Trouble Here in River City

Since October I’ve been having dinner once a week with a group of women at what we’ve been calling the Liberal Ladies Table. We started with four of us and last week we were up to nine. It’s very low key and what we talk about at the Liberal Ladies Table stays at the table. And the table they seat us at is back in a corner of the restaurant where voices don’t carry. In other words, we don’t flaunt it or make a big deal out of. However, this week a women who lives in our independent living apartment complex ambushed us as we were waiting by the fireplace for our reservation time to tell us that what we’re doing is wrong. She thinks if we want to talk about politics we should meet in our apartments. She just learned about the group and now she says she feels uncomfortable around us! “And I’m not the only one,” she claimed. She wanted to know how we get people into our group and acted like it was a clandestine thing where we badger people in dark hallways until they tell us which political party they support. “No one living here should know each other’s political leanings!” she told scolded our group.

We all sat there, getting reprimanded and lectured without us saying much back. We were in shock at how angry she was. One woman did said, “We spend very little time talking about politics, we talk about other things as well.” Another added, “We eat together because we’re friends and it’s only once a week!” I wanted to spat out, “So much for free speech!” but I didn’t because that would have escalated her anger. But when she asked if we really feel the need to talk about politics at all?“ I did reply, “Yes because current events is important and every time someone brings something up in the news around here it quickly gets shut down.” 

I don’t get it, I really don’t. This woman is a good Catholic who wanted to be a nun. Goes to church several times a week. She’s a person who is always organizing extra social activities around here. She’s in line dancing class with 5-6 of the Liberal Ladies and until now they seemed to have fun together. They even put on shows at the other buildings on this and our sister campus. In other words she’s social and fun. While she’s doesn’t talk in depth about anything it’s been pretty easy to guess that she’s a bit naive as is her older sister who I really like. I can tease the sister and she can give it right back. The sister one time heard another women here say that she is an atheist and the sister told a group at lunch, “After she said that I had nightmares about burning up in hell.” I’m still scratching my head over how an acquaintance's view on God could upset you as much as it did her.

 Our resident atheist (aka Ms Social Worker) has made a lot of people distance themselves from her because she’ll freely tell anyone that she is one. She once said that she’s had to listen to church talk her entire life and she’s tired of hiding. The atheist is part of our Liberal Ladies group and maybe Ms. Zip-Your-Lips is painting us all with the same broad brush? Maybe that’s why she was so angry? One time when the atheist was being discussed Ms. Zip-Your-Lips remarked, “Why would anyone say they don’t believe in God?” Duh, isn’t it a clear enough statement? I thought but I didn’t say, If a person doesn’t believe, they don’t believe. I consider myself an agnostic but I’d never voice that around here and the number one reason for that is that I knowingly bought into a faith based, non profit campus and while there was no litmus test to get in I don’t think it’s right to purposely (or accidentally) agitate others on the topic of religion when I’m benefiting from the campus’ non-profit status.

I've talked to a couple of the others in Liberal Ladies group since 'the lecture' and we feel the same way----conflicted. On one hand we think she owns us an apology and on the other hand we want her to help us understand why she’s so offended. Has the word "liberal" become a dirty word? To tell us she feels uncomfortable around us after learning our politician leanings blows my mind. She’s judging us to be toxic or like we’ve suddenly changed our personalities since she learned we’re liberal leaning and we’re no long fit to associate with. I just don't get it! Every day we co-mingle with ultra-conservatives here---even like most of them---who don't always keep their views to themselves, they even eat together once or twice a week and have been a lot longer than we liberals. I'd love to ask Ms Zip-Your-Lips if she gave them the same lecture. But I won't because our group decided to lower the temperature, not make anymore waves.

Since this happened a tenth woman asked to join our group. However, our group will never be the same. For one thing, we agreed to stop calling it the Liberal Ladies Table. While I understand the decision, the damage is already done so what it the point? It feels like we're walking around with a big red 'L' painted on our foreheads, wondering who are the others who agree with her. And two, because our size has outgrown the table spaces available the ones in charge of making our reservations decided to break us up into three tables and rotate each week who sits with who. In other words she'd driven us to hiding in plain sight. My reaction to hearing that decision was, "Sadly, this will be the beginning of the end," and I was assured, "We won't let that happen." Time will tell... ©

New Year's Resolutions Report - Week Four

 

As you may or may not remember I’m taking a 12 week course called Stronger Memory and one of the three requirements is reading out loud 20 minutes a day. Sounds easy enough, doesn’t it. It’s not! My voice box hasn’t gotten this much of a workout since…well, since never. I wasn't a mother who got to read to kids or grandkids and I’ve never taught classes or had a job where I had to give corporate reports. The closest I got to speaking out loud for any length of time was back in college when I took a couple of classes in public speaking, and I was a second stringer on a debate team but even back then our preposition and rebuttal speeches were limited to ten minutes.

A quick google search of how our voice changes over the years brings you information like: “As you age, all of your muscles naturally lose mass. This includes the muscles of your vocal cords and voice box that make your voice work. The older you get, the more your voice may become hoarse or ‘tired’ feeling as a day wears on." Even before I signed up for this course and discovered how hoarse my voice really is I’d been concerned that my voice was cutting in and out when I talk. I spent so much time alone during the pandemic of 2020/21 that if I hadn’t had a dog to boss around my voice would be even thinner and more cracker-ly than it is. (Oh, look, I just made up a new word.) As one website describes the aging process of our voices, “Weakened and dry vocal chords become stringy, which prevent normal vibration, causing higher pitched voices that sound thin.” That’s me. My voice sound ten years older than I am by the calendar.

The above paragraphs are the long way of saying that after ten minutes of reading out loud, it gets hard to do! I have to push myself to get through the next ten minutes. I have to keep reminding myself that I’m supposed to be reading out loud. (And I'm not alone in these complaints about our homework.) I am, however, enjoying the content of the book I’m reading: Painting Techniques of the Impressionists. One of the things I’ve learned that gives me hope for my own work is how long it took various Old Masters (by contrast to the Impressionists) to complete some of their famous works of art. Notes, sketches and color samples in a notebook of Turner’s for example resulted in a finished painting ten years later. Impressionists were not like that. According to my book they were “…painters of fleeting effects, as no other painters had done…” Impressionists would paint outdoors then come back with paintings they’d show and sell in galleries while the Old Masters would have taken those same paintings back to a studio, refined them and worked on them for long periods of time---years even---before they’d declare them finished. No wonder the Impressionists were scorned by some in the art world. (The invention of the camera factors in here, too, but that's a whole another topic.)

Anyway, back on topic: New Year’s Resolutions kept and discarded. I have started a painting but I had a least ten false starts before I settled on a subject to paint. Check that resolution off the list since the resolution was about starting a painting…nothing was said about finishing one. Okay, so that’s a technicality and some might say I’m cheating but it’s my Resolution List so I get to make up the rules here.

Although by the end of the year I do hope to finish a couple of canvases I’d been working on when my husband had his stroke in 2000. I recently found the photo and notes I’d mourned as lost about what color formulas I’d been using on a painting I truly want to finish. It’s of my great-niece when she was a little girl and now she’s a woman with two children of her own. If Turner could take ten years finish a painting and some of the Old Masters work on the same paintings for half a decade, then Amateur Hour Jean can take twenty-two years and not have to feel like such a failure about it. And Manet had once scraped a face off his canvas 25 times before being satisfied that he got it right, so I guess there's no shame in me redoing a face for a second time. Still, my mom in the last few years of her life made a conscious choice to finish up all her unfinished projects and sometimes it feels like her ghost is haunting me, telling me to hurry up and tie the loose ends of my life up because time is running out. Mom, quit nagging me, I'm trying!

The above paragraphs cover two of my New Year’s Resolutions, a third one about improving my personality has already been moved to the discard pile as being too vague. I’ve changed that from “improve my personality” to “reveal more of my personality” and I did so recently at a lunch table when the topic of Chick-fil-A came up. Someone asked if their chicken is really that good that people would wait so long  in line to get it and I mentioned that I wouldn’t know because the place is on my Boycott List. When I was asked why I boycott it I kept it simple, just saying that they support a lot of conservative causes that I fight against. That statement opened it up to where three others revealed that they boycott the place too.

Then one of the Skinny Minnie Twins admitted to buying a My Pillow pillow before they knew the company owner was so off the rails Trumpian and how much it hurt to throw that very comfortable $100 pillow out because she couldn't put her head on it without negative feelings filling her head. Another woman admitted that she will only go to Hobby Lobby when she’s exhausted all other sources to find what she’s looking for. Because I had the guts to drop the ‘Boycott List’ into a conversation I’ve found my political tribe on the continuum care campus. And here I didn’t think there were any other Liberals around.  However, The Cheerleader causally mentioned that we all have to live together for the rest of our lives and there are so many other things in the world to talk about that we should keep politics and religion off the table. Okay,  then. ©

Photo at top: J.M.W. Turner's 'Dutch Boats in a Gale.'

The unfinished portrait that I'm pledging to finish by the end of the year. (Need some practice time on other stuff before I tackle her face again.)

 

The shelves I mentioned in an recent blog that I had added to have a place to store wet canvases and various things I need for inspiration or to have handy in my painting nook. The thing to the right of the easel is a fold up, antique table that I can put my palette on when working.

Blogging in the Real World & the Straw Wars

I wish I was a person who did things like mountain climbing or sailing from port to port or monitoring endangered species in the wild, if only so I’d have more to blog about. I do wish I could generate more than two blogs a week but who wants to read the minute-by-minute details of a seventy-something woman’s life who has no job or goals beyond the obvious?---eat, sleep, and wake up every morning. No one wants to read about the keys on my keyboard that stick or how often I ask Alexa how to spell something and I end up yelling at her for misdirecting me to words I have no interesting in using. And what about that Windows 10 update that put my printer out of commission just before I needed it for e-Bay labels? Does anyone really care that at my age I was able to puzzle out the fix without calling the Geek Squad? Well, I care but that's beside the point. In the real world if I did live the life of an adventurer or was involved in scientific investigation---like how do elephants react to whale vocalizations and visa versa?---I probably wouldn’t have the time to write a daily blog. Is that a dichotomy or what? Seriously, is that a dichotomy? How else would you describe a situation where you’re too busy living to write a blog but if you’re not a busy person you have nothing to write about?

As it is, my blog drives me out of the house more often than I’d care to admit. I go out looking for human interaction and to prove I’m still alive and not a figment of my own imagination. A few days ago, for example, I went to a busy park where a trail brings bikers and walkers by a river observation area with benches where people like me sit and eat ice cream. The only words I said that day were, “I’d like a single scoop of mint chocolate” and “thank you.”  But the sun was shining and I soaked it up, wishing I had the dog with me because he likes watching the swans floating at the top of the dam as much as I do. How do they know not to get so close that the current takes them over the falls, landing them below where there are usually five-six guys standing in the water fly fishing? Don’t they have jobs? I’ve often wondered of those fisherman---not the swans---and do they really trust eating fish caught in that water? A shoe factory that tanned leather used to dump their waste water in that river and, wells at houses all over the area have recently been found to have dangerous levels of toxic PFAS contamination. 

It seems like each generation has to clean up the messes of the previous generation’s ignorance. Were there people back when it was legal to dump toxic crap in rivers, who knew it wasn’t a smart thing to do? Did they have their plastic versus paper straws debates back then? The Trump campaign store is now selling plastic straws---a 10-pack for $15.00 “because Liberal paper straws don’t work,” Trump proclaims. I can’t believe straws have become symbolic of Right versus Left! I guess they want to brag that they are a party who doesn’t care about killing wildlife or polluting the oceans. Trump thinks paper straws are an invention of the far Left, as evil as evil gets. And as a card carrying member of the Left, I think Trump is as evil as evil gets. He’d probably enjoy pulling the wings off butterflies if he hadn’t found a job where he gets to mess with human lives instead.

I’ve been carrying my own paper and stainless steel straws since April of last year when I saw a video of sea turtle getting a straw removed from his nose. Back then I wrote: “Have you heard about the movement nicknamed Straw Wars? ‘National Skip the Straw Day’ took place in February so I’m late to the party. If you are too, let me introduce you to the cause. According to National Geographic Magazine Americans use 500 million plastic straws DAILY. They are a particularly insidious pollution because they are often the cause of death for marine animals. Plastic straws are an unnecessary pollutant because there are Eco-friendly wax coated paper straws and reusable stainless steel to take their place or we can go straw-less altogether.” 

Perhaps you’ve been in restaurants who’ve joined the war and either don’t automatically give you a straw or they’ve switched to paper or adult sippy-cups. Where I live, they are becoming common and when I pull out my paper straw young wait-staff are quick to offer positive reinforcement. The Millenniums are driving the Straw Wars into action in the food service industry and very quickly. Makes me think of a Bible verse. “…and a little child shall lead them.” They are social media savvy and are going to be a force to recon with as they take over the world. At least that's my hope. 

Trump plastic straws sold out the same day they were first offered and are on back order. And that begs the question: Will the Straw Wars become iconic? Will people a hundred years from now be standing on mounds of plastic garbage proclaiming victory or will the other side be shaking their heads and wonder how those who are opposing paper straws could have been so wrong-headed? You know, in the future when whales and dolphins no longer die with pounds of one-time use plastic in their tummies and plastic bags and straws no longer kill over 100,000 marine creatures and a million sea birds annually because they are either all instinct... or enough ordinary people in this decade cared and gave up their one-time use plastic and saving the planet snowballed from there. ©