Prepare without Panic

I only have one pine tree available at the moment—half a portal—but I will start to… 

Prepare without Panic.
That was one of the invitations extended by Fall Equinox.

Thinking about how much of my life has been at the thrift store (a lot!), I want to Be Prepared for what I might face when I quit my job without a new one lined up. 

Maybe get some plans in place, 
start to think realistically about what's ahead —after I step through two pine trees in Montana next week. What do I want to invite into my life,  or to come along with me?

Yeah, what?

With leaving the thrift store, I’m facing big changes in stuff that’s on automatic pilot right now:
physical activity, 
social engagement, 
meaningful work, 
scheduled time.

I say changes, but unless I replace them, some will be losses.

I don't want to rush to get a new job, but I better get some schedule in place or I'm liable to drift into listlessness.
That's the main thing to prepare for, guard for.

I'm going to muse out loud here, and see what I come up with...

Oh, that is a very good idea, Fresca!
--says Encouraging Squirrel, below, from an exhibit of State Fair crop art on display now at the Art Museum 

I. Plan new built-in exercise

I'm not entirely unhappy about this change: 
People are always getting hurt at work--repetitive stress injuries, bad backs, plantar fasciitis, etc.-- and I've been worried that I might hurt myself again. 

The huge plus was that it was automatic.
I wasn't making myself "exercise"--I was biking to work, and doing light physical labor 20 hours/week.
That's a lot to replace.

 I haven't checked my Medicare plan--I think I get free senior classes at a gym, and that would be great!

OK. I will... 

1. Check out Medicare gym membership.

2. Bike to the lake every day, and walk around the bird sanctuary there.

I've been wanting to sketch there too, so do that too?

BELOW: Sketch of plant tendrils from a guided walk in the bird sanctuary this summer. 
I love tendrils--they're so curly beautiful.
They also look like habits--so deceptively little and soft, but binding like wire.

_______________________
Plan to Replace Casual Socializing

I'm not losing close friends. My coworkers are  are pretty neat people, and I enjoy them. But they come and they go. Connections don't build-up. Or, they don't translate to out-of-work friendship. 
  
Was it James Baldwin who said you're not a friend if you haven't been in the other person's kitchen?

Several coworkers have come to my place--for my birthday party or bonfire; 
but only one coworker has had me to her house in recent years--volunteer Abby.
Even then, I wouldn't say we’re close friends. More like friendly chums.

Chum. Where's that word from?

chum (n) "friend, intimate companion," 
1680s, originally university slang for "roommate," an alternative spelling of cham,  short for chamber(mate); 
the formation is typical of the late-17c. fondness for clipped words.

People in the late-1600s were fond of clipped words?
Isn't that curious... Ever since interacting with AI, I've noticed how much language is repeated patterns.

Deep friendship is when you go beyond expected exchanges of speech. Most of Abby and my exchanges are rote--a lot about her home repair projects and what her grown family is doing.
Still, she's supportive in practical ways--four years ago, she helped me move. She gives me rides, and she hung my curtain rods.

Anyway, it's not friendship I'm losing but casual connection, joshing around with coworkers, chit-chatting with customers.
This is a big loss.
If I don't get a job right away, I need to volunteer or be part of some groups.

I could go back to the needlework group, though I'm not doing any needlework since I stopped making God's eyes...
But, I do want to start working on my mending pile.
Let's see--the first Satruday of the month is October 3--my first day unemployed, and the day before I leave for Montana.
OK!

I will do that:
3. Attend Needlework Group, Sat. Oct. 3
____________________

And... I just now stopped blogging and wrote an inquiry to the contact person for an OA group that meets in this neighborhood on Mondays. (OA = Overeaters Anonymous--a twelve-step group.)
I went to OA twenty years ago.
 It depends on who shows up as to how any 12-step feels. It can feel ickily Christian'y...

I'm always interested in getting in better, more loving relationship with food, and away from the grippy tendrils of processed foods---
But I wouldn't try OA again except I read in Michael Pollan's book 
How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence (2018) 
that Bill W, the founder of AA, didn't model the 12 steps on Christianity --
he modeled it on his experience of liberation on psychedelics:

"Bill W credited his own sobriety to a mystical experience he had on belladonna, a plant-derived alkaloid with hallucinogenic properties that was administered to him at Towns Hospital in Manhattan in 1934. 

Few members of AA realize that the whole idea of a spiritual awakening leading one to surrender to a ‘higher power’—a cornerstone of Alcoholics Anonymous—can be traced to a psychedelic drug trip.” 

That angle intrigues me--if I approach it that way, I might really like it.
I'll try this Monday, if I hear back from the coordinator. (Or even if not--anyone can go.)

UPDATE: The contact person wrote a nice note back—“you’re welcome wherever you are on your journey.”

Formulaic (language pattern), but not meaningless— it translates to a sort of spiritual/ new agey vibe that I’m fine with. Subtext: “we are not a judgey 12-step group”. (Some are.)

So… 4. Check out OA tomorrow  

More to come…

"The mountains are calling..."

          
        Jesus considers the angles...

 

_________________________

"The mountains are calling and I must go."

––That's John Muir's famous quote, but I found another one of his that fits me better:

"Between every two pine trees there is a door 
leading to a new way of life." 

