"You're sure it was this evening?"

 Welcome home, Marz, when you get here!

Summer flowers ^ from the farmer's market. Mary water bottle from Lourdes & Caribbean Mary doll from Linda Sue. (Thank you!)

Ay-ay-ay... I leave in three hours to go to the airport to meet Marz, who is returning from Camino.
But wait...!
I'd intended to become a funnier, smarter, fitter, more laid-back, all-round better human being while she was gone.
And then I FORGOT, and now it's too late.

I'm especially not more laid-back:
I drank a Bloody Mary just now, to calm myself after I practically hyperventilated upon discovering that the light-rail train to the airport is not running, due to some system breakdown...

There's a bus work-around. It will be fine.
I hope. Marz didn't have exact details of the new flight she'd moved up a week--and what she told me doesn't match what I found online. She doesn't have a phone with her, so I can't reach her.

Marz, is your flight the non-stop one from Paris, despite what you told me about a layover in the US? It's the only one arriving at the right time...

 "You're sure it was this evening?"

Above: Lee Van Cleef in a spaghetti Western version of Waiting for Godot (not really)

I told her to meet me at the airport's taxi stand, and if I'm not there, to come on over anyway....
It will be fine, one way or another---that's the lesson of travel. You get there, or you sleep on the floor somewhere else.

I tried to remember what food I'd craved on Camino---mostly freshies, I think...
This morning, bink and I went to the farmers' market after our Sunday coffee. I got fresh basil & tomatoes--here, soaking in olive oil--and I sprinkled peaches (not local) with sugar & cardamom, with blueberries.

I'd intended to rearrange my apartment, too... Also didn't happen.
But there's plenty of room for a pilgrim to sleep over. I got a like-new Ikea foam mattress at the thrift store--for children, though, so a bit short.
Pilgrims aren't picky, having slept in far worse conditions...

A bit of good luck--I'd been wanting to read Jenny Diski's In Gratitude--a memoir of her relationship with her sort-of foster mother, Doris Lessing, who'd taken Jenny in when she was fifteen. It's a cancer journal as well, started when Diski was diagnosed with incurable cancer at sixty-seven.
I'd been reminded of it recently--and yesterday it was donated to work!
I read the intro last night, and it was terrific, so I'll sit on the floor by the taxi stand and read it while I wait for the Marzipan.

Should all else fail, Marz could go back to her own place---but I understand not wanting to go back to an empty apartment right off, so here's hoping transportation systems work well enough.
They usually do.

Marz is coming home!

Aw, geez--I missed Marz calling from Spain! I'm almost never without my phone, but I left it at home this morning when I went to coffee with bink & Alice. . . and when I came home I'd missed Marz calling (on a borrowed phone) from Santiago.
Argh!

Drawings toward the end of my 2001 Camino sketchbook: figs and coffee:

I'm so sorry to have missed the calls. She left a voice mail though, saying she feels done, and she doesn't want to walk anymore (she'd thought she might walk to the ocean, after finishing the pilgrimage proper), so she's coming home early--this weekend instead of next.
Yay, I'm super excited to see her! And she'll have missed our heat wave, which wasn't so bad after all. (This afternoon's the hottest--"only" 97ºF /36ºC here at 2 PM, and a cool front in a few hours is supposed to drop the heat 10 degrees.)

I had gotten one postcard from Marz, dated July 4. It took three weeks to arrive. She'd written from a tiny town out of a spaghetti Western-- where a local  had invited a pilgrim/priest to hold Mass in his backyard, . . . attended by four mangy cats.
Very Camino.

Oh--nice... I just now got a call from the phone-owner (I'd called the number and left a message).
I'd thought it was a the phone of a fellow pilgrim, in which case they might never see Marz again, but Kelly, the very nice woman who called me back, is a volunteer at a place for English-speaking Catholic pilgrims to gather in Santiago--for tea and talk and Mass in English--and she said she'll see Marz again and pass along a message.

***Give me your flight info, Marz, so I can meet you!

Kelly said Marz is great, and she looks great, and she walked Camino in 28 days, record time. BIG SMILE
Hm--that means she got to Santiago in time for the Feast Day of St. James ("Santiago")--neat!

Gee. It's so long that Marz's been gone... Camino takes FOR   EVER, and then in a flash--poof! it's done.
That can be a hard stop. I wish there'd been this place to gather and reflect in Santiago when I walked. (It started in 2014.)

The very last drawings in my 2001 sketchbook: a dog at the Catedral de Santiago, and the contour of the cathedral's spire:

"be transformed"

[I'm going out for coffee so these are jumbled thoughts on transformation---a very Fairy Tale–summer topic.]

BELOW: "The Birth of Pegasus and Chrysoar" by Tyler Miles Lockett

I'd looked up the Birth of Pegasus this spring.
In Greek myth, Pegasus is born out of the blood from Medusa's head, cut off by Perseus. Because... omg it's too complicated.

I wasn't consciously thinking of that story when I collaged a woman flying/leaping out of flame this week. Look who's joined her on my desk this morning.

The horse had been part of the Rat Mischief Parade on July 4 at the Japanese/Peace Garden (which has a commemorative bridge to Hiroshima). The book Hiroshima had been donated to work this week. I'd picked it up as part of my Re-Read project. It'd affected me deeply when I was thirteen, the year I also read Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five--ditto--about the US bombing Dresden.

I don't want to see the movie Oppenheimer, but the topic is part of my life. My mother was eleven when the US dropped the atom bomb--she says it shaped her life. (She left the family when I was thirteen--that was some year. Luckily, besides reading books about bombing, I'd found Star Trek re-runs on our little b&w TV.)

