Sixteen Candles: Life Is Open Source

This, my blog, l'astronave, turned sixteen two days ago, on October 7, 2023. I was working at the thrift store that day, setting up displays, and I put off till today doing something I've wanted to do--to go through each October and post a glimpse of that year's birthday time.
(The actual day each year is tagged "blog birthday".)

For this year, working on collages with a circus theme with Em, I came again across photo, German "Circus Workers" by August Sander (c. 1930), below.

I'd always liked it, but now I relate to it--how everyone looks tired and worn, maybe distrustful (of onlookers)... but they are the ones who make magic.
We are in no way coordinated enough to do acrobatics (nowhere near!), but this group reminds me of me and the people I work with (and not just coworkers).

Art Inst of Chicago article "August Sander Takes His Camera to the Circus"
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And so, review of Blog Birthdays, in descending order...

BELOW: Blog turns 15 one year ago, October 2022.

Re-reading now this 10/9/22 blog post--"Goodness Adequate to Actual Events"--I'm impressed and I stand with my response (in the form of a question) to the huge events of the past couple years: from COVID (2020–), to the police murder of George Floyd in my city (May 2020), to climate breakdown heating up, to the January 6 attack on the US Capitol. And that question is:

"How should I, an ordinary person, think and
act well in extraordinary times?"

I am still living deep in that question. A helpful perspective came along this year, the reminder that I am not the savior. It is weirdly invigorating:
"Oh, if I am not expected to FIX this mess, I feel free to try to do what I can do."

And what can I do? Many things. Including recreate famous paintings with toys, which I did this fall.
Play may seem irrelevant, but PLAY IS PRACTICE.
Play knows and shows (like the GTA video, below at 2016) that
you can go into the operating system and change it.

Also, bink & Maura get married 10/1/22! Legal after twenty-three years. :)

BELOW: Blog is 14, October 2021

So much going on, eh? So much that my sixtieth birthday in March doesn't get much attention, what with everything still masked and locked down for Covid.

One of the things spinning round in the larger world is gender and pronouns. This is one of my favorite photoshops I've ever made. Maybe they have but I've never seen anyone else make this joke, surprisingly.

"Victoria, We/Us/Ours"

And here I am wearing a mask, below, with EVE from WALL-E behind me. (No, that's a mammogram machine.) October 4, 2021.

BELOW: Blog turns 13, October 2020

"With what kind of human beings do we want to surround ourselves for our own flourishing?
If we want to live among equals with strength and candor, among people with, as Euripedes says, 'free and generous eyes,' the understanding of trauma can form a solid basis for a science of human rights."
-- Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character, Jonathan Shay (1994)

I should post a photo with COVID mask or George Floyd Square, but this, perhaps, is enduringly me--donated stuff I've put on the wall above my work space at the thrift store where I do BOOK's and Toys--posted here October 24, 2020:

BELOW: A dozen years of l'astronave, October 2019
Many people have left the blogosphere for the shiny lights of social media. Not me.

 Do you want toast?

BELOW: "Now we are eleven", Oct 2018
There aren't eleven Orphan Red Dolls yet (there will be), but Penny Cooper has arrived! Here she is greeting my sister through the glass of Penny's Café downtown, where we're going for tea.

(Also, it's my first year as BOOK LADY at the thrift store.)

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BELOW: 10th blog birthday, October 2017
THE MOST IMPORTANT BEST THING:
Red Hair Doll arrives the summer I'm working at Goodwill-- around the same time my father dies, aged 86 (important, but not a "best" thing).
 I'd no idea she was originally designed to be a Madeline.
"I AM NOT," she says. "I AM ME!"
Quite right.
Here, she is doing acrobatics with bink in October:

BELOW: 9th blog birthday Oct 2016
I am immersed in FANDOM--writing a book for teens about creative stuff fans do. This fun fanvid by Olanov mashing up (violent) videogame Grand Theft Auto + "Happy"  opened up my brain:

YOU CAN GET INSIDE THE MACHINE
& REMAKE THE STORY.

(In case it's not obvious--the characters in GTA do not dance--the creator manipulated them.)
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BELOW: 8th blog birthday, Oct 2015
Looking at Starsky & Hutch (Hutch is from Duluth); stuffed animals; Duluth... Stuffed animals in Duluth--here, Black Bear over Chester Creek

BELOW: 7th birthday Oct. 7, 2014
I started working with people w/ dementia on 10/7, but what I'm most pleased to rediscover, looking back, is my mashup of Gilgamesh + "Amok Time" (Star Trek) just beforehand.
I'd totally forgotten it, and it's pretty much genius, if I do say so myself.
Click and judge for yourself: "Gilgamesh/Enkidu meet Kirk/Spock"...

BELOW: 6th birthday, October 2013
I turn in ms for what is wholly my first book for teens (geography books were rewrites of a series)--history of the toilet!
Jump for joy--with Marz at an apple orchard--photo by bink:

BELOW: 5th Blog birthday, 2012
Still barely blogging... Injured my arm's Dequervain's tendon working as a nursing aide...

But made some good photo essays, including, below, my neighborhood's voters in the 2012 election. Minnesota voted for marriage equality, as bink and many others had worked for.

 
BELOW: 4th birthday, October 2011
Barely blogging: Marz (below, left) has moved here after walking Camino, summer 2011--below, in Spain with our ages in kilometers:

BELOW: 3rd birthday, October 2010
This fall, I'm helping bink with her "DVD to Art" project to counteract the Catholic archbishop's opposition to marriage equality (same-sex marriage).
Jumping for joy at the opening--bink on the left:

BELOW: 2nd birthday, October 2009
Write/editing geography books for middle-schoolers on contract. This fall writing about Finland, I bought a Marrimekko shower curtain.

BELOW: 1st birthday, October 7, 2008

Making my 9-min movie Orestes and the Fly this fall:

"As I prepare to shoot the Death of Agamemnon
[below: me trying out bathtub for death scene; bink as Fly, with Erica],
I see that I have been, honestly, a bit overwhelmed with all that moviemaking requires. It's a lot!
I wanted to gobble it all up at once, it's so good. "

BELOW: First Post of Year Zero: Sunday, October 7, 2007

"Sunday Morning"

"One of the things I have missed most about blogging (it's been two years) is having a place to keep found words--things I overhear, for instance, or bits and pieces of writing--like a nest where magpies keep objects that catch their fancy."

Did I not have a camera? Maybe not. Certainly I didn't have a cell/smart phone (and wouldn't for another dozen years)-- did they even have digital cameras in them in 2007?

At any rate, I didn't post any of my own photos until December that year. My first photo was of one of the cards I made to send for the holidays: