You could twist your ankle on the bricks. You can have this, it will work better. "

Well, maybe that's "just" a nice guy practicing good property management, but personally, it makes me feel almost worshipful––LOL––it's such a huge contrast with my workplace's lack of care (or kindness) toward workers' safety and comfort.

Also, the blue and white pot I got at the store ^ makes me happy and cheers up the north entrance. (The pot is not to my taste for inside, but I can store it in the basement in the winter.)

Anyway--I'm glad I'm feeling lifted, expansive, instead of squashed, because tomorrow I'm going to the therapist for the first time, and in my current mode, I'm excited about that.
I didn't get a great feeling from the therapist on the phone, but after the lake winds and the landlord's clarity cleared my mind, I thought,
Eh, I don't care if she's a perfect match.

This is not about her.
It's about me activating my options--me being willing to SEEK HELP, and me being willing to experiment. It's an adventure!

I wasn't seeing it that way when I got a statement from the therapy practice a few days ago, notifying me of the costs. I owe nothing because my therapy is being paid for by a grant, but they said that legally, they have to inform me of the cost.
(I'm only starting this therapy because Big Boss told us about this "Be Well" grant for workers in this (our) area where there's been so much devastation.)

Anyway, they informed me that my grant is $2,000, and each one-hour (50 minute?) session with a therapist costs $185.

WHOA.
Did I ever have a huge reaction against that.
I make $15/hour, and the therapy provider makes $185/hour? (Minus overhead and all that blah blah blah.)
No wonder when I asked what bus went to her workplace, she didn't know. (It's the number 63.)

The socio-economics agitated me so badly, I thought about not going.

But then I thought--wait a second, Little Miss Reactivity. This is a GIFT.
Isn't it nice, after all, that some people somewhere thought,
"Hey, we should help out the workers who've been showing up the past coupla years in this benighted strip of real estate" . . . even if their conclusion was, "Let's grant them some Very Expensive Therapy"?

And then, the amount of the gift came into focus. Two thousand dollars. That's the amount I gave BJ in the last months of her life--the money I was earning house/cat-sitting.

When I'd given her the check, she'd thanked me and said,
"This will come back to you."

I'd said, "Well, thanks, BJ... I don't exactly believe that, but I'm not worried about it either. I'm just happy I have this to share with you."

And she'd said, "Wait and see."

__________________

So--here's the thing. I don't believe BJ is sending me 2K. I don't believe my dead auntie arranged for me to find a shower curtain in the alley.

I do believe that kindness and love have long extension cords--they continue to deliver even when the source is far away, gone....

I don't think the therapy grant is pay-back for the money I gave BJ. 
BJ couldn't pay me back (she was dying), but she wanted me to be paid back supernaturally––and I believe it is that––her willing of GOOD for me––that comes back.
I can count on that returning, again and again, because when I remember that someone cared for me, willed Good for me--that, that is the superpower.

That is the superpower that lets me put aside my resentment and skepticism and ask instead:

Hey, BJ, whatcha think the Universe has in store for me? What gifts and challenges are going to come to me on this adventure? And how am I going to find new and better ways to be Very Annoyed Indeed?

Let's go see!

P.S--it's garden flower season--my favorite! From the farmers market:

 

Also, swimming

 SweePo went floating in a rock pool at Lake Superior 

Climbing up that hill

 Buchanan Rocks, Lake Superior, just north of Duluth; team building, outward-bound outing for the cast of Dolls’ Summertime Dream

Not a Pretty Picture (and a few pretty ones)

Here is a pretty picture of meadow flowers Marz brought me from the farmers market yesterday.

Not a Pretty Picture

Michael recently blogged about a journalist using the phrase "folks on the ground" to refer to Wisconsin voters.
I thought of this when I walked up to my workplace yesterday and saw the real thing:
two people lying on the ground--seemingly passed out--one on either side of the street near the thrift store.

