A couple pink photos.
I. Display Case Books
Big Boss (BB) has asked me to photograph books for the store's social media. Here is this week's---four pink books in the display case.
BELOW, L to R, clockwise:
1. I'm surprised the Posada book hasn't sold yet--maybe people don't know that they know this Mexican artist--probably from his Day of the Dead prints. Also, at 48, it's not cheap.
2. Jim Klobuchar was a writer for the Minneapolis Star-newspaper, and he was our senator Amy K's father. She mentioned her father being an alcoholic (longtime in recovery) during her interview of Brett M. Kavanaugh, nominated to the Supreme Court.
Jim K. died in 2021--his NYT obit.
3. The two Henry Miller Tropic books sold, but not Black Spring--again, maybe not a familiar name (the title not the author)? Miller liked it though:
But the book itself sounds practically unreadable for someone like me-- "written largely in sixteenth-century English". Though I loved Riddley Walker, which is written in future-speak. But that was about a boy making sense of life hundreds of years after an apocalypse, and this is lords-and-dwarves, Norse-inspired, high fantasy of the sort I skip in Lord of the Rings. (I only read the Frodo-and-Sam-drag-themselves-to-Mordor, World War I– Catholic-inspired parts.)
Due to a tight publishing schedule, Remington illustrated the covers without having read the books.
Big Boss (BB) has asked me to photograph books for the store's social media. Here is this week's---four pink books in the display case.
BELOW, L to R, clockwise:
1. I'm surprised the Posada book hasn't sold yet--maybe people don't know that they know this Mexican artist--probably from his Day of the Dead prints. Also, at 48, it's not cheap.
2. Jim Klobuchar was a writer for the Minneapolis Star-newspaper, and he was our senator Amy K's father. She mentioned her father being an alcoholic (longtime in recovery) during her interview of Brett M. Kavanaugh, nominated to the Supreme Court.
Jim K. died in 2021--his NYT obit.
"During the ten years I spent in Paris, I must have written seven or eight books. This one, Black Spring, I like the best of all I wrote during that period. It was a wonderful period of my life." [Wikipedia]4. The 1967 cover of the Ballantine Books paperback The Worm Ouroboros (1922) is so cool. Oh, looking it up, I see it's by Barbara Remington [NYT obit], who created the famous 1965 Tolkien book covers for BB (below). I had those! That's why The Worm cover looked familiar.
But the book itself sounds practically unreadable for someone like me-- "written largely in sixteenth-century English". Though I loved Riddley Walker, which is written in future-speak. But that was about a boy making sense of life hundreds of years after an apocalypse, and this is lords-and-dwarves, Norse-inspired, high fantasy of the sort I skip in Lord of the Rings. (I only read the Frodo-and-Sam-drag-themselves-to-Mordor, World War I– Catholic-inspired parts.)
Due to a tight publishing schedule, Remington illustrated the covers without having read the books.
After reading his work, I was in awe of Tolkien. I knew there was something special about him. If I read ‘The Lord of the Rings’ first, I don’t think I could have drawn the cover art.
II. Bluey
the Alley Protector got caught in graffiti spray paint--now he's pink!
In this instance, I love the interaction with alley life.
("Graffiti" is a word I always misspell! I looked it up for the nth time
just now. Maybe I'll remember it if I create a mnemonic?
Let's see...
TWO F's, like fanfare.)
I haven't made any apotropaics since E quit working at the store at the beginning of summer. She was my spark to do them.
Also, before Marz left for Camino, she had borrowed the paint markers I made the figures with, and she hasn't returned them yet.
But that's just as excuse, I could make them other ways.
My main, self-selected challenge is to Make Toys (or Toy-Like Things) (this includes Playing with Girlettes), with or without others.
Working with others spurs me on, for sure, but you can't always count on that--have to figure out ways to make them anyway.
And if you make them, that can lead to getting them out in the world where they'll meet others.
I mean the real-life, in-person, physical world, not online (or not only online).
Social media was a weird double-bind for me.
On the one hand, it was good to have a place (Instagram) to post photos of what I made, to share with other people who make things.
