Flattening the curves

“It is better to take many small steps forward in the right direction than to make a great leap forward only to stumble backward.”—Louis Sachar

Greetings Dear Ones,

Well, it’s all Peace and Serenity here at Hermit Hollow.  No one does Social Distancing with Style quite like us Hermits.  We are making Excellent meals out of two ingredients or less; when we play tunes, we are absolutely in tune and even remember their names; the Jack Russells are behaving like adorable, narcoleptic kittens; and when we make our Excellent movie choices, we always remember to mention that a horse dies in this one, or a bunny gets its head blown off in that one, or a that a ten-year-old’s mother gets hanged by the Nazis—lest someone winds up on the couch sobbing her eyes out…  

APRIL FOOLS!

Truth: We can’t remember tune names. Hell, some days, we can’t even remember our own names.  With dismaying regularity, the resident Jack Russells have to have their bloody disputes settled by depositing the snarling mass into the sink and spraying it with the hose until one spits the other out.  We’re pretty sure that one is a Democrat and one is a Republican, so deep is their dedication to not getting along.  It’s impossible to tell which one is which though, since they are each the very picture of self-serving avarice trying to win public approval.   After three disaster “movie nights” in a row, where at least one person went to bed crying, I forced everyone to watch Disney’s 1959 version of “Darby O’Gill and the Little People,” starring Sean Connery, Janet Munro, and Albert Sharpe, as revenge.  The scariest thing about that movie was the way Darby held the Stradivarius (so badly) and pretended to play it in the hall of the Mountain King.  Even so, we all slept so much better!  We’ve also limited watching the news excessively and now stick to cheerier documentaries about the Plague, Syphilis during the Civil War, the Great Hunger in Ireland, or the Pandemic of 1918.  

Finally, after at least thirty-nine days of March, it is April First—my mother’s most cherished holiday.  She is a decent, church-going, God-fearing woman with a prayer life as elaborate as her technique for perfecting Yorkshire pudding but her FAVORITE day of the year is the day she gets to call friends and family and LIE to them, then giggle helplessly in the moments they digest information such as “Are you home? I’ve got a truckload of ducks headed to you and the driver can’t find your street.” Once, she even took elaborate pains to smuggle a donkey to a friend’s farm, wet it down, put it in the stall with his prized broodmare, then told his son to summon his father and say she had foaled.  (What horse-women do for fun, eh?)  It was not a nice thing to do to a man with a heart condition. There were a lot of undergarments soiled in the name of a good joke that day.

I smile as I think of these by-gone pranks.  It does not seem like a time for them now, given the circumstances.  I am sewing cloth masks—attempting to churn out as many as fifty a day as I vacillate grimly between delusions of grandeur and delusions of insignificance.   I made a hundred and seventy six over the weekend and realized that I may have lost my balance with this.  (And by may I totally mean girl-gone-bonkers…)

Making masks has become my way of Bargaining, of staving off a nameless Grief—the loss of something invisible, intangible, yet palpable—even as it is very much a necessary stage of that process of accepting the Inevitable. The other hermits note that I have stopped bathing, exercising, or playing music.  Frantic anxiety motivates me to do more masks, even as I tell myself this is a hopeless waste of time.  Everything exhausts me—especially all the verbal “processing” of sorrow and information that I have to do with loved ones over the phone.  Times are tough. It seems treasonous to do anything but sew, even as I talk.  I hang up, slump over my sewing machine, glare balefully at the stack of fabric cut out in front of me, close my gritty eyes and feel the fur on my teeth… If not for a good mentor and the ban on unnecessary travel, I would be at the nearest market loading up hard liquor and Swiss Cake Rolls by now.  Someone asks if I want to take a break to play some music.  My arms hurt too much.  “Don’t bother me!” I snap, “I’m busy making myself the next victim of Covid-19!”

I realize that one thing I am genuinely afraid of, among SO many fears, is that I don’t want to do this anymore, that I will Quit.  “Is it that I really don’t want to do this or is it just hard?” I wonder.  God knows, this is HARD.  Sewing 6 x 9 squares together and trying to get the damn elastic to stay put is simultaneously irritatingly Fussy and ludicrously Boring.  My heart goes out to factory workers who have to make hundreds of the same thing each day.  Piece workers in sweat shops—How do they stay sane? (Personally, I will never look at mass-produced blouse again without thinking of the poor wretch who had to sit there stitching for hours without the benefit of YouTube videos on the plague and occasional dogfights for diversion.) I imagine a lot of us are asking ourselves that question these days, as our lives shrink to fit the menial and mundane—how to we stay the course?  We know we must keep doing what we are doing—how do we summon the patience of oxen to continue?  How to we find contentment in staying small? (Especially since social-distancing from the Fridge has not been easy!)