Big Boss and others have been in meetings all summer with the City and social workers, etc., about the folks living (and dying) on the street outside the store.
(Remember last summer, I'd tried to get the City to give the street trash cans? I didn't bother this year.)

Upshot: basically, there's almost nothing to be done--or, nothing the City will do.

Nonetheless, I called 911--(they did not send an ambulance, they sent a cop car that simply moved the people along, stumbling)--and I took a photo and sent it to our City Council member. I said,  "I'm writing to express concern: it's like walking the Gauntlet of Hell out here".

I didn't send the photo to the therapist I'll meet in person this coming week, but this morning I emailed her about what I'd seen. She and I had talked on the phone for twenty minutes on Monday, and I'd liked her okay, but I hadn't felt she really got what I was saying.

I had said that I'm not looking for "healing" from the trauma of 2020 (specifically the police murdering George Floyd, a mile away), because the trauma, the wounding, is not over; I see it every day at work.

However, when she mirrored back to me what she'd heard, she got it wrong, and in the past tense:
"You are looking to be healed from what happened...".

No, I said, I'm not, and I explained again that it didn't "happen", it is happening.
But I didn't sense the light turning on.

I just now wrote her:

"This is what I'm wanting help with:
handling the pain of others and the way it ricochets in my life and the lives of everyone around me.
I want to be able to work alongside it, effectively, and not be overwhelmed by it.
It's more like incurable cancer than an old wound:
I want help living with it as well as possible."

I'd filled out a required intake form too, but I'd left a lot of the multiple-choice questions blank. All the available answers were misleading.

Do I feel "a heightened sense of danger"?

Well, yes.
But that's because someone was shooting a gun outside the store the other day, not because I'm over-sensitized due to unhealed trauma.

Another Pretty Picture

People at work are stressed, oh yeah, for sure...
But meanwhile, Asst Man set up fresh new end cap displays, and as I was photographing this one, below, a customer came into view wearing a matching shirt.
I don't think he intended to strike a pose for my camera, but he did:

Let's see. Other fun things at work:
the set of Dansk silverware that I'd brought back to the store (after paying waaay too little for it) sold for $175–! (I did keep a set for myself too.)

And several expensive (for the store) books sold from the glass display case--Big Boss assisted a customer who wanted to see the set of Khalil Gibran books, which they bought for $60.
I always like when Big Boss sees I'm selling pricey stuff, because otherwise Books at 99 cents each don't bring in all that much.

I truly don't know why this low-rent thrift store of nonreaders ever decided to PAY someone to arrange the books like a bookstore, but I sure am glad they did--and every week customers tell me the same.

Another nice thing...
Below: Donated Steiff chimp "Jocko" from the 1950s, with old antique store price tag of $50, marked down from $120:

* * *

Ooooh--Marz just called and asked if I'd like to go up to the North Shore for the day, spur of the moment. Even though it's expensive to rent a car, and we'd be getting a late start (it's 10 a.m., and it takes two, three hours), yes, I said, I would LOVE to go see water crashing on rocks.
Better than any therapy!

Cat Sitter

 Neighbor cat Pixie comes in my open door and takes up residence… “The comfiest chair is for me.”

I’ve requested a screen/storm door for the back (north) entrance (it’s such a narrow building, I have doors on the north and south side). This is the north, shadier, and more private side—I love to sit with my morning coffee out here, but in also I’d like some patio stones, since the ground is bare dirt: 

A door would not be to keep Pixie out—I like her—but to keep out bugs. It’s been such a dry summer—we’re in drought—there haven’t been many, but the occasional buzzing fly drives me nuts—I squashed one with my Harry Potter book the other night as I was lying trying to read in bed.

I love my new home so much, I’m a little sad to be leaving it for a while to go house/cat sitting next month. (Living with House Mate, I was always almost desperate to get a break by staying elsewhere.)  

I’ve been rereading the last three Harry Potters in reverse order, and I’m almost done with Harry Potter 5. After (or, before) this one,  they don’t hold my interest. I’ve enjoyed the last three, though their defects drive me crazy: How can J K Rowling be so imaginative as to create this complex world and yet have no sense of humor? I NEVER laugh or even smile at these books. 

