"May you live in interesting times" 

Interesting times, indeed.  Frightening, dangerous, catastrophic times; unprecedented in our lifetimes!  What do we do when every person living on the planet is presented with something we've never had to deal with before? (Think of that...everywhere, everyone impacted in one way or another, no borders, no barriers) How do we respond, cope, adjust, fail or succeed?

There are many ways at many levels to answer that question.  There are the formal, necessary answers that governments and institutions arrive at; and there are the smaller individual actions and mindsets that we each choose.

Among my choices, I am choosing to return to writing this blog.  I started it a long time ago, when I was working as a media curriculum coordinator/technology strategist in the Minneapolis Public Schools.  I'm a very sporadic journalist, but at the moment I'm not going anywhere, so I'm going to give it another shot.

The blog title: "Information Woman" is meaningful to me.  Accessing information for my own enlightenment and entertainment and sharing what I found and learned has always been important; important enough to make it a career. 

In today's information environment, ethical, accurate and useful information sharing is endangered--false, inflammatory and politically divisive information sharing gets more than its fair share of airing and viewing and spreads its virulence.  It's hard to know what truth is.  In my small way, I'm going to try to make a difference.

I'll start with the saying that is my title.  I've often quoted that as an ancient Chinese curse.  Using it as such would seem highly appropriate in light of the Co-vid 19 virus coming from China and certainly creating "interesting times".  Unfortunately, it appears it's not an ancient Chinese curse at all, but has a much more recent origin, at least according to the Quote Investigator.  Garson O'Toole appears to be very credible and cites both sources and investigative processes. 

I'll express my own opinions as well, but state them as such.  You can agree or disagree.  Today is day 19 of the declared pandemic.  There is much to ponder.

Poem One (day 18)

I was never good at hide
 & seek
because I’d always

Make enough noise so my

Friends would be sure to
Find me.
I don’t have

Anyone to play those games

With any more, but now &
Then I make enough noise

Just in case someone is

Still looking & hasn’t

Found me yet

 From: Story People by Brian Andreas,
Story People Publishing, Decorah, IA, 1997

Day 18–filling the days with activities important and mundane. After selling books online since 2006 through my little bookstore, Ginger Tea Books, I decided a few months ago it was time to close up shop. I gave away a lot at my birthday party, took bags and bags to Half Price Books and some to a thrift store but still have a book cart full ( librarian envy alert...). Yes I have my very own library cart, acquired when White Bear Lake Library was being renovated. So, these fabulous, but not on my reading list books, will have to sit in limbo ‘til summer. It did free up some bookshelf space however to shift my poetry collection. In doing so I realized I have over 100 poetry books collected as a teacher and bookseller and aspiring poet. I’m going to crack one open each day that the world is under quarantine and share a random (or maybe curated) poem on my page and on my blog. Hope you enjoy them.

March 28, 2020
 Day 18 of the World Health Organization declared pandemic

 This may take awhile.
The price will be high.
Our character as individuals and as families,
communities and nations will be tested.
Many of us will fail;
many of us will muddle along,
most of us will strive to do our best,
but will still suffer.

The virus will not discriminate
but the discrimination we have already built into
our systems and our social relations
will make the suffering greater
for some than for others.
If only we can always think of the greater good
and recognize that working towards
the greater good
works for us as well.

It was snowing today.  This is not an unexpected event in Minnesota on a February day.  However, the swirling snow got me thinking not about driving or shoveling but that each of those snowflakes could represent the thoughts and feelings that are swirling around our country today in the wake of another mass shooting; the attack on high school students and teachers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida on Valentine's Day, Seventeen lives were lost and many others were injured.

The Unexpected Wonders of Holding a Garage Sale: Day Two

Thursday's sale started out slowly.  The sky was mournful and gray and the city road crew were doing their thing,  filling the street with trucks.  I learned that I had more in common with these men than you would have thought.  I basically know nothing about roadwork and so apparently do they.  Places on the road that were mostly smooth were skipped over including the curve just before our driveway.  They left a nice incipient pothole there that is very likely to get us when the road is covered with snow and ice.  The rest of the road was uneven and messy.  The teacher in me gave them a D-...better than nothing, but certainly not an outstanding effort.

Since the customers were not appearing, I had a chance to read my story (thus far) to Rod.
"You left out the important part," he said.
"Oh, really?  And what was that?"
"About all the work I did to help you set up the sale."
"How inconsiderate of me," I said, "Let me rectify that right now."

I guess that means going back to all his previous comments such as, "Do you really need that?"  "Every room is filled with your stuff" and the classic "I feel like I'm living with my mother."  Encouragement to purge is a gift he keeps giving.  Of course when he acceded to in the inevitability of the sale happening, he and Ryan carried up the tables to the garage.  I sweetened the pot by telling him that we would have to clean out the garage anyway and this would be a good time to do it and we could even go up to the garage attic and get rid of stuff.  Stuff, I assured him that would leave one way or another and never enter the house again.

I felt him getting into the spirit of the thing.  We rigged up a rope across the canoe supports to hang the dresses and jackets.  It gave him a chance to practice a new knot he'd learned and with the help of several bungee cords, we created a thing of "beauty" (if not a joy forever).

