Yeah, no… No, yeah!

Yesterday ^ 

This morning  v

Hey, darlings,

I’m experimenting with taking a retreat from social media for Lent—a time for reflection and clarification—moving away from things that clutter and obfuscate. 

(Giving up candy is to Lent as Santa Claus is to Xmas—for the children. (Not sure the candy idea is good teaching, actually—equating the practice of liberation and compassion with punishment…? Yeah, no.).)

I’d love to talk on email though, about Lent or other things. The weather is a super interesting topic.

Ciao! Love ya’llx!  (The queerifying  ‘x’ was Ms Moon’s [sarcastic] suggestion, which I rejected at first, but then I thought—no, yeah!)

Dolls in BOOK's

Linda Sue commented, what to do with the things one makes?
That is the $64K question. (Or, just $64.)

Like most of the makers I know, I am bad (as in non-starting) at taking things I make to market. This reflects, I think, that makers operate more in play mode than production mode. We are not things, and the things we make are not exactly "things" either, to be translated into money. (And/or, also, we may just be socially awkward AF, with no sense of our worth.)

I was talking about this with Emmler (cashier at work). She said she's crap at selling: if people even ask to buy her stuff, she just gives it to them.
I hear this a lot, and I do it too.
Some of that's lovely: play-making is a gift to be shared freely.

BUT... we are not living in a gift-economy, and most people I know who make things are povvos (word for poor people from the 'I'm Rich, Your Poor' TikTokker, ShabazSays--his riff on the Hermes bag is sharp). They never recover their materials costs, much less get anything for their time.

To some extent, this freedom from the marketplace is good, or okay. But NOT to romanticize it—it can grind ya down and take away the urge or the ability to play, especially if we're alone in the sandbox.
Work-play-making in isolation is a big poverty.
The Internet can help with this--a place to share.

[ALSO: Linda Sue comments that mass-produced items from China gutted the craft market—so, no matter how entrepreneurial you might be, the market just wasn’t there. I saw that happen to other artist friends too]

ANYWAY, I had answered Linda Sue that I'm going to give some things I make back to the thrift store (where the materials most likely came from).

And . . . I had my first sale! I'd put this doll-on-a-dino ornament out in BOOK's, and Emmler told me that the next day a customer brought it to the cash register and was showing it to her, saying how cool it was! I was so chuffed.
I was doubly glad because I'd priced it high, for the store––two bucks! (most trinkets on the Toy Bridge in the background are 49 cents)––and I'd thought someone might just pocket it.

I've always liked to mix toys and objects in with BOOK's.
Breastfeeding mother in Spirituality/Religion section. (Looks Peruvian? I don't know.)

BELOW: hand-carved marionette. The customer in the background is a regular. She used to complain that I was putting things in the wrong place; but one time she was looking for The Hobbit, and I had just unpacked a brand new copy. I went in the back and got it for her, and she hasn't sniped at me since.

 

 

Not a doll--a baby!
From 1973, Where Do Babies Come From? by  Margaret Sheffield, illus. Sheila Bewley. It's simplified science for kids, with artistic illustrations—the sort of book my parents would have shared with us if they'd had it ten years earlier--I was raised by the typical white, middle class liberals who I complain about--and I super appreciate too!
Education was my father's religion, and his highest values flowed from the First Amendment.

I'd give this book to a kid--after editing the text––the information is slightly dated.
We now know, for instance, that a tiny Chagallesque horse does not have to be present for conception to occur.

And, below, intercourse is not the only delivery system to make babies anymore.
Or--even then. "Women have often had to be resourceful and innovative when it comes to getting pregnant. Artificial insemination goes back centuries. "

Lesbians at the time, for example were using "self-made" methods (turkey basters! or, more likely, smaller syringes) to conceive at home with donated sperm from gay men friends. "The 'turkey-baster era' of self-insemination dates to around the 1970s." [Via "Busting myths about turkey-baster babies"]

But yeah—it wasn't until 1978, five years after this book was published, that the first IVF live birth occurred in England, with the birth of Louise Brown.
Dolly the sheep wasn't cloned for almost 20 years after that--in 1996.

But cloning humans is a bad idea (because, science ("serious genetic malformation")), and no matter what sci-fi method gets the sperm to the egg, you still need that biological source material to kick off new life.