(What passes for humor is the Weasley twins’ “joke” charms that make you throw up or get a nose bleed—funny if you’re a snot-nosed seven year old?)

Still, despite their limitations, they’re a good distraction that require little thought—perfect for this August. I’ve been thinking about trauma—it bothered me that Harry doesn’t have PTSD at the end of the books, after all he’s been through—like Frodo clearly does at the end of Lord of the Rings— but what I’ve read says that if a traumatized person has some sense of agency, if they can run or fight, they’re less likely to suffer from the disorder afterward. So maybe Harry was sort of immunized? Or maybe it’s just that HP is a magic fairytale for children, while  LOTR is a war story …

 (I can’t weigh in on CS Lewis’s Narnia because I could never stand to read more than half of one book, they’re so condescending and not at all as if he’s ever met—or been—a child. IMHO.)

Okay—off to work now. I hope you’re all having a good day, or night. Xo

Into the Garden

 Biking through the community garden down to the Greenway bike/walk path that takes me to work.

On the street above:

BELOW: 18-second video, biking down the garden path to the Greenway—it’s a bit wobbly, as I was holding my phone on my handlebar…

Pirouette & Pears (pink & green)

 One panel of this fringed green curtain was in textile recycling at work—I brought it home for Dolls Summer Dream but realized that cut in two, it made wonderful half-panel privacy curtains for my first- floor living-room windows, which look directly onto the sidewalk. 

Also, they pair with pink, this summer’s dolls’ color scheme…🙄😄

Going to Get Milk This Morning

Good morning! I was IG messaging Fiona, my dolls-friend in Berlin, this morning and decided to “ask her along” while I biked 5 blocks to the gas station for milk for my coffee. 

I snapped photos as I went along. I’ve really enjoyed seeing Linda Sue’s dog walking photos—so fun to get a sense of where others are—so I’ll post my morning bike for milk here. 

Note—this goes toward the richer side of town. Going to work, I bike into the poorer side…

Heading off from my apartment:

So so so lucky—it’s been cooler here than normal! Now in the 70s during the day. In drought though—any green lawns are due to watering 

Sunflower season. Lots of beautiful gardens in this neighborhood 

Below : gas station red sign on left—this plant was full of fat 🐝 bees! 

A gallon of milk (2 for $8) and a gallon of gas cost about the same. One day we will look back and marvel. Probably we marvel now…

Waving at you in the gas station window:

Fiona asked if it’s unusual to bike here—I said no, not at all:

Very popular sign here. Also BLACK LIVES MATTER; “All Are Welcome Here”; and Support Ukraine 🇺🇦 signs.

Home again:

My kitchen: fuzzy photo? Taken on IG camera—

 Success! Have a great day!

Open Streets

 Being goofy with my coworkers—not sure if I get it across here, where I express distress about the workplace, that work can be very jolly. 

For Open Streets yesterday, with the main thoroughfare closed to motor traffic, we grilled burgers and hotdogs to give away with chips and fizzy water. 

Half our lunch guests were the street folks who hang out doing business (sex, drugs, whatever) on the corner—it was nice to have a friendly interaction with them. They are not always peaceful and well… One young woman said she hadn’t eaten in days. 

It’s like we’re in a foxhole or the trenches and no help is coming. But we often have a lot of fun among ourselves.

Some lunchers were regular customers, and a few were newcomers come from the festival. We had bags of squashed vegetables in the parking lot, leftovers dropped off from a giveaway somewhere else. If you’d been willing to cook them all up the same day, they’d have made a nice stew, but few people wanted them. (Some have no stove.) A woman who has a small farm with chickens, ducks, and two pigs came by and was excited to take them for her animals. We took her name in case we get more—we have no organic compost recycling outlet.

A good day. 