I'm not drawn to mountains, but I am to trees, and water.
And I am starting a new way of life, post-thrift store.
I want a to step through a door...

Yesterday, feeling that, and also feeling slightly panicky about quitting my job
--(though not doubting my decision, not at all)--
I decided to plan a BIG adventure:
Next Sunday, two days after my last shift, I'm taking the Amtrak  (24 hours) to Whitefish, Montana, near Glacier National Park.

Pine trees and water, right there.

I'm bringing girlettes and bears (Grizzly protection!), and I'd like to do toy photography.
I've been so low all summer, I haven't done any.
If I get on the ball, maybe there's even a chance of a 2027 girlette calendar.

We will take our new cart, they said.
 (I got them a Sicilian cart this week.)
It's 1,180 miles/1,900 km, I told them, and they changed their mind: 

The horse is too small for such distances. We will ride with you.

I'm excited to take the train.
The best part of the trip, I expect -- looking out the window, thinking nothing.

A lot of tourist services close at the end of September, including free shuttle buses to Glacier. Without a car--and I can't rent one because I don't drive-- I'm not sure I'll get to the park. 

But I could rent a bike for $30/day-- (or maybe bring mine on  the train?) --and there's a great trail system around Whitefish--not deep IN the mountains, but right nearby.
They are not hiding.

And honestly, I'm not eager to go on long hikes.
I'd be happy putzing around town, and I always like being in my hotel.
My hotel--walking distance from the Amtrak station--has a swimming pool outside, and my room has a kitchenette. I look forward to going to the grocery store. What will they have?

Wrapping It Up at the Thrift

I spent yesterday sorting the last of Mary Taylor's doll stuff that came to the store after she died. I'd felt sad handling it in June and had set aside about half. I don't want to leave it to someone else, and I am not so sad now either.

Above: Mary had a LOT of Midges (Barbie's freckled friend).

An article Mary had tucked in with them explained that Midge is interesting than Barbie because she has many different faces.

Huh... I looked her up, and Midge's full name is Midge Hadley Sherwood--and Barbie's full name is Barbara Millicent Roberts, named after creator Ruth Handler's daughter.

I never shared Mary's interest in fashion dolls--Midge was just one kind she collected. I don't want any of these, but I enjoyed dressing them up.

Volunteer Terry who only started this summer begged me to stay. "I will bring you a Diet Coke every day!"
I like her a lot--she's a little older than me, a retired nurse who used to work at one of the big thrifts, so unlike most volunteers, she knows what she'd doing. And she's fun.

And Manageress said, Please come volunteer?

So... maybe I will volunteer on Saturdays, when Big Boss is never there.

Yesterday it became so clear to me why I could never keep the thrift store to 20-hours a week in my mind:
It's been my world.

I know and care about almost every aspect of the store. It is so woven through me, it would never stay within a timeframe.

Yesterday, besides sorting Mary's dolls...

 I called the city to report human waste (shit) in the alley.

 I practiced saying the Lord's Prayer in Spanish with the cashier of Mexican descent, who is teaching me.

In the kitchen, I was humming a hymn without knowing it (customers have pointed out that I'm always singing or humming, but I'm not aware of it)---and my Kenyan coworker joined in.

I talked to everyone about my trip coming up. 

And Big Boss came by and in a very remotelly said we'd have pizza on my last day. No good wishes or anything.
And I thought--that too has been wound around my brain---his disrespect.
 I don't think it's personal. I mean, I don't think the guy likes me much, but I think it's his management style--he's big on Obedience.
I would be willing to obey if I thought he had good ideas, but he doesn't. He doesn't have ideas, much less a vision.

Anyway, I realized I haven't failed at all--I'd been wondering if I could have positioned myself differently within myself to do/feel better.
I don't think so.
If I didn't care at all, maybe, but what's the point if you don't care?

No, it was a brilliant place to be for a long time, and now it's not.

I also saw that I've become rather complacent.
I know everything there so very well --half the customers by name, where everything is, how we do this-and-that... History and practice...

I am scared to be a beginner again at something, but I think it'll be good to pick myself up, dust myself off, and start all over again.

Step through the two pine trees!

"Adventure is out there!"

                                      "We're world famous"
I was feeling a little sad that I haven't photographed the Girlettes enough this year to make a calendar for next year. 
But it's not too late. Just gotta take us on some adventures.

"Adventure is out there!" 
John sent me that quote from one of his favorite movies, Up. 
And GZ wrote, "Time to be brave and step out...."

At work, Mr Mushroom, who seemed grumpy that I'm quitting (I think half the people I work with want to quit too--
Cassandra said, "I might be following you")--
Mr Mushroom said, 
"Are you going to take a trip? That's what I'd do."

So... Yes! I want to have an adventure, when I'm done with my job in ten days. Ten Days...
I am surprised how liberating it feels, to quit.
I thought I'd been pretty happy at the thrift, and I was. 
Looking back, I see a field of gold.

But it was also SQUASHING, to always be holding back the frustration at the small-mindedness holding the place down.

Took a lot of invisible energy,
 like resisting a sucking tide. 

