Chapter 23 “Can I Hold Fred?”

I blog regularly and post on Tuesdays.

Last week, I was burnt out, lost, and tired. I wrote a few sentences, declared it a No-Blog Blog, and took myself on an artist's holiday.

Sweetpea and I sat in the pickup truck where she could sit beside me instead of being separated by bucket seats.

We parked by the Willamette River, close to the footbridge that spans the river. After walking across the bridge onto the park on the other side, we walked the path beside the river through the green lawn dotted with white flowers until we came to three snowy-white geese with fluffy yellow chicks. The geese were a surprise gift, as I had only seen ducks there before.

The geese were my Fred, Julie Cameron's bunny. In The Artist's Way, she encourages creatives—which we all are, whether we claim to be or not—to take an artist's holiday. Creativity is a part of us. It can only be drummed out. An artist's holiday recharges our batteries and often inspires us to the next step.

You can go to a museum, a play, a movie, a fair, or someplace grand; all of these give us a recharge.

It can also be something simple. Cameron often takes herself to the pet store to hold the giant bunny.

"Can I hold Fred?" she asks the proprietor.

"I don't know; you'll have to ask Fred." (Or whatever Fred's name is)

Well, she held him, so he must have said yes.

When my girls were preschool age, and we had recently moved to San Diego, there was an aquatic store down the hill not far from where we lived. We would go there and look at the fish in the glass aquariums, and outside behind the shop, we would peruse the cement block ponds where they raised fish, large and small.

My youngest daughter remained quite attached to aquatic animals into her adult life. Right out of college, she got a job at PetSmart, working with fish. Later, she had a mail-order saltwater animal shipping service. Then, she became the store director of a PetSmart store in California.

You never know the ramifications of a fun holiday.

Jo’s Commentary:

Remember Mrs. Banks from the movie Mary Poppins?

We used to march around the room to the tune of, “We’re simply soldiers in petticoats,” and shout, “Votes for women!”

“Our daughter's daughters will adore us, and they will sing in grateful chorus, “Well done, sister suffragettes.’”

Well then, there is the line, “Although we adore men individually, we agrees that as a rule they’re rather stupid.”

See what Mrs. Banks could get away with? And you thought it was a children’s movie.

What about suffragette Mrs. Pankhurst, who “has been clapped in irons again.”

Those suffragettes upon whose shoulders we stand fought to give women the right to vote.

And now, dear ones, we come to an election where one candidate is already spreading the rumor that the next election will be rigged unless he wins. Then, it will be accurate.

And, if he loses, he’s inciting his supporters to mutiny.

What do you think of this?