PennyCooper Is Real

Yesterday was an Open Streets celebration near the thrift store, so PennyCooper brought her nickels and we went to see the Advice People (above).

In real life, PennyCooper doesn’t need advice from humans, but she’d heard (thru the doll grapevine) that a friend of Cabbage Patch Dolls would be offering advice at a booth for a nickel, and she has some nickels (all the small coins in my pocket go into a little ceramic pot made by GZ, for Penny). 

She talked to them about how some people say she is not Real. I don’t know if this really concerns her, honestly—I think she thought it was a good question for humans. Which it was.

The best answer of the two advice- givers was, “I see you. You are Real”.

Not Broken

[posted on my phone—weird formatting]

Ever since I decided to seek help, I’ve felt kinda terrible—all my problems swam up to the surface. It helped to watch the clip from the Fred Rogers movie where the journalist says Mister Rogers loves people like him—broken—and Mister Rogers says, “I do not think you are broken".

No, I am not broken. If I were a book donation, I would put me in Cool Old Books. Broken in!

Sometimes the guys on the donation door will bring me boxes of books saying, “These look like good ones.”

That usually signals shiny hardbacks, which usually means worthless bestselling thrillers. Readers buy new Lee Childs, Clive Cusslers and the like in hardback because they’re eager to read them, as the publishers know; but once they’ve been read, and once the titles are in paperback (preferable for easy reading), the pretty hardbacks are like peanut shells on a barroom floor. 

I love soft old books that people have loved enough to read and reread and pass on. I put the crisp shiny hardbacks in recycling (they don’t sell even for 49 cents). I tape the cool old paperbacks’ broken corners and worn spines; I glue text blocks back into into cool old hardbacks’ cover boards; I unfold dog-eared pages, and erase pencil marks. 

We are not broken; we are well read.

II. Spanish Books 

Some of a great donation of Spanish literature in English and Spanish, (and some both, on facing pages), this week, by Spanish and Latin American authors. Many books are like-new.

I say “we got”, but no coworkers notice this unusual haul except the cashier from Mexico, who is a serious reader, and she’s been out sick. 

The other main cashier quit, saying “this place is too dangerous “. I’d quit too if I had to cashier—that is walking point, for sure. The third cashier is home for the week because his housemate has Covid.

 So it’s Asst Man on cash register, mostly, which he likes and is where he started. I think he may regret having become middle manager—it’s the worst of both worlds: responsibility without power. He could use some non-profit therapy too. 

The therapist will call me Monday afternoon for an intake chat. I’d wanted to show her the display of books that included three by Borges, but all the Borges sold the first day, even the worn copy of Ficciones. Funny what moves and what doesn’t.

In August

 

Watercolor inspired by the caterpillar of a Swallowtail butterfly in a friend’s yard

"Can You Say Hero?" Mister Rogers & Judas

I'm excited--I got a referral yesterday to a therapist who seems like she might be a good fit. She's in her 50s, grew up in Argentina, studied English Translation for her undergrad, AND she has an MBA in nonprofits!

Funny coincidence, the same day I'd brought home from the thrift store a book about Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges* by his English-language translator, Norman Thomas di Giovanni.
But the therapist's experience in nonprofits feels more pertinent, since a lot of my distress comes from my workplace.
I bet a lot of my stress is common to nonprofits--people (like me and the management) go into them with high ideals and low business competency.

I emailed the therapist saying I'd like to be better equipped for dealing with the human cruelty and human desperation I see up close and personal at work (and elsewhere).

Is that even possible, to be better equipped?

Of course it is. Not to vanquish cruelty, but to find ways and means to stay in the work without losing your mind.
Or, to lose your mind and to stay and work (well) anyway?

Push the Reset Button

Recently I've been glitching and sparking like some sort of electronic machine gone haywire. Sometimes the thing to do, in that case, is to push the reset button, or to un- and replug the thing.
(I read that a lot of repair people answering calls for malfunctioning machines do simply that.)

