Reimagined Saturday

Ongoing tech challenges notwithstanding, I woke up refreshed this morning. I work this Saturday and it looks like a nice one (and no Asst Man). After weeks with no rain at all, we’ve had rain for days —and nights, including last’s —and it looks spring green out there. Plus fallen autumn leaves. 

Last night Big Boss was to give a talk to the Society that runs the thrift stores and parish charitable group, and he’d asked me the day before if I could lend him a bear I’ve repaired—he wanted to use it to illustrate how broken things (including our broken selves) can be restored.

I dropped off a bear AND a doll for him yesterday —the girlette Puck who’s gotten a bionic leg —purple and multi-jointed (from a broken action figure), and Pyx the Unknown Bear, who’d been donated with his button eyes safety-pinned to his ear for reattachment. I’d also mended a tear in his white fur with a flowered patch. 

 

I wrote a note saying “re-imagined” might be another way of thinking about what happens rather than “repaired”

or “restored”—we are not returned to the way we were but become something different. Sometimes strengthened, sometimes fragile at the broken places.

It’s all alchemy.

Yesterday’s food shelf haul had changed to autumn colors too—nothing green… And nothing very great for making work lunches except the butternut squash—I’ll make soup. 

Would my coworkers eat quiche?

Thousands of strawberries though—you could take two flats if you wanted—each flat holding maybe 20 cartons of berries. I couldn’t carry them, or I’d have taken them for work.

Butter was in abundance too:

“Take a whole box, or two!”—each box holding 10 lbs. I rarely cook with butter but took two pounds. Got home and one stick had black spots on it-/put them all in the compost. And the same with the Indian naan bread—every piece was fuzz moldy. 

Ah, the ongoing adventures in the humiliations of poverty. Now I understand why Mr Furniture won’t eat my lunches—I’d told everyone where the food is from—and he calls it prison food. He’s right—this food isn’t good stuff from generous people, it’s food fit for pig troughs from grocery chains happy to offload what they can’t sell. It’s cheaper for them if a charity hauls it away than if they have to pay garbage service. I expect they get tax credit too. 

…Once again, I knew this but I didn’t have the personal experience of being on the receiving end.

The food-shelf workers where I go are as respectful as can be—I love ❤️ them!—and I know they work to cull the donations of actual garbage, the same as I do at work, but the food is ALL on the edge of sell-by dates, and while that doesn’t matter for canned goods, it does for everything else. You have to cook or freeze everything immediately, and who has that sort of storage room?

So, yeah—grocery shopping it is not.

Once again, a wealthy volunteer has given me a gift card to Aldi to buy lunch-makings—that’s better—I can plan a meal.

Yay!

Tides

 I hadn’t posted this photo before my phone was stolen last week, and I was sad I’d lost it (the photo, and the phone)—I don’t use the so-called cloud for storage—but then realized I’d emailed it to someone so had that copy, and here it is. It’s from my recent day trip with Marz to Lake Superior. Not really tidal, the rock pools were full of rain.

It calms me to look at it. I’ve been out of sorts from dealing with tech—more like avoiding dealing with it, in dread—but in a weird piece of luck, yesterday someone donated a like-new iPhone 7 to the thrift store. (“Weird” because most donated phones are locked or defunct, and almost never iPhones either.) Big Boss unhesitatingly said I should have it for free to replace mine stolen by a temp worker. Not that an outdated 7 would  sell for much, but I’m glad to have again a phone that I know my way around.

iPhone is on model 15 now; Apple doesn’t allow the 7 to update anymore (I’d forgotten that hindrance to using a phone forever), but it’s still better, especially its camera, than the cheapish Android from BJ that I was using. 

So that’s a relief and felt like a weird bit of justice… 

Auntie Vi, is that you again? I’m going to assign all unexpected gifts of material things to Auntie Vi from now on.  

And I’m going to give that Android to a coworker with one eye who can barely read the shattered screen of his own phone. (My workplace can be like something out of Dickens.)

I’ve been feeling out of sorts with it being Asst Man’s last week at work, too—his very last day, today. Even though we’d had continual problems and I’m glad he’s going, I’m also sad that I’m losing someone with whom I experienced one of the most astonishing days of my life—the day three years ago during the 2020 Covid shutdown when, after George Floyd’s murder led to uprising and looting, AM had called me up in the morning and said, “Big Boss just asked me to paint the boarded up windows at the store—do you want to help?”

We’d each rounded up house paint from our basements (I was rooming with HouseMate who was happy to donate hers), he’d picked me up in his car, and together we’d painted the plywood boards. We then walked together, the two of us,  through acrid smoke down Lake Street, along with groups of people, many of them carrying brooms and bags to clean up broken glass, to the overpass where a line of armed National Guards blocked further access.  