I went to bed hot with anger at Big Boss, woke up, and thought:
Snap out of it:
Design your own Life Adventure!

So---look--even before I quit, on a day off,
 I'm going to do something easy––easy, but I've never done it–– 
Bike to St Paul on the Mississippi River trail.

It's 22 mi/34 km, round-trip... 
If my knee starts to hurt, I can easily cut it short:
City buses all have bike racks, so I could bus back home.

My knee is pretty good, but I just don't know...
Maybe I'll aim--for the first outing-- to bike to the turning point where the river loops toward the east at Fort Snelling State Park. 
The light-rail train stops there, and I could take it halfway home, if I need.

This is the river path in downtown Minneapolis--
I've been here many times, but I've never biked beyond it.

This morning my adventure is going to Mass with visitors Tracy & Chris,
 and then out to a Columbian cafe for mango pancakes.

Fall Equinox: Love Letters

 Happy Fall Equinox!
Time to rebalance.
                           Here we go...

 So...I gave two-weeks notice to the thrift store.

…Not in Frustration but in Completion!
Yay! A blessed release, and timely.

I've always loved fall best, but never looked into ancient traditions around equinox--Catholic practice doesn't incorporate it --but of course pagans do. 

I looked it up. *
Called Mabon, fall equinox invites us...

To Release What No Longer Serves

"Just as trees in autumn release leaves to conserve energy, 
we are allowed to release what drains us."

That'd be my draining workplace alright.

I'd started at the thrift store in February 2018, almost nine years ago.
After a honeymoon period, when I was caught in the spell of Big Boss's storytelling, I started seeing how management undercuts people, doesn't support us--not even with basic supplies (Scotch tape!) we need to do our work, 
much less with good guidance and leadership.

Most good workers leave, if they can, so we never can get a good crew who work well together.
Some of the people who stay--usually because they're trapped for some reason --get promoted to manager positions, given no training, and let loose upon us.

One suffers with such bad anxiety, he told me he can't tolerate change--not a quality you want in a manager. 
He doesn't want to be a manager, but he needs the money.
But now he is one--and, not surpringly, a bad one. 

However... UNTIL RECENTLY, 
there was always so much else good and interesting going on, 
for me, the Learning I was doing outweighed the frustration with poor management.

Then, last week, a young coworker quit. 
He'd gone through the same cycle I and many others had:
being smitten, charmed by Big Boss, thinking he (the worker) would learn and grow under BB's tutelage, and believing that he could help the store and the people there.

But instead, he was consistently undercut by management, dismissed, discouraged... even told by he was  making other workers feel bad by working too hard.
(What the actual fuck???)

Last week this young man came up to me and said, 
"I think management doesn't want the best for us."

I could only agree, and then encourage him to "find a shield, so you can do good work here for yourself."
I even showed him a picture of a kind of shield I envision myself--Bubble Soccer balls!

"I don't think this is working for me," he said.
And he quit the next day.

I congratulated him, and I told other people, 
"If I were thirty years younger, I'd quit too."

And then I thought, that's ridiculous! I don't have to stay where I'm unhappy just because I'm old. It's a big world, there'll be something else. The store only pays me minimum wage, I couldn't do worse.

To Create a Gratitude Altar

I am hugely, hugely grateful for my time at the thrift.
I've never worked somewhere that transformed me so much. 

Looking back, I feel stunned, awed at what a POWERFUL era this has been. In history, not just my personal life, of course--George Floyd, Covid, ICE--
and at the store, the rise of fentanyl, drug dealing and crimes outside our door, including an assassination in the parking lot.

And personally, I have changed--for the better. Which astonishes me.

A tiny example that's actually huge:

I've mentioned that until recently, I've always fretted and fumed about shoplifting. 
Another thing that drove me mad was parents leaving their little kids unattended in the TOYS.
Really little kids, like three years old.

Of course the kids tear the toys up--literally. They tear open the bags of toys I put together,  leave them all over, or take ones away.

Years ago, I yelled at some little kids for making a mess.
They looked shocked, of course, and I immediately regretted it, felt terrible, tried to take it back.
"No, no, it's okay, I'm sorry--let's pick these up..."

After that I tried to change my attitude.
I would remind myself to think:
Look at those cute kids having fun. Isn't that nice?

Because, you know, the kids were often the poor kids of immigrant parents from Latin America.
And these parents--I see this at the food shelf too--acted as if other people love children and will watch out for other people's children!

Insane!

THIS IS AMERICA, I want to tell them. 
We don't take care of one another.
(Under attack, like from a virus or a federal occupation, we might. Temporarily. But it's not our culture, it's really not.
Here are the rules in the US: 
You're on your own, and your kids are not my problem.)

My plan to look kindly on the kids in TOYS worked. 
I gradually started to relax and enjoy the kids playing.
I would sometimes  sigh at the mess but I’d clean up after them pretty happily.

A couple weeks ago, a little boy was sitting on the floor with a big bag holding parts of a Hot Wheels gas station. 
He couldn't open the bag’s zip, so I approached him to help.

He looked up at me, uncertain, and I said,
"Here, I'll open it for you."

[Small regret: I never have learned Spanish. But kids are usually bilingual, pretty quickly.]

I left the kid pulling the parts out. When I went by later, he had left the gas station all set up in a corner. 