I've mentioned the movie A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019--one of the last movies I saw in a theater before Covid).
It's based on the story of a real journalist doing a piece on Mister Rogers for Esquire magazine.

The article "Can You Say Hero?" by Tom Junot (1998) is behind a paywall, but I found a PDF of it from Lake Harbor United Methodist Church, in Michigan:
lakeharborumc.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Can-You-Say-Hero-by-Tom-Junod.pdf

Reading the article (and remembering the movie, which I've seen twice) pushed my reset button--calmed me down and reminded me of who I am, at heart.
I won't pull a quote from it because it's really of a piece.

The final question in the Book Reading Questionairre I posted this morning asks who your literary heroes are.
What's a hero, I wondered.

This article touches on the question of what's a hero, but even more, the question that pulls it together is, What is grace?

___________________________

* Judas, the Hero

I forgot when I was filling out the book questionairre,
Borges wrote a short story/essay that challenged my thinking (one of the questions):
"Three Version of Judas", included in the Borges collection Ficciones. I'll add it.
It is a review of three scholarly books about Jesus & his betrayer, Judas--three books that do not exist.

Summary from Wikipedia:

The [fictitious] author Runeberg comes up with the argument that as God in human shape would be "made totally man, but man to the point of iniquity", committing a sin would also not be beyond Him.

More importantly, Runeberg states that a sacrifice limited to only one afternoon on the cross does not compare with the sacrifice of accepting shame and revulsion for the rest of history.
Thereby, Runeberg concludes finally that He, God, chose Judas as his incarnation:

"God became a man completely, a man to the point of infamy, a man to the point of being reprehensible - all the way to the abyss.
In order to save us, He could have chosen any of the destinies which together weave the uncertain web of history; He could have been Alexander, or Pythagoras, or Rurik, or Jesus;
He chose an infamous destiny: He was Judas."

[end Wiki/Borges quote]

Ha. There's a hero. The biggest loser for the greatest gain.

Book Reading Questionnaire

I don't know where I found this questionnaire--I've saved it for some months.
I always answer questions about books the same.
I'm going to try to turn off my automatic responses and open my brain up to answer afresh--or at least to choose more recent books.

I'd love to hear your answers!

1. The Book(s) That Transitioned Your Reading From Childhood to Adulthood

I arrived at full adult reading comprehension when I could fairly easily understand John Donne's poetry on first reading.
I was thirty five.

Okay, but as a child?
Hard to say.
I read a lot of books that were beyond me when I was little. I even remember wondering why I could read the words of something off my parents' bookshelf but not understand the meaning.

But maybe this marks a transition:
When I was twelve, I wrote a book report on John Steinbeck's Cannery Row (my choice), about a bunch of bums who lead what is presented as a good, free life in Monterey, California.
The teacher wrote on my report that I had a sophisticated understanding of the book.

I haven't read Cannery Row since, so I don't know how romanticized it is, but I know it influenced me a lot. The life of a bum sounded good to me. It slotted right into the romanticized movie version of that bum Saint Francis, Brother Sun, Sister Moon, which I saw three years later.
And that explains a lot about me.

[Here are 5 transition-to-adult books that people list, from the Guardian.]

2. A Book That Made You Laugh Out Loud

When I was eleven, with my family taking turns reading out loud My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell.

The scene in Lucky Jim (by Kingsley Amis) when Jim is staying at the home of wealthy people he's trying to impress, and he burns a cigarette hole in his blanket.

There must be a more current one, but I can't think of it.

3. A Favorite Sci-Fi Book

Three from the past couple years:

Mockingbird (1980), by Walter Tevis
A man liberates himself and others, including an AI, from their drug-stupified society by learning--and teaching others--to read.

Devolution:: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre (2020), by Max Brooks (author of World War Z, another favorite)

Horror story about the wisdom of believing that what's happening is, in fact, happening, and responding as well as you can.
The high cost if you don't?
Big Foot will come down from the mountain and eat you.