Fairy tales and myths and religion are full of things changing form.
It's as if all things conspire to trans-form...

"Be transformed", Paul the apostle says.*
The call to CHANGE, to align yourself with a higher truth, is key to the story.
"Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind."
________________

I was angry at E.D. and disgusted with his lack of a creative, helpful response to my coworker in need. But I have to deal with people who cause harm all the time--(and sometimes that person is me).
How does, how might that go?

"it's the harm that I'm interested in transforming"

Years ago a friend was talking to me about her work with domestic violence, and linking it to Israel & Palestine. "I'm interested in oppression," she said---and then stopped herself.
"No," she said. "I'm interested in liberation."

This week, I also picked up a donated copy of We Do This 'Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transformative Justice (2021) by Mariame Kaba. I opened it this morning, and the first thing I saw was this exchange:

Autumn Brown, Q:
When did you decide to staring working with those who have caused harm?

Mariame Kaba, A:
"I've always worked more with people who have been harmed than caused harm. My work was rooted in supporting survivors, mainly because I myself am one. And my orientation has always been toward addressing harm, wherever it is.
However I can intervene in a way that's supportive, that's really what I care about.
It didn't really matter whether it was the person who caused harm or the person who has experienced harm––
it's the harm that I'm interested in transforming."

___________________

*Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.
2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what is God's good, pleasing and perfect will."

--Letter to the Romans from Paul, Romans 12:1-2, NIV

"Treat the public to some butter."

E.D. did not, after all, rise to the occasion.
I'd asked him for food for a coworker who had none. He'd told me that he'd "figure something out", but he came up to me at work yesterday and said, "All we have at the warehouse are tomatoes."

"Oh, no," I said. "Well, I knew we weren't getting food regularly anymore."

"We really aren't," he said. "Just boxes of tomatoes. Maybe if you were Mexican you could do something with them."

Mexican?
In the moment, I was too shocked/confused to respond.
This guy is my age, and as middle-America as they come. What was more white bread in our childhood than tomato soup?
Bring us the tomatoes!
But no.

As it happened, Supershopper Louise brought in baked beans that she'd made from a giant donated bag of dry beans, with glazed carrots on the side (above, right). She squirrels away good things that come her way, from Baby Yoda pillows to wilting vegetables––and she shares them freely.
She's a good cook too! She'd cooked the beans up with onions, spices, and a little molasses, I think.
A bunch of us ate them for lunch in the break room.

But that's not all E.D. did/didn't do. He handed me some Xeroxes of places you can get free food--"Pass these along to the person in need."
He pointed  to one of the sheets:
"This place provides hot meals on Saturdays."

I'm standing in front of you, telling you someone has NO FOOD on Monday, and you're telling me there's free food on Saturday?
What a fucking dimwit.

No. Here's what you do.
You hand me a fifty, and you say, "Tell Coworker this is from the Society."
The Society that employs us, whose mission is to lift people out of poverty.

Or, YOU go to the grocery store and buy 20 cans of chili, a 20-pack of mac-and-cheese, and some canned mixed vegetables––cheap and easy––and put them out for everyone.

The store suffers from poor leadership, I've always known that, but I'd thought the Exec. Director had a heart bigger than a Xeroxed list.
Guess not.
I'm extra glad now that I hadn't revealed who the person was, to be the victim of this charity.
(I'd brought them a hot sandwich from Subway and lent them a twenty--all they'd accept from me.)

And that's why it enrages me when people say things like, "Everyone is doing their best", or "People mean well".
That is limp. As Zora Neale Hurston said, Go hard or go home.

_____________________________

"Treat the public to some butter."

"I’m going to sit right here on this porch chair and prophesy that these are the last days of the know-nothing writers on Negro subjects.
Both editors and readers are clamoring for something that makes their side meat taste like ham, for to tell the truth, Negro reality is a hundred times more imaginative and entertaining than anything that has ever been hatched up over a typewriter.

"From now on, the writers must back their rubbish with something more substantial than the lay-figure of the past decade. Go hard or go home. Instead of coloring up coconut grease in the kitchen, go buy a cow and treat the public to some butter."

—Zora Neale Hurston, from “You Don’t Know Us Negroes” © 2022, via Oprah Daily, "Zora Neale Hurston’s Reflections and Insights Are Captured in You Don’t Know Us Negroes"

"I will figure something out."

My floor this morning---the aftermath of Collage Making.
Standing on my desk is the black board I started (& posted) for the collaboration yesterday.

I'm leaving my collage papers out because I'm bringing home the board Em prepared for Ass't Man. AM hadn't take home the board before he left for vacation all this week, so I'm going to--it'll give me something to work on inside this week--not only is it going to be hot, but it's smoky again too.

I am GRATEFUL that bink & Maura gave me a standing, rolling air conditioner, above, right, when they got a new system.
It hasn't been very hot this summer, so far, but there've been times you don't want to open the windows for bad air quality.

Breathing. It’s good.

From a donated book about Workplace Health:

Workplace Health

"I will figure something out."
That's what E.D. (executive director) texted me this morning. I had written to him on Saturday asking if there was any food at the warehouse.

The Society that runs the thrift store used to run a massive food bank in our warehouse to distribute to food shelves.
We used to get free groceries at the store, weekly.
Some of it was horrid to me--FUD-brand hot dogs, etc.--but we often got freshies too--veg and fruit.

FUD is a real brand of cheap meats and other stuff. I googled it, and they say FUD stands for "Fine Unique Delicious".
Uh-huh.