I’d posted about those last days of May 2020 here.

This morning I went into work to drop something off with Big Boss, and to say good bye to AM. I told him I’d been thinking about that day and how glad I am he’d called me that morning. 

He said yes, it’d meant a lot to him too, and too bad we have such “different personalities”. 

I felt again that slight surreality, a sense of dis-location that I often felt with AM, as if there were an invisible but powerful third person all the time between me and AM, like a road worker holding signs of misdirection. That invisible presence being alcohol.

At any rate, once again there was no connection, only a sense of something not fitting by a frustrating fraction—like a Tupperware lid that should snap onto a container but simply does not. 

So I feel a little crazy, a little fragile, a little sad, and angry, and mostly relieved to be free of this. I suspect it’s like the low-level infected tooth I finally had pulled after several years—I will feel slightly but significantly better in my whole self afterwards.

Can I find 7171?

Inspired by Michael's sleuthing around in old NYC photos over on Orange Crate Art (like this one), I decided to see if I could track down the former owner of my old keychain-- an item donated this year to the religious articles ministry (Catholic) that uses the thrift store where I work as a mailing address.

Could I find who owner no. 7171 was? The guild that registered the number is still listed at this address, but on a quick search this morning, I could find nothing about it. Will look further...

Pro Deo Guild /5770 Mosholu Ave./Bronx, NY

 

The organizer of the ministry knows I love old Catholic holy medals (for themselves, not ironically), and she occasionally gives me some to look at, and to keep any I like. The intention of the ministry is to re-home these items--they come from around the country, often with notes along the lines of, "These were my mother's and I don't know what to do with them".

They are relics from another age.

I love that someone carried my keychain in their pocket and charged it with their faith, like we charge our tech. Though honestly, it's not worn very smooth, the way medals get when carried for a long time, so it might have mostly lived in a box...

Mosholu Ave. is in Riverdale--once largely Irish Catholic, and, according to Wikipedia, an affluent part of the Bronx. I'll search more later.

Meantime, here's the Mosholu branch of the New York Public Library-- a modernist building from 1955. I must look at a map to see if it's even in the same neighborhood--- but now I must leave for work.

"The Mosholu branch of the New York Public Library is located on 205th Street, adjacent to Whalen Park and the Perry Avenue exit of the D train.

"Like the neighborhood, the branch gets its name from the Native American word mosholu, which means 'smooth stones' or 'small stones' and once referred to a brook that ran through the Bronx.  The one-story, modernist building opened in 1955."

https://www.nypl.org/about/locations/mosholu 

Tips on searching? Other ideas? Email welcome

On the Boards, Acrobats

 Unexpected! Together, the two boards work better than either one alone. They weren't intended as a diptych, but then, Em and I have never discussed any intentions, or even talked about the process of our collaboration. (Em doesn't stand still long enough for a conversation.) 

The boards go back to Em to work on again now... Or later, probably--I'm enjoying looking at them so much. I'm curious to see them with the third board (at Em's). Three ring circus?

 The acrobats are my favorite. Now with strawberry shortcake hats (the mother and daughter).

Red Board, living dangerously

Em surprised me by bringing me the red board, above, the third board of the collaboration we'd started with Asst Man ... two? months ago. I'd thought she might never work on this one (which I'd covered with peeled-off, red cloth book covers) , so I was thrilled.

I like the faces she'd drawn, but the man with the beard looks a lot like my father ... This morning I saw the face as a fox (I started sketching it in, above).

I had an old book covered in worn orange cloth--perfect for a fox. In process:

 

Asst Man has got a new job! --this coming week will be his last at the thrift store. He'd complained about management from the get-go, but wasn't able to do better himself. I figured when I called out his bad behavior when drunk that it would spur him either to address his alcohol use or to get a job in education, as he'd often talked of doing--both things, actually. I'm not surprised at his choice.

He's going to work as a teacher's aide with teens with special needs at a nearby highschool. It pays significantly more ($22?/hour). Schools are desperate for help and you don't need any training, just a two-year degree in anything. AM has a degree in graphic design.... 

To me it sounds like jumping out of the frying pan into the fire, but I don't care. I'm just pleased he'll be gone. I think I've complained about him on this blog more than I've complained about anyone or anything. 

Speaking of complaining... After complaining here about Apple, I got my iphone stolen at work. 🙄

What a hoot--it felt kinda like instant karma. Luckily I still had BJ's new Moto(-rola) phone that her sister had given me when BJ died--(thanks BJ❤️).  I'm typing on it now because I haven't figured out how to synch it with my laptop to make a hotspot (I don't have internet service).

