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Reminder to self: remember Marta Beckett. When the going gets tough and you feel like you’re toiling in obscurity and not even accomplishing anything. I have a lot of trouble with motivation, but fortunately I have various tips and tricks. And also, a whole bunch of role models.

I first read about Marta Becket back in the 80s or 90s, and her story really captured my heart. I ended up carrying it around with me for years in a binder notebook full of other inspiring people’s stories clipped from newspapers and magazines.

Marta Becket was born in 1924 and died in 2017 at the age of 92. She was a ballerina and a visual artist and a lot more.

She got a flat tire while driving way out west in the desert, and she ended up buying a decrepit old building and turning it into a theater. In her later years she attracted large audiences, but before she had audiences, she just painted an audience on the wall and performed for them. She never gave up sharing her art and passion.

Our work is our work, and the way you know your work is your work is that you just have to do it, regardless of whether anyone seems to be paying attention. It’s what you just have to do. It’s easier to keep going when we remind ourselves that it doesn’t matter if anyone’s paying attention right then.

On that note, I have come to treasure this blog. I never know who is reading or listening, except one or two very special friends who I am so appreciative of. You guys know who you are! But it doesn’t matter. Somehow writing these posts and putting them out into the world, they’re getting out somewhere. Independent and irrespective of any kind of social-media sharing.

It really only takes one person to hear something good and share it with the next person. One person in my community back in Austin heard about permaculture, and he went on to become an expert practitioner, and beloved teacher/mentor of hundreds or even thousands of students. The way he heard about it was on some radio show that happened to be broadcast on a fishing boat he was working aboard in Alaska. NPR interviewing Bill Mollison or something. I’m sure it was filled with crackly static, at least that’s how I picture it, being broadcast across that much land and water. Very distant connection reaching across the airwaves but it found the Motherlode!

What does this and my many other posts about art and creativity have to do with sustainability?

Well, for one thing, the arts give us a doorway into our hearts and reduce our tolerance for wasted time and meaningless drudgery. I have a suspicion that a lot of mindless consumerism is motivated by restlessness: Many people have never had a chance to awaken into their essential human creativity. If you’re out there making the arts a cornerstone of your life, please encourage as many other people as you can to do the same. It’s a service to them and to the planet.

Sustainability about a lot more than green toilet paper, eco-friendly lawn equipment, choosing the right carbon offsets for your weekend flight to Prague for your seventh grand-nephew’s gender reveal, selecting low-VOC paint from the big box store, etc.

Every time i get bogged down in hopelessness, feeling like im toiling in obscurity and pathetic in my flimsy efforts to build and nurture community, Marta Becket is on my short list of people i try to remind myself to remember.

Further exploration:

• “Marta Becket’s Amargosa Opera House” (by Kim Stringfellow; mojaveproject.org, January 2016). https://mojaveproject.org/dispatches-item/marta-beckets-amargosa-opera-house/ “A fortune teller’s prophecy and a fortuitous flat tire led the multitalented doyenne Marta Becket to resurrect and transform Death Valley Junction’s decaying community meeting hall into a gloriously muraled theater where for four decades she has performed her own choreographed ballet and vaudeville acts for an international audience. Her legendary story is not only the subject of the Emmy-winning documentary Amargosa (2000) but one that has captured the imagination of fans from across the globe.”

• “Marta Becket, dancer who built a theater in the desert, dies at 92.” https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/03/arts/dance/marta-becket-dead.html

Today and yesterday I’ve been having so much fun arranging the community art space here at Starshine House / Trailhead 501.

A few days ago when I was sorting through beads and fabric for just a personal project, it occurred to me I think for the first time that straightening and arranging supplies isn’t just a necessary thing for order. I actually think it might be part of the creative process. In other words: In the process of straightening and ordering and categorizing, we come into physical tactile contact with our creative supplies, and this contact generates seeds for different projects.

Also on a somewhat related note, it makes sense to me why raking sand, stringing beads, etc. can be so beneficial for the mind calming and also for creativity.

In today’s rushed world, a lot of people tend to keep their creative supplies (if they even allow themselves to have such supplies), tucked away and not looked at for months or years.

Then when a tiny window opens up in the hectic schedule, we try to get the supplies out to do one specific project, but we get annoyed and frustrated with ourselves because things don’t turn out looking or functioning in a way that we feel happy with. So then we put away the supplies again in their cramped, opaque boxes or cabinets until months or years later …

I’m realizing that, at least for me, I need to just allow myself to sort and categorize without actually “doing a project.”

Just having fun having tactile contact with beads and fabric and all that. Oh, these guys are all the same color, let’s put them in this container, and these fabric pieces which I don’t have an immediate urge to use can go in this big box at the back of the craft shelf, whereas these things that are calling me and I might want to use this week should stay in the clear container front and center etc. etc.