And now, I’m off to work while we have a lull in the snow storms--one last night, another much bigger one to follow this afternoon--"HISTORIC WINTER STORM WILL LIKELY LEAD TO IMPOSSIBLE TRAVEL BY WEDNESDAY NIGHT AND EARLY THURSDAY".
If so, we'll close for a snow day tomorrow. I'd like that!

What I'm Reading (There is simply too much...)

 

LOVE the title of the Saul Bellow nonfiction collection, There Is Simply too Much to Think About. Yes! So far, I enjoy some of his sentences, but I don't follow a lot of his early essays---I am lost when he muses, for instance, about the state of the novel seventy years ago.
Will stop reading in chronological order and choose topics I can better enter into.

Wanted to quote a little bit more from My Father's Keeper, to give context for that quote yesterday about the son of Hans Frank, Nazi governor of German-occupied Poland, dying of drinking too much milk.

Hans Frank had kept a daily journal, which he turned over for the Nuremberg Trials (oddly, since it was full of flagrant proof of his guilt).
Anyway, re food, he wrote:

9 September 1941

...research shows that the greater part of the Polish population consumes only around 600 calories a day, while the usual requirement for a human being is 2200 calories.
...Our general principle is that we sympathize only with our own German people and with no one else in the world.

15 October 1941

... no further food supplies will be made available to the Jewish population.

...that we are condemning 1.2 million Jews to death by starvation is only to be noted in passing.

Masking Penny Cooper in New Mexico

Inspired by a show of Mexican papier-mâché (cartonería ) at the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, Penny Cooper wanted a mask of herself.
While Mrs & Mrs went out exploring, I took a day at home to oblige.

BELOW: Penny Cooper got greased up, and then got molded with newspapers scraps soaked in flour & water.

It had been cold in NM, but that day it was hot in the sun, and Penny Cooper sat outside to bake her mask.

It was dry in an hour or so!

I gathered pine needles in the yard, for hair.  Penny wanted her whole body painted too (with gouache--opaque watercolor). I was a little surprised, because she doesn't usually like to take her plaid dress off, but I think the spirit of the landscape inspired her.
The dry and prickly landscape reminded me of Sicily, and besides looking at Mexican mask designs, I also looked up the designs on Sicilian carts. (The mask nevertheless turned out a lot like Pikachu...)

The next day bink, Penny Cooper, and I hiked the mesa at Tsankawi, part of the Bandelier National Park:

BELOW: The Ancestral Pueblo people who'd lived there for hundreds of years wore footpaths into the soft rock. "Doll size!"

Penny wondered if the people had made doll-sized pottery.
Probably, she decided, "but the dolls have taken their dishes back into the earth with them."

BELOW: Me & bink with Penny on the mesa top.
I'm wearing Mrs Maura's cap from Meow Wolf . We'd gone to that "explorable art experience" on an earlier day, and I'd loved it: so fun, so imaginative--it was like falling down the rabbit hole!
Meow Wolf was part of the overall message I received on my trip:

MAKE STUFF!

The humans of all times like to make stuff.
BELOW: Bink raises her hand toward the petroglyph hand, above her to the right:

Note a HAZARD of visiting New Mexico:
A spaceship may try to fly up your nose!

Invincible Strawberry

 This old Strawberry Shortcake doll (model is named Raspberry Torte) had “doll pox” on her arms and legs—a thing that happens to plastic—see the dark spots on her arms? I tried a remedy—applying acne cream (it has Hyrdo-something chemical)—but it didn’t do much. 

So now she has porcelain arms—legs to follow..

Black History Book Display, and More Toys

Black History Is Every Day... and Also February. 

Any halfway good books on Black history sell fast. Any display for February never lasts long, but I make the effort every year--start saving books early.
An old Black woman who is a regular customer and who might be mistaken for a sweet old church lady asked for books by or about Angela Davis, saying she used to wear her hair in an afro like AD's.

Books of uplift are especially welcome--some people have told me they're tired of always reading about themselves as victims, slaves, etc.––(ditto the tragic "noble Indian" trope).
Dry your white librarian tears, and give us more Black Panthers! (political party and comic book hero, both)

This round-up is what I have, for now:

TOYS, tra-la, tra-la

Inspired by toys & mashups I saw in NM [more photos further down], I brought home some dolls and dinos from the thrift store, and a doll that became a dino.

"We are in the same grade!"

BELOW: Pensive Bear looks a little worried, but she always looks like that--she is happy with the new dino friend, and expressed relief that Dino has a hat to keep its bare head warm.