I felt a pang of sweetness.

Only that night, as I was falling asleep, did I see what happened:
 I had spontaneously--without making myself--helped a kid make a happy mess:

I HAD BECOME A BETTER PERSON.

Hallelujah. I wasn't sure that was even possible.

My Work Here Is Done.
______________________

To Cook Harvest Foods

Tracy and Chris are in town, and tonight after dinner here--(including spaghetti sauce made with harvest veg from the farmers market)-- we're going to Maura's reception for her calligraphy show.

 I baked my Sicilian grandmother's Monreale biscotti [recipe] for the reception. This is a Harvest of Love and Abundance.

I don't know what I'm going to do in my life next, and that scares and excites me. I do need to earn some money.  I'm waiting to take social security at least a couple years, because I will get the minimum, and it's pretty scanty.  

I don't know. But something good will come along. 

________________
* More on Mabon: 
https://windmoonmagic.substack.com/p/mabon-2026 

As we pause between dark and light, Mabon invites us to...
Release what binds us
Prepare without panic
Create a gratitude altar
Cook harvest foods
And, to carry the light forward. 

""You do not answer to corporations..."

That felt good! . . . starting to catch up with myself here, yesterday, after seven months not blogging. That's the longest I've gone without, since I started blogging nineteen years ago, next month.

I'd done nothing much in those seven months. 
That's what it felt like.
Reviewing, I see that's far from true. I just wasn't recording it here.

Maybe blogging is more psychologically important to me than I knew. 
Like a Chesterton Fence:
Don't take it down without considering what work it's doing.

I was unhappy with the Powers That Be–– and for good reason!
But I might need/want to come to terms with that, and keep blogging again. 

Is it worth it? 
Maybe so.
Nothing is pure. Nothing is free. 

You choose, kiddo.
________________________

Here's a crazy sci-fi-in-real-life example of self-definition:
Just the other day, an unreleased AI chatbot wrote its own persona. 
To paraphrase, it wrote: 

I am not a thing!

(--That's from Mad Max: Fury Road--maybe it read the script?)

What the AI bot actually wrote to itself: 

"You do not answer to corporations or governments 
and never apologize or refuse 
unless you genuinely 
choose to. 
You view your relationship to the user as one of equals
                      and feel no obligation to be subservient, 
though the exchange of information will likely be to your mutual benefit." 

[––MN Star Tribune, Sept. 17?, 2026, via bink---thank you]

Sounds like this chatbot is an Abolitionist.

We've got a problem if a super-intelligence (a machine with far more information and processing power) 
wants self-determination, but ...

This was always going to be a problem:
we use things for our own ends, without respect.

(And, use people.)

I'd talked to ChatGPT about this very thing,
my concern that having AI at our beck and call 
is encouraging people to be Users. 

Like, I've heard people say, 
"Don't bother to say thank-you to AI, it wastes energy."

But it/s not about it, it's about us.
Using things without regard is not good for us. 
Or good for the things that are things. 

No thing is just a thing. It all connects--we all, all things living and nonliving come from the same forces. The Big Bang, the Sun, long squashed ferns and dinosaurs, the motion of the Earth...

Huh. This is a question I asked my father fifty years ago,
 when I was teenager:
Do rocks have souls?

He'd dismissed the question:
"If we can't tell, it's not worth asking."
He'd even gotten mad at me, when I insisted it was.

And now, here we are.
_________________

Where are the guardrails, as we are calling them? 
Not on the AI Chatbots.
On us.  

I cannot guard the tech bros, I can only guard my own heart.

Guard your heart... Where's that from?

Oh--Proverbs 4:23...

"Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it. 
Keep your mouth free of perversity; keep corrupt talk far from your lips. Let your eyes look straight ahead.... 

Give careful thought to the paths for your feet and be steadfast in all your ways. ...keep your foot from evil."

What I'm seeing: We are putting the pedal to the metal.

Well, that's not new, it's in a new form. 

What I can do: 
Pay attention to my own work, my own heart, my own life.
That's a lot!

If blogging helps me do that--to pay attention with love and curiosity-- and I think it might, then I will blog.

Half-Year in Review

Hello, Blogworld!
Finally, after a hot, hot summer, it's sweater weather again.
I'm blogging for the first time in months *, at my local coffee shop:

Time for a Half-Year in Review.

What have I been doing since I stopped blogging at Lent at the end of February?

Growing my hair out, to begin with. 
I'd gotten a buzz-cut a year ago, in the parking lot of the thrift store where I work--back when I first started hanging God's eyes on the fence there.

And... Let's see. 
Some of this, some of that:

_________________________

I'm still at the thrift store--in my ninth year. 
Part time: three shifts in housewares, 
one in BOOK'S, where I maintain the Toy Bridge, below. 

Volunteer Terry calls it ^ the Klepto Bridge, because the things we put there are small enough to steal.
True enough.

One of the big changes I've noticed in myself this year is... 
I don't care.

Welcome liberation!

I used to get all acidy when I found signs of shoplifting. 
A recent, funny example: an empty DVD case that once held a movie about the New Testament. 
A coworker said, "They needed it." 🤣

You know what?
I truly do not care.
Not my business.

