Photo of 2 postcards. On the left is half of a postcard. The background looks like scribbled blue marker. In the middle is the word VOTE in bubble letters that are white with green stars and yellow circles inside the letters. On the right side, covering the address area of the first postcard, is a postcard with the reverse side showing the message: Dear Voter, Your Vote=Your Voice! Don't be silenced, vote this November for family and community. Check your voter status at my.arizona.vote. Need help registering or updating voter registration for yourself, family or friends? Call 928.414.8097. Thank you! Sue, Arizona Native Democrats.

I signed up with another postcarding group, Arizona Native Democrats. Their current campaign is directed towards residents of Navajo Nation, encouraging people to register to vote, update their registration if needed or help family and friends do the same.

Most postcarding groups have you provide your own postcards, and just ask that the postcards not have divisive messages. This group has an added requirement due to cultural considerations - no postcards with images of an owl or coyote. I have a "white person who's read a lot of Tony Hillerman novels" understanding of Navajo culture but I do know that the owl can represent illness or death. The coyote is both important culturally but also an irresponsible troublemaker so not the best representative for checking on something important like voter status!

hand illustrated postcard with an orange cat with a star pattern on his fur sitting on a grassy hillock. There are two flowers on either side of him growing from the ground. They have purple bell-shaped blooms. The cat is looking up into the blue sky. There aresome scattered clouds, a 4 pointed star at the top and a crescent moon on the right. There is a blue-black bird flying downwards. The scene is framed in an ornate, hand drawn curly frame, embellished within the curls and swoops with purple and yellow stars and decorative tendrils.

I received my own postcard in the mail this week, the August mailing from Silver Swan Post Club. In the envelope was this sweet little kitty card, some stickers, a play list, a journal prompt, a recipe for White Cheddar Mac and the usual chatty letter. I love the letters these postcard clubs send - it's like getting a blog post in your mailbox!

Items laid out on a white sheet of paper. On the top row on the left is a small square card, pink with brown polka dots. On the top in a blue banner in brown text it says cat nap playlist curated by @elenastrawn25. Below that is a QR code that leads to a Spotify playlist. On the right is a large rectangular card, brown with pink polka dots. In a blue banner in brown text are the words JOURNAL PROMPT what would you like more room for in your life right now? There are 2 sparkle stars in the upper left and lower right corners. Below the cards are 4 stickers: a long blue fish with a pink underside, a yellow and pink star with the center cut out, a pale cream kitty with light brown stars rolling on its back and a darker brown kitty with light brown stars, stretching with its front half down, eyes closed and mouth open as if it is yawning.

The playlist is something new she's doing this month. The journal prompt was included because she said a lot of her members journal. Back in February, before I joined her postcard club, she had made stickers of one of her cats. These kitties are her other cat.

I first talked about the postcard clubs back in Weekly Wrap Up 107 and made a list of the clubs I had found in Weekly Wrap Up 108. My intention was to cycle through them and check them all out. I signed up for 3 and then felt terribly guilty at the thought of cancelling, which is totally a me thing, not any pressure from the card clubs! I finally cancelled the other 2 but I'm glad I didn't cancel Silver Swan before getting these cute kitty stickers! I'll go through my list and figure out which ones I want to sample next.

Skep's Place is hosting the second virtual Small Web Potluck! I participated last year and had a lot of fun, not only trying out recipes that had been sitting in my "gotta try this one day" pile but also checking out what everyone else made. I'm definitely participating again this year - just have to figure out what I'm going to make. If I can figure it out and sign up by the 16th, then I get an early bird badge! Nothing like a prize in the offering to get my procrastinating self motivated. You should join, too!

Listening

Some podcasts I've listened to this week:

Reading

I wasn't sure what I was going to read last week. I have so many options, it's hard to decide between them! I finally chose to go with Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner and Lawrie Mott. It is fascinating but also infuriating. So much chicanery went on regarding water usage/owning/pilfering in the West and it is affecting the region to this day.

I'm only up to chapter 3. I'm feeling particularly flighty and unable to concentrate for long on anything plus I keep getting stopped by the wonderful turns of phrase. They're so amazing that I just have to pause, reread them, soak in their beauty and then write them down. It's wreaking havoc with my reading flow but how could you not stop to admire sentences like:

"The frozen fire of a winter's moon poured cold light on the desert below."

and

"...vast gridiron of lights appeared out of nowhere. It was clustered thickly under the aircraft and trailed off toward the south, erupting in ganglionic clots that winked and shimmered in the night."

In addition to beauteous turns of phrase he also uses a lot of really awesome vocabulary. My favorite so far has been describing someone as speaking with "sesquipedalian tergiversation."

Watching

Best Son came over for a visit and we watched Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man. He wasn't very happy with it because it didn't answer things left over from the last season of Peaky Blinders. I was just there to be entertained so I didn't really miss that although there was more contemplation and less violence (not that there wasn't any, just seems like there is usually MORE) than I'm used to from Peaky Blinders.

On YouTube, I watched 11 British Sci-Fi Movies Most Americans Have Never Seen from The Sci-Fi Graveyard. I'm always looking for sci-fi that I may have missed but I was already either familiar with or had watched most of these. One that they mentioned was Attack the Block. I saw this years ago and it is a really fun sci-fi/comedy/horror film about a teenage street gang that has to fight off alien invaders. John Boyega plays the head of the gang! Anyway, apparently there is a sequel in the works that Boyega is involved with and I am super excited about that.

If you want a good double feature, I don't think you could go wrong with Attack the Block and Slash/Back, which is a 2022 Canadian Inuit sci-fi film that was a whole lot of fun.

Link Lagniappe

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Ok, that's about it for this week!

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