IdeaJones

Blog

  • Hearts and Peace Signs

    Hearts and Peace Signs

    Available on zazzle.com or redbubble.com. Just search for “ideajones” and you’ll see it.

    The 50th anniversary of the “Summer of Love” is this year. Maybe that’s why I’m drawing so many peace signs, or maybe it’s just that everyone seems so angry and worried. It seems like a good time to remember that how we respond is always our choice.

    A portion of our commission goes to charities helping people or pets in need.

    Mom was always involved in projects for charity. When I was a toddler, she and my grandmother hand-made beautiful doll clothes for an annual toy drive. I wasn’t that much into dolls, but seeing my mom and grandmother so focused on making them, and seeing how beautiful they were (mom really could sew), I wanted them. I must have been about three when this happened. I told her I wanted (pointing) that one, and she handed it to me, but explained it was made for someone who had no toys. Someone who was going to have a very sad Christmas. Did I want to take that doll dress away from her?

    Let’s be honest — I did. Because mom made it, because it was beautiful, and because I was three. But I put it back.

    Later, she had our Girl Scout troop make presents for kids in hospitals (little paper chimneys full of candy and a little toy), and we grew meal worms for birds recovering after an oil spill. My dad, who ran a furniture store back then, organized employees into refurbishing furniture returned to the store for distribution to halfway houses. I trick-or-treated for Unicef.

    My parents weren’t hippies. Far from it. But they remembered The Great Depression and mom used to say, “There but for the grace of God go I.” She used to tell me that if you’d been really poor, if you’d been hungry, you knew what a kind gesture could mean.

    Whatever our leaders do, on a day-to-day basis, our world is in our hands. Yes, there are things our government should do, things that take all of us together. But if we (you, Mark and me) give a recent immigrant a bus pass, or a bowl of kibble to someone who’s having trouble feeding his dog or cat, or give art supplies to kids from homeless families, we don’t fix all of the world’s problems, but we make one thing just a little bit better.

    So if you’ve ever bought a onesie, or a tee shirt, or a cell phone case, or anything else from us, thank you. You supported a small business. You were a patron of the arts. You were a philanthropist helping someone in need. You hippie, you (lol).

     

     

    http://www.zazzle.com/rainbow_peace_heart_baby_by_ideajones_baby_bodysuit-235514816804770528?rf=238652286093066263

  • Safe Harbor and safety pins

    Hi!

    These are “Safe Harbor” pins. I make pins like these and give them away. It’s led to some heartwarming interactions.

    “Safe Harbor” is a symbol that came to the U.S. from the U.K. One wears a safety pin to signify that one is a “safe harbor” for people who feel threatened in some way. It says “I will try to treat you with respect and courtesy.”

    As reports of people being harassed and threatened grew, I decided to wear a pin and hand some out. Then white supremacists and others started trying to co-opt the plain safety pin, so I started “tarting them up,” adding beads and pendants.

    I wasn’t sure if anyone would get what I was doing, but when Mark and I went to Southern California to see friends, I took a few along. When someone admired my pin, I gave him one. A young man who works at Universal Studios Hollywood noticed my pin as Mark and I were leaving. He asked if I knew the significance (I did). I offered him a pin. He was very excited. He said that he knew people who had been harassed and felt threatened. He asked to hug me, explained that he wasn’t allowed to wear the pin at work, but he would when he wasn’t working. Mark and I made a stop at the Customer Service Office, and when we came out, the young man came running over to show us his new pin in its new home, on his hat.

    Since the first few were well-received, I decided to make more and give those away. Today, at the Women’s March on Sacramento, I gave away 50 pins in less than 15 minutes. They were accepted by young mothers, including one nursing her baby, older women including a grandmother who also took one for her granddaughter… women from all generations and backgrounds. Among the people I met today:

    • A church group, who said they are thinking about giving out Safe Harbor pins;
    • A group of young people (say 15-20) with partially-shaved heads, hair dyed in rainbow colors;
    • A couple with a daughter lofting a Mexican flag;
    • A group of young women in pink “pussy” hats;
    • A little boy who took one with a leaf, because he wants to encourage people to take care of nature;
    • A young woman who took a packet with two simpler pins (not as ornate as the ones in this photo) because she liked the idea of taking one and giving another to someone else.

    My favorite might have been the mom who navigated the crowd with her teenaged son in tow. She had accepted a pin earlier and hailed me through the crowd because her son wanted a pin, too.  By that time I was almost out, but he found one he liked.