Long story, big nonprofit interests pushed little nonprofits like The Society out of food redistribution--("nonprofit" does not mean nice). The food bank operation has dwindled, and we thrift store workers rarely get food anymore. . . except free Big Box bakery items full of preservatives, which some volunteers pick up weekly for us to give away at the store. I don't eat it.

However, the food operation still exists, though greatly diminished, and I was asking if we could get good, I told E/D, because one of my coworkers told me on Saturday they didn't have any groceries until payday this Thursday–– did I know of a food shelf open on Sunday because they work weekdays and don't have a car so can't get to a food shelf in time?

I wrote to E.D.:

"If there's any food in the warehouse, on Monday could you send some over for everybody, so no names are named?
I offered to buy Coworker groceries, but they refused--said they had spaghetti to get them through. You know how people don't like to be beholden. I found some canned soup and peanut butter and bread for them in our break room."

I'm curious what E.D. will figure out and what will show up at work today.

Choice Is Wealth

As I said, "nonprofit" doesn't mean nice.
The Society's mission is to lift people out of poverty, but they don't do that for their workers.
Some have other sources of income--
Ass't Man is married to a teacher; I have money from dead relatives; Helen sells vintage clothes on the side; older workers start drawing their social security at 62; some live in government-assisted housing--
otherwise--or also--well, they're living on the edge, like Coworker who ran out of food.

Some don't qualify, or don't know how to apply, or don't want to receive government assistance.

Mr Furniture doesn't want to be on any government lists. He lives on boiled eggs until payday, sometimes. This is freedom. COSTLY freedom, but real---he chooses.
And he's an artist.
There's wealth!
Though this may sound romantic, in some ways it's true what Isak Dinesen wrote in Babette's Feast:

“A great artist is never poor.
We have something of which other people know nothing.”

Mr Furniture means it, and lives it, and thereby proves it isn't just a romance.
And you don't have to be a "great" artist, just a person who somehow transforms things or words or images. The fairy tale of spinning gold out of straw...

Another coworker lost their apartment and is living in a van. I lent them money for a down payment on an apartment that they're moving into today, I think.
I said they didn't have to pay it back, but they insisted they would.
"When you can," I said. "After you catch up. No hurry."

I don't care if they never pay it back. They have nothing. Even the van they're staying in is not theirs.

I chose not to pursue a middle-class life.
Because I didn't want it.
I wanted THRIFT LIFE.
To do stuff like cut up magazines and glue them in new pictures, and to play with dolls and bears, and read and write and [something like] pray, and to, most of all, to have time to think about things.
Vacationing in Belize--all that entails--was the opposite of what I wanted.
I tell myself to remember I have made these choices all along, when the bill comes due.

The best investment I could make, I think, is to FINALLY do what I always say I want to do and write something besides blog posts.
Why don't I?
Fear? Laziness? Or is it merely an illusion--a romantic idea--that I even want to do that? No, I don't think it's an illusion--when I do it, I love it. But yeah, there's some barrier...

Thrift Life is a gamble.
I trust I will figure something out.

My High-Wire & Fire Figure

Em wanted a prompt for our three-way collaboration with Asst man. I suggested ‘people living dangerously’—the name of one of the books whose red cover I’d collaged onto the board that went to her. 

(Also The Year of Living Dangerously was a favorite movie of mine—maybe still is? I’ve seen it several times but not in years.)

I have the board Asst Man prepared. It’s more textured than shows in the photo, but it’s mostly just black paint because he was rushed—he and his family were leaving for Yosemite the next day…I’m glad he did it so I could get started.

This afternoon I scratched the figure in and collaged the high-wire circus bike on her arm, and the fire gate. I like it and would happily keep working on it, but it goes to Em next—and then I think it should go back to AM since he’s not made a representative mark on it yet. So I stopped myself from doing too much. (Hair made of cut-up circus tigers! Hm. Maybe I will do that-/there’s still lots of room for the others.)

The boards are about 3 feet (1m) tall x 2 feet.

Speaking of movies, and fire, my hot weather plan for midweek, when two days are forecast to be at or near 100, is to go see Barbie one day and Oppenheimer the next. 

(On Friday temps drop back into the 80s. Marz, if you read this, it’s supposed to be reasonable by the time you return—in 2 weeks. Two! Marz must be in or near Galicia now, on the last stretch to Santiago. And then the optional walk to the ocean. Gosh… almost done…)

I don’t have any choice about Barbie. The girlettes say I have to go. “It’s about dolls!”  Yes, it is my duty to check it out. The preview looks kinda fun, and I’d liked Margot Robbie a lot in Bombshell (about #metoo at Fox).

But, Oppenheimer, eh… I don’t know. A couple weeks ago I’d read (and quoted from) God and the Atom (1945)—theological reflections on Hiroshima  by Ronald Knox. It might not be wise for me to subject myself to more of that topic. 

Yeah, you know, probably not. Director Christopher Nolan is super dark (k)night emo—I would probably be reduced to a wet rag. 

Alternate reaction: immolation by irritation. It’s almost guaranteed I would be highly annoyed by some aspect of the presentation of this touchy topic—including the almost inevitable problem: that it will be too death-sexy. How not, really? All that flaming power… And then I’d have to write a ranting review here:  RONALD ARBUTHNOTT KNOX WOULD NOT LIKE THIS MOVIE. (Almost certain to be true.) I will spare us all that. 😆 

At any rate, I’m glad there’s something to see this week besides Marvel movies. 

Excelsior! TiffanyPat the Bear

Just as I was leaving work through the donations bay door, a woman drove up with a small box of old toys—hers. “Are you sure you’re ready to give them away?” I asked. 