What happened was, a guy who was doing worker's comp hours at the store stole a bunch of stuff on his last day, including clothes, two phones (mine and another), and a customer's car. A car. They got it back, but nothing else. Some coworkers were angry, but I just shook my head-- our workplace once again proves to be the Wild West. And it's just a phone, just a thing.

The main problem with this relatively cheap phone, besides that I begrudge having to learn my way around it, is its poor camera (though I photographed the boards with it and they are okay). I'm not buying another Apple though, much as I love their excellent cameras, having just looked into the company's practices. (Also, $$$.) I think I'll supplement this phone with a better digital camera from work. Big Boss said I could have any donated tech to replace my stolen phone--not that we get good phones, but we do get some good cameras, since almost nobody uses them anymore.

Happy Fall Equinox! On we go, living dangerously, tipping and spinning in space... 

PS. Also I haven't figured out text messaging on this phone, so if we've been texting please email me instead.

Annual Two-Person Book Club

Every so often I round up books we have two copies of and set up a ‘two-person reading group’ display. Usually both copies don’t sell together, but I like the conceit. Here’s a few of this year’s round-up.

“Misanthropy is too easy.”

I. “Misanthropy is too easy.”

Yesterday, Sunday afternoon, I went to a bookstore (what I do on my days off my BOOK’s store). There I was so happy to run into a friend, KG, whom I hadn’t seen in years— and with her partner, Mike, we went out for beers. I’d only met Mike once, a dozen years ago. I’d liked him—a reader and a complex thinker—but he’d come across as bitter and judgmental—even though I agreed with his judgments, I wasn’t sure how it’d be hanging out with him. 

It was great! I don’t know if he’d mellowed over time, or if I’d met him on a bad day in a bad year? He was just as judgmental (me too!), but the bitterness was gone.

“Misanthropy is my default,” he said, “but I try to resist it. It’s too easy…, and it’s what ‘they’ want you to feel—it divides, and they conquer.”

I feel the same—misanthropy is a honey trap. I told him [what I’d recently blogged about] how people at my workplace distrust one another and don’t bond to pull together against the machine, and the machine picks people off one by one.

II. Muriel, the Book Angel 

Where I’m house/dog sitting has Amazon prime, and I was excited to watch season 2 of Good Omens, having loved season 1. 

What a disappointment. I slogged through all six episodes, and it felt like the actors did too (though David Tennant has said it was a delight to play the demon Crowley again—I hope it was— it felt stale to me).
Then, all of a sudden, the show gets really good—in around the last fifteen minutes! I recommend starting with episode 6, the last one. The plot finally congeals, and the most delightful character comes into their own—the naive angel Muriel (Quelin Sepilulveda), on their first visit to Earth, discovers reading books.

BELOW: Muriel posing as “a human police officer”, trying to figure out what to do with their first-ever cup of tea, in Aziraphale’s book shop.  

Muriel helps me like the humans, though they are fictional (Muriel I mean, not the humans). Fictional people count too!

Below—Muriel holding a copy of The Crow Road by Iain Banks, a book which Crowley has tossed at them, saying “you’ll like this”. I guess Neil Gaiman does. (He’d had to write GO2 on his own, coauthor of Good Omens (book and season 1), Terry Pratchett, you know, sadly having died.) The Crow Road is referenced in other places in this season. (screenrant.com/good-omens-season-2-the-crow-road-book-meaning)

In fact, I’d gone to the bookstore yesterday to see if they had this book. They didn’t, but there was my old friend and that was better.

Duluth Trading Twins

 My coworker Grateful-J, above, often wears clothes from Duluth Trading Co. Yesterday I pulled a pair of work pants by them out of our textile baling bin—my size! A bit torn, but it’s only 50 cents for items going to recycling. 

I showed Grateful-J, and we happened to be wearing similar colors. Twins! He’s one of my best coworkers. Good for him, sad for us, he’s only here part-time now because he’s working for a guy in the wild mushroom trade—foraging and selling to restaurants mostly. 

Happy Blog-a-versary, Orange Crate Art!

OCA is nineteen today—entering its last year of teenhood…

I think of it as a sort of older cousin blog to l’astronave, who will turn sixteen on October 7. 

We met in 2013, through nail clippers of all things, when this blog (b. 2007) was six. 

(gugeo.blogspot.com/2013/09/whats-new-and-exciting-in-my-life.html?m=0 )

Michael is the only blogger I know from the (g)old days of blogging who still posts regularly—and interestingly too. OCA is a place to start… and a place to keep coming back to.  

