I'm not here to look pretty

Trying to paint environments more often

I HAVE FOUND MY FAVOURITE POST ON THE INTERNET

Cats Stealing Food in Paintings

Still Life with Cat (1705) by Desportes, It's no use crying over spilt milk (1880) by Frank Paton, Still Life of the Remnants of a Meal with a Lunging Cat (18th Century) by Alexandre-François Desportes, Fish Still Life with Two Cats (1781) by Martin Ferdinand Quadal, Still Life with a Cat and a Mackerel on a Table Top (18th Century) by Giovanni Rivalta, The Collared Thief (1860) by William James Webbe, Cat Stealing a String of Sausages (17th Century) by Abraham van Beyeren, Still Life with a Cat (1760) by Sebastiano Lazzari, Kitchen Still Life with Fish and Cat (ca. 1650) by Sebastian Stoskopff, An Oyster Supper (1882) by Horatio Henry Couldery, Still Life with an Ebony Chest (17th Century) by Frans Snyders, Still Life with a Cat (1724) by Alexandre-Francois Desportes, A Cat Attacking Dead Game (18th Century) by Alexandre-François Desportes, Still Life of Fresh-Water Fish with a Cat (1656) by Pieter Claesz, Still Life with Fruits and Ham with a Cat and a Parrot (18th Century) by Alexandre-Francois Desportes, A Cat Holding a Fish in Its Mouth (18th Century) by Sebastiano Lazzari, Still Life with a Cat and a Hare (18th Century) by Desportes, Still Life with Cat and Rayfish (1728) by Jean-Siméon Chardin, A Cat with Dead Game (1711) by Alexandre-Francois Desportes, Still Life with Cat and Fish (1728) by Jean Baptiste Siméon Chardin

There are certain recurring behaviors on social media that annoy me to no end. And one of them is "whataboutism."

You know, you post about SHEIN's unethical supply chain and someone says "yeah, but what about prison labor in the US?"

Or you post about AI, and someone's like "well what about people who are still eating meat?"

Of course the frustrating implication here is that if you care about fast fashion, you can't possibly have space to care about prison labor.  Of if you're posting about AI, you never think about animal rights or the climate impact of industrial farming.  And so on. 

It's annoying and distracting, but I think it's also a coping mechanism. When you feel overwhelmed by the "badness" of something, it feels emotionally helpful to call out another bad system/problem. Why? Because now there are TWO bad things in the conversation and you can kinda walk away thinking "there are so many bad things in this world that one person like me could never have an impact on anything." And then you don't have to think about it ever again!

Fortunately, all of us have the ability to care about AI and prison labor and fast fashion and animal rights and more. We contain multitudes, my friends!  And of course the "fix" for any of these things is complex, a combination of social change, governmental regulations, and individual lifestyle changes.  That means "fixing" them requires all of us, doing a million little tiny things every day that move us in the right direction.  I have been thinking about this a lot lately, and it motivated me to make a list of the conscious things I'm doing every day while envisioning a better world. I hope this inspires you to make your own list, too.

Clotheshorse is an anti-AI zone, so the images in this post were created by me, using Photoshop and lots of scans from two different mid century children's books:  Teddy Bear's Book of the Alphabet and My Big Picture Book of teddy bears.  The superhero bear graphic came from a different craft book, Cuddly Toys and Dolls. This post took three hours to make. 

P.S. The black kitten in the last photo: I live on a farm in Lancaster County, PA. We rent our home from an Amish farmer who owns lots of land around us that he rents out to other farmers, including a few barns. The barn next to our house is really dilapidated and it is used by a goat farmer. Yesterday my husband Dustin thought he heard a kitten crying inside that barn, but I didn't hear anything when I walked by. This morning, he heard the crying again. After walking around the barn trying to figure out the source, I saw a little tiny black tail stick out of the wall. We found a way into the barn (it was very creepy in there), where we found a tiny black kitten with his leg stuck in a crevice between the wood floor and the concrete foundation. We tried to get him out, with no luck. He was so stuck! I had the idea that if we could shave down some of the wood, we could get him loose. Dustin went in the house and returned with a metal file, which he used to file down the wood. It worked!