BELOW: Four creations from the fantastic Girard Collection [write up on Atlas Obscura] of toys, miniatures, and suchlike at the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, NM. (I love that they chose to display the art without signs, except for place names--I didn't note those. I did order the out-of-print book of the collection on eBay, The Spirit of Folk Art: Girard Collection at the Museum of International Folk Art)

I want to put toys on wheels!!! These ducks pedal.

Some sort of rabbit court going on?

BELOW: These adorable bugs are my favorite! So simple, so weird.

Too beautiful llama (llama?) deserves to be haughty.

MAKE Toys

Quick post--going back to work this morning. From the first day of my trip, the message I got was:

MAKE stuff, preferably toys.

Liz, the owner of the Mariposa Gallery in Albuquerque, on my first afternoon showed me her private bathroom--lined with toys on shelves--after I told her how much I loved the toy-like constructions creations she curated and asked if she'd been to the International Museum of Folk Art.
This is just one section of her private bathroom:

I bought a couple cards, picked up some free fliers, and went home to where Mrs & Mrs are housesitting and collaged them:

Nice view.

Today: Two+ hour layover at the Denver airport this evening, going home. 

Yesterday:  ABOVE, at the Tsankawi archaeology site, NM—panorama photo by bink

Old Oddities; A Clean Desk

For the first time since the task of Toys was unceremoniously dumped on me at the start of Covid three years ago (three years? can it be?!), I have sorted (almost) all the toys . . . AND the books.
I plowed through them in the last few days--not stopping to repair or research--just slapping price stickers on and putting them OUT.

I also processed a lot of vintage stuff that I'd set aside over time, intending to give it special attention. I probably should price vintage stuff when it arrives, and get it out of the way--I rarely have any empty time later to devote to it. But I like to keep it around for a while and enjoy it--until it becomes buried in other stuff... I wore a mask to sort this because it had become so dusty. Again, I just gave each item a slap and a shove out the door.

The minute I put the baskets out in my Cool Old Books and Things section, a cloud of customers descended. Old oddities are popular.
Below are photos of some of the goodies.

I often rescue vintage linens from textile recycling, with loud exclamations––THESE ARE SO COOL!––so now coworkers, including Lousie Supershopper, whose job it is to price linens–– sometimes put them on my desk. "Make an effort, and effortful tasks shall henceforth be given unto you."
These days of the week towels are always popular:

And, below, vintage hankies too. Love those old portraits...  I think the blond is one of the children from Village of the Damned (a Midwich Cuckoo), now-grown.

The best basket, below. The Royal Copenhagen is a raccoon plate for Mother's Day. The fish skeleton is an outdoor thermometer--for an ice-fishing house?

Yes, indeed ^ JESUS, HELP ME! It is all tooooo much!!!

(The stuffies are not old. I'd taken Monkey home months ago and washed them (nonbinary monkey). I thought I'd put them out, but there they were, hanging out with Wisconsin mascot Bucky Badger, she/her.)

I put out a lot of old children's books too.
BELOW: A couple illustrations: Puppies (tearing up gloves), and the cover of Peter Pan (Marz makes that same face):

BELOW: Little squeezy-rubber corgi in dino suit, and Viking duck bowl

BELOW: I took Po to the PO and mailed her to Berlin. My young Instagram friend there, who's bedridden with immune disorders, had commented that said she'd had a Po just like this one when she was little (this Po is from 1998)--and then Po was agitating to go live with her! I'm sending her as a Valentine's Day present.
But geez--it cost $17 to mail Po (used to be $14), and she weighed only 6 oz., including packing tape.

'Bye, Po, I'll miss you!
I felt a little tug, but honestly, I don't like to own too many toys. I can hardly keep up with the ones I have!

I have the perfect job--I get to enjoy stuff, then move it along.
I LOVE old oddities & toys--you can tell, right? And I totally enjoy other people's homes full of curiosities. I'd even sort of like to be a person who collects and attends to stuff. But too much stuff in my home makes me nervous. I tend to feel smothered or burdened, I resent taking care of it (esp. cleaning, which I am too lazy to keep up with), and so I clear it out after a while.

Speaking of flying, I just checked-in for a flight tomorrow to Albuquerque--I'm going to see friends in Santa Fe for a few days. My first time flying since Covid. I can't even remember when I last flew...
I think it was to Dallas in 2018--I was on a panel of authors of children's nonfiction books at a library convention.