And it seems to be something a little bit more than what I had always assumed it was, which is that if I haven’t gotten my creative things out for a while, I’m “out of practice” and that’s why the project effort falls short.

But the other day it occurred to me differently: Instead of it just being a matter of being out of practice with my tools and materials, I actually think it’s an insufficiency of tactile interaction.

This is a very liberating realization. It takes a lot of pressure off. There’s no pressure to create some perfect item each time. Or even to create any kind of item.

Which is a good thing, because we’re living in a world that’s pretty chock-full of items.

On a related note, I feel like in days of yore, a lot of people’s art urges got channeled into basic daily everyday household items. And I find a lot of beauty and reverence in that. I really enjoy creating or embellishing ordinary household items as opposed to creating something that is “only” a piece of art.

In the generalized ye olden days of yore, I feel like putting a touch of beauty into ordinary objects enabled people to channel the creative urges we all have. And, not incidentally, it brought much-needed beauty into what otherwise would’ve been a pure drudgery life.

Nowadays people go out and make a bunch of money so they don’t have to do old fashion toil and drudgery. And yet, hasn’t it ended up just becoming a different flavor of drudgery, and we often don’t even have every day handmade beauty to draw on, unless we can manage to carve out the time and space to create a bit of beauty. The embroidered flower or initial on a towel; the handmade stencil images on a wall; the handstitched koozies made out of the beer- and soft-drink-company gimme koozies that litter the streets after a festival.

(That said, I love art and always will, even if it’s not functional art. Actually, maybe all art is functional, in that it wakes us up and helps us access our hearts and recharge from the grind. Not only the making of art, but also looking at art made by other people, including both contemporary people and people in other times.)

Looking up from this typing, I see a beautiful jar of beads. They’re already strung, they’re part of basically the whole inventory of a small bead-shop. (A treat that I purchased a few years ago after coming into the life-changing sum of money that I used mainly to buy this house.) A nice local lady was selling them on Facebook or craigslist or something.

I’ve had as much fun using the beads and findings for decorations around the house and outdoor trellis-rooms and such, as I have had making necklaces and earrings and so on.

Same with my fabrics and threads.

Art supplies actually make kind of a pretty decoration in themselves. I clump little groupings of things. Oh hey, there is a still-life waiting to happen! Maybe I’ll make a painting of my jars of beads, sitting just so in the afternoon light.

You can see some pics of one tiny minuscule scintilla of my bead collection over here.

Whether or not it turns into a necklace or a scarf or whatever at that moment, just the process of touching the supplies is it self a valid and joyful activity.

By the way, speaking of another one of my favorite arts — not long ago I found out that a relatively high proportion of ecological landscapers come from a background of arts and literature and humanities, as opposed to, say, “official” landscape architecture or botanical sciences. It’s almost like beauty and ecological consciousness are connected … <wink>

Story coming up; stay tuned. In the meantime, you can see pix here on my deep green Facebook page. (Extra bonus points if you can guess why I was so pleased to find these particular plastic items!)

So, I’m sitting in my kitchen.

Stay tuned for the story; in the meantime check out photos here on my DEEP GREEN fb page.

OK I’m back. So, I was sitting in my kitchen. What’s the big deal, right? Well, until today, my kitchen had just not had any chairs in it. There wasn’t really any reason to have chairs. There are many other rooms in the house, and places outside of the house, for people to sit. And yet, I felt like trying something new in the kitchen. So I put a little wheelie table between two chairs. And I sat in one of the chairs.

Probably sounds silly or trivial, but it felt like I was more fully inhabiting my house than I ever had. That’s a theme of this week in general, as I create the community art space in one of the big rooms. I’m sitting in all of the rooms and using them in the way that I mean for the community to use them.

It struck me that many of us might go through a lot of our lives without ever fully inhabiting even our own bodies, let alone our whole houses.

I might have other things to say about this but I’ll stop for now, and hope you can get a flavor by looking at the photos. There’s just something about a yellow kitchen that has a little nook with chairs. One wonders why I hadn’t thought of it before. But sometimes it takes a little bit of clearing out to generate something new coming in. Not that the chairs or the table were new, they were just in different rooms of the house being used in other ways. Oh, and all of them were old stuff: The rolling table from the curbside luck-tide; and the chairs came from my own childhood home and are full of memories. Cheery shiny red with checkered upholstery seats, they were part of our informal dinner-table setup.

My efforts to nurture a community and support literacy and connection in my neighborhood will never cease; but a pivot is sometimes needed.