This morning before I read OCA, walking Astro, the dog I’m house sitting, I happened to pick up a couple orange crates in the alley, with some tattered art still holding on. A happy coincidence? Or subliminal programming?

“Why are you lugging those?”

Back at work

 In my five and a half years at the thrift store, I’ve never seen a single one of these Fire-King teardrop mixing bowls, much less a perfect set of four. I wouldn’t want them, but I bow to their prowess. 

 

A volunteer is now listing occasional high-price stuff on eBay for the store, and AsstMan gave the bowl set to her to sell. “Why not try them at the store first?” I said. “They’re just what thrifters are hoping to find.”

He was doubtful anyone would pay that much (350-), and I reminded him we’d sold a four-place set of  Dansk silverware for 125-. People will pay antique store prices for super cool rare finds.

He consulted with the other underling manager, and together they decided to try them in store for a month. 

Such is the high-wattage decision making power at the store. At any rate, I’m glad AM and I are maintaining the “professional workplace relationship” I’d told him I wanted after his denial of any drunken wrongdoing.

I’d rather have the dignity of being honest about my wrong-doings than the indignity of weaseling out of responsibility. But that’s just me, not certain …leaders (imagine air quotes).

——

Lunch (by me) yesterday was pulled chicken in barbecue sauce with fluffy white buns (thanks, k., for suggesting the element of “fluff”) and coleslaw. I hadn’t had time to get to the food shelf (very limited hours, all during the workday—really NOT good for “the working poor”), so I used the $25 gift card to Aldi a volunteer had given me for that purpose (feeding coworkers). 

I ended up spending $8 of my own too because ALDIs $2 barbecue sauce was basically pancake syrup (first ingredient = corn syrup). I used it anyway, but the chicken tasted like the chicken in sweet-and-sour American Chinese takeout (where’s the sour?). I drained it off, stopped at the co-op, and found a sauce with tomato first, then vinegar, then sugar. Organic and vegan. For your barbecue tempeh, I guess. Basically tomato paste with spice, it cost $8, but it was good.

I’ve made my own bbq sauce in the past—easy, but messy—and easy I’m trying to keep this fast and with as little cleanup as possible because one thing I dislike is doing dishes. And if I’m going to keep doing this, as I’d like to, I need to practice Resentment Management by keeping it cheap ‘n’ easy. I am no selfless angel.

My workplace, as I’ve said many times, is rich in resentment opportunities. After three workdays away, I returned yesterday to see that my coworkers had dumped book and toy donations in such a way to block my workspace aisle. Toys are easy enough to shift, but boxes of books aren’t. I spent half the day digging out. Thanks a lot, my darling  m’fuckers.  

I know why they do it—they’re old men in poor health tasked with moving truckloads of crap.  But jesus… Lengthwise, people! I tell them, but it does not take.

I don’t know much about Marxist thought, but it occurred to me I’m seeing the inner workings of Maintenance of Poverty: people do not pull together, do not pool resources, do not think in cost/benefit terms. Definitely a mistrust keeps everyone working for himself at their own detriment. 

I’ve suggested, for instance, that we chip in together to buy cases of pop, which would equal about 25 cents/can. But everyone prefers to run across the street to the little shop that sells it for $1.50/can. I expect they think someone would take more than their fair share of the case of pop. I believe they’re right, but a person would have to take [oh no, math!]… uh, a bunch of cans (5?) before you were paying more than $1.50 for your can. 

This self-defeating lack of pulling together can look like stupidity, but I believe it’s learned helplessness + learned distrust, plus a big scoop of exhaustion. Result: My coworkers are NOT ripe for radicalization. Including Mr Furniture, the guy who’s always talking about The Master Plan. He can see it, but he can’t see his way around, over, or under it. We all carry it on our backs and dump it in each other’s areas. If I do it less than some of the others, it’s only because I am lucky enough to have resources they don’t. 

Like, I can read the label. Literally.

And that’s my class analysis from the armpit of Lake Street today. Off to work to shift more heavy stuff. The truth is, if it doesn’t break me (go slow, Fresca!), it genuinely does keep me stronger. I don’t like to exercise. If I’d been sitting at my laptop editing /writing all these years, I’d be a total pudding.

———

gone, gone… awake!

PennyCooper lays the moth to rest.

They determined a land place of rest was best for the moth. “It was not a swimmer.”

As at the Bee Burial, at the moth funeral we all chanted the Heart Sutra (in Sanskrit?):

"Gaté, gaté (Gone, gone), Paragaté (Gone beyond),
Parasamgate! (Fully beyond!) 