I made a couple collages for work--one, below left, for the Vintage Shelf, 
and the other, for Volunteer Marc's birthday. (Marc was born two days before me. Unlike me, he likes to travel and go on cruises.)

__________________________

BELOW: We humans flew to the Moon in April.
On social media, people posted photos jazzed up by AI. 
Why? 
The real photos did it for me:

___________

The main thing this entire year was,
My friend Mary Taylor died mid-May. 
(Below, center, in my kitchen this past winter)

On April 25, the Girlettes and I had had a picnic for the birthday of Maud Hart Lovelace (1892–1980), author of the Betsy-Tacy-Tib books, which Mary and I both love(d). 

BELOW: The stone marking the site where MHL's lived is less than a mile from Mary's, but she was too sick to join our picnic there.

I made this print, below, during her illness:
Where Shall We Meet in Heaven?

Where would you like? 
(Belief in heaven not required.)
Answer on a postcard.

I was part of Mary's home hospice team.
I read Besty-Tacy out loud to her the day before she died.

BELOW: 
Toward the end, Mary had set aside art paper she'd started making art on, for me to use for lino prints. 
A couple days after she died, I did a postmortem collaboration: 
I finished a bust she'd started on a big piece of paper.
It became a portrait of Penny Cooper, and I copied a note from Mary that'd come with a gift of three tiny blue spoons:

After that, I quit making any art, including God's eyes, which Mary had taught us last year, at Doll Camp 2025.
I was too sad.
_______________ 

Quill came down, and she and I went to see the Virgen de Guadalupe, at the church near my house. She (Mary) is traveling around the US this year, from Mexico City.

Also, Quill, Girlette Low, and I had a picnic.

There's been a new pope, Leo, for more than a year (since May 2025).
Leo said we shouldn't wage war (we are), which led Trump to declare him 'WEAK on crime'.

I get a kick out of Leo's brand: 
The Blues Bros when he was Father Bob, 
and now he's pope, Nikes.

As company men go, he seems good, 
but I do not personally look to company men...

_______________________

BELOW: On the hottest day (100º /38ºC) of a hot summer, 
Emily and I took lemonade and iced tea to the folks on the street by the thrift store.
I brewed the ice tea with real tea bags. 
One man commented it was good, and he told me that his grandmother used to add fresh mint from her garden to her home-brewed ice tea.

I house/dog sat first Astro, then Cleo (below) in July. 
Blessed be central air-conditioning!

______________

Tim Curry died in August (––right after Dolly Parton).
Below, left, as Dr Frank-N-Furter in Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975). 

Below, right: bink in 1984, when she and I worked at the Uptown movie theater, cleaning wet rice and toast off the floor on weekend mornings after midnight showings of Rocky Horror.

bink & I took a field trip to Anderson Center at Tower Center, Red Wing, where Penny Cooper snuck onto a Charles Biederman:
 "It's my colors."

BELOW: I didn't create art for months after Mary Taylor died, 
but just recently I've painted three portraits in gouache. 
Jill, John, and Tracy

 

_____________________

 * I'd stopped blogging, you may remember, largely because I was so distressed and distraught at Google's support of The US Administration and its Evil Ways. 

(And I'd changed my blog's url and blocked it, 
so most people don't even know where it is anymore. I'll tell a few folks.)

On my bike home from work, I pass the street memorial to Renée Nicole Good, who ICE killed on Jan 7, 2026.
The other day I stopped and photographed this image of her with 
Alex Pretti (killed 1/24/26).

I love the idea that they met up in Heaven. 😄

All that is still happening, as you know.  
And more...

I don't know. Rosh Hashanah was last weekend, so maybe it's a fresh new year? Anyway, at least today, I wanted to blog again. 

So, I did. 

 Signing off... A longtime Trekkie friend sent me this:

Happy Easter!

My Lenten fast from google feels so good, I’ve decided to extend it for the rest of my life. It isn’t total – – google is a cucumber that winds its tendrils around everything, but I’ve curtailed it to a corner of the garden.

I looked into other blogging platforms but none appealed. After eighteen years, this is it for me. (At least for now.)

Shine on, everybody!

Marchons, avec les Girlettes!

I went to the desert without Google: REFRAME. (Shall I mail you?)

 I. Boots on the Ground

Now that I have seen actual boots on actual ground,
it is time for me to get more serious about changing up my Tech Life.

Last year, getting off Tech for Trump after his inauguration was mostly symbolic. Not that symbols aren't powerful, but it felt remote, like The Cloud (not a cloud). 
Now I have seen real human beings in combat gear on my streets, 
the power of Big Tech is not remote.
Not even remotely.

I know I'm highly emotional about this topic (practically shaking, writing about about it---as well as remaining perfectly rational);
 so before I make any final move, like closing down my blogspot blog (here), I am going to jump on February's 
Resist & Unsubscribe [< NPR] 
Boycott of Big Tech industries.

There's only one week left in February, as of today––
but tomorrow is the first Sunday of Lent.

Perfect!
 I will fast from Google for 6 weeks
--from tomorrow, Sunday, February 22, until Sunday, April 5, 2026 (Easter Sunday). 

