I might do a Mirror series--if I can remember to snap myself in public restrooms and other places with mirrors.
I'd already photographed myself in the parking garage I walk through on the way to work--I took it again to show the snow piles.
This is the sort of winter that scares me about getting older:
if you can't climb like a mountain goat, you can't scramble up and over the icy snow hills to cross the street or get on a bus.
This morning I ran out to photograph a City front-end loader clearing the corners of sidewalks, for pedestrians. Nice, but it takes a few days before the City gets to this. Street clearing first. And whether or not home-owners shovel is another matter again.
Speaking of City services, six cop cars pulled up outside the store yesterday---clearing out the corner dealers again... This has been happening every couple months or so? The dealers move elsewhere and then back again.
Same with homeless people--the City moves the encampments, but until there's some massive shift in social services, etc. they'll pop up elsewhere. What are they going to do, disappear?
"Homeless" is now "unhoused", you may have heard, in an effort to remove stigma. It's the euphemism treadmill at work: a term that has become onerous ("retarded") is replaced with a neutral one ("learning disabled"), but unless other things change too, the new name becomes onerous in turn.
Here's a funny switcheroo in meaning, though: the other day Big Boss was wearing a T-shirt that said DRIP.
I asked, and he explained that drip means a cool style. (Hip-hop origins.)
He hadn't heard the old phrase I told him--what a drip, to refer to a loser.
Mostly anything I post on IG, I also post here--though not vice-versa (I write and post MUCH more here), but I realized I'd forgotten to post this cat teapot I got from my workplace.
It's painted redware (red clay pottery) by Norcorest, 1959––.
The spout is broken but I wasn't going to use it anyway (the paint is peeling, for one thing).
And here, below, is a chenille bedspread I pulled from textile recycling. It's dingy but I think would clean up well--I priced it $18, hung it in BOOK's, and . . . it didn't sell.
I marked it down to $12, and my coworker Emmler bought it. I felt bad though-- we workers can buy stuff out of recycling for 50 cents. If I'd known she was buying it, I'd have given her that deal. (She's a single parent with no money--I don't know how she's making it.)
Anyway, isn't it pretty?
Soaked in vinegar, it got clean but remained yellow. The designer Gayle Kirkpatrick did sportswear in the 1970s.
This dress is small--way too tiny for me--but would be a great candidate for a visible mend makeover...
It would be good to save the label, make a five panel bag and sew the label back on one of the outside panels. Cool color!!
ReplyDeleteWe only had two weeks of snow, today it is 60 degrees! Odd.
That is serious snow!
ReplyDeleteAll of the things you have showed us here look like treasures to me. The cat teapot is fascinating in its way. A chenille bedspread is always a treasure. I remember when everyone used them. Or at least in my social class. Perhaps the rich used something else to cover their beds.
ReplyDeleteAnd oh, how I do love corduroy. Especially wide-wale.
Now. As to your snow- no thank you. Be careful.
I recently read something about how discarding the term "homeless" and using "unhoused" is taking away the true meaning. A house is but a shelter. A home is, well...a home.
I get that.
LINDA SUE: A tote bag is a great idea! I don't use tote bags much (though now I have a lightweight, waterproof one, I do use that when I'm taking the bus)--I'm thinking of making a table/desk cloth).
ReplyDeleteGZ: It is serious snow, even for us. It was wet snow so it's quite compacted--very heavy to move, like ice boulders.
MS MOON: I'm glad you enjoy the treasures! It's so fun to work with thrift (except when it's disgusting, which is plenty often enough).
House/home... It gets complicated. Maybe needlessly so?
I've heard people say you can't assume that a person doesn't have a "home" within themselves or with others even if the home is a tent, not a house--so "houseless" is better.
BUT...
I have never had a house! Should we say "apartmentless"?
Some say "unsheltered".
But of course a tent is also shelter---
some Native people here say they live outside much as their ancestors did (except their ancestors had an intact society around them...).
Ayayay--the point is, we agree, people should have shelter/house/home IF THEY WANT and not be forced to live in dire circumstances--whatever you call it.
My cynical side thinks yes, the goal of the endless cycle of destructive displacement is for marginalized people to disappear aka die but where those responsible can deny their responsibility (and likely avoid even facing that conversation). Passive but absolutely predictable deaths of attrition. The risk of mortality associated with being displaced from even the tenuous stability of an encampment is so high that it's hard for me to not think that's the implicit goal. And those deaths are often due to addiction, which indicates to me that it's likely that besides the deaths, the displacement is correlated with serious but non-fatal consequences for those struggling with addiction/to get sober/to stay clean. It's especially disturbing when the city's been escalating their clearing against all public health recommendations for infectious disease (ie early in this pandemic, the CDC policy was to have a moratorium on displacement, which almost seemed to spur the city into more evictions).
ReplyDeleteI worry about writing any humans off as outside community, and something in what's going on within the city's political machine seems to have shifted substantially to be more callous, which is strangely against the broader pattern I've seen locally in the last few years.