Bodhhi! Svaha! (Awake! YAY!)"

The Exotic Common White-lined Sphinx Moth (funeral to follow)

 

“We must give it a funeral.”

They’re pleased to have found a beautiful dead thing, to indulge their tender hearts and flare for drama. They are composing a dirge—I hear their little voices—while I have my coffee before heading out to the estuary—likely moth’s send-off will be on water.

Unfortunately for me, it’s rainy, but I brought a rain poncho. You never know when you’ll have to attend (officiate, even) an outdoor insect funeral. 

I’m in Duluth for an over-(last)night—staying by the St Louis River that flows into the Great Lake Superior. The girlettes found the dead moth yesterday, as big as their head. I showed it to the motel owner, who recoiled. “Ew, no!”

Looked it up instead. It’s a white-lined sphinx moth—pink inner wings clinch id—so big it can be mistaken for a hummingbird I read. Looks exotic, but is common. 

The girlettes object. “There’s only one!”

Quite right. And it is no more. Its passing shall be noted with grief and appreciation. 

Bring on the funeral rites. Alas, too wet for a flaming barge. 

What’s on your nightstand?

 ….Michael asked on OCA today, What’s on your nightstand?

My nightstand is predictable—toys and books.

Discussing whether a doll can be a cyborg…

The Long Walk is the book Peter Weir made into his last movie, The Way Back. A good read, though likely fictional—about a group of escapees from a Soviet prison camp during WWII walking thousands of miles to British India. If the author didn’t actually do it, as he wrote in an afterward there are many people who did and do do such feats of survival.

Apotropaic Knight Squirrel, most powerful protector

This Knight Squirrel came together easily—a sign that it was ready and that it is the correct apotropaic for me to make for the person (the customer I mentioned in the previous post.)

Its helmet is also a face shield, and it can carry the sword or not (or use it to spear acorns). Also it can hop in and out of its cup. I wanted it to be flexible.

I don’t know the person well, and I hope but don’t know if this will fit them. All I know is, it is the true thing I have in me to offer.

(Thank you, Linda Sue for the tiny salt shaker that provided the lid.)

"You're in the right place."

I walked into the reception for Douglas Ewart wearing my musical headdress. The gallery director saw me right away and said,
"You're in the right place."

When Douglas saw me, he stood still, and quiet. He was looking closely at each element on the frame.
His rare ability to quiet, to pay attention, is a kind of generosity.

I'd like to be more like that with people. I tend to get hyper in social settings.

Btw, my favorite element on the headdress is a rolling wheel for sealing ravioli— like a pizza cutter —with a crimping edge--the 2nd uncolored clanger from the left. I'd picked it up in the thrift store and wondered what it was--a customer told me. Oh, bink points out it can also seal pie crust. 
________________

II. “Talk Werk”

BELOW: Donated like this. I might bring this dictionary home.

BELOW: Books, side-by-side. Henry VIII's wives disappear when you pour hot water in the mug.
(Some volunteer ladies in housewares are indiscriminate in their label placement--smack in the middle of a decoration on a plate, for instance.)

III. Bionic Leg!

I'd stopped on my bike and picked up a run-over action doll--its legs were intact and I thought one of the girlettes might like to swap a leg.
"Me! Me!" said Puck.

Ta-da!

(Heating the area with boiling water or a hand hair-drier softens plastic enough to pull/push a leg with a joint in and out.)

IV. Apotropaics to Be Made

BELOW: Em came in on her birthday last week, and I gave her this broken porcelain doll I'd saved for her. (I'd dropped it and the face broke. We get a lot of these modern, fake-antique dolls.
"They are not alive", says PennyCooper.)

E has an uncanny way of looking like other things.

 

She has not worked on the red board for our collab and isn't actually sure where it is. I'm giving her the clown board, but maybe this project is at its end.
She's really brilliant at of-the-moment creation though. I should/could show up at her place and say,
Let's make alley protectors!

I want to make an apotropaic for a particular person. A regular customer texted me--a month ago we'd exchanged numbers re some books--apologizing for the delay. He'd taken a month off due to "some deaths in my immediate community."
I'm pretty sure he's talking about the mass shooting at a DIY punk/queer community / performance space a mile from the store.

I was thinking what to do...  

Like I did for Linda Sue's son who was shot by police, I decided I'll make an apotropaic for this customer.

What's the etiquette for expressing care toward witnesses and victims of hate crimes anyway?

Why is this a real live question in my life? Our lives.

Wrong place, wrong time?
Right place, wrong time?