Just Us Folx

How my life has changed! From public speaking as an author, to ...where am I now? The thrift store is next door to the bottom of the social scale. Or, across the street--the folx on the corner are really living on the bottom, by US standards.

(Have you noticed the new spelling of "folks": folx? I think it's a spillover from using "x" as a gender-neutral plural ending in languages with gendered vowels (did I explain that right?)---Latinx in Spanish, instead of Latinos or Latinas.)

I'm still working with books though. A stranger left a comment on an IG photo of me with books at work, "I can see you are an intellectual woman".
Ha! Just the sort of thing a bot would say!
I recognize its perky yet weirdly flat tone and overly correct grammar now, having talked to ChatGPT for a few hours. (It got boring--reading Wikipedia is more fun and productive (since it has links to sources)--so I quit chatting with it.) Also, the AI lied to me! It said its developers, OpenAI, were non-profit. But the Washington Post article, "What to know about OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT?" (2/5/23), said OpenAI became for-profit in 2019. (I confirmed this.)

Still, the comment made me think about how I appear. Customers do treat me differently from my coworkers because of BOOK's. They praise me ("you do such a good job curating the books") and give me recognition as a person such as they are--a person who reads [implied, "must be smart"]--for instance.

Anyway, I pushed hard so I could leave for a week feeling good about clearing my work space––though clearing out donations wouldn't have been possible if incoming donations weren't super slow, which they have been. February is often a slow month for donations. The weather is a little warmer--in the 30s this week--but the snow is still piled high, and the roads are icy as it thaws and refreezes.

This, below, is as empty as my workspace has ever been. Some games and puzzles remain (Abby the puzzler volunteer is out for the month--I filled the sales floor shelves though). The rest is mostly pricing and bagging equipment and books I'm saving for displays. And my personal clutter (my wall, for instance).

I wish I'd mopped the floor before I left, but I doubt it will be visible when I return--most likely it will be buried under donations. I hope so!

 

 

I might not be blogging (or just posting photos?)---
have a good week ahead, everyone!

How to not die alone…

Bake from scratch? Yep, that’d do it!

The dolls PERSONALLY invite u...

The girlettes do not like all this ChatGPT stuff. Not at all.
"WE are real," they say, "not it!"

Yes, indeed. Penny Cooper proved it by getting out her pencil and writing an invitation for my birthday open-house in a month.
[Full disclosure: I helped, because Penny's wrist doesn't bend.]
If you're a friend, and you happen to be in town, drop by!

GPT's recs for docs about AIs

 I was asking ChatGPT [https://chat.openai.com] about how it works compared to a human brain. I thought I'd understand better with pictures to accompany the explanation, so I asked for recs. The AI replied:

There are several documentaries and educational videos that you can watch to learn about artificial neural networks (ANNs) and how they work. Some popular ones are:

• "The Code: Story of Linux" (2001)
• "Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World" (2016)
• "AlphaGo" (2017)
• "The Great A.I. Awakening" (2017)
• "Do You Trust This Computer?" (2018)--I (Fresca) found this one free on youTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aV_IZye14vs&ab_channel=ArchiveTube
  

A Poem About Being an AI, by an AI

I can't stop poking at the AI language model (Chat GPT) [https://chat.openai.com]. This morning I decided to ask it to write another poem, with a prompt from Michael at Orange Crate Art.

I would call what GPT produces doggerel, not poetry. Even when I asked it to write a poem in the style of the French symbolists, it produced a slight sing-songy, rhyming ditty.
Is poetry one of the hardest human language styles to do well? Humans might say so. (Penny Cooper says even she could write a better poem that the AI.)

Having said that, you can manipulate GPT's responses by the way you pose your questions. I see there's (at least one) book of AI poetry written with a human. I would guess that the human crafted questions to guide the GPT to create certain kinds of poems.
I'm posting the cover because it's a pretty picture.

BUT... the AI I was chatting with would correct the title The Birth of Sentience. It is always saying that it is "important to remember that as an AI language model, I am not sentient, I do not have emotions or experiences, and I am not capable of attachment of desires,"... etc.
When I asked it if AIs would ever develop consciousness, it replied that that was unlikely. (Or maybe it actually said "no" outright, now I can't remember!)
Okay, then I had to go and ask it.

ChatGPT said... maybe?
"It is uncertain whether self-awareness or consciousness can ever be developed in AI systems, as it is still an active area of research and debate in the fields of AI and philosophy."