She really was. She wasn’t at all sad, unlike a woman who’d teared up when she gave me her old doll, while insisting she wanted to clean things out so her children wouldn’t have to.

I hear that a lot, and it sounds like a good idea, but sometimes people are doing themselves a minor violence. Sometimes they force themselves to get rid of clutter, but it’s not “clutter” if your heartstrings are attached. Things have souls too.

People will say, “I don’t want my kids to have to clean up.”

I say, yeah, clean up your your medical life, and leave your finances in order! But if you’re still loving your things, let someone else donate them when you’re gone. Your kids? I’m sure you cleaned up a lot of their crap. 

Efficiency is not the highest good. Unless it is for you, in which case it’s not violating you, giving away childhood toys. I think this donor was like that—truly ready to clear the clutter.

Anyway, I took the woman’s little golden mohair bear for myself. She said, “I thought you’d like that” (though we’ve never met to my recollection—she certainly might have seen me working). Now I’m kicking myself for not asking her Bear’s name. 

Bear had a bandaid on its leg. “This needs air,” the girlettes declared. 

“Will it hurt?”

It didn’t hurt a bit. A shin tear reveals the stuffing of excelsior (wood shavings)—a small operation will take care of it. A colorful patch maybe?

It doesn’t hamper Bear’s mobility at all. Excelsior! I think Bear is named Pat, for the character in Silver Linings Playbook whose motto that is. Hm, or Tiffany, the other character. The name means to shine forth. “I want both names!”

Okay then. TiffanyPat.

Passing

I. Passing

Below: From The Whales Go By, 1959, pictures Paul Galdone, words Fred Phleger.
The book's whales have migrated from the Bering Sea to their winter home...

"The way is not big. We have to swim in line to get in. One after the other. It is not deep. There are waves. We can just make it. We have come a long way. We are happy!"

Another contemporary of my Auntie Vi (b. August 1925) has died--Tony Bennett (b. August 1926).
A paisan! Anthony Dominick Benedetto--my uncle's first name, and my father's middle name from which my sister gets her name. Bennett's parents came from Italy around the same time as Vi's parents, my grandparents.

My book display at work is a jumble this week--no theme.
I'd only had enough books on the topic to create a mini-World Cup display...  An unknown customer added the Tony Bennett bio--Life Is a Gift–– from the biographies section. I'd forgotten we had it.

I'm touched when people enter into the BOOK's like that.
Usually....
One customer (I know who) maintains a power struggle with me over Lord of the Rings books: he moves them to the sci-fi section, I move them back to literature. On we go until someone mercifully buys the set.
But even that I think is funny, not annoying.
_______________________

II. Flying

bink & Maura had me over to watch the Women's World Cup last night. USA v. Vietnam.
It was an uneven match--the young Vietnam team's first ever World Cup--and it's never much fun to watch those.
But I did enjoy and admire the Vietnam goalie--Tran Thi Kim Thanh––she was constantly in the air, fending off 28 (!) shots on goal.
Below center, in yellow: [photo via NYT]

Soccer is the only sport I much enjoy watching, and mostly only because it's fun to watch World Cup's players from around the world--beautiful bodies in flight.
I won't be watching much of this one though. Because the games are in NZ & Australia, most of them are played in what is the the middle of the night here. But a few are at 8 p.m. central, including this one.

III. Painting

Just for the record--this is the board I got from Asst Man (AM) to kick off our three-way art collaboration with E. (My croc to the left, for size.) As I did with my board, he prepared a canvas with only a hint of direction.
(E. had collaged a scene to kick hers off. It's with AM for its 2nd stage. The idea is there are no rules, it's free-form. We're each so different in personality and art styles, we'll see how that goes. Even if the final art isn't stunning, the process should be fun. Maybe. I'm impressed that we all got out of the gate anyway!)

bink had given us the boards with some acrylic painting on them--I love that AM had scraped back to reveal some of the color.
Reminds me of  when I was little--covering paper in crayon colors, layering black crayon on top, and scratching back. Magic!

Off to work. Wishing a good weekend to you all.

Uncomfortable/Beauty

ABOVE: I took this photo for Big Boss to post on the store's social media--help he'd requested. He wants me to write the copy too. I wrote:
"Cake Ornamenting Tools from 1958. Hours of fun: turn gum drops into floral cake decorations!"

I'm regretting not buying the kit myself. Maybe it'll still be there today... (I had yesterday off.) It seems highly desirable, but it's funny what doesn't sell sometimes.
 _____________________________

A squirrel just ran past me, sitting outside this morning, with a black walnut in its mouth. With their bright green hulls, black walnuts look like tennis balls. I was surprised to see it--they're a sign of a changing season and seem ridiculous, deep in summer as we are. We're due for temps up around 100ºF (38ºC) this coming week--luckily only a few days of it.
But of course fruiting and harvesting time means fall will come... Thankfully!

And by now, Marz will be halfway through her fourth of six weeks on Camino. Notes in my sketchbooks had dwindled at this point, and thinking of Marz every day as I have been, now I realize why--this is a long, long haul.
The walking takes over...

I'm remembering why I cried when it was over too, even though I had not had a good time--having fallen into the rhythm, the beat, of your heart and your feet, there's some grief in being wrenched out of that and thrown back into the industrialized world.

I do have a few more notes and sketches--another foot report, of course:
"both little toes are all swollen and mashed up... hurt excruciatingly".
And a dog.

__________________

"The World Will Be Saved by Beauty."

I went to the Turtle Fountain gardens with an old friend from publishing days, Denise, yesterday evening. It was a perfect peach of an evening. We sat on a bench and talked for hours... she's one of my best friends for that.