    I’ll be posting a video in coming days on how to make a Safe Harbor pin of your own. It can be ornate or simple. But I would encourage you to make at least two, one for yourself and one to give away.

    In the end, it isn’t princes nor politicians who make our world what it is. Our world is whatever we choose to make it. They can’t take us where we are unwilling to go, and they can’t make us hate each other. We can be the first to be kind. We can give each other a Safe Harbor.

    Hope you and yours are happy and well. Check back to see the video, probably early February so you can make a few pins for Valentine’s Day. And to the people who accepted pins, thank you.

     

    #safetypin #safetypinAmerica

  • Playing A New Game

    Playing A New Game

    Take a chance on yourself.

    Hi. I hope the new year is treating you well. So far it’s not bad from here. True, I have a cold, but those happen. No sense taking it personally. I get frustrated when I get sick. Long story, but I took a long time to get around to living my own life, so I tend to think I shouldn’t take down time. I have “too much to catch up on!”

    But I realized recently that I can’t start from anywhere but where I am, and can’t start as anyone but myself. I am who I am and I am where I am, and if sometimes it feels like I’m not where I “should” be, is that a useful idea? So I’m working on not living in the past, or trying to live in the future, or constantly measuring myself or my life against some invisible yardstick. This moment, cold and all, isn’t bad.

    A friend of ours just got her driver’s license. She’s over 30 and had never intended to do anything but use Uber and Lyft and public transit, but she got a chance at a new job and they need her to drive occasionally. So, nervous as she was, she faced it head on and learned to drive. She’s continuing to challenge herself, learn new things, and go in whatever direction looks best to her at the time. That’s brave, not to get stuck in a rut because anything else is unfamiliar and uncomfortable.

    I’m learning new things. For the first time, I got hired to create the art for a CD cover. It’s not something I had done before, but I met with the musician and his producer, they liked my ideas, so I decided to stretch myself and learn to do a new thing. We’re all happy with how the final artwork turned out, but I admit, it was a nervous business in the beginning. I wanted to do a good job for the client, and my own pride in my work.

    I researched the covers in his genre of music and gave it some thought — it seemed to  make sense to honor the conventions of his genre (blues rock), but not simply be “one more in a herd of just that.” So we (yes, I created the artwork, but he had choices to make and participated in the creation) took a common theme in his genre and changed it up. It still fits his genre, but it won’t be just like hundreds of other covers. Still, could I pull off my idea?

    Here’s one thing I figured out — most music is sold online now, which means a potential customer could first see it as a postage-stamp-sized picture on a phone or tablet. It used to be that album covers had to work in a fairly large size, that of an LP record. Then 45s came in, and the images had to work smaller. Then audio cassettes, now online sites showing pages of little “stamps.” The cover has to work at the size of, say, a tee shirt, and at that postage stamp size. I poured hours into creating an image that would be clear and interesting whether it was scaled up or scaled down. So I learned a new thing — to create artwork that works no matter what size it is.

    I’m trying new media artistically, and trying new things as a writer. Who knows how successful it will all be, but I’m trying. Like our friend, I’m learning all I can and then getting in there. It’s like a roller coaster. Sometimes scary, sometimes exhilirating. I hope your new year brings you just enough of the right kinds of challenges to keep you growing.

  • So That’s What It’s Like To Be Hip (Sort Of)

    We went to Southern CA to visit friends (and some theme parks). Through a cosmic accident/karma/God decided to throw us a bone, the compact car we rented was unavailable. The rental agency had a crowd of people waiting and almost no cars. Mark is almost always polite and a nice guy, and the rental agent asked if we’d be willing to accept another car — then gave Mark a choice between an SUV and a convertible for the same rate as the compact we’d reserved.

    A black Mustang GT convertible. Yes, please!

    We caught a concert (The Tribe, a group of musicians who perform to raise money for charity. The group includes session and tour musicians, so the people who make famous people sound good), and is invariably fun and musically satisfying. Our friend was performing (because he is also a nice guy). Such fun to sit in the third row, watching our friend perform.

    Flash forward to the last night of the trip. Our friend was performing again, in a small, very nice club in Westlake Village, CA (southern CA), Bogie’s. I suspect either he or his wife dropped a word, because we were shown to a table in the best section of the house, up on the riser, a seat down from the venue owner. We had a great view as our friend and his band rocked the house, and then other talented musicians came up (including Denny Laine of The Moody Blues and John York of The Byrds). They played the music from the Abbey Road album by The Beatles, and our friend came back up to join them.