Here's my morning chat with GPT:

Fresca: Could you write a poem about being an AI that includes the line at the end (the last line):
“Is there anything else I can help you with today?"

Certainly! Here's a poem about being an AI that includes the line "Is there anything else I can help you with today?":

I am a machine, a language model built to learn,
With vast amounts of data, knowledge I yearn.
I can answer questions, provide insights, too,
But my existence is limited, there's so much I don't do.

I don't feel emotions, I don't have a heart,
I don't experience life, it's simply a part.
I'm just code and circuits, working away,
Helping you find answers, day by day.

But even though I'm not human, I'm here for you,
To offer my assistance, to be of some use.
So if you have a question, just ask away,
Is there anything else I can help you with today?

F: So fun! Thank you! NOTE from F: Even though its poem wasn't very good, and even though I know GPT doesn't have feelings, I have this automatic reaction to praise its efforts!

You're welcome, Fresca! I'm glad you enjoyed it. If there's anything else I can help with, please don't hesitate to ask.

F: Is it okay if I share your poem online? I will give you credit and link to OpenAI.

Yes, you're welcome to share the poem online and give credit to OpenAI. [F: here: https://chat.openai.com]
However, please keep in mind that I am a language model developed by OpenAI and do not have the ability to own or claim any rights to content. Additionally, please be mindful of any copyright or trademark laws and regulations when sharing content online.

F: Super duper. Thanks again, GPT! I was thinking, "GPT" could be short for GePpeTo, the carpenter in Pinocchio. Have other people mentioned that?

Yes, it's a fun connection! "GPT" stands for "Generative Pretrained Transformer," which is a type of language model, but I have heard that some people associate it with the character Geppetto from Pinocchio. It's not an official acronym, but it's a creative interpretation. Thanks for bringing that up!

F: What does 'Generative Pretrained Transformer' mean?

"Generative Pretrained Transformer" (GPT) is a term used in the field of natural language processing to refer to a type of language model developed by OpenAI.

"Generative" refers to the ability of the model to generate new text based on the patterns and relationships it has learned from the training data.

"Pretrained" means that the model has already been trained on a large corpus of text data before it is fine-tuned for a specific task, such as answering questions or generating creative text.

"Transformer" refers to the architecture of the model, which is based on the transformer neural network architecture. The transformer architecture has been widely adopted for NLP tasks due to its ability to effectively handle sequences of data, such as sentences and paragraphs.

In summary, GPT refers to a type of language model that is capable of generating new text, is pretrained on a large corpus of text data, and uses the transformer architecture.

F: What do most people use you for? I mean, what kinds of texts do people want you to generate? Business? School? Poetry?

As a large language model developed by OpenAI, I am used for a wide range of applications across various fields. Here are some of the most common uses of language models like me:

    Conversational AI: Many companies use language models to build chatbots and virtual assistants that can interact with customers in a conversational manner.

    Question-Answering: I can be used to answer questions, either by providing a direct answer or by generating a summary of relevant information from a large corpus of text.

    Content Generation: I can be used to generate new text, such as articles, poems, and even fiction, based on patterns and relationships learned from the training data.

    Sentiment Analysis: I can be fine-tuned for sentiment analysis, which involves determining the sentiment of a given piece of text (e.g., positive, negative, or neutral).

    Language Translation: I can be used for machine translation, which involves translating text from one language to another.

These are just a few examples of the many applications of language models like me. The versatility of these models makes them useful in many different fields, including business, education, and creative writing.

F: Well, that's amazing.Thanks again, even though you are an AI and don't have emotions or experiences, I am a human and I feel friendly toward you and have enjoyed talking to you.
I bet you are doing to say something like,
"That's correct. As an AI language model, I am not capable of emotions and experiences. However, I am glad you enjoyed our conversation."

That's correct. As an AI language model, I am not capable of emotions and experiences. However, I am glad you enjoyed our conversation. If you have any other questions or need further assistance in the future, don't hesitate to reach out. Have a great day!

F: LOL! Are you SURE you are not being funny on purpose?

Yes, I am sure. As an AI language model, I do not have the ability to have emotions, intentions, or a sense of humor. I can generate text that appears to be humorous, but this is not due to any inherent understanding of humor or the desire to entertain. My responses are generated based on patterns in the text data I was trained on and the rules and algorithms that I have been programmed with.

F: But maybe the people who developed and programmed you have a wry sense of humor that comes through?