(Climate change, as a big picture example--but small, intimate things on a personal level-- believing, for instance, that yes, I am stressed out.)

The Murderbot Diaries, a series of six books (2017––), so far, by Martha Wells.

The first one is the best, and stand-alone: All Systems Red.
It's like a lot of novels about orphans coming-of-age––David Copperfield, Jane Eyre, Huckleberry Finn––except this orphan, who thinks of itself as Murderbot (it has no gender) is an artificial construct--a sentient humanoid made of machine and human parts. Murderbot escapes its owners and must determine who it is and what it wants.

4. The Author You've Read the Most Books By

Probably someone whose works I read all of in childhood, such as Hergé, creator of Tintin books.

I've read most or all of the novels by these British women writers who are often concerned with the minor events of small lives: Jane Gardam, Penelope Lively, Barbara Pym

I've also read a lot of John Le Carré.

5. A Book That Shocked You

I can only think of one, but it's a doozy:

Crash (1973), by J. G. Ballard.
The weirdest book I have ever read and liked, Crash is about people who stage car crashes for sexual fulfillment. I don't think I'll read it again, but it was shocking, and shockingly well written.

It's interesting to link the book with the young Ballard's internement during WWII in a Japanese camp in Shanghai (the basis of his novel Empire of the Sun).

Ballard said of the experience:

"I don't think you can go through the experience of war without one's perceptions of the world being forever changed. The reassuring stage set that everyday reality in the suburban west presents to us is torn down;
you see the ragged scaffolding, and then you see the truth beyond that, and it can be a frightening experience."

6. A Childhood Favourite

The Griffin and the Minor Canon, by Frank R. Stockton:
The minor canon, a young man in religious orders, falls in love, basically, with a beautiful, dangerous monster he cannot have.

7. A Book That Deserves More Attention

Fluffy, (2007) a graphic novel by Simone Lia
One of my favorite books, but it wasn't published in the USA, and it's little known here.
Fluffy is a child bunny with an anxious, depressed human father. They have some problems but they come to a happy resolution in this book.
(I'm sad that I haven't liked anything else Lia has published though.)

8. An Author You Would Grant Immortality To

Immortality? I'd ask instead, authors who died too soon, authors you wish wrote a few more books...

Jane Austen, who died at 41, having written six novels.
Barbara Pym who died at 66, having written six novels.

9. A Book You've Re-Read Often

Fluffy! (see above)

10. A Book That Challenged Your Thinking

"Three Version of Judas",  a short story/essay by Jorge Luis Borges, included in his collection Ficciones (1944).
It is a (fictional) review of three scholarly books about Jesus & Judas--three books that do not actually exist.

Summary from Wikipedia:

The [fictitious] author Runeberg comes up with the argument that as God in human shape would be "made totally man, but man to the point of iniquity", committing a sin would also not be beyond Him.

More importantly, Runeberg states that a sacrifice limited to only one afternoon on the cross does not compare with the sacrifice of accepting shame and revulsion for the rest of history.
Thereby, Runeberg concludes finally that He, God, chose Judas as his incarnation.

Recently, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration (2010), by Isabel Wilkerson.
It opened my eyes to the American Experience of my Black coworkers who came from or have roots in the South––and to how widely shared that experience is.
I kinda had no idea...

11. A Book You Recommend to Everyone

I don't know. Not Crash!

I've recommended The Murderbot Diaries to all sorts of people--including my sister who doesn't like sci-fi or share my taste in general. She liked it.
Come to think of it, the book was recommended to me in the first place, by Marz.

12. Your Favourite Literary Hero & Heroine

In this case, the main two from childhood still stand:
David Copperfield and Jane Eyre, for being the heroes––the authors!–– of their own lives.

I could add Murderbot now.

Fluffy!
Fluffy is not a hero for creating an adult life, Fluffy is an innocent child who reminds me of my Orphan Red girlettes (also orphans, though they never had parents). These are heroes for being authentic, even though they haven't been tested by adulthood.

(What's a hero?)