Right place, right time?

Reclamation II: "Would you like something to read?"

Books from my earlier life have always shown up at my workplace, but only recently have I started to buy any of them for myself.
Over the years, I'd gotten rid of all but a short shelfful of my books. Now, at sixty-two, I seem to have started some reclamation project of my past, including framing one of my oldest family photos (post below this one).

BELOW: My mother cooked out of the original Betty Crocker cook book in a three-ring binder. This is a bound reprint.
I've never actually read archy and mehitabel, but I remember staring at the illustrations in my parent's paperback--they're by George Herriman, who drew Krazy Kat.

Every year, in the evenings leading up to Christmas, my parents read aloud Charles Dickens's Christmas Carol--a little red leather edition. If it was on TV, we'd watch the 1951 movie with Alastair Sim as Scrooge. (Found it on utube.)
On Christmas Eve, we'd read The Night Before Christmas illustrated by Arthur Rackham (above).
On Christmas Day, we listened to the LP record of Dylan Thomas reading A Child's Christmas in Wales.
"Would you like something to read?"

The three books were my parents' choices. I discovered C. W. Anderson's horse books--including the Blaze series––on my own. I mostly got them from the library, and I drew horses, copying Anderson's style.
I was so excited to own a copy of Heads Up, Heels Down, his instruction book on horse riding--hardback with an orange dust jacket. I think it was a birthday present--maybe for my tenth birthday?

I've ordered a couple other books from my past off ebay, inexpensively. The cheapest copy of Heads Up, however, is around $25 with tax and shipping. I don't want to pay that much. I'm not trying to rebuild my entire bookshelf.
Also, I prefer the serendipity of thrift store donations.
__________________________

These books, below, for instance, I never would have searched out, except maybe Star Trek 2 from my teen years. It's one of a series of novelizations (short-storyzations) of the show's episodes, by James Blish. I didn't care about the stories--I was delirious to have this cover photo of Spock and Kirk, in particular--back when you couldn't easily find photos of old TV shows.

ABOVE:
The Country Between Us I discovered in my early forties, when I rewrote a geography book for middle-schoolers about El Salvador (contract work I did for a decade for a children's book publisher). I was going to quote a famous line from the poem "The Visitor", but it's too grim. You may know it already. (NYT review of Forché's book.)

Sixteen Pleasures (1994) and Towers of Trebizond (1956) are from the first, happy years of knowing Oliver, in my early thirties, before we started an affair. They are, however, both about affairs....

I'd recommended Sixteen Pleasures to him, ostensibly because it's about book restoration after the Florence flood.
And he gave me a copy of Towers before a trip I took to Turkey, which is about traveling there. I brought it along.

Towers's opening line:
"'Take my camel, dear', said my Aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass."
Aunt Dot's full name is Dorothea ffoulkes-Corbett. The book's like that, and so was Oliver.
Hm, looking at the Wikipedia article makes me want to read that again--I haven't in twenty-five years...

It's difficult to call up feelings of happiness, or even love, toward people when things have ended very badly--for me, that means Oliver and my mother.
I remember that I did love them very much, but I rarely feel anything pleasant when I think of them now.
These books I've collected help in both cases.

Whereas it's easy to call up a pleasant and fond feeling for my father, whom I didn't love deeply. My worst years with my father were all before I was twenty-five. After that we had a cordial relationship, with some moments of true connection.

I graduated from college in 1996 with a BA in Classics, when I was thirty-five. (I thought I was sooooo old.) In celebration, my father gave me an antique, leather-bound book in Greek (I don't remember what it was), and a check for a hundred dollars. I no longer have the note he'd written to go along with the gifts, but I remember what he'd written:
"There are few times in life when a person can be genuinely proud. This is one of them."
________________

Reclamation, I. (Was there always a dog? Of course there was always a dog.)

Old photos are donated to the thrift store with some frequency--often loose, sometimes in albums, and sometimes they've been professionally framed in colors suited to old sepia.
I bought such a framed one, took out the old photo (saved it), and framed the photo of my mother's father as a 12-year-old boy. I've had it since my mother died twenty years ago.

Below, far right: my grandfather, Lytton Somer Davis, Kentucky, c. 1912.
Handling the photo, I noticed THE DOG lying at the family's feet. |
Of course it has always been there--had I never seen it? Or just forgotten?
I've posted this before, but here I brightened the photo so the dog is more visible:

My grandfather always stayed aloof when my mother took my sister and me to visit her parents in Missouri. He did tell stories about growing up though, and the memory came to me that he'd said all their dogs were named Ticky Pete.