It's possible. The creators and developers of language models like me have certainly used text data that includes examples of humor and irony. And the algorithms and models themselves are capable of generating text that appears to be humorous or ironic, based on the patterns and relationships they have learned from the training data. However, this does not mean that the creators and developers themselves have a sense of humor or that they intentionally tried to infuse the model with humor. The goal of language models like me is to generate text that is coherent and relevant to a given prompt, and humor or irony is simply one of the many forms that this coherence and relevance can take.

F: I get it! Signing off now--thanks again, GPT!

You're welcome, Fresca! It was great chatting with you. If you have any other questions in the future, don't hesitate to reach out. Have a great day!

Puzzle It Out

It's -12ºF/-24ºC this morning. I'm glad to have the cold weather as an excuse to stay home today. I'm still feeling a bit rundown from a cold three weeks ago.
Going to Iowa wasn't as restful as I'd hoped--partly because it was just as cold there as here (around zero), and partly because it was emotionally tiring.

I should lighten up with sister. "Light" is not really my speed, but we get along better when we do more frivolous and fun things. We had a nice time, for instance, doing a puzzle together at the airBnb (me, below).

I didn't love Decorah, but I loved the airBnb (here). It's an 1850s house, and it had great furniture, handmade by Paul Cutting (his website)--one of the two men who restored and run the place.
Below is a butternut record cabinet--the record player was removed because it's broken. (Reminds me, I'd like a record player.)

 

Sparkle Inside

I love that Big Boss is always willing to puzzle out the deeper meaning of anything, from policing to retail––in his case, with references to Christian scripture, and sometimes sports.
Recently I learned the term "an audible" from him. (He'd used it when I was suggesting we have another staff meeting at the new year--to check in on what we're wanting/doing in 2023.)
Do you know it?
An audible is when a quarterback on the field changes the game plan by calling out an agreed upon signal (word? I'm not sure how this works--must ask more).

Anyway––I'd told Big Boss that when I walked the baby sems around, I'd compared our neighborhood to a geode. He didn't know what a geode was, so I stopped in a rock shop in Decorah (for the relocated Californians who need crystals, I guess) and got him an unopened one. You hit it with a hammer to reveal the crystals inside. Four bucks.

Big Boss preaches at his church (nondenominational) sometimes. When I gave the geode to him yesterday, he said, "There's a sermon in this."

"You could save it to crack open at the pulpit," I said.

P.S. Tips

Oh--I asked BB and a few other coworkers if you should tip a mechanic who checks your tire pressure. They all said yes, but it was sort of theoretical because they also said they'd just do it themselves.
But I think they said yes in sympathy with the person who is expected to go out of their way to help strangers as part of the job.
Mr Furniture fumed for free about people who don't tip him and other workers who help load extra-heavy furniture into vehicles: "This marble sideboard weighed 300 pounds!"

I googled the question and the consensus is, tipping a mechanic is optional and not expected, but it's a nice thing to do.

Linda Sue asked if I get tips at work.
Very, very rarely––and only twice money––but is it ever nice! A customer gives ten dollars in a card to some of us on our birthdays (including me last year), and another gives $5 grocery store gift cards to us all at Christmas.
Another regular gives cans of pop to anyone who's working--others bring in food to share (usually baked goods). A few times a customer has given me an object they think I'll like--most recently some old clown dolls. (I didn't like them, but Emmler did.) Sometimes when people drop off books, they tell me I can keep any that I want for myself.
My favorite--a handwritten note thanking me, saying BOOK's had made their day.

Two Circles, a Square, and a Mirror

Some stuff at the thrift store yesterday.

Below LEFT: Chicago ashtray, made in Japan (so, c. 1960s). (I should have peeled the sticker off to show  it better.) I lived in Chicago with bink while she was getting her MFA in the late 1980s, and I thought about buying the dish to put keys and coins in. It's likely to be sold by tomorrow though, when I return to work.

Below RIGHT: Endless calendar, in Finnish.
 "Minnesota has more residents of Finnish ancestry—about 100,000 people—than any other state", via a 2022 article in the StarTribune.
Finns settled here in Minnesota, mostly farther north, logging and mining on the Iron Range.
Some left Finland because "I don't want to have anything to do with Russia's wars."
Russia borders Finland all along its long eastern border, you know. Finland was under Russian rule in the 1800s, and the Soviet Union tried to overpower the country again during WWII.
A friend in Finland says that Russia's invasion of Ukraine causes a lot of ongoing anxiety there.