We laughed about the rulings that say you can't teach books or anything that makes anyone "uncomfortable" with their race or sex.

"What will be left to read?" Denise said. "Uncomfortable situations are the crux of literature."

Yeah, what will they read?

I talked to her about reading Dorothy Day, and how reassuring she is to me--one of her mottos could've been, "Get comfortable with being uncomfortable."

Photo below via the New Yorker, "Dorothy Day's Radical Faith".
Look, she's wearing shoes like Penny Cooper's! (Penny's only have one strap.)

 

ABOVE: Day at a protest for the United Farm Workers led by Caesar Chavez. "Devout and left-wing, Day believed we needed “a revolution of the heart.”

One of Day's mainstays was Dostoevsky. She wrote,
“I do not think I could have carried on with a loving heart all these years without Dostoevsky’s understanding of poverty, suffering, and drunkenness.”

(Dostoevsky survived four years in a Siberian prison camp, you know--for reading banned literature! The more things change...)

Dostoevsky also said, "The world will be saved by beauty", and this was one of Day's favorite quotes.

I love it too, and isn't that a crazy thing to say?
Denise and I talked a lot about what it means...

Dorothy Day on Reading [uncomfortable things]:

“Turn off your radio. Put away your daily paper. Read one review of events a week, and spend some time reading good books.
They tell too of days of striving and of strife.
They are of other centuries and also of our own.
They make us realize that all times are perilous, that men live in a dangerous world, in peril constantly of losing or maiming soul and body.
We get some sense of perspective reading such books.
Renewed courage and faith and even joy to live.” 

Malcolm in the Break Room

Someone donated three boxes containing every New Yorker from the past 7 years, from 2016––now. That's more than 300 issues. Since a lot of the magazine's content remains interesting, they do sell, but we happen to have about 50 issues spilling off the magazine rack right now. 

I decided to take off and frame some of the coolest covers. We usually have lots of picture frames priced at 99 cents, and I think the framed covers would sell in BOOK’s for a coupla bucks. Not the best time-per-penny ratio, but I’d enjoy doing it, and I always like to snazz up my area.

But this first cover (2/22/2016) I framed, for which I even found a mat, I put in our break room, underneath the MLK Time cover I’d framed a while ago.
When Mr Furniture came in, I said, “Look, I put up Malcolm X to balance out MLK, like you and Big Boss.”

“He’s no MLK,” Mr Furniture said. “More like Dr. Phil.” 

(Mr F’s a nick-namer. He calls Big Boss 'Dr. Phil' to his face, and me 'San Francisco'. Asst Man is 'Opie' from Mayberry.)

Mr Furniture paused. “But I could be Malcolm .”

See the art close-up, at The New Yorker:

Kadir Nelson's painting “celebrates the Schomburg Research Center [for Black Culture--a branch of the NYPL] in Harlem.
He wanted to create ‘an homage to the great Harlem Renaissance painters Aaron Douglas [the background painting, “Into Bondage”], William H. Johnson [“Café” couple, 1940]…
Also …artists and performers the Nicholas Brothers, Billie Holiday, and Duke Ellington; the activist Malcolm X;
and writers James Baldwin and Zora Neale Hurston.'"

THE BEST: the famous Nicholas Bros. 3-minute dancing scene (the staircase!), here on youTube—from Stormy Weather (1943, Cab Calloway at the start):

II. Bunny & Blanket

Second post this morning....

I am this bunny's lost sister!

II. Cover Me

A couple days ago a young woman, a girl, really, maybe nineteen? was sitting on a chair in BOOK's, nodding out.
This happens sometimes at the store--a person on heroin (synthetic opioids, actually) sits looking dazed, slumps further and further down, almost tips over . . . and then catches themself and sits up again, only to do it all over again.
I usually make sure the person is conscious and leave them alone.

This young person was a little unusual though. I asked her if she was okay.
She startled and said, "I'm just reading this book about osteoporosis."
She was indeed holding a book about osteoporosis that she'd pulled off the shelf, though she wasn't reading it.

Did she want some water?
"Oh, can you do that?"

I went and got her some.
There are so many people addicted to something toxic, as long as the person is conscious, we don't call 911 on them.
Later I checked on her again. "Do you need to go to the doctor?"

"Oh, no. But is it allowed to sit on the couch?"

I helped her carry her backpack over to one of the couches. She looked around confused, "Is this a thrift store?"

It is, I told her. Would she like something to eat?

Again, surprise--"Oh, is that possible?"

All we had in the break room was a pan of peanut-butter rice krispie treats frosted with chocolate that a coworker had made. I brought her a big piece, and she seemed pleased, and thanked me.

She dozed or whatever on the couch a couple hours. "She's on the moon," a customer said. (No one's particularly phased by people nodding out on our furniture.)
I looked it up, and a high lasts about four hours, so I figured she'd be okay by closing time.

I checked on her one more time before I left.
One of my coworkers had wrapped a blanket around her.

Film Strips & Fairy Tales

3 books

I. Do you remember film strips?
I thought they were soooo cool when I was a kid. Sometimes we could view them in the library.
I was reminded of them by this illustration in the donated kids book, Blue Bug Goes to the Library, 1979--no computers!

II. Walk in a Fairy Tale

“I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can't stand it. I been there before.”

― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

I'm always hearing people say, "I can't understand [some political position]". Doesn't it all make more sense if you see it––and us–– as existing in a fairy tale?  
Trump? Doesn't he make sense as an ogre--a stupid, ravenous monster that eats humans and weak members of its own kind?