We hear a lot of talk about “hope,” as each news cycle has us lurching between the poles of optimism and despair.  Ironically, our sense of our own mortality is the wellspring of our Meaning. We balance the heavy weight of our fragility with Hope, hoping that it is the center point between cynicism and naivete, knowing that both blind optimism and blind pessimism are lazy choices.   It’s a uniquely human paradox of trying to make our choices count, of trying to make our lives more empowered in circumstances where we are our most vulnerable. It’s so easy to lose our way and give in to momentary panic.  To paraphrase Erich Fromm, the price we pay for our consciousness is insecurity; the reward we have for insecurity is consciousness.  What makes us different from other species, perhaps, is that we are not just vulnerable; we know we are vulnerable.  (The birds in South American rainforests have no idea how vulnerable they are!)  And yet Hope gives us the belief that our choices can change our chances.

Welcome to “Oh no, NOT AGAIN!” says Prudence, as I swirl around and around in these complexities. Exhausting myself with the initial blaze of fresh passions then slumping and wanting to quit is an old, embarrassing pattern for me.  I only share it here because I think others might be finding this true for themselves. Crafty people are often the most giving and the worst at saying “no” to those who find uses for their skills.  We over-commit, over-do, and let fear and the need to “do something” throw us off balance.  I humbly admit my enormous and fragile ego often gets involved as well.  I, in my tragic attempt at Magnificence, must do “more of or better than…”  As part of me sprints around each 24-hour track, I notice other parts in the bleachers watching me.  One, of course is Prudence.  I cannot run fast enough for her.  The other is a newcomer, a healthy part of me that elbows Prudence in the ribs and says “What the hell does she think she is doing down there???”

“Why not use this as a wonderful opportunity to try to do things differently?” he barks through his megaphone.   Panting, I slow up and consider--How do I step back, yet not quit? How do I take a breath, and stop Reacting?  I start by reaching out to my fellow sewing friends. “How long do these take you? How many are you making each day?  What is reasonable to expect of ourselves?” These are healthier people than I am.   I find out that average, not tragic or magnificent—would still be Acceptable, Worthy, and actually far more Useful eventually.  I am not alone, either. One tells me “Honey, we’re all in the same boat. If you keep going that way, your production is going to look like a Covid curve—the bad one that spikes high and drops sharply.  Who the hell cares if you make 90 in one day and can’t function the next? You’ve got to flatten your own curve, girl! We’re in this for the long haul. Soon, people are going to wake up and realize we ALL should be wearing masks.  You’re going to be making these for months.  Choose a quota that feels good to you and then don’t do more. Just do it every day.”   

This advice feels amazing.   The relief of Common Sense is as liberating as realizing one is NOT getting a surprise shipment of ducks to your front door.  I cannot stop laughing.  I have been praying for expansion—to extend either my speed or my capacity.  How silly! What I need is Clarity and a healthy Boundary.  Each of us needs to honor our energy, honor our talents AND the limits of those talents.  This is not a sprint, sadly; it’s a marathon.  This race will be run by the Enduring and Resilient, not the people who flame out after a week or two.  We are Tortoise—on we Plod! Let’s stop thinking we should run like hares when any limp, hop, or wobble in the right direction works. (Unless of course you are the one making ventilators or vaccines!  Then, by all means, please make haste! Make Haste!)

Hint: Homeschoolers—it’s not necessary to do twenty-seven chapters a day in every subject!  Or ANY subject.  Your kids might actually get way smarter if you just snuggle up together and read good poetry aloud and discuss it. Or watch Darby O’Gill and the Little People as a family (just be sure to cover their eyes during the fiddle scenes!) Don’t tell those wonderful teachers who are doing the best they can to ensure your children get all their appropriate mental vitamins and minerals via the internet, but it’s true!  