Here's my wall with the sepia photo (bottom row).
Auntie Vi drew the charcoal picture of a bridge in winter, far right. I've walked across that bridge often--it's in a little park near her house.

I will keep an eye out for more good frames--I want to add some favorite photos from my father's family too.

Not sure I want photos of my immediate family on display, though--they mostly call up pangs of sadness...
Auntie Vi never had family photos up, said they made her too sad. Now I understand. But the generation further back, I don't have close memories.
With everyone gone, the photos remind me of where I come from, the framework of who I am.

Dolly Parton delivers!

Had I mentioned that I recently dreamed I was talking with Dolly Parton? I don’t remember what, but I woke up with a good feeling mood that has stuck around. 

This afternoon while the vegetarian posole simmered in the crockpot, I popped over to the food shelf a couple blocks away, hoping the line would be shorter mid-afternoon. It was—I only waited 5 minutes. The shelves are picked over toward the end of their day, but I was mostly hoping for meat to cook for my coworkers—a lot of them big carnivores. Bingo! Ground beef AND chorizo. Vegetarian no more.

I’m gonna need a bigger crockpot.

BEST OF ALL: Dolly Parton’s sweet cornbread mix!!! I will make it to share, but I’m keeping the box.😊

 

 UPDATE:

I made cheesy cornbread for work this morning, with the Dolly Parton's Cornbread Mix I got at the food shelf. I had all the ingredients but an egg, so I substituted an overripe peach, also from the food shelf.
It was really good! I'd add a peach on purpose next time.
I'd also cut back on the cheese--a cup and a half is a lot.

Here's the recipe from the back of the box.
Dolly's Favorite Jalapeno Cornbread

1 16-oz. pkg Dolly Parton's Cornbread Mix (or make your own, cheaper = corn meal, flour, sugar, & baking powder)

1 1/2 cups shredded cheddar cheese (I'd half that next time)

1 medium jalapeno, seeded & chopped (I used Trader Joe's bottled Sweet & Hot jalapenos)

1 cup milk
1 egg (I substituted a mushy peach)
1/3 cup melted butter

Stir the mix, cheese, and jalapenos together.
Stir in wet ingredients.
Pour into 8 x 8 or 9 x 9 pan or skillet, or muffin tins.
Bake at 375º for 20–30 minutes.

In the Swing of the Season

It’s peak harvest time, and I had a bounteous day yesterday, Labor Day, starting with meeting bink & Maura at my newly discovered coffee provider--the "refuel" (gas 'n' stuff) station with a fancy coffee maker that grinds beans per cup. If you bring your own cup, any size, it's only 99¢. Turns out, lots of other people go there just for the coffee too.

We sat at their picnic table. The man and dog mural advertises the chiropractor next door.

It was bink & Maura's dog Astro's tenth birthday too. Here he is several years ago, below, with the girlettes, who are celebrating with ice cream.

I. Presenting. (Is that you, Auntie Vi?)

This week will be the two-year anniversary of Auntie Vi's death on Sept. 10, 2021. She was ninety-six years old, like the queen and Tony Bennett.

BELOW: Vi on her last birthday, a month before she died, with her neighbor Lance:

Vi grew up poor during the Great Depression. Abundance was her life philosophy. (From Latin abundantia, "fullness, plenty".)
"Not for me," she always said, "but to share."

Last year sometime between Auntie Vi's birthday (Aug. 7) and her death day, I'd found a white cotton shower curtain, exactly the kind I'd wanted for my new apartment, neatly folded on top of a trash can. I felt like it came from her--it was just  the sort of thing she'd have given me as a housewarming present if she'd been alive.

A year later, biking down a nearby alley after coffee yesterday, I found a crock pot, well cared for, complete with instructions and pot liners. I'd been thinking it'd be handy to have one for cooking meals for my coworkers--to slow-cook meats and to save me heating up my apartment.
(I serve the food at work in a crock pot, but I didn't have one at home.)

Again, it was exactly what Auntie Vi would have sent me a check to buy. She loved cooking and sharing food. After her husband died when she was seventy, she'd worked part-time in a kitchen/cooking store for a while.

And that's my blue Croc ^ next to the crock pot set out by the trash cans for the taking.  There was lots of good stuff in the alleys yesterday--a big house/apt-moving time--from flat screen TVs to a sectional sofa to door hardware (knobs and locks). I took some of the last, to be spaceships for dolls.

II. Swinging

Working on the collage board at home all afternoon, I ended up with many unused bits of paper, some of which became their own pieces. At the end of the day, I'd put together four. Not all equal.

