I HAVE BEEN taking a painting and drawing class through the Park District of Oak Park. Once a week I drive about ten minutes to a public building built in 1926 that now houses studios for art, ceramics, dance, and music, as well as a library. I sit at a table and draw leaves for an hour and a half. It is a highlight of my week.

I stumbled on a method of drawing and painting leaves that involves dragging a graphite pencil through wet watercolors. I don't know if the teacher was just being nice or not, but she was very complimentary of my work. I felt embarrassed because it was really so easy—I just dabbed color onto the paper and then drew some lines over it. I mentioned this to a friend and she responded that there's nothing wrong with things being simple. Which is true. Yet why have I been agonizing over drawing Study Hall for months now? Why not just pick the easiest way?

I don't want to belabor this as a metaphor because I'm pretty sure it would collapse under close examination but somehow it feels apt to so many aspects of my life right now. Why make anything overly complicated? For example: In terms of responding to whatever mishegas the next several years have in store for us, instead of trying to fix the world, I am leaning toward a hyperlocal approach.* How can I serve my community best right now? This is a conversation I've been having with my neighbors. The nicest part? Getting to know your neighbors is usually fun, and involves treats.

Speaking of neighbors and treats: We went to a Diwali party the Saturday after the election and I was glad to have an excuse to light something on fire, especially something as lovely as a sparkler.

On Sunday, we adopted Rosie, our tabby cat, from an adoption event at Animal Care and Control. We were all moved and inspired by the number of animal lovers who regularly volunteer at the shelter. Rosie was not feeling so well for the first few days, but now she is fully recovered and loves to play, and my phone is filling up with pictures and videos of her. (Thank you, Kaylee B., for your advice and encouragement during those first anxious days!)

I also collected signatures to put a progressive candidate on the ballot for Oak Park's Board of Trustees.

Collecting signatures was ultimately a pretty simple action, and it felt good to be doing something.

Three Things That Kept Me Going This Week

This is a week old, but is too sweet not to share.

A few Christmases ago my sister gave me The Selected Works of Audre Lorde and I pulled it from my bookshelf the other day and happened to open it to "The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism." I was struck by how relevant this essay, written in 1981, continues to be. It is full of powerful statements such as this one: "Guilt is only another way of avoiding informed action, of buying time out of the pressing need to make clear choices, out of the approaching storm that can feed the earth as well as bend the trees."
I had no idea that Chicago was home to a 2000-year-old Roman column gifted to the city by Benito Mussolini until I saw this fascinating exhibition of work by Dawit L. Petros at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, which is up through December 20th. The Balbo Monument is named after aviator Italo Balbo, a devoted fascist, who flew with his squadron of 25 seaplane pilots and their crews from Italy to Chicago in 1933 for the city's World Fair. The show digs into Italy's troubled history of rapid industrialization, its colonialism of Ethiopia, and the complicit acceptance of such belligerence by the US and other nations.

Lastly, despite my crowing about the beauty of focusing on local relationships I am definitely not disengaging from national politics. If you have a minute this week, please call your senators and ask them to reject H.R. 9495. The bill allows the government to withhold tax exemption status from nonprofits, which could prove a devastating tool under the Trump administration: consider the impact on organizations that help refugees, for example, or any organization that doesn't conform to the Project 2025 agenda.

Mushroom Head will be off next week in honor of Thanksgiving. I have so much to be grateful for, not least of all your continued support.

Enjoy the holiday,

Claire

*This was inspired in part by reading the last issue of Elizabeth Lukehart's climate newsletter, the suburban wilderness, titled "Help." "Creating the culture and infrastructure of helping each other, and bringing communities together in ways that we never really have before in this country, is the name of the game now," she writes. "It just so happens these are also the things that will help us resist authoritarianism." Also have been mulling over a phrase I first learned from Twilight Greenaway's climate newsletter, The Window: "library socialism." If ever there were a movement designed specifically with me in mind, library socialism is it.

Thank you for reading! If you like Mushroom Head, please consider leaving me a tip, or share this with a friend. And if you're new here, welcome. Mushroom Head is a comic diary about me, Claire, a middle-aged lady who lives in Oak Park. Previous installments recorded the time I thought I'd ODed on THC and my experience parenting a person with ADHD as a person who has ADHD. There are also occasional forays into the surreal. If you'd like to get in touch with me, please feel free to respond directly to this email. I'm always happy to hear from you! (Also, you might want to put the Mushroom Head email address into your contacts to avoid having it go to your junk folder.) And if someone forwarded this email to you, I hope you will subscribe, because you are welcome here! Unless you are a bot. In that case, boo, please go away.

Sometimes the simplest way is the best way

I'm pretty sure this metaphor would collapse under close examination but for the moment it feels apt