Photo of sign saying this library is now closed, visit little free library.org for list of other LFL’s in the neighborhood and city; if you’re not able to get online call or text me and I will send you a list. Also support your local public library and used bookstore.

I will be writing more about this a little later. “Longtime neighborhood little free library steward makes weirdest rant ever.” Stay tuned, I will probably add it to this post by the end of the day.

For now you can see the photo of my basic handwritten sign. Courtesy of a whiteboard and perfectly fresh whiteboard marker that I found awhile back in the curbside trash. Yay for landfill diversion, and for things being available right when they’re needed.

OK, I am back.

So imagine that somebody runs a little free library, and they get annoyed with people for always asking, “Do you need books?” Pretty weird, right? I mean weird that a librarian would get annoyed with people for offering books.

But, that annoyed librarian is me. And there’s a reason I feel this way.

Of course a little free library needs a steady stream of people bringing back books, and bringing other books that they’re no longer reading. This ideally occurs roughly in balance with people taking books.

But what a Little Free Library really depends on is flow.

What keeps the library alive is people who care about it and use it. I mean, who actually rely on it for books, and bring books that they’re finished reading as they finish reading them.

Instead, what typically happens is that a person hears about the library and immediately thinks of cleaning out their bookshelves, and brings a huge box of books and dumps it on the sidewalk or porch.

The first thing out of their mouth when they hear about the library is, “Do you need books?”

OK, so that sounds petty of me, right? If I am looking for book donations, do I have any business being picky, and being annoyed about having to sort through somebody’s big box of Fortran manuals and Atkins diet books?

Am I entitled for not wanting to store extra books and wait for space to empty out in the library?

Flow, my friends. What we’re talking about is a problem of flow.

And also a problem of mentality. People are not thinking of the library as a library; they’re thinking of it as a place to unload their extra stuff. That’s how the more well-off people think of it.

Meanwhile, there’s the population that actually depend on the library. They walk past everyday on their way to work at the hotels or restaurants. We say hi and pass the time of day.

There are also many of our unhoused neighbors who love the library. Maybe they can’t walk all the way over the bridge to the big public library. Maybe the public library won’t let them in because their backpacks are too big. Yes, this happens. These people actually need a library. And they actually take books, and at least occasionally bring back a book here and there. That kind of flow is what sustains this type of little community library.

There are a number of other little free libraries not far away, and I’m going to re-open mine eventually as well. In the long run, I can’t really not run the library. I can’t not share books. But geez Louise, those voluminous drive-by offloads of people’s closets are a drag. And then the other extreme, when it gets really empty and no one’s bringing back any books. Until the next giant drop-off.

Over the years, I have asked for help of more of a co-stewardship variety, but that hasn’t been forthcoming. Once in a while I’ll have someone told me I should do this with that improvement. Better doors. Glass front, whatever. My attitude is that those people can either pick up a hammer and a checkbook or keep it moving.

I guess the thing that bugs me most is what a sign of community fracture this is. There is a disconnect. It’s sad.

But I know a lot of people really appreciate the library in the spirit it’s intended.

So when I finish being fed up with the housekeeping aspect (constantly having to straighten up the books on the shelves because people can’t or won’t keep them straight), I’ll throw myself back into the fray of sifting through those SUV-trunk expulsions of dreary weight-loss tomes, phone books, VCR manuals, cans of green beans, Fodor’s travel guides from 1999 … and glean the books that are actually for reading.

But hey, even the books I think of as duds, are treasures for someone.

Just for gosh sake don’t ask me if my little community library “needs books.” What it needs is more interaction, more people who actually use it.

Interesting thought … I just had a flashback to a time I was helping to run a small garden at a church. It grew better when I was living nearby and was depending on the garden as a food source. When it became just a demonstration garden, the plants seemed to languish.

I imagine my library closure will probably last until about next week. If that long.

But those people who leave the shelves messy. Argh! Do I need to hide in the shrubbery with a super soaker squirt gun and give them a surprise when they leave the books in disarray? Or maybe I could chase after them like a book version of the Seinfeld “Soup Nazi,” yelling “NO BOOKS FOR YOU!”

What comes to me just now is, it feels like something a whole order of magnitude more novel and interesting needs to happen with the design of the library. There are a lot of really cute and wildly creative library designs; might be time for me to revisit the LittleFreeLibrary.org website.

UPDATE: Update, well that library closure lasted about a day and a half lol. I just can’t NOT support literacy and accessibility in the community. So, the library is back open.