My favorite, below: "Penelope I, Pont. Max." [pontifex maximus: Latin for "supreme pontiff", from pontifex, meaning any high or chief priest--or ruler, like Julius Caesar]

In real life, Penny Cooper wouldn't even consider being pope.
"It's just a funny picture, it has nothing to do with dolls."
But if she were to be pope, she says she would "give away all the money like it says in the guidebook, and make sure the office supplies are top notch. This one broke."
She says the Vatican should shop at Phil's Stationery, as featured on Orange Crate Art.

(The hand-embroidered postcard was donated to the store. Originally it showed Pius XII, the pope before John 23.)

I just now updated the photo of the clown collage I'd posted yesterday with the most recent iteration, now with acrobats. The woman and child acrobats came from the same photo as the man (below, right)  I'd put in the Dessert Delivery collage.

I like the idea of all three boards having some connection. I'll bike the clown board over to Emmler Bemmler later this week, when the weather cools off, for her to work on again. I'm not sure if she's started the third board. If not, I'll take it and get it going.
_________________________

III. Humming

Right now, sitting outside my door this morning, I can hear the humming of cicadas and my neighbor's a/c. Marz came by with scones earlier, and she's sitting here too, reading Blood, Sweat, and Chrome, a book about the making of Mad Max: Fury Road a favorite movie, and its director, George Miller.

I was going to go into work today, but when Marz showed up, I decided to take a holiday. This Labor Day fell on my Monday off (because I worked Saturday), so it didn't make a three-day weekend. As a part-timer, I don’t get paid for holidays, but I can make up the hours on another day. 

It's going to be another hot day (92ºF/ 33ºC), but a cool front this evening is supposed to drop tomorrow's temps by 25 degrees. I love this time of year--even the heat is bearable, because temporary.

I have lots of veg from the farmers market to cook up--I'll try out my newly found crock pot. I'm going to make a vegetarian posole for the first time. Suggested by friend K. (thanks!), posole is a Mexican soup/stew made with hominy––I can buy some at the nearby Mexican grocery––and guajillo chilis, which I happen to have. I'd bought them to make hot chocolate, but I almost never drink hot chocolate.
This recipe uses pinto beans instead of the usual pork or chicken.

Have a good week ahead, everybody!

[comments off, e-mail welcome]

Never give up...

Never give up your adventure. 

Unless, you know, you want to.

For Marz. (But not a representation of Marz. More like Don Quixote and  Ignatius Reilly, if they were prehistoric ancestors of sloths.)

Col-LABOR-ative DAY

I’m working on the Circus collage, cutting and glueing paper in the shade outside my door on this hot Labor Day. (It’s 92 and going up, but low humidity.)

I hadn’t been thinking “circus” when I started this, so I was temporarily thrown when E gave the figure a clown face. Now I’m getting into it.

At the end of the day, it looked like this:

“the fine lines between child and adult”: Musical Headdress, in process

Sunday morning coffee with bink often involves playing with attaching things to other things. 

Today—making a musical headdress for me to wear to the art opening of regular thrift-store customer, and famous musician and maker, Douglas Ewart. 

In process, below. The rainbow slats are xylophone keys from a cheap kids’ toy, the strikers (clangers?) are household objects—a plug, a tea strainer, kitchen tongs, etc. The wire frame is for holding canning jars:

Douglas is a musician first, I think, but as a non-musical person, I love best the things he makes, including made-up musical instruments, such as a contraption with a hamster wheel—you can see it and others here: www.douglasewart.com/artwork

I love love love what Douglas says (link in his name up top):

“I want to magnify the links and the overlaps of play and work, laughter and seriousness, esoteric and generic, ethereal and earthy, mythology and pragmatism, gravity and levitation, meditation and concentration, the fine lines between child and adult, imagination and realism.”

I’d say something similar. 

———

[comments off; email welcome ]

This Is Our City

It took me, a non-driver, a year to discover that this nearby gas station, 36 LYN refuel station, has the best coffee—from a machine that grinds the beans per cup. A neighbor told me. The local owner chooses to carry food from small local businesses—the beans are roasted by Peace Coffee, who deliver by bike. (How they get raw beans from coffee growers, I don’t know.) 

The owner is a Black man, Lonnie McQuirter.  In the turbulent days after the police murdered George Floyd in 2020, when unmarked pickup trucks (some agitators were white supremacists) were cruising the neighborhood, neighbors sat out all night to protect the gas station. And this mural went up on its side, where I’m sitting at a picnic table before going to work: 

THIS IS OUR CITY.

Someone could have used the ominous warning from British TV show The League of Gentlemen—though it’s not well-known here: “This is a local shop for local people.”