On the other hand, I spent so much time online, it didn't leave blank time to get bored, such time in which I tend to make things... or to nap, and then wake up thinking of things to make.
So in the end, I decided IG wasn't good. Surprisingly, I'm actually happier off it, overall.
III. Not pink, but kinda Pinko
Speaking of waking up with ideas... I've been thinking about the gospel story about the rich young man whom Jesus advises to sell all he owns, give the proceeds to the poor, and then to "come, follow me". [in Wikipedia]
I haven't talked to Big Boss about scripture in months, but I broke my own rule yesterday and asked him what he thought about this story.
He gave me the line that so many people use--that Jesus didn't mean we, you and I, should give all our money and possessions to the poor. What Jesus meant, BB said, was that we should give up things we're "overly attached to".*
"Uh-huh," I said. "But for most of us Americans, that probably is money and possessions."
He laughed, and agreed.
* BB's Buddhisty-Lite interpretation of the story of Jesus & the rich young man--
"drop your attachments to whatever you're attached to... if you're not too attached to your money, you can keep it"--
that could be okay? though it's kind of a cop-out ("cheap grace" Dietrich Bonhoeffer called it).
But in fact, it doesn't line up with what Jesus says specifically about money and possessions, immediately after the rich man goes away:
In this instance, I love the interaction with alley life.
Let's see...
TWO F's, like fanfare.)
I haven't made any apotropaics since E quit working at the store at the beginning of summer. She was my spark to do them.
Also, before Marz left for Camino, she had borrowed the paint markers I made the figures with, and she hasn't returned them yet.
But that's just as excuse, I could make them other ways.
My main, self-selected challenge is to Make Toys (or Toy-Like Things) (this includes Playing with Girlettes), with or without others.
Working with others spurs me on, for sure, but you can't always count on that--have to figure out ways to make them anyway.
And if you make them, that can lead to getting them out in the world where they'll meet others.
I mean the real-life, in-person, physical world, not online (or not only online).
Social media was a weird double-bind for me.
On the one hand, it was good to have a place (Instagram) to post photos of what I made, to share with other people who make things.
On the other hand, I spent so much time online, it didn't leave blank time to get bored, such time in which I tend to make things... or to nap, and then wake up thinking of things to make.
So in the end, I decided IG wasn't good. Surprisingly, I'm actually happier off it, overall.
III. Not pink, but kinda Pinko
Speaking of waking up with ideas... I've been thinking about the gospel story about the rich young man whom Jesus advises to sell all he owns, give the proceeds to the poor, and then to "come, follow me". [in Wikipedia]
I haven't talked to Big Boss about scripture in months, but I broke my own rule yesterday and asked him what he thought about this story.
He gave me the line that so many people use--that Jesus didn't mean we, you and I, should give all our money and possessions to the poor. What Jesus meant, BB said, was that we should give up things we're "overly attached to".*
"Uh-huh," I said. "But for most of us Americans, that probably is money and possessions."
He laughed, and agreed.
This
morning I woke up with an American "solution" for the young man,
who had gone away sad after the encounter with Jesus.
I
pictured a cartoon.
A simple drawing shows the young man returning to join Jesus, traveling staff in hand, sandals on his feet, and calling out,
A simple drawing shows the young man returning to join Jesus, traveling staff in hand, sandals on his feet, and calling out,
“I got a storage locker!”
______________________
______________________
* BB's Buddhisty-Lite interpretation of the story of Jesus & the rich young man--
"drop your attachments to whatever you're attached to... if you're not too attached to your money, you can keep it"--
that could be okay? though it's kind of a cop-out ("cheap grace" Dietrich Bonhoeffer called it).
But in fact, it doesn't line up with what Jesus says specifically about money and possessions, immediately after the rich man goes away:
It's harder for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God than
for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.
(Luke 18:18–30)
It could be argued that people like BB are not rich, but that's wriggling to get off the hook. The point isn't to win a logical argument, the point is to figure out how to live. Which is up to the individual, seems to me. The rich young man has free will...
I wonder what he decided to do after he went away sad.
