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Ele Willoughby

@minouette.bsky.social

12K followers 4.8K following 9.9K posts

Artist/marine geophysicist (PhD Physics) Printmaker Find/contact me at: minouette.Etsy.com minouette.blogspot.ca Instagram.com/the.minouette https://cara.app/minouette I post art, science, #sciart and stuff with typos. She/her, Settler in Tkaronto 🇨🇦

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Ele Willoughby @minouette.bsky.social · Aug 18

My social media is filled with artists announcing that they are suspending shipments to the US when the de minimis tariff exemptions are removed August 29.

This is devastating for a lot of small businesses. Canadian artists should find artworks still exempt from tariffs (in accordance with CUSMA)

What Canadian artists need to know about US tariffs › CARFAC

The national voice of Canada’s professional visual artists

www.carfac.ca

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Ele Willoughby @minouette.bsky.social · 1m

Oh wow, that was heroic of you. I hope it went as well as it could for all of you.

Thank you very much. It’s the final stage of getting her settled now and I really want to get this completed without any more hiccups.

Ele Willoughby @minouette.bsky.social · 10m

being done for her by her children anyway) and her complete and utterly unfounded self-confidence.

She told the realtor, “I guess you’re hallucinating” rather than admit she might be mistaken about something.

Ele Willoughby @minouette.bsky.social · 10m

I’m very sorry she was angry. Getting Mom to understand she’s having really memory issues hasn’t really worked but she’s also loosing her vision so she has luckily embraced the idea of moving into the home.

Our main issue is her panicking about getting things done (which aren’t urgent and are

Ele Willoughby @minouette.bsky.social · 16m

🙄 it’s amazing how not knowing what is going on doesn’t give people pause before issuing instructions. If they would only stop and ask questions!

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Ele Willoughby @minouette.bsky.social · 20m

Oh wow! My in-laws are currently mad at my husband’s cousin for reasons that sound quite like your story. The version of events the older generation believes doesn’t fit facts.

Thanks very much! It’s important to be able to blow off a little stream and I appreciate it.

Ele Willoughby @minouette.bsky.social · 29m

ability to not follow instructions despite multiple phone calls and confirmations.

I do of course have a backup plan, because I have learned a thing or two about logistics in my careers, but I am nonetheless fed up.

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Ele Willoughby @minouette.bsky.social · 29m

deliver the bed. After promising me they would deliver today or tomorrow they are now saying Tuesday. Mom is arriving tomorrow.

I was so annoyed that she didn’t think I could coordinate everything, but I suppose I may have underestimated both her ability to blithely mess up plans and The Brick’s

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Ele Willoughby @minouette.bsky.social · 29m

My 81 year old mother is quite hard of hearing, and having difficulty keeping track of details but nonetheless quick to assume she knows better that others. So she misunderstood and thought it was the movers calling. She told them they were in the wrong place and she wasn’t there, so they didn’t

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Ele Willoughby @minouette.bsky.social · 29m

Yesterday we moved Mom’s things into the retirement home with the exception of her new bed which was coming directly from The Brick.

They had instructions that the home could let them in. I had reserved the elevator. If they needed anything they were to call me. What did they do? They called my Mom

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Ele Willoughby @minouette.bsky.social · 1h

I look forward to it every year! I’ll be I’ll be joining #FolktaleWeek2025 again this year. On October 20, hosts will be posting their 7 prompts for artists and/or writers to create illustrations or tell stories on these themes inspired by folktales, folklore, fables, myth and fairytales! Read more:

My illustration announcing “I’m joining Folktale Week 2025 November 17-23” shows my linocut print of three fanciful sailing ships from the age of exploration along with waves printed in silver against a dark blue background. Each ship is collaged with wooden areas and sails and flags in various brightly coloured and patterned Japanese washi papers.

Ele Willoughby @minouette.bsky.social · 2h

But, it feels like a fairytale and is expressed metaphorically in the language of magic fairytale illustration.

You can find these prints in my shop, here:

minouette.etsy.com/listing/1778...

minouette.etsy.com

Ele Willoughby @minouette.bsky.social · 2h

Lastly, my moku hanga style wood block print, “Little boat, big ocean.”

This print is actually about what it feels like to do science at sea, and feel like the tiny fisher in the paper boat with unseen dangers below.