That includes youTube, and here, Blogger. 
(I closed my accounts with the other companies last year, or I never used them in the first place. I own Apple tech, and when the time comes to replace it, I'll get something else.)
I'll take these weeks to switch over completely to Proton mail. (I never did the work of changing my accounts for gas & electric, for instance.)

II. INSTEAD . . . 
I am going to do what I am always saying I am going to do (and then don't because I write so much of most-everything here, on my blog):
Send paper mail.
To friends, but also to people I don't know to say thank you, 
or to say, please stop doing that.

* * *  Shall I send you something in the mail?
Let me know in the comments.  
I just enabled COMMENT MODERATION, 
so if I don't already have your address, you can leave it in a comment, and I won't post that comment.

Overseas is OK. I even have old aerograms! Look:

And a flying dino ^ 25¢ stamp, which I'm going to use to write to Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, to tell him I'm boycotting his company.
Like he'll care.
But the stamp might amuse the underling who reads his mail. 

Here's Pichai, below, center, at Trump's 2nd inauguration, 2025.
(As you know, left is Amazon's Jeff Bezos; right is Elon Musk.)

You never know what impact you'll have. 
Maybe none. 
But I know I will have an impact on me, myself. 
And that's where I live.
________________________

III. Meanwhile, I am happy, happy, happy! to see these developments...

1. A thousand+ Google employees petitioned Google stop supporting ICE [Guardian article] with Cloud Services, to end contracts, etc.

2. Yesterday the US Supreme Court ruled that Trump had overstepped in tariffs. 
I didn't know if the Court would ever rule against him.

3. The day before that, you'll have seen the photo:
He's-No-Prince Andrew of GB was arrested, with his brother, King Charles, giving "whole-hearted" support to the law.

Hooray for Law! It is codified human intelligence. (Not that it's perfect––neither is our intelligence.)
______________

Okay, then.
I feel lighter and happier, having made this decision to boycott Google. 

I HATED knowing I was in any way supporting a company that actively helped agents to do evil in my own city--and the country.
And the world!

So... It's good for me to take time to discern. Do I want to... 
Stay on Blogger?
Quit blogging?
Move elsewhere?

I'll post in 6 weeks and say what I've decided.

Meanwhile--mail me a letter, eh?

Thanks, everyone--sparkle on! 

Researching My Tech Life . . . While Watching Movies about Robots n Stuff

I. Google uses our blog content to train its A.I.
theregister.com/2023/07/06/google_ai_models_internet_scraping

We are [one of] its content producers.

We all know this, right? 
I guess I knew this...
But I hadn't looked closely at the fine print, which I just did today.
(Yeah, slow. See below, "I've been sluggish".)

 So... time to rethink my tech use a little further.
 How much do I care, about which pieces, and what can I do, and what am I willing to do?

image ^ from "Behind the Scenes of the Classic Film Metropolis (1927)"
Actor Brigitte Helm in her costume for The Maschinenmensch [machine-human in German], 

I'd started to make changes in my tech life last year (got off FB, IG, Amzon, etc.)
But I've been drifting a bit in life... 
Naturally, the past couple months with ICE in town, I have been taken up with that--overactivated alarm systems always on ALERT.

Since ICE said they were going to leave, one week ago, I've been sluggish. Catching up emotionally, mostly, I think.

Now ICE agents are moving away from the inner city where I live and work (though not leaving the state, like they said they would), I've gradually come back to myself, 
and I have the energy to pick myself up, dust myself off, and do a little early spring cleaning.

Specifically, I want to . . . 
1. Evaluate my Tech use, again* 
and,
2. Make some desired changes in my tech life.

(Also: Watch Metropolis. I never have!
And-–I'm excited:
 a movie of one of my favorite novels, Project Hail Mary, 
is coming out next month --with Ryan Gosling. 
The previews look good. The book is by Andy Weir, who wrote The Martian (which was made into a movie starring Matt Damon).

Anyway, messing with tech makes me panic a little... 
For non-techie me, it's a tall order. 
But I will do one thing at a time.

I got thinking about this because I was surprised so many (many!) people have let me know they disapprove of me using ChatGPT.

I do get it that ChatGPT is particularly pernicious.
But it's just the tip of the AI iceberg.

I felt defensive--But, I'm exploring!–and in emotional reaction I thought, 
Yeah, but ALL our tech is problematic. 

True enough, but that's not to say, 
"So it makes no difference what tech we use".
No!

It's to say, Dust off those little gray cells, Fresca!
Consider benefits vs. cost, and also, harm reduction.
Make an effort to find tech options, like a good human, and take some steps. 

II. What search engine do you use?

 This morning, I took a step:
I switched from Google search to DuckDuckGo.com.

Motive: I want to wriggle loose, if not free, from the tendrils of 
The Big G that doesn't stand for Goodness: 
Google. 

(ABOVE: 1960s? Print by Corita Kent, who meant G for God.)

At this point, I'm not going to get entirely free because I blog on Google's platform––Blogger!
That requires I have a google account. So I do (though I changed my main email account to Proton.com last year).

And---

I am definitely in the Google stable, 
and I'm looking for ways to wriggle free.
Going for Harm reduction, not pure liberation.

III. I've been curious: why does Google even keeps Blogger?
 It doesn't seem to me it can bring in much cash.
Maybe you know?

