Blog Is Shiny Fifteen!

Photo, below, goes with yesterday's post about my thrift haul:
my new (old) curtains and Mikasa dinner plate

Fifteen years ago, on October 7, 2007, I wrote my first blog post here. It began...

"One of the things I have missed most about blogging (it's been two years) is having a place to keep found words––things I overhear, for instance, or bits and pieces of writing––like a nest where magpies keep objects that catch their fancy."

I'm on track. Yesterday on l'astronave's birthday, I blogged something I'd overheard at work. Keeping the bookstore diary is an exercise in paying attention to shiny objects.

[L'astronave is Italian for "starship". I chose the name when I was deep into Star Trek: "These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise", ya know.
(The earlier, first blog I referred to was Flightless Parrots.)
I still like it--the show, and the name. And the blog. It's been so long, it's part of my identity. Heh, My Life Work.]

Mix It Up

New cashier Samantha was accused of racism by a customer last week, as all cashiers are, eventually, and regularly. Standing in one place, they are sitting ducks. Simply asking customers to check their backpacks behind the counter is all it takes to set some off.

"Do I look like a meth head?" an angry customer said to Samantha when she asked him to check his bag. ("That would be the whole store," Samantha said to me.)
And then he called her a racist.

"I'm part Black too," she said.

The customer was Black, but all races sling this accusation, often as a catch-all insult. Not that racism isn't real, but the word is almost meaningless at my workplace, a generic insult, like Shakespeare's "thou art a general offense".

Sometimes at work I swear in frustration the usual predictable words. I'm going to borrow from Capt. Haddock and next time yell JELLIED EEL!

A white guy recently told Ass't Man that he (AM) wouldn't make him check his bag if he (the customer) were Black.
"Dude," AM said, "we're both white."

You can't always tell by looking though--see, Samantha. Though it had crossed my mind that she might be multiracial, which is kinda the new American, right?
Ah--here--a graph from the Washington Post article (Oct. 8, 2021), "‘We’re talking about a big, powerful phenomenon’: Multiracial Americans drive change":

 

The other day, a customer told me his elderly, white parents had been unhappy that his Anglo/Mexican son is dating the daughter of Somali immigrants . . . until they met the young woman.
"She's so nice, not like his last girlfriend. Now they hope he'll marry her."

I try not to assume, but I get caught out all the time.
Leah, for instance, is an older, Jewish woman who I saw at first as unidimensional--nice, but uninteresting. She volunteers straightening clothes on the sales floor once a week. One day a customer was trying to get something across to the cashier in Spanish, and Leah stepped up and interpreted fluently.
Turns out she grew up in Cuba.
(And what I know about that comes entirely from the Wikipedia article "History of the Jews in Cuba".)

Yesterday she asked me if we had any books about Putin.
No? How about any Russian history.
Sorry, I told her, they all sold when I made a War & Peace display for the Russia-Ukraine war.

(Which reminds me--I pulled a new Ukraine flag from textile baling. "We can sell this," I said. "I see Ukraine flags flying around town."

"Oh, is that what that is?")

Later, I unpacked this book, The Oligarchs: Wealth and Power in the New Russia. (rev. ed. 2011).

I handed it to Leah, "Just for you!"
She was pleased.
Russia, Jews, Cuba...I must ask her more about all this.

________________
Keep 'er Moving

I'm in motion at work, so I don't get targeted by customers very often.
But last week I did. I'd left my cart in the center of the aisle while I shelved books.

A young man said loudly, "Why would anyone leave their cart right in the way? It's setting me up for failure."

"That's my cart," I said. "Sorry I left it in the way--it's tight for space in here."

"You're too old to tell anything to," he said.
I couldn't tell if he meant I deserved respect as an elder or if I was an old dog who couldn't learn new tricks.

I was annoyed with him from start to finish, but I wondered if he might be schizoaffective or something like that.
Not to assume!
He might've just been pissed off all day long, because LIFE. It can be like jellied eels on your head.

Draperies

I have the weekend off--I'm going to start to put my furnishing in order.
I just now got my new Draperies by Burlington House out of the washing machine (gentle cycle) in the basement. Avocado green with a gold-green sheen. They'd smelled a little rubbery, from their light-blocking lining, but they cleaned up great.

I'm sure they're 1970s. Insulated, like Jimmy Carter said--wear your cardigan! (Did you see Carter turned ninety-eight on October 1? He's outlasted his age-mates I associated him with, my Auntie Vi and Queen Elizabeth.)

I have to mount a curtain rod to hang the drapes. A chance to practice with the electric drill my coworkers gave me as a housewarming present.

My radiators came on this cold morning (39ºF / 3.9ºC), and the apartment is now 72 (22 C). Plenty warm!
(The landlord pays the heat; I pay gas & electric.)

WILL I NEVER STOP WRITING ABOUT FURNISHINGS?
But... It's weird to get so many new things all at once. Usually furnishings collect over the years. I'm wondering if I've got too many things that match... Too much green?
Yeah, no. I don't think so.
Anyway, if I don't like something, I can always take it to the store. It's like a library of stuff.

And now I'm going to walk over to the Fall Festival at the nearby Catholic Church. See what they've got for handmade Christmas tree decorations, if anything. I have none.
Then I'm going to start sewing the felt stars and eye buttons on my tree skirt.

Tootle-oo, blog friends. Thanks for being here!
Let us shine on, like luminous jellyfish, not jellied eels.