2 stainless steel Italian charm bracelets that have been unhooked and lie flat. There are several charms on each bracelet. Some of the black lasered ones are quite faded.

Click photo to embiggen

Description of charms on the bracelet

Top row, left to right: (blank); Vitruvian Man; Swiss flag; (blank); (heart) TO READ; (blank); Cross Word on a crossword grid that is otherwise blank; Welcome to Las Vegas sign; Mississippi state flag (retired in 2020); sparkly atom; (blank); X-Ray Tech with a skeleton hand; (blank); California state flag; (blank); (heart) Scrabble; Pisces sign with white fish facing the opposite direction on a blue sparkly background; I (heart) TO READ; Arizona state flag.

Bottom row, left to right: (blank); (blank); white square with 4 rows of letters with one row and one column spelling out WORD SEARCH; Louisiana state flag; (blank); orange tabby cat; old style CRT monitor and desktop; Austrian flag; Phoenix Mercury; I (heart) my cats with 2 pawprints; Mexican flag; cup of coffee; blue enamel background with Volunteer on the bottom in black and 4 black hearts above; German flag; Welcome to Las Vegas sign; (heart) cross stitch with 4 Xs; UK flag; double wide white link with Organ Donor in black and a red cadeceus on the left.

When I was growing up, I had a charm necklace. It was really fun picking out charms that represented something about me. I ended up buying a lot of them from the local drugstore's jewelry section. That was what kind of jewelry budget I had as a kid, plus that was back in the olden times when drugstores also sold ice cream. What better to follow up a charm purchase than some delicious Thrifty brand ice cream?

As an adult, I picked up the charm habit again only in the form of an Italian charm bracelet. I had as much fun choosing charms as an adult as I did as a kid! I picked charms representing states I lived in and countries I either lived in (Germany, Mexico) or visited (Switzerland, Austria, UK), hobbies, things that were important to me. It's been years since I wore my bracelet but recently I've been thinking about dusting it off, replacing some of the more bedraggled charms and wearing it again.

And then just this week one of the people I follow on Neocities made a whole page on her site about charm bracelets! She showed off her own charms and did a great write up on the different charm brands and even linked to an awesome, very early-2000s style charm selling site that is still in business! You should check out her super cool page, The Meerkat's Burrow - Italian Charm Bracelets.

And, while I'm here rhapsodizing about charm bracelets, let me give a tangential shout out to some charm bracelet graphics from one of my beloved old graphics web sites, AmboGraphics. They have a whole set of charms with letters and graphics that you can use to build yourself a virtual charm bracelet. I used it on the page I made for my collection from the Charm Bracelet Pixel Club.

I was surprised this week to receive an email from a rightwing group that's all about banning books from school libraries. Well, they will say they are about "parental choice" but that's code for I don't like things and I'm going to force my beliefs on everyone else. This was sent to my throwaway email address but, even so, I have never remotely supported something like this so I wonder what kind of list I'm now on.

The group was promoting their new program where they are going to use the power of numbers to conduct nationwide campaigns against specific books that they have targeted. The idea is each month they will concentrate on one book and give people the tools and resources to find out if these books are in the local school libraries and, if they are how, to write speeches against them to present at school boards and how to craft arguments that will withstand any counter arguments from the ACLU, ALA or other such organizations.

If you don't want your child to read something, then talk to them or lay down rules or, you know, fucking parent. Don't force your beliefs on everyone else. Some of the books they have issues with do have very frank descriptions of sex and alternative lifestyles but in light of how freely available this kind of information is to kids via social media, the internet and even their peers, movements like these really seem to be just performative power plays.

I was just going to junk the email but then I got to thinking. If I know which books they are planning to speak against then I can at least craft my own comments in support of keeping books in the library and bring those up at the same school board meetings where they will be speaking. So I signed up for their informational webinar.

It was disheartening to see how well attended this meeeting was (50+ attendees), how very well organized this group is and how enthusiastic people were. The head of the group didn't go into very detailed information because she said there were probably "trolls" in the meeting. (I think maybe if you don't want trolls in your meetings then you can vet your email marketing a little better, just sayin'.) Anyone interested in this project will have to fill out a thorough questionnaire to make sure you're on the up and up and then you will be admitted to a state-based workgroup.

So, I have until the 20th to decide whether or not I want to do this. I mean, I can go before the school board at any meeting and speak. I just thought it would be helpful to know what specifically to speak for and, in that way, work against a hateful group. I'm trying to weigh how much good trouble I can cause versus having to put up listening to these people.

In other news, I attended an information session last night to check into election protection opportunities and I have signed up to be both a poll observer and also a ballot curer. I have my poll observer training this week. Ballot curing happens after the election and it's where the signature on your ballot is verified against the signature that is on file with the Secretary of State's office.

Listening

Some podcasts I've listened to this week:

Reading

I have still not finished Cadillac Desert. I had to return the library copy and have since acquired my own. I will get back to reading it but for now I'm reading another library book (that is due in 2 days), Field Guide for the Formerly Villainous by Autumn K. England. The description that sold me on this book was:

Stardew Valley meets Studio Ghibli in a charming cozy fantasy about healing, redemption, and the subtle magic of simple living.

Twice a year the lastest stories from Translunar Travelers Lounge show up in my RSS feed. I haven't read all the stories in this most current issue yet but so far my favorite one is The Fall of the Automatous Abbey by Maria Haskins.

Watching

I've been making my way through season 2 of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. I just finished episode 6 last night. It's OK but it needs more kaiju and less drama. I was thinking there was some big money behind this show but this last episode had both some atrocious green-screening as well as some pretty bad aging makeup. What the heck? I expected better.

Shows that I'm interested in watching after this: season 3 of Silo and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.

Link Lagniappe

Hammerhead shark illustration on 隠岐国産物絵図注書

That's about it for this week!

When I first started using Zonelets I had Disqus set up as a commenting system but it looked obnoxiously ugly and I ditched it. Some people are happy to not have blog interaction but I'd love to hear from you if you have any thoughts you want to share! You can respond through my guestbook or email. If you found this link on Discord or the 32-Bit Cafe Discourse, you can message me there or leave a message on my Neocities profile page.