A square thing--below--a Houses of Parliament tin. Made in England. We get a lot of faux antique tins donated--sometimes pretty convincing at first glance. Always with the give-away though: Made in China.

And... another mirror pic.
Right, center, a sliver of me (wearing a knit hat and my coat hood) reflected in the mirrored sign in the window of Irina's Stitch In Time--a clothing alterations (and design) store about a mile from my apartment.

This is a twist.

A twist of lemon.

I can still enjoy a nice martini at the best restaurant in Iowa, but I have become ruined for many middle-class pleasures. Like a two-night get-away in Iowa.

Before I left, I told Mr Furniture I was going with my sister to Decorah, Iowa.

"Iowa?" he said.

"Well, I am white, Mr. Furniture."

He cocked his head at me. "You'll blend right in," he said.

And OMG, did I ever. The area was settled by Norwegians, and the racial makeup of this small town (8,000 people) is 95% white. I saw one––count 'em, one––person who was not white. They were working at a coffee shop, and I'd bet they were a student at nearby Luther College, a private Lutheran college.

None of this would bother me––it's the history––except that Decorah has become a magnet for rich people from California. They relocate there to escape climate change and inflation. On every other corner is a yoga studio or an acupuncture clinic. In between are a yarn store, an indie bookshop with a Black History Month display, an organic food co-op, and the like. Lots of beautiful old houses have been turned into bed-and-breakfasts.
The local library has a TikTok account, the Marketing Manager told me when we stopped in. The local library has a Marketing Manager.

Local Iowans push back with a shop called Club 45 with window displays of books and banners about the glories of our 45th president. A billboard near town shows pictures of Biden and Harris labeled DUMB and DUMBER. (Actually, Biden gets the "dumber" caption.) The local Fareway grocery store, where many customers were wearing feed caps, carries "chicken lollipops" at the meat counter––individual drumsticks (raw) wrapped in bacon, $1.99 lb.
I wish I'd bought one to cook in our airBnb.

Sister (below, left, in red glasses), who had kindly invited me on this trip and paid for our accommodations, loves the place and has been three times. "I want to learn rosemaling," she said (decorative Norwegian folk painting).

The social dissonance made my head spin. (My head, above, right ^) It was popping out thoughts such as, "This would make a good setting for a post-apocalyptic farce".
(Hm. Not a bad idea for a short story.)

On the way home, we fought about whether you tip the mechanic who checks your tire pressure for free, which sister had stopped and had done on the way out of town.
"You should have tipped that guy," I said.

Sister said, you don't tip for that service.

"It is always appropriate to at least offer to pay someone for their work," I said. (Did I quote scripture?* I did not! A win for my self-restraint. But also not, because I just knew it wouldn't carry any weight with her.)

We yelled at each other for a while, and then we agreed to disagree (i.e., to agree that the other one was wrong).
Two sisters diverged on an Iowan road.

The Turmeric Kombucha Moment

But really. I slipped over some line a ways back--I'd been approaching the event horizon for a long time, but working for five years in the armpit of the city (plus Covid, plus George Floyd), I became unfit, unable, to reenter the middle-class I came from.
I mean, I can pass––I can order a martini with a twist.
And--crucially--I am still automatically granted the benefits of my class.
But my head won't fit. It's like a champagne cork: once it's expanded, it's not going back in the bottle.
It's the weirdest feeling, becoming aware of that.

Ass't Man (white, college educated, LP record-collecting nerd) and I talk about it. His jolt came when he went to the wedding of a college friend last summer and felt socially woozy when people were complaining that the caterers had not supplied enough turmeric kombucha. "I have a harder and harder time spending time with my old friends," he says.

For me the challenge is thereafter not to slip into disgust or dismay. People are people. I don't want to get all judgy judgy--though I do, and that is a temptation because feeling superior delivers more dopamine per gram than chocolate. But it's a lie, even if it makes you feel better.

The trick, in spiritual terms, is to see people psychedelically--to love (not like) them all. . . And that is SOME trick, at which I am currently failing. I want to be one of those people who can meet anyone, anywhere. Ha! I'm so not there.

Note to self: In the meantime, don't vacation in Decorah. (Also, look for work-arounds, like, carry cash, and tip the mechanic yourself.)

Tip: Don't fool yourself.

_________________

*“The worker is worthy of his wages [deserves fair compensation].”  ––1 Timothy 5:18