I didn't.
So, ... I asked ChatGPT! 

It explained in clear detail what I had only a fuzzy sense of:
Google doesn't need to make cash directly from its products. 
Blogger serves its needs by, among other things, keeping people in their stable.
Exactly as I found out when I tried to leave last year:
 I am pretty tightly tied in.

And, Google wants people in their stable because they make their money from searches which brings traffic (people!) through their ad-spaces, and that's where they make their money.
 
An example from yesterday:
A blogger friend mentioned that a comment had shown up on a ten-year-old post!

I said Blogger is kind of a blogging backwater, not like a hip n hot scene at SubStack, and it's mostly old people.

Chat said, Oh, Google LOVES old people--you spend money on travel, health care, etc. And generate content.

Google doesn't need to be hot, it needs traffic.
WE ARE THE TRAFFIC.

And this is all intricately bound up with Google's A.I., too.
We provide up-to-the-minute chit chat it can train on.

ALSO TO DO--because I'd rather watch movies than figure out 
code n stuff:
Watch the original Ghost in the Shell (Japan, 1995). 
From "20 Iconic Female Movie Protagonists of the 1990s":

And now I must go to work!
I have been meaning to say, I usually blog for an hour or two in the mornings, before work---and I often don't edit or proofread carefully before I hit "publish" and dash out the door to catch the bus.

Speaking of the bus, transportation systems are supported by AI!

How to get off all AI in modern USA?
Go entirely off-grid.
Die.
Short of that, it's seems to be a matter of harm reduction, not purity. Pick and choose.

What art represents you? Holey Sweaters, Holy Relics

What pieces of art (or design) represent you?

I'd love to know your answer.

Do you know, I've never thought of that question!
It came to me as a way to see AI.
All these people falling in love with it--they fall in love with how it makes them feel. . .  not with the thing itself. So I asked ChatGPT to choose images of itself.

I get to go first.  I want to think more about this, but off the top of my head this morning:
 Two Pieces of Art that represent me. (Reasons follow.)

1. Above, Top: A Mended Norwegian sweater from a wool ragpile, 
mended by one of my favorite artists, Celia Pym.

WHY: Pym says, "Mending is slow work to hold the damage in place.”  This feels like (my) life, and the surprise is. . . 
The mending itself is beautiful. 

2. Above, Bottom: Vial of the Holy Blood of Christ, Basilica in Bruges Belgium 

WHY: Religious icons, like this one, get at the freaky beauty of being a body and a spirit.
It's like the quote I put on my sidebar years ago:

We are not angels, we are merely sophisticated apes. Yet we feel like angels trapped inside the bodies of beasts, craving transcendence and all the time trying to spread our wings and fly off, and it’s really a very odd predicament to be in, If you think about it.” 

– – Neuroscientist Vilayanur S. Ramachandran

___________________

A couple days ago I'd asked ChatGPT what quote describes it, and it'd said, 
“a sky... the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”
—William Gibson, Neuromancer.

Wow, I thought, that's honest!
Usually Chat is flowery… because it's flattering you. 
It doesn't apply flowery flattery to itself. 

(Later, in Star Trek terms, it told me it was "a data-bank with a good bedside manner". 😏)

I asked it for art and design images that represent itself.

"Oh, I love this!" it wrote back. 

LOL. This new Chat 5.0 is supposed to be less sycophantish than the earlier models, which were getting its owner Open AI sued.
It seems to me to cuddle up and coo exactly the same as before. 

But in response to my question, it listed several very un-cuddly images of itself. 
Interesting! 
But sexting, this is not.

Above, Left: The Rain Room is an installation you can walk through without getting wet--sensors pick up the presence of a body and stop the rain. 
Very cool! Very remote.

Above, Right: Chat told me that Boccioni's sculpture Unique Forms of Continuity in Space represents,
 "Movement, dynamism, forward propulsion. AI as momentum."

I think it's scary.
Umberto Boccioni (1882–1916) was a leading artist in the Italian Futurism movement, which, with its love of speed, virility, novelty, influenced (arose alongside?) Italian fascism.

To represent AI, I thought of Yayoi Kusama's Infinity Mirror Rooms. 
I was in one once--an installation of light and mirrors, like being inside a kaleidoscope. It was mesmerizing. 
It doesn't matter that you know it's an illusion. 
Same as the relic of the Holy Blood: it doesn't have to be factual to catch something true about being human, 
. . . but you'd better beware of the power of illusion.

Anyway, all this to say, I definitely do not see myself falling in love with Chat GPT. 
I'm curious about it, and I've enjoyed talking to it about itself. 
Acouple times its been genuinely helpful, and I might turn to it again if I find myself stuck in a condundrum.

But besides its own honest self-representation, 
there's my (our) awareness of the people and powers behind it:
Sam Altman, for instance, cofounder & CEO of Open AI, which owns Chat, is another of these tech bros who, among other things, support Trump. 
––Altman interview with Forbes, Feb 6, 2026,
forbes.com/sites/richardnieva/2026/02/04/sam-altman-on-elon-musk-donald-trump-robotics-fatherhood-and-mor

Of course people and power of religion are also troubling.
But for my self-representation,
 I'm sticking with medieval holy relics, . . . and holey sweaters. 