As seamstresses, we take two-dimensional fabric and shape it to fit three-dimensional bodies.  To do this, we use a number of techniques, one of which is employing darts.  Darts are tapered tucks stitched in the fabric to accommodate curves, particularly at the arm, bust, waist, and hip area.  When a garment has too many curves, we usually amend this by removing or lessening the number of darts in it. The word ‘Dart’ has another definition: “An act of running somewhere suddenly and rapidly.”  It strikes me as a proper metaphor for our social distancing.  To reduce the curve of the pandemic, we need to eliminate all those times we “dart” about in society—just to the store for a pint of milk, just a quick errand, just a quick visit—all these things we used to do to “round out our days.”  No more. Flatten! Stay home.  We also need to think of Slowing Way Down—in our cooking, in our resting, especially in what we expect of ourselves during a crisis.  Fear weakens our endurance and makes us cuckoo.  We need to allow space for the fact that we may be too drained to achieve otherwise “normal” capacities.

Be gentle on yourselves Dear Ones.  We will triumph—not in a day, not in a single pile, not in a great hurry, but gently, persistently, with steadfast hope and tenacious faith.   Doing Less for much, much longer is going to have a way better effect that doing a lot then suddenly quitting.  When youcan’t do enough, try doing a little.

That’s my message to myself. There is a person I am desperate to grow into beneath these scars of “trying too hard” –a person with the capacity to do small things with great love over long periods of time.  No more, no less.   I hope it helps or comforts those of you who might be going through parallel challenges, whether it’s home-schooling, sewing, or cleaning the garage.  Whatever you are doing, your work now has too much value to blast through it all at once.  Save some, and yourselves, for Tomorrow.  We can do this. Now go have a stretch, a nap, or a shower. Don’t neglect your own Mending!!!

With so much love,

Nancy

Sew on...and sew fourth (and fifth...)

“I will not hate and I will not fear;

In our darkest hour, Hope lingers here”

—chorus to my current favorite hand-washing song, by Lissa Schneckenberger

Greetings My Dear Ones,

Well, I’ve had to indefinitely suspend my ambitions to get rich quick through the sale of Monogrammed Turd Rags because I have switched to producing cloth face masks to donate to health care facilities.  Several people have approached me (and anyone who sews) to help bridge the gap in the availability of appropriate facial protection until domestic factories can ramp up supply.  The “good” N95 masks are being reserved for serious cases and threats of Covid-19, while places like nursing homes, other hospital units, and community health-care facilities are suffering shortages first. A labor and delivery nurse friend of mine said that she and her co-workers were advised to “wear scarves” around their faces if needed.  I was shocked.

This totally appalling state of what is purported to be the “Premier Health System” in a “First World” nation has become a wonderful opportunity for my inner cow-horned Heroine to swing from the nearest balcony down onto the stage and start belting show tunes. She spreads wide her feet, clears the phlegm from her throat, and prepares to bellow “Mi-mi-mi-mi-mi-mi-mi,” up the scales (translated narcissistically as “me, me, me…”) “This is a dream come true!” brays this egoic Monster, “Seamsters are going to Save The World!!! Our Big Moment has arrived!” as she brandishes a seam-ripper and coils a measuring tape like a bull whip.

She tears into our stash and begins to dump and scratch around, flinging bolts of fabric everywhere, like she’s a Rodent of Unusual Size building a rather messy nest. She is willing to part with Anything for the cause, that fabric with cartooned sheep dancing on it, the acres of quilt backing she was saving in case anyone ever wanted to slip-cover New Jersey, even the remnants of the dresses she made for her little girl when she was small.  Please, no! I beg, Not the sheep fabric… not yet! “To those whom much has been given, much will be expected,” admonishes Prudence with biblical authority.

A lady never discusses the size of her stash.  But… Let’s just say my little addiction is coming in quite handy at this time when supplies are limited in the outer world and I don’t want to have to go shopping.  This is the moment I can tell all my former self “honey, to hell with Marie Condo, and her minimalism; it’s a damn good thing you bought out all the end bolts of that place that was going out of business.  You are hereby vindicated, you clever girl!” Of course, ever after, I may have to live with unchecked impulses to over-buy (fabric, that is, not guns or toilet paper) in the ways that my post-WWII grandparents used to collect everything from string to milk cartons.