I unpacked a donated book yesterday:
Lights Out for the Territory: Nine Excursions in the Secret History of London, by Iain Sinclair (Granta 1998). I thought of Steve's London walks, Sarah W's mudlarking on the Thames, and how Linda Sue is heading off to London in a couple months(!).

The book, however, from what I've read about it, is not a travel guide but a view of a political, fairy tale landscape.
I've been thinking in fairy tale terms lately, and I was excited to read in a review that Sinclair sees Margaret Thatcher in those terms:

"[Iain Sinclair] believed quite literally that [Margaret] Thatcher was a witch. He still does.

'You can't understand Thatcher,' says Sinclair, 'except in terms of bad magic. This wicked witch who focuses all the ill will in society.
I can't understand her except as demonically possessed by the evil forces of world politics. Everything else follows from that: oil revenues blown in dubious arms deals, all real values trashed.
She becomes a godhead to those who want to destroy the city's power. But the godhead is created for a system which destroys her, as always happens.
Now she's been banished to a kingdom of whisky and mockery.
But the fact remains that she introduced occultism into British politics and that the role of the writer was to counter that political culture.'"
––"On the Road," The Guardian, April 24, 2004, 
www.theguardian.com/books/2004/apr/24/featuresreviews.guardianreview14

III. Speaking of London, here's the funniest dog--on the cover Jack London's Call of the Wild. Its legs! Its expression! Its eye shadow!

Board & Blanket

I. The Art Board

I prepped my board this morning, for the three-way art collaboration I'm doing with Asst Man (AM) and Em.
Each of us has a mounted board (from bink's stash--thanks, bink!). The idea is we each start ours and then pass it along, round-robin style, for the next person to add their art to—how/whatever they want.

I peeled two cloth covers off books and glued them flat onto my board. That's all I'm going to do to kick it off:

Penny Cooper approves.
"You've created a canvas where the others can play."

Yes, and also, honestly, I want to start slow and see how--or if--this proceeds. Em will start her board now,  I bet. Not sure when AM will.
They are opposites:
Em blasts stuff out, at 3 a.m.;
AM doesn't start until he has everything planned out.
I'm in the middle.

I told them I'm bringing my board to work, and I will swap with whoever brings theirs in. (Ideally we'd all swap at once, 1–2–3, but I am not holding out for that.)

I hope this works because I like collaborating--it gets me going--I tend to dawdle. I hope it sparks the other two, too.
We could be really great together...

And, in fact, AM offered to help me set up a faux cathedral dome for the girlettes to do a Toys Recreate Paintings shoot of the "Assumption of Mary" I posted yesterday!
He suggested an upside down wicker laundry basket--poke holes in the sides for the dolls to be in flight...
There will still be a parade though--this is Parade Summer.

II. The Blanket

What a gift I got yesterday from a coworker!

Clothes-Helen collects, or accumulates :) vintage fabrics, linens, clothes. She's slowly getting rid of some she's had for years.
She brought in this twin-sized trappers blanket by  Faribault Mills (modeled on the Hudson Bay blanket).
She said she was going to donate it unless I wanted it, in which case she would give it to me. Did I?

Did I ever!

Here it is this morning:

This is only the second four-stripe blanket to be donated to the store in my time. The first one I foolishly marked only $20--up from my coworker Mr Linen's price of $8. It sold instantly.
That was the beginning of my lust for wool blankets from Minnesota mills (primarily Faribault & Bemidji Woolen Mills. I'd blogged about the blanket "Guided" by Faribault I got at the store.)

Let me float...

I learned a cool new word (to add to apotropaic!)
adiaphora = "a thing of indifference"
(adjective "adiaphorous", from Greek a- "not" + diaphoros "different")

I learned the word when I was looking up Mary's Assumption for the girlette's upcoming "When Mary Became a Parade Balloon" parade on August 15. Anglican doctrine considers the Assumption of Mary "adiaphora"--irrelevant.

(What happens to Mary after Jesus is killed is not recorded in scripture, but there are lots of folk tales (fan fiction!) about her--some of which, like the Assumption, the Roman Catholic Church took up as doctrine.)

Anyway--I am trying my best to be adiaphoric! (Is that the correct formation?)

I. Let Me Float Above the Swamp

See, a fairly new volunteer at the thrift store, a productive and practical woman who is a recently retired doctor, has been talking to me about improvements that could be made to the store. She has all the good ideas I had when I started five years ago:
"Wouldn't it make sense to add/change x.y. z.?
Wouldn't it be easier/work better if we... ?"

Certainly this volunteer could get some things done. She knows people on the board, and that's something.
She asked me for my ideas, so I sent her a list of four practical, infrastructure improvements--including replacing the front window with the bullet holes.

In reply, she wrote a list of possible systemic changes---improvements to management--stuff like implementing job training and volunteer management.

omgno

I told her I wanted to be clear and honest with her.
I said to her--not in these words--you are mistaken in thinking in Middle-Class Terms, lady, as if this were a Place of Business.
No.
This is a A Fairy Tale SWAMP. You will get nowhere if you don't feed the trolls, and as we know from the Internet, trolls do not offer a good exchange rate.

What I really said was,
I have no energy to give to management or system changes, only to one-time, practical doable improvements, like knocking down the walls of the dressing rooms we no longer allow people to use (because they were turning into a shooting gallery).
I have not gotten anywhere with management, I said, but if she felt she could, she should go for it.
_____________

II. 9 a.m. Half an hour later...

Ah, relief. The exchange with the volunteer had knocked me off center. So half an hour ago, at 8:28 a.m., I biked two blocks to attend Mass.

Ever since I went back to the Christian stories--and also to Grimm's Fairy Tales--(after the dreadful therapist), I've been missing Mass. I hadn't liked the priest at the nearby church, but this morning I thought--so what? It's not about him.