That being said, i DID post a couple of short videos just now. Heart request to my more-affluent neighbors part one and part two. See links below in the further exploration section.

part 1 https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZThcNRqff/

Further exploration:

• Little Free Library website www.LittleFreeLibrary.org ; and Little Free Library page on Facebook

• And check out my TikTok videos I posted just now. #LittleFreeLibrary heart-request to my more-affluent neighbors — Part 1 (Video duration 3 minutes 2 seconds) ; and #LittleFreeLibrary heart-request to my more-affluent neighbors — Part 2 (Video duration 2 minutes 50 seconds).

This is a post I made yesterday.

jenny’s sudden impromptu micro yard-sale! First come first served. No sincere offers refused. (Actually, it’s a FREE “yard sale” lol.)

BTW fun fact: Almost everything here were things I scored from the curbside bounty (Neighbors were throwing away), or purchased secondhand from thrift shop or local online marketplace etc.

It’s great to keep the flow of things going to the next people who will put them fully into use. Around this house, once we stop using something to the point that we even forget we have it, and / or it is simply in the way and hard to stow, it goes!

The bicycles are already spoken for but everything else is available. Update, some of the dishes are moved on to new owners. Air fryer is still available as are the cute seahorse bowl/cups.

Pickup only. jenny’s corner
NOTE I am no longer on messenger.
Please contact me by phone. (Either voice-call or text message is fine.)

PS. Added right here for this blog post: As of yesterday, I officially do not own any bicycles.

One (the one that was too short for me although I loved it’s super simple beach cruiser design) went to a neighbor down the street who will be able to use it, as will her daughter and tenant.

The other (my beautiful single speed fixie that I just couldn’t keep in repair) went to a leader of a local Critical Mass chapter.

But, you might ask, why would I get rid of bicycles? The fact is that without a bicycle shop in the neighborhood, and me not having mechanical skills, And the bicycle shops several miles away abolishing their mobile repair service or not having any in the first place, and the unofficial underground bike repair guy ceasing his operations after finding some steady handyman work out of town, I really don’t have a good way to keep a bicycle in repair.

When I first moved to this neighborhood, the pedicab company where I got a part-time job as a pedicab driver was right down the block, and it was additionally a bicycle repair shop in addition to being our garage. But it closed a few years ago.

None of this is meant to sound whiny. It’s meant to illustrate the challenges for people attempting to get around by foot, bicycle, or bus in a car-centric society where there’s not enough supporting infrastructure. either physically, or socially. Some areas are remarkably socially unsupportive towards pedestrians and cyclists, and this is one such place. And yet there are many many people here who cannot drive, cannot afford to own a car, etc. I work on behalf of those people as well as on behalf of my own needs and wishes.

On the positive side, being almost exclusively on foot has forced me to become more knowledgeable about the bus routes, which is part of my community activist mission.

If I had had a working bicycle the other day instead of walking/jogging the 9 miles from my friends’ place in Ormond by the Sea back to my place, I would not have ever realized how very few bus stops there are above Grenada. (Now, as of March, all bus service above Granada is being eliminated.)

Fixed-route bus service, and the availability of bicycle shops in every neighborhood, are essential in order to have true sustainability of transportation. We have work to do.

Regarding bicycles, I would love to have community bicycle sheds and repair clinics in each neighborhood, where we learn together and maintain a small leak of shared bicycles. With perhaps a membership fee, especially for those of us like me who pretty much have zero mechanical skills. So far my efforts to start something like that haven’t attracted any interest, but you never know when the next person arriving in the neighborhood is somebody who would also want to help create such a community asset.

A friend and fellow resident of Daytona Beach posted a lament about her favorite restaurant condiment packets at her when she asked for ketchup. Meanwhile condiments were right there in bottles, behind the counter.

Packets don’t allow a person to choose how much of a condiment they want. Also, packets are very wasteful because a lot of product stays stuck inside of the packet.

My response focused on the plastic-trash aspect:

So true! Bring back the ketchup bottle and the mustard bottle, and ditch the packets.

As residents of a coastal town, we see more than our share of plastic trash because it washes up in the water and on the wind.

Public service announcement: Packets are trashy; they trash the beach and the planet because almost all of them end up as trash floating around somewhere.

Let’s start insisting on common sense, bring back the ketchup container and salsa container and mustard container etc. etc. etc.

Also, locals, if you’re just grabbing food to take home, then don’t accept the packets. You already have your condiments at home.

Same with the plastic cutlery and paper napkins. Every bit we say NO to when we don’t need it, is one less bit of trash.

Also, when you have a favorite restaurant or food / drink vendor who lets you use your reusable cup etc., support them and tip them extra! Food and drink taste so much better when we don’t have to generate single-use-plastic trash in order to enjoy our favorite treats.

Oh, and three cheers for those of you who actually carry your own reusable silverware, cloth napkin, and reusable cup. Urban survival belts are a fun and cool and functional element of style.