This crisis has brought some drastic changes to my world. For one thing, my hands are now so rough from constant washing that I could probably card lambs wool without the use of steel-tined carders.  And I have had to encounter deep philosophical questions about the Meaning of Life—like why the hell I didn’t stockpile Ben ‘n Jerry’s the way others were hoarding Advil and ammo.   All we have in any abundance at Hermit Hollow are mason jars filled with what looks like dead beetles. “Yum,” I mutter listlessly, “Not what I want to go out on if the end is nigh…”

I am also learning quite a bit. For instance: In every endeavor, no matter what one chooses to do, there will be those who say “Well Done!”, those who say “That’s not something that needs to be done,” and those who say, “Wait? You’re doing something?”

I am overjoyed that there is something we can do “if we can sew.” I am tickled by the idea, after the way Art & Music programs have had to scrap and scrabble for funding in our school systems, that it’s the artists, poets, musicians, and seamstresses who are giving us so much comfort in this time of crisis. 

Besides…  I was getting really intimidated by all the people who are using this time to Better Themselves. (Though Prudence heartily Approves!)  They are over-achieving their little hearts out—writing novels, songs, poetry, and tunes.  They are learning languages and making things of exquisite beauty out of fibre, metal, string, or fabric. They are reading great literature, watching epic films, slow-cooking fabulous meals, and doing “See 20 Do 20” fitness challenges.  Some are doing online yoga and making facial scrubs out of things they find in the fridge.  One friend actually posted about how “hot” we were all going to look when we emerged from our dens.  I panicked. Not me. I’m a slacker.  While they are positively Glowing in their homes, I’m in my pajamas for the ninth day, dimly snuffling in the shadows for any overlooked oatcakes crumbs I could not find when I checked ten minutes ago. What if I’m the one that’s not hotter—just bigger, grayer, with much flabbier thighs and morals when this is over? What if I have to be cut out of these pajamas? Or worse, what if firemen have to come cut a hole in the side of Hermit Hollow to get me out after I work my way through all these dead beetles and rice?  (I should not be sheltering so close to where the food is stored.)

So I’m relieved to have something to do. It is appalling that our healthcare professionals are at risk however, it’s a privilege to try to help. It’s gratifying how robust the response from home sewers has been. Newspapers call it “unprecedented,” as if it is a surprise. Everyone I know with a sewing machine is sewing her/his heart out. It makes me weep with grateful pride. Finally, they SEE us. This is Who We Are.  Artists and craftspeople are infinitely loyal, patriotic, generous, tenacious, and we CARE.  Deeply. FINALLY, we can turn to our mates and say, “SEE? You should have let me buy more fabric!”

Admittedly, these masks might not do much for anyone except those of us who make them, who, by our co-operation and dedication, can participate in something that feels worthwhile for a moment, in the face of overwhelming catastrophe. It helps tremendously to “help,” even if we are, as John Adams once was during a stormy passage across the Atlantic, pulling all night with all our might on a rope that does nothing.  It gives us purpose.  Purpose gives us hope.  We sew on… despite the arched eyebrows and snarky comments from those who say we should be making these out of vacuum cleaner bags or gortex or whatever they used for Spiderman’s codpiece. 

As my son has often pointed out to me, I’m not here to be THE best, just my best.  My best is small, despite what my horn-helmeted inner Opera Star wants to believe. My best is not up to the likes of Covid-19.  My best is nothing to what is being required from the exhausted doctors and nurses who have to deal with terrified people coughing up blood on them. I’m nowhere near the front lines.  I get that.  But I’m happy to get just a few feet off the couch where I was getting pretty damned depressed.

Each day that we work on these masks, we receive comments and reports that “They won’t work,” “They will need to be sterilized,” “They will be redundant the moment the factories start churning out a million a day of the N95 masks.”  I know that a good deal of these hours we are putting in might be pointless. 

To all of it, I say HOORAY!  I hope the factories beat us.  I hope that our precious front-line personnel get the Very Best in the nick of time. Getting elastic to stay in place while you sew it is a pain in the buttocks.  I certainly do NOT think that a cloth mask that was supposed to be someone else’s summer petticoat but got cut up in the heat of battle is the dream solution.  I hope that I wind up staring at a pile of unneeded pleated rectangles with elastic loops on them.  In the mean time, I need to keep sewing.  For SO many reasons… Most of all, I want the doctors and nurses to know how very much we love and value them—how grateful we are to them for living lives of danger and service, not just now, but every damn day.