I feel back on point now. As we prayed "deliver us from evil," I thought--let me be indifferent (adiaphoric)---deliver me from my own fearful reaction. It's not "evil", but it's sure not helpful!
Let me step aside from/FLOAT ABOVE  the volunteer's plans and carry on in what I do best.

The priest was fine. In fact, better than fine. He started by telling us he would be doing a funeral later this morning for a young woman who'd been killed by her boyfriend. Then, his homily was about our human propensity for fear and violence and our call to cultivate a culture of love.

This applies directly to what I face at the store. I don't want to or need to mess with management. I want strength and clarity to continue to cultivate the things I love, the things I can do:
Books & Toys, and also, trying to be present to the people I encounter every day.
That's enough of a challenge!

Speaking of challenges, how are the girlettes going to shape their parade?
They're pushing me to recreate this illusionistic fresco in the dome of the Cathedral of Parma (where the ham's from) (via Wikipedia)!

This is beyond me.
I vote for this sort of thing, below, instead--Mary definitely looks like a girlette here, with her little smile.

It's Eastern Orthodox--it seems Mary's assumption (or her dormition--"falling asleep") was more? popular (or popular from an earlier date) in Eastern Christian art.
Don't quote me on that. The history and theology is fun for me, but the minutiae is not personally important. Adiaphora!

Little Peaches Everywhere

This summer is being pretty peachy for me lately. 
Not to say there have been no problems.
If only.

Earlier this week, for instance, the workplace got so tangled, I actually TALKED TO JESUS on my bike ride home!
This is not something I do--I don't even "believe" in Jesus... but maybe I should, he was so very helpful:
Jesus told me, "Put that shit down, I'll deal with it." 

Thank you, yes. I'm doing that. (Wait, is this a peach or a problem?) 

And this morning, again, my eyes register smoke from Canadian wildfires.
But, you know, there's always something.

Okay, so, examples of peachiness...

I.  To begin with, Marz walking the Camino has invited me to review my own Caminos, walked twenty-two and twelve years ago, as I've been writing about. (My notebooks below.)

 

I've been surprised how good that is being. Following along is a reminder, too, of how loooong the walk is.
Every day is walking.
Marz left town three weeks ago, tomorrow, which means she's about halfway through.

Hi, Marz!
I am hoping your pilgrimage is as fruitful, at least in the long run, for you as it was for me,  . . . even if it's full of pits—which of course I hope it’s not!

II.  Then, one day this week I came home to TWO boxes on my doorstep--both from blog friends:
a box of fun old books from Kirsten (thanks, K! NEVER ENUF BOOKS),
and Linda Sue sent me a box of little, toyish things I don't know how I've lived without... including, miraculously! a doll (below) who will be the Mary Balloon in the Assumption Parade (Aug. 15).
I'd been wondering who could do that. (I have some old plaster Marys, but they are too heavy to float to Heaven.)

This new doll is the first I've met who was not manufactured to be a Madeline doll who clearly is an Orphan Red (the taxonomic name of the girlettes). You can see it too, can't you?

The girlettes say, She is one of us, just big. She has the same color dress with even lace sleeves that we have!

III.  Giving gifts is bounteous too.
Working at a thrift store, I am perfectly positioned: thrift presents are the best presents!

It was the birthday of E's little boy this week, and I could easily find for E (who isn't working at the store anymore) two of the three things her boy asked for:
rainbows, trucks, and baked pears.

He was carrying around his pastel-rainbow birthday bear. It'd donated with its tag still attached--I assume it was a birthday gift with the same temporary status as a greeting card--and it wears a birthday hat and a sign saying Happy Birthday.
The bear is silky soft, and the boy held it out to me, saying, "Touch it."

E also gave him an unpainted ceramic rainbow with paint pots to paint it (also donated new, in a sealed box). He wanted to paint it right away, so I helped him open the lids, and rinse his brush, while his mom attended to guests and food, etc.

My present to him, a dump truck with a lever to tilt the back box, was also popular--he put little Matchbox cars into its box-bed to dump out.

No baked pears 😞 but there was chocolate cake 😋.

IV. And...  little peaches everywhere.

I stopped on my bike home to photograph this painted Totoro bus stop box a few blocks from my house. It's painted all the way around; this is the inside: THE CATBUS STOPS HERE.
I should go back at night and see if they turn on the electric candles.

I'm always intending to make handmade signs, like the above box, for work, but realistically, this is what I'm up for, below---collaged signs.
I made these a couple weeks ago, and like them fine--they're fresh and new anyway.

Big Boss had asked me to take book photos for him to post on social media. In the interest of good work relations, I'm trying to do that weekly. I don't really mind, because BOOK's…

A good side-by-side presented itself this week:

Aaand... a tiny peach of a pleasure:
I was able to offer a helpful suggestion to Joanne at Cup on the Bus about how to mend a vase her grandmother had made:
kintsugi, "gold joinery"--a Japanese visible mending technique.

Joanne got a kit, and her sister mended the vase for her, with beautiful results--you can see it on Joanne's blog post, here.
I was extra-pleased to be of help because Joanne was thinking the broken vase might have to be thrown out.
Instead it has another layer of history and loveliness.

Article at the BBC: "Kintsugi: Japan's Ancient Art of Embracing Imperfection"--photo below:

__________________

That's it for now!
I am going to ANOTHER social event this afternoon---luckily the air quality is supposed to improve because it's an outdoor gathering that a volunteer is holding. I don't think I've ever mentioned him here--we're not personal friends--but he is the best volunteer at the store. I'm kinda going as a store representative.
It'll be fine.

