Come to my kitchen

Back to Blogging . . . in My Kitchen 

The plans I started to form here yesterday--to stay connected and to set a schedule--well, blogging slots right in!

I don't know if I started blogging again as an act of life-reclamation related to quitting my job... which I didn't know I was going to do.
I do know it was a return of life after a blasted season of ICE and death.

Anyway, it's good to be here--it will help anchor me--keep me in Time, and be a place to record life. 
Things done, to be done, wondered about, wished for...

I'm glad I'm keeping track of my life here again---it's such a resource. And I'm glad I've indexed it all along (though you can do a search too.)

I could easily find the James Baldwin quote [below photo] I was thinking of:
What kind of friendship is it, 
if you don't come to my kitchen, and I to yours?

My kitchen. I blog at the cafe table.
it's early morning, still dark outside--so the overhead light makes it look kinda uninviting––
But I wanted to show you.
Come have coffee!

_________________

 James Baldwin is talking about race relations in the quote below--being segregated from one another's intimate lives.
[Not that Black people didn't know white people's kitchens, of course--some were cooking and cleaning in them.]

It connects to other aspects of friendships too:
In the Age of the Internet for instance,
we friends may love each other, but we are often lacking experience of one another's physical lives.

I don't know what you sound like, for instance.

Or maybe I do. Maybe we met online and you moved across the country and slept on my couch, like Marz did 15 years ago. 

Anyway...

From transcript: 
James Baldwin speaking at a public forum in 1963 (used in the documentary film I Am Not Your Negro)

"Most of the white Americans I have ever encountered had a Negro friend or a Negro maid or somebody in high school.
But they never, you know, or rarely after school was over or whatever, came to my kitchen.

You know, we were segregated from the schoolhouse door. Therefore, he doesn't know - he really does not know - what it was like for me to leave my house, you know, leave the school and go back to Harlem. 
He doesn't know how Negroes live.

...Like most white Americans I have encountered, they have no, you know, I'm sure they have nothing whatever against Negroes. 
That is not - that's really not the question. 

You know, the question is really a kind of apathy and ignorance which is a price we pay for segregation."

_________________ 

Experiences, Not Things

I was talking to a customer about how wine glasses don't sell. I'd read that young people don't drink wine.

"Right," he said, "sharing a bottle of wine is a social thing, and they don't socialize like that. They're on their phones, doing their THC or whatever they do."

It's not necessarily bad, or good--it's different. 
(Can't exactly regret people not imbibing toxins, but the culture it came from--sitting at a table eating a meal and talking together-- that is some loss.)

The manager of the gift store at the American Swedish Institute, when I commented on a couple beautiful pieces of Swedish crystal, saying we get suchlike donated to the store, and it doesn't sell, said...

"It doesn't sell here either! These pieces are leftover from the last buyer."

"What does sell?" I asked her.

"Food, and craft kits. Young people want experiences, not things."

Old people too, maybe?
I know most people my age are getting rid of things (even if we're also bringing new things in...). 
_______________

Counting Down...

I have four shifts left at the thrift store: Mon Tues Thurs Fri.
Tonight I'm checking out the OA group.
Saturday is Needlework group.
Sunday night I get on the Amtrak!

Next Monday, this time, I'll be looking out the train window at the sunrise over the plains.

I am so looking forward to my train trip to Montana.
I'll only have three full days in Whitefish itself--I want to plan some toy photography before I go. Scrabble together some costumes... 

But it's a low (no)-pressure enterprise.

Goal 1: HOT BREAKFAST BAR at the hotel!!!
Even though I read a review on Trip Advisor that the oatmeal is not a consistent texture... 🙄 

Goal 2: Look for the pine tree portal.

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...

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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!

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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

 

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 * 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: