A close relative is driving around with these messages on the trunk of her Prius, perhaps for the car behind her, her neighbors, or drivers in a parking lot to see. Bumper stickers are a form of self-expression.

Care More; Judge Less, Nobody is Free until Everybody is Free, Minds Are like Parachutes… etc.

• Minds Are like Parachutes; They Only Function When Open

• Love is Greater than Fear.

• Co Resist

Do you have any bumper stickers on your vehicle? Why or why not?

Talking back to E-mail

Do you get too many messages in your inbox that are unnecessary or irritating? It takes a lot of time to delete all of them or to remember to come back to some of them.

• I keep falling for the survey on which the company or city council or candidate specifically needs my opinion only to discover at the end it is all about getting a donation.

• Then there is the message sent to 200 people.

• I keep getting offers for cheaper car insurance even though I don’t have a car.

• I have found that it is impossible to unsubscribe from political action committees or retailers. Hitting UNSUBSCRIBE means that I read their post and now I will get more!

What if we were to add a personal note at the bottom of our e-mail?

From 1800 - 1915, both men and women sported tight curls like Caesar and Brutus. Then men adopted a style which was short at the back and long over the eyes. Next their hair was parted on the side; then it was parted in the center, followed by hair of Victorians being slicked back and combed into a high wave at the center of the forehead.

The grooming product to strengthen and smooth men’s hair was called Macassar Oil. This thick oil was made from vegetable, coconut, and palm oils and scented with yiang-yiang, supposedly products straight from the port of Makassar in Dutch East Indies. The hair product left ugly greasy stains on the backs of chairs.

Mothers, sisters, and wives could have forbidden men to come into the parlor, sitting room, or study with the oil in their hair. They could have insisted that men not sit in upholstered chairs at all but in wood dining chairs. There could have been daily bickering if not fights. The women could have marched on the Rowland Company in NY calling for a boycott of Macassar Oil.

Instead, the women devised a creative solution: antimacassars. These decorative and practical creations were crocheted, knitted, or embroidered and secured horizontally on the backs of upholstered chairs. Since arms of chair could also get worn or grimy, arm pieces frequently matched the chair back.

Taking Your Inventory at the End of the Year

2023 is a new year. Articles abound suggesting that we list our goals and ambitions for the coming year. How many new friends or colleagues do we want to attract? What commodities (cars, clothes, better gardens, best-selling books) would we like to acquire? A new career or vocation? A raise or promotion? A job with benefits?

What if instead we listed what we already have?

What/who are the specific friends, comfortable places, talents we have developed, a few family members, art, music, body strength, photography, garage tools, fishing poles, leather golf bags, banjos, resiliency, etc., that we already have in stock? From 1977 to 1987 in Granada Hills, CA, I had a yarn and needlework shop called Happy Hookers (latch hooking was big then). Every year, between December 30 and January 1, my whole family counted inventory—every skein of embroidery floss and every ball of all the shades of worsted weight yarn for ripple Afghans. Every crochet hook and circular knitting, pattern, and stitch holders. We needed to know the current value of the enterprise to which we were devoting so many hours.

My November prompt is late because my brain was fixated on the mid-term elections and the possibility of violence in the streets after the results were announced.

If you are a creative writer or artist, you probably would rather be reading, journaling, doing yoga stretches or breath work, listening to music or poetry readings, and writing-- a lot more than you would like to be carrying a sign and shouting slogans in a protest march.

That doesn’t mean that creatives are oblivious to wrongs in this world. But our activism is of a different sort. As an example, I can’t get out of my mind that I heard that the huge private prison corporation, Core Civic Inc., looks at every state’s data on how many third graders cannot read at grade level in order to plan how many new prison cells they will need in 15 years.

I can’t adjust my thinking to this alarming fact….

Can the world close its eyes? “Good night people of the world. Sometimes I think a deep sleep for all of humanity might help, especially if we woke to mild weather and sunshine and (peace).” —Anna Quon PROMPT: Write a paragraph or two about your hopes for what might happen if every citizen on Earth got a good night’s sleep.

I admired boys in fifth grade who could make gross faces. They could flip their eyelids up so I could see the inside pink that usually covered their eyes. They put their thumbs in their ears and did funny things with their fingers, but the greatest thing was that they could stick out their tongue and curl it up until it touched their nose. All I could manage to do, hard as I tried, was to stick out my tongue and put my thumbs in my ears and repeat “nah, nagh, nah, nagh, nah, nagh” in someone’s face. My classmates would do the same thing back to me.

Then one day on the playground, a teacher told us that if we were making ugly faces and it thundered anywhere in the whole world, our faces would be frozen in position.

Time Will Tell

A friend of mine who has been working hard to declutter her living and sleeping space told me about having a box labeled “Time Will Tell.” The idea of making a “Time Will Tell” box comes from The Minimal Mom, Dawn Madsen. She has a YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/c/TheMinimalMom) and a Work Book for each room.

We all know about sorting our closets and bookshelves into “Donate,” “Throw Away,” and “Save.” I have had the experience of knowing what to get rid of, knowing what I am currently using, but then stalling over books and clothes I can’t think clearly about. Ultimately, I quit the whole project feeling I have failed.

The idea/concept/freedom?? To sort my stuff and ideas and old file folders into a “Time Will Tell” box is comforting and enlightening. It says to me that it is okay not to know the value something had to me right now. It says I do not have to make decisions about everything at once. I can share with my friends and relatives the importance of the “Time Will Tell” box.