I almost never want to take myself to social events, but I often do enjoy them, once I'm there---and this summer, they've been mostly good (or better—the garden tour, for instance).

Before I go . . . I still haven't put away the clean laundry!

[UPDATE: Ugh, the air is worse —in the red ‘bad for things that breathe’ zone—I didn’t go—am staying in and watching a Bourne DVD.]

"We all get the same box."

 "We all get the same box," said a woman on the neighborhood garden tour that bink & I went around to on our bikes last night––meaning the houses around here sit on the same square lots--but some people have transformed theirs.

I've mentioned that I live on the edge of a well-to-do neighborhood. Several of the home-owners had paid for gardeners (or garden businesses) to create their gardens--not only to plant them––(as I age, I understand better wanting to hire that hard labor out)––but to plan them.

This surprised me: where's the pleasure? Yeah, the gardens look nice, but is that the point of gardening? Don't you want to choose the plants, and, if you physically can, don't you WANT to dig in the dirt yourself?

Same with interior design--I don't get hiring someone else to choose the things you live intimately with.
Maybe it's a like arranged marriages--sometimes they work out better in the long run than marriages chosen by individual, romantic whim.

I guess it depends what you want. A tidy kind of beauty, or the mess of free choice. Growing living things, such as plants (or children), reminds me of what Molly Ivins said of democracy--you have to relish a certain amount of chaos.
Ah--here's the exact quote:

"The thing about democracy, beloveds, is that it is not neat, orderly, or quiet. It requires a certain relish for confusion."

One woman told us that her first garden she planted herself was a mess because she didn't know what she was doing. When she hired a designer from Tangletown Gardens (nice! pricey!), they told her what would work and what wouldn't, and it looks great. I'm sure it does.

But honestly, probably most of the people had done their own gardening. Some had gone to a lot of extra work too--for instance, a couple houses had paths of granite cobblestones the owners had collected (heavy!) when the city tore up streets, down to the old trolley car lines.

It was fun to bike around my still new-to-me neighborhood and look in people's backyards.
Everyone was friendly and open--though there was a paucity of snacks... Only one woman had put some out--shortbread and lemonade. Funnily, the thing in her backyard that everyone was commenting on was her old-fashioned style of laundry-drying rack--one of those that's like a spider web of clothesline that rotates around a center pole. You know? She was my favorite.

Lots of people had a vine arbor or pergola--I took photos for my sister who's planning some such thing for privacy, as a new condo building has gone up right next to her & SIL's house, with massive windows overlooking their lawn!

(That's bink, far right, taking off her bike helmet). I looked up pergolas, and, I didn't realize--you can buy such a structure at Costco for around $500.

How bout outdoor kitchens? That one on the right even has a sink with running water. These yards are not that big--such set ups dominate--it's not what I'd choose, but then, I'm living on vodka and ice-cream this summer--no cooking required!
I do love the orange trumpet creepers (left).

I'm sitting outside this morning, laptop on my lap, feeling proud of my three pots of geraniums, and my bird-and-squirrel water dish.
I did them myself!

It's been a decent summer here . . . if you overlook drought and fires. (More Canadian smoke is due here today, as a passing cool front pushes the higher air down). I mean, it's not been too terribly hot. This is another cool morning--and wet--it rained hard last night--welcome!

BELOW: I'd saved this quote from Werner Herzog because it'd reminded me of what I'd said about walking Camino--going by foot, you experience your self differently--but it reminds me of gardening too--the Earth reveals itself to those who dig in it.

"I create my own world view out of the knowledge that I derive from the world itself. When you travel on foot, for example––and I don't mean backpacking or hiking, I mean, for example, travelling on foot from Munich to Paris--you are given a world view, an insight that is different or outside the average knowledge. I have a dictum:
'The world reveals itself to those who travel on foot.""

--"Werner Herzog", New Yorker, Ap 26, 2022.

______________

This has been a warm social month--warm in a pleasant way. Very Cancerian. The astrological sign. Though cancer, the disease, has also figured... 

A thrift-store regular I like, for instance, Marian, came in for the first time in a few months--looking thin--she had been tending her oldest friend with cancer. They were both long-time single, and childless. She'd moved into his house to care for him, and a couple weeks ago, he had died.

It was quite a good ending, as these things go, she told me.
She'd been helping him stand, when he'd said, "Oh, no!" and fallen over, unconscious. A stroke.
He died within the hour, her holding his hand and talking to him about the musicians he was about to meet in heaven. (Neither was a believer, but these stories are sustaining.) "Miles Davis! Johnny Cash!"

And now she's living in his house forever, because he left it to her! It's small house, but paid for, and he'd also left enough money for her to pay property taxes for years. She'd been living in government-assistance housing, so this is extra welcome--and even more so because... she loves to garden!
So that's nice, though she said, "I'd rather have him. We've known each other since we were thirty-one." 

Sometimes I wonder what my final illness will be like, being single and childless myself... It might be lonely, or it might not.
I see these sorts of surprises around deaths--like how I helped BJ die last spring. I didn't help much--once a week--nice, but at the end, you need 24/7 care. The real helper was her foster sister who she hadn't seen in thirty years! She flew in from Georgia and did every. single. thing for BJ's last three weeks dying at home (another gov't assisted apartment--across the alley from the thrift store). Hospice helped, but they visited, they didn't stay.

So... you just don't know. I've worked in nursing homes where people with lots of children died alone--often because their children lived and worked out of state. (I mean, they were not necessarily uncaring.)

In the end, we all get the same box indeed.
Enjoy your garden, whatever you've got of one!