He even contributed some shirts to our clothesline.  (If only he'd try on the two dozen pants hanging in his closet since 1998 that just possibly might be too small).  Also, he didn't continue to complain about having the sale...I appreciate that he doesn't hold on to anger, when I don't "submit and obey".  That actually never made it into our marriage vows...the unwritten ones that did are more like "support and allow", which means when he takes off for North Dakota to hunt in a few weeks (pheasant feathers-0.25 a piece/ 5 for $1.00) I will stay home and fend off the plagues of locusts, blizzards and other natural disasters that might swoop down without a word of complaint.  He should be able to handle a garage full of odds and ends for another day or two.

Finally a car pulls into the driveway.  It is our friend Katie and her mother Candie, who had been to the dentist.  We cut them pieces of apple crisp and sit and visit, totally undisturbed by other shoppers.

Eventually a few more customers come by, including a woman in a Harley Davidson tank top and long blond hair tied back in a ponytail who called me "honey."  When she suggested that the white sign at the end of the road wasn't as visible as it should be, I decided right away to change it with the bright yellow sign at the end of the driveway.  Why would I disagree with a woman who owns a motorcycle and wears the same size shoes as me?  I know this because she bought the super cool orange strappy sandals that were way too high for me and the suede Borns with the evergreen shaped treads on the bottoms.  (A real bargain at $1 a pair)

The lack of customers allow me to bake 4 more apple pies, fix a casserole and sort through newspapers.  Robin and Lexi come home and as we are closing up, we find a baby garter snake on the driveway.

"Look at the cute worm, Grammy," Lexi says.  She keeps calling it a worm even though she knows it's a snake.  It does look like a worm; only about 6 inches long and thinner than a pencil.  Robin gets a bucket and pulls some grass.  We will have to figure out what this baby eats.  It's spending the night on the window seat, the bucket closed off with a wire mesh colander.
"Oh, by the way Mom," Robin says, "why do you have that wimpy yellow sign at the end of the road?"

The Unexpected Wonders of Holding a Garage Sale:  Day One

My husband Rod asked our son Ryan to help him convince me that it was a bad idea to have a garage sale.
"You've got no argument there," I thought.
"They are a lot of work for little money, " he said, "and we have lots of other things to do and little time to do them before you leave to see your sister.  Plus you are supposed to rest your knee."

He was right on all counts, but I'd already committed myself with ads and posts on Facebook. However,  as I drove down our pothole-infested road to set out the garage sale signs and found myself dodging a bobcat with a brush attachment on the front throwing dust up into the air and we discovered that the county planned  to lay asphalt today, I thought perhaps I should have taken his concerns more seriously.  Who is going to wend their way past heavy equipment belching smoke and tar to check through my old sweaters and socks and used kitchen tools?

Well, they did come despite the roadwork:  First, a gray-haired lady who drives children with challenges to their schools.  She bought the wicker cat bed and we talked about how to blend cats forced to live together. I learned that her son had come home under disappointing circumstances and brought his cat to join her two.  She gave me $12 and a story from her life.  I started feeling glad that I'd had the sale anyway.

Next a couple where the wife browsed and the husband noticeably stayed outside the garage, almost like a force field separated him from the merchandise and he threw his voice into the unknown to give her advice.  More cat conversation sparked by the cat tower (For Sale $10).  They had a cat named Puppy, and a story about  how the cat got its name and how they got the cat.  Wow, more characters, more stories and $1.50 more in the cashbox.

Then two familiar faces--Steve and Eileen, friends and classmates from Milaca and Ham Lake neighbors on their way north to view the colors.  They had seen my Facebook posting and stopped by.  We talked politics and classmates and the upcoming reunion.  Steve left me his number to I could call him about the next reunion meeting.

The next customer also took me by surprise.  He got out of his pickup and heading in the direction of my garden instead of the garage.  He admired the size of my garden, told me about his market garden plot around the corner where he sells sweet corn and how his beets were as big as softballs this year.
We looked at the ground cherry plants and I gave him a sample (sweet and tart) and offered him some for seeds.  He looked at the fresh mounds of dirt that a gopher had just created as asked for a shovel.

The next thing I knew, he was scraping off the mounds looking for a good spot to set a gopher trap which I retrieved from the back of his pickup truck.  He didn't buy anything, but I collected my second male phone number of the day!  Hopefully the mound-making culprit will be caught and I can call Richard to collect the trap.  Maybe we'll talk about carrots and broccoli too.

The day proceeded like this...story after story.  There was a man and his adult son.  The son stayed in the car but the talkative father bought one of my apple pies, proclaiming that he was going to eat it all himself.  Five minutes later they are back again.  The son bought a second pie.
"Now you'll each have your own pie?" I asked.
"Going to give it to a friend down the road," the father said.
 I do hope the son at least got a bite.

I gave out samples of my fresh organic apple juice.  One man told me about his winter neighbor in Florida who also grew apples in Michigan and made juice from them.  His wife would accept the juice, but wouldn't drink it...she suspected worms.  Apparently the man was as unsavory as his juice.

A mother, father and young adult son stopped by.  The son's eagerness about everything--the book on dogs!  The apple juice!  let me know he was unique.  I complimented him on his t-shirt, the front had colorful puzzle pieces on it.
"Read the back," he said. The  extensive writing on the back explained about autism. "Because I have autism." he cheerfully confided.
"And you just carry on with your happy life, right?"
"Right!  Dad can we get some juice?  And an apple pie?  What, I get a free book too!  Thank you!"

I closed up for the night, went in to make more apple crisp and to anticipate what interesting stories my garage sale would bring me tomorrow.