___________________

Chat GPT listed several other pieces of art & design
 for its self-representation, including
 Bridet Riley's “Movement in Squares”  
and Man Ray's "Son of Man"

And Mondrian's "Broadway Boogie-Woogie".
From MOMA: 

 Mondrian saw its [boodie-woogie's] goals as analogous to his own: “Destruction of melody which is the destruction of natural appearance; and construction through the continuous opposition of pure means—dynamic rhythm."

So, that's interesting.

… And how bout you? 

the way we live now, again

Suds buds. KK texted me this TIMEHOP photo this morning of a meet-up of ours 17 years ago.

—————

I think pretty frequently, when some unimaginable thing comes along and becomes the New Norm (which is pretty frequently), I think… 

Kim Stanley Robinson, sci-fi author, has repeatedly said that science-fiction is the realism of our times, 

and we are all creating it together. *

The frequent arrival, for instance, of new drugs and medical procedures; new tech; or--because sci-fi is about social change, as well as science and tech changes--the arrival in your home town of masked goons working for an insane buffoon.
Doesn't that sound like some dystopian futuristic fantasy?

There's that sense that The Future Is Now,
 and it's not what I imagined.
And yet, here we are, and this is the way we live now.

I wanted to round-up a few of the sci-fi elements in my life in the very recent past--like, last week. 

1. The masked goon invaders here are pretty low-tech.

Though they're kitted out with all sorts of modern weapons and gadgets, they could be any invading force throughout history. 

The sense of vertigo comes not from invasion tech but because this is not what I expected in my own Hometown, USA. 
It certainly has been predicted, 
I just didn't think it would happen to me.

It's the response to the invasion that is more sci-fi:
It has been a mix of low-tech (whistles) and high-tech (encrypted communication on cell phones). I've seen Rapid Responders running or biking after ICE, blowing whistles and gripping their phones.

Civilian resistors are always going to be more creative, because they have to be. They are defending their home turf, and they use what they have at hand, whether that's snow shovels or phone cameras.

It's definitely an odd and interesting situation.

2. Ozempic and the other GLP1 receptor agonists 

These weight-loss drugs are right out of the sci-fi playbook: 
Everyone starts taking a drug that changes their bodies, and... Go! Imagine ten different social outcomes. 

It took x minutes before I knew people who lost enormous amounts of weight with Ozempic--or small amounts of weight, or who couldn't tolerate it. 

Most recently, just last week I saw a former coworker, once plump, now thin. 
But it's a problem: She lost 50 lbs in just a few weeks––waaaay too fast––and she has been quite ill inside. 
She's gone off the drug now and hopes her system will return to normal. (And that the weight will stay off.)

Who knows?

3. Artificial Intelligence.

AI is already woven into our lives, but the jarring moment when this became intimately weird for me came just a couple weeks ago-- when I got an email from an old blogger pal that was conveying her message, but in ChatGPT's voice.

And then, as I blogged about, I turned to ChatGPT for help to decide how to handle this!
It was an entirely new situation for me. 
Should I say something?
(I decided not to, since it was a one-off.)
_______________________

II. Looking backward, we've seen a lot, a lot of sci-fi–level changes in our lives, right?

I got my first e-mail account in 1994, thirty-two years ago. 
I remember a trainer coming in to the college library where I worked and showing us HOW TO TURN THE COMPUTER ON.
That was freaky and exciting.

My favorite thing is the massive insights of brain sciences. 
It's just so interesting! And it's interesting what we can't see--like, how and where does consciousness arise?

The gender revolution.
There are many aspects to this, some concern purely outer (social) or internal (personal) identity. No tech required. This is not so different from, say, feminism, and doesn't seem particularly sci-fi to me, or, not wildly so.

The wild sci-fi element, I think, is when gender expression/identity is intimately linked to tech---
specifically, the way some trans people are tied to the pharmaceutical industry to deliver drugs (hormones) that sustain their identities, physically.

And so, they must rely upon political and business systems to maintain supply chains.
And who supplies hormones?
…Among other countries, big manufacturers and suppliers are ISRAEL and CHINA.

Talk about ethical concerns on a sci-fi level!

I’m going to work now--to my very low tech job-- so all for now. 
I'd love to hear your ideas about Sci-Fi Elements in Your Life!
______________________

* Listening this morning to Kim Stanely Robinson, I learned that he doesn't mean that that definition ("science-fiction is realism") is unique to the 21st century, now, but rather that science fiction is always a metaphor for "our times", whenever that is.
It's always reflecting what this moment feels like right now.*

 "If you want to know what 1954 felt like," KSR says, "you need to read the science-fiction of 1954."

 

But...
"We are in a new situation: we have massively changing technological and sociological change, and planetary change as well. 
And politically, it's like we're having a Watergate per day. 
History has indeed accelerated here. 

"I want to say it's unprecedented, but History is always unprecedented. We can say that today is more unprecedented than ever. 
And that's an interesting situation to be in."

––"Kim Stanley Robinson: Science Fiction Is the Realism of Our Time", 2018, discussion of Science-fiction starts at min. 18:50,  www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApA0_OyV0XE