And they are not the only heroes.  The farmers keep raising food and truckers keep hauling it.  In Brattleboro, the school bus drivers are continuing their routes, despite the fact that schools are closed, to deliver needed food to children who depended on the school breakfast and lunch programs. The musicians are hosting on-line concerts to keep spirits up.  Humorists are creating clever memes to elicit smiles.  People are clicking and smiling then hitting “share” so that others can click and smile too.  Teachers are connecting with their students on-line. Our local co-op and supermarket workers are staying after hours to sanitize all surfaces and restock shelves, many of them are teenagers.  These are not people losing big on Wall Street. These, usually considered “the little people,” on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder, are doing a myriad of tiny things to keep us all safe and fed.  And the overall effect is HUGE.

As this virus spreads with the perniciousness of glitter on a work table during prom season, I continue to think and write a lot about our need to be “valued.” This crisis, for all its horrors, might just be the thing that teaches us all that every single one of us matters.  So…How do we feel about defunding the Arts now? How do we feel about nurses strikes now? How do we feel about the need to bring back domestic production for our basic necessities now?  What do you think about teacher salaries now, all ye forced to homeschool?  

Our present state of things is the result of our past decisions.  The future is yet to be won. It is not fixed.  There are no assigned roles—our future consists of waves of grim potentials and agonizing probabilities.  Yet, within those probabilities, we get to co-create our reality in every moment.  We don’t get to choose the force of the wind, but we can pull together and adjust our sails.  Our latitude comes to us in our levels of consciousness around our intentions and our willingness to cooperate, to see each other as a “human Family,” not a human “race,” which implies there is something to be won in competing with each other.  There isn’t. None of us is “special.” This virus does not discriminate.  Yet there is no such thing as an “expendable,” either. Each and every one of us matters, whether what we contribute is large or small.

Years ago, our choir provided the music for the funeral of a six-year-old girl. It was the most moving funeral I have ever attended in my life.  This little girl had never driven a car, passed an exam, negotiated financing for a large corporate deal, or discovered the cure for Cancer.  She owned nothing. She didn’t even know how to tie her shoes.   Yet over a thousand weeping people thronged the church that day, teaching me then that our value in this lifetime has very little to do with what we have or achieve and everything to do with how we love and are loved in return.

Everything has its preordained “time.” That flannel with pictures of tiny sheep dancing on it that I bought seven winters ago to turn into ankle-length nightgowns (but never did), who knew it would one day be used as an inner liner on a mask stopping cough-droplets from spraying over others in a nursing home?  Or that cotton I always thought was destined to be a baby quilt (the Baby is now nearly twenty…), who knew I would be tearing it into six-inch strips and piling it into stacks I will soon cut with a rotary cutter? We Stashers truly do not know the day or the hour…

We are, each of us, like the precious fabric in a Divine Stash of excellent things.  We have been Chosen.  We have been Saved. We are each Precious and needed for something specific and special, though we might be surprised to find out it might not be how we ever thought it would be.  Some are being called to act; some are being called to sit it out.  Some are being called to sing; some are being called to remain silent. Some are being called to grieve and pray; others to charge on without time for such spiritual luxuries. Some are being tempted to murder the children they are supposed to be homeschooling and taking deep cleansing breaths instead.  It’s all worthy and necessary and Good.  Some of us will be called to be the hearts, some will be hands; some will be lungs, and some will be brains—We are One Body in the end.  You each know what to do and you do it!!!

Sew on, my darlings—each in your own way, according to your means and Will—sew on!

I thank and love you each so much!!!

Yours aye,

Nancy

Selfish...

“It turns out that Americans were not lazy couch potatoes this whole time.  All that sitting on our asses and watching T.V. was actually training to save the world.” –Stephen Colbert

Greetings My Dear Ones,

Well, I’m really having a ball running my own business! Guess who won the prize for “Employee of the Week” again?  (hint: also the same silly arse as the “Boss from Hell”)  Sadly, despite a mere three weeks of great success and hard work, I’ve had to lay myself off.   You might not know this, perhaps you haven’t heard, but there’s a bit of a nasty virus going around…

I’m hearing tales of woe from would-be customers I have spoken to over the ‘phone.  There’s the bride and groom who needed me to alter his suit and hem her dress.  They have no idea when they can get married now. There’s an older gentleman who cannot pick up the trousers I patched and hemmed for him because he is terrified of infecting his wife who has cancer.  Young girls who enquired about having prom dresses altered will now not be going to proms.  It’s beyond disorienting for me to think of a Spring without proms and a St. Patrick’s Day without gigs in bars yet I walk outside and see the bulbs pushing their shoulders through the snow.  Silently, without glitter or fizz, Spring is coming anyway.