    I’ve never been particularly cool, but then, I’ve never really tried to be. My friends are incredibly cool people, though, each of them talented at something, whether it’s music, getting kids to read, art, teaching, animal rescue, or any number of other things. They’re passionate, funny, intelligent, good people. Through them, I occasionally get to sit at “the cool kids’ table” now and again.

    But the coolest thing is just spending time with them. As cool as it was to watch John Wicks and The Records from a ringside table, the coolest thing was chatting over Indian food in a small restaurant with John and Valerie, catching up on our lives, talking about music and art, and just being together.

    We’re posting some video from the Bogie’s concert on Youtube. Here’s a link to their performance of “Liverpool 6512:”https://youtu.be/5H-cu0DpTFU

  • Happy Thanksgiving, Whoever and Wherever You Are

    rainbow-heart-circle-neon-ideajones This is long for a post. It doesn’t start out so thankful, but it gets there. As I was telling friends, the other day I spoke with a friend who’s a therapist. She told me she’s working overtime every day because she’s getting referrals from people, LGBT, immigrants, etc., who are losing sleep, scared, worried, to the point where it’s harming their health.

    As a relative used to say, “This is some shit.” Mark and I talked about what she said, and wondered whatever happened to minding one’s own business? I mean, a lot of things make me uncomfortable. People in Spandex out in public. Dudes who wear their underwear high and their pants low and so baggy they look like toddlers toting full diapers. Daddy Long Legs spiders.  I have a list.

    But.

    So long as whatever it is involves consenting adults and nobody’s underaged, under the influence or under coercion, if I don’t have to watch or help, it’s not my business. If it’s legal but it makes me uncomfortable, I get to feel how I feel and avoid it if I can, but when I can’t, the rules of courtesy apply. I don’t get to make that person feel ridiculed, or worse yet, threatened because I’m uncomfortable. My discomfort is not the litmus test by which other human beings must live.

    I’ll be straight up here… I don’t get the transgendered thing. I don’t disapprove or approve… I just don’t get it. But I don’t have to. That person is still a person and he/she has a legal right to be who he/she is, and let me say it one more time… *it’s none of my business and I would treat that person with respect.* Because that person is a person, and so am I. My courtesy toward another human being is not dependent on my approval of how he’s living his life. You don’t have to pass a test for me to treat you decently.

    You can be okay with me even if I don’t understand how you live your life. I don’t have to. Not my job. It’s not required and I don’t have time to freeze my life until I can make sense of all the things human beings do/are. So if it’s not for me, I keep my nose out of it, wish whoever it is well, and honor that person’s basic humanity.

    Anyone who thinks that giving someone else respect and courtesy depends on approving of how that person lives his or her life doesn’t understand respect, or courtesy, or that how you treat people says a hell of a lot more about you than about them.

    So what is it I’m thankful for? I’m thankful for people like my friend, who does a difficult job that only gets more difficult during stressful times. She does it with humor, intelligence and compassion.

    I’m thankful that mom introduced the idea that I have a variety of options available when dealing with other people, and one of them is to keep my nose out of their business. As mom used to say, “Several billion people would have trouble walking through life hand in hand, so it’s okay that not everyone cottons to everyone else.” But she also told me that just because someone wasn’t for me didn’t mean he had no value at all.

    I’m thankful for a minister who, when I was young and impressionable, told us that God loves everyone, even the people we disagree with or dislike. He told us that to deny another person’s dignity was to reduce our own. You don’t have to share my faith to share that idea.

    I’m thankful that my life includes people who are intelligent, engaged in the world, passionate, and yet respectful even to people they disagree with.

    And I’m thankful for you. You’ve read this far. You’re willing to at least consider what I have to say. You are interested in the world around you and art and other people or you wouldn’t even be here. We may disagree with each other about some things, even some important things, and yet find common ground.

    As my friend Mary says, “You are awesome! Own it! Own it!” And you are.

    And so are other people, even people who do things that neither you nor I understand. Most people are decent. Confusing, confounding, but decent. And nobody has a monopoly on human decency, intelligence, kindness or worthiness. There’s enough for all of us.

    That’s a lot to be thankful for.

    Save