Annual report time!

To recap: this quirky business started out as the Cat Blanket Project. The Lovely Georg, Ceiling Cat Remember Her With Fishy Treats, asked friends to knit or crochet blankets for animal shelters, which I did. But then people from all over – possibly including you – sent me yarn in large boxes; other agencies/organizations asked for yarny help. So! You trusted me with art supplies. This is what I did with them in 2014, in 2015, in 2016.

After last year, my priorities shifted. In February, a friend mentioned he wasn’t writing his dissertation because when he was at home, he couldn’t finish anything. I thought, ‘Every night, I sit on the couch and work on my projects.’ He said he could never take online classes because he needed the in-person pressure to get work done. I thought, ‘Sometimes I’d rather chew off my foot than go to class.’ The further thought occurred that taking online classes at the unnamed university where I work would mean sitting on the couch at night and reading about art. How bad could that be? If this worked out, it had real potential. I might actually finish a freaking degree.

To test this theory last summer, I took a class called Feminist Practices, read interesting stuff, saw an absolutely great movie, wrote a whole bunch and panicked each time I didn’t understand the technology. In the end, I got an A, and registered for two more classes for the fall semester, in which I also earned As. As you might imagine, this cut into my crocheting time in a big way. That turned out to be genius when the cat shelter I’ve been sending blankets and toys to had so many extra they were sent to a different shelter, where – hooray! – they were needed. The shelter sent a thank you note!

Sometimes we plan, and our plans like concrete crumble. Or cheese, but cheese that crumbles.

What did I actually accomplish? This year, I sent 25 blankets and 35 toys to the cat shelter in NY State. Thank you for trusting me with yarn! Cats will be warm and have toys! Since I seem to have overwhelmed the tiny shelter, I will look around this year to find a local group that needs blankets and toys.

Last year, I joined the felt-tip army for PostcardsToVoters.org’s Democratic Get Out the Vote campaigns. As I said in last year’s book report:

[2018] was a crucial year in the history of our country and I started writing postcards to overcome my despair. Writing each postcard was an act of desperate hope in the beginning, and then the candidates I was writing for began to win races. I won’t lie. I needed them to win. I needed them to win enough that I wrote 405 postcards last year, putting a crimp in my 2018 crocheting schedule and making my hands, which don’t work well on a good day, feel like reheated crap.

Good news, Poor Impulsives! My hands now work a little better. Though I have been limited for a couple of decades now to writing no more than a sentence at a time by hand, writing a sentence at a time is brilliant for writing postcards! In 2019, I wrote 2,330 #postcardstovoters. My favorite campaigns were for Vote By Mail efforts in Florida because I’m goddamn sick and tired of reading accounts of overarmed assholes turning up at polling places to intimidate participants in participatory democracy.

If you happen to be disgusted with current events and inspired to spend more time at the post office, go to Postcards To Voters and enlist in a resistance effort with real results. The presidential election of 2020 is the single most important election of our lives. Now is the time to find your preferred form of activism and push.

Seriously, now is the time. A year from now, show me your annual report.