My wood block print “Little boat, big ocean” shows a tiny paper boat with unseen fisher dangling a line in the water. Below the boat is a gigantic yellow octopus with hints of purple, arms up towards the boat in a swirling wavy blue sea against a yellow sky.

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Ele Willoughby @minouette.bsky.social · 2h

It’s believed dumbo octopuses have a worldwide distribution, living in the cold, abyssal depths ranging from 1000–7000 m and they have even been observed at hadal depths below.

Then an older linocut I made of an octopus in burgundy ink.

My swimming octopus linocut in burgundy ink on white washi paper.

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Ele Willoughby @minouette.bsky.social · 2h

Some of my octopus prints for World Octopus Day this October 8! 🧪🐡🐙

First up my lino block print of a charming Grimpoteuthis octopus, one of a genus of pelagic cirrate (finned) octopods known as the dumbo octopuses. The fins reminded scientists of ears of the elephant in Disney’s 1941 film Dumbo.

My 9.25” x 12.5” Lino block print of a Grimpoteuthis octopus, one of a genus of pelagic cirrate (finned) octopods known as the dumbo octopuses. The octopus is mostly bluish with red at the top and on its ear-like fins. Its tentacles are brown and all spiralling up close to its body. The dark water around it is blue-black.

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Ele Willoughby @minouette.bsky.social · 2h

She was indeed, thank you!

Ele Willoughby @minouette.bsky.social · 3h

left the museum $400,000 upon her death.⁠
#printmaking #sciart #womenInSTEM #Indigineer #SpaceRace #planetaryScience #linocut

minouette.etsy.com

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Ele Willoughby @minouette.bsky.social · 3h

NASA Flight Handbook Vol. III about flight to Mars and Venus. ⁠

After retiring in 1973, she devoted her time to recruiting & mentoring women & Indigenous people to engineering. At 96 she participated in the opening ceremony for the National Museum of the American Indian &

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Ele Willoughby @minouette.bsky.social · 3h

and much of her work there remains classified! It included preliminary design concepts for interplanetary travel, crewed and uncrewed space flights and the earliest plans for orbiting satellites. She worked on the Agena rocket, so important to the Apollo moon mission (shown) and was an author of the

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Ele Willoughby @minouette.bsky.social · 3h

was indeed farsighted. After the war Lockheed sent her to UCLA to study engineering and celestial mechanics. She was one of the 40 engineers selected to start Skunk Works, their Advanced Development Program, an in-house top-secret think tank. She was the only woman and only Indigenous person

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Ele Willoughby @minouette.bsky.social · 3h

technical job in California. Lockheed Aircraft hired her as mathematician in 1942, troubleshooting the P-38 Lighting fighter plane (as shown). She knew already that her interest was in interplanetary flight, but didn’t mention it in 1942 for fear that her credibility would be questioned, but she

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Ele Willoughby @minouette.bsky.social · 3h

Depression then got her Master’s & put her education to work to try to help Indigenous people and worked as a statistician with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, until she was reassigned as an advisor to girls at the Santa Fe Indian School. ⁠
⁠
When WWII broke out her father suggested she find a

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Ele Willoughby @minouette.bsky.social · 3h

Trail of Tears, Ross attributed her success in math to the Cherokee tradition of encouraging equal education for boys and girls. She went to Northeastern State Teacher’s College in Tahlequah, Oklahoma and earned a bachelor’s in math by the time she was 20. She taught science and math through the

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Ele Willoughby @minouette.bsky.social · 3h

For #spacetober_challenge day 8 prompt propulsion, my portrait of #mathematician, aeronautical #engineer, philanthropist & Cherokee ‘hidden figure’ of the space race: Mary Golda Ross (1908-2008).⁠ 🧪🐡🧮🔭👩🏻‍🔬 #histsci
⁠
Great-great-granddaughter of Chief John Ross, who was forced to lead his people on the

Linocut portrait of Mary Golda Ross looking over her shoulder in a gradient of green (at bottom) to gold (at top) surrounded by vehicles important to her career including P-38 Lighting fighter plane, and Agena rocket, important to Apollo missions in grey.

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Ele Willoughby @minouette.bsky.social · 16h

Good luck!

Ele Willoughby @minouette.bsky.social · 20h

Thanks!