Like many of you, I’ve also taken up new hobbies—like using my rudimentary math skills to interpret graphs that resemble dinosaurs with pancreatitis and watching Youtube videos showing how to make your own homemade bidet out of a soda bottle with a hole poked in it—for that ghastly moment we run short of loo roll.  

An extremely Wicked part of me has been plotting, with all the self-serving avarice of those who seek to profit from disasters such as this—how to use my spare time and seamstress skills to come out with a specialty line of high-end, monogrammed re-usable Turd Rags.  Each member of the family will get his/her own name and color, with the yellow ones for guests just emblazoned with a cheery, anonymous “Shit Happens.” (Offended, Prudence sniffs haughtily and wants this modified to say “Doo-doo Occurs.” She also wants them called “Botty Blotters.”  She thinks “turd” is a vile word.) This venture will be so lucrative and people will enjoy using this line of “Bell Bottom” Products so much that One day, when you visit my mansion on a hill dotted with prized Highland cattle and heritage sheep, you will hear docents in Historic Clothing say in hushed tones, “here in her beloved Green Mountains is where she built her empire in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic. She made her millions as the Benevolent Empress of Turd Rags and created trust funds for homeless Jack Russells and Scottish Fiddlers.  Can you imagine? People used to wipe their arses on processed wood pulp?  She changed all of that and she herself farted through up-cycled silk all the rest of her days…” (Sigh…) But I digress…

In between fantasizing about how I can make a swift fortune while all my gigs are cancelled and my shop is closed, I’ve been thinking of a night, approximately thirteen years ago:  I was putting a small boy to bed when a newly-adopted Jack Russell (who had four legs then) jumped up on the quilt, wiggled all over, and then tucked himself into a tidy circle next to the boy’s chest, under his arm.  The boy stroked him softly and asked me if the dog knew that this was his home yet.  I answered with theatrical gravity: “Yes. This dog definitely has decided this is his Forever Home. He just told you he loves you. When you love the people you are with, that’s your home.” The boy was curious.

“How can you tell? I didn’t hear him say that!” he said.

I continued my air of grand importance. “Because I happen to be fluent in Dog, I understand ninety percent of what a dog has to say at any time of the day or night.”  The boy’s eyes opened wide.

“You speak…DOGLISH?” he asked incredulously.

“Indeed I do,” I admitted lavishly, anxious to extend the mothering mystique that already included eyes in the back of the head and the ability to “see” lies as black spots on the tongue.

“But they don’t use words!” he insisted, “How can that be?”

“They don’t need to use words,” I said. “They use their whole bodies.  Just watch them. Noses are for questions; tails are punctuation marks; it’s actually rather simple. After a while, you realize they don’t have more than five or six things to say anyway.” He laughed, delighted with the idea that an animal could communicate. I said, “If you pay attention, you’ll be fluent in Doglish in no time.”  He paused.  I thought that was the end of it but no, not for his clever little mind.  He frowned.

“But that just means you understand them.  How do they hear what we are saying? Do they learn our words? If I tell him I love him now, will he understand?”  His seven-year-old mind had worked out the difference between receptive and generative language, though he did not have the vocabulary to discuss it in those terms.

“Dogs may learn a few of our words—like they usually learn words associated with food, going outside, going for a walk, potty time… We will certainly teach him those words but he’s more likely to be watching our bodies, feeling our touch, listening for tone and energy rather than our language.  By the way, what language to we speak?” He looked confused.  I tried to help him but couldn’t resist tricking him.

“If the people in Finland speak Finnish, and the people in Ireland speak Irish, and the people in Spain speak Spanish, what do you think the people of America speak?” He scrunched up his small face, rolled his eyes as if the answers were written on the upper shelf inside his forehead, and then smiled coyly.

“Selfish?” was his tentative response.  My laugh exploded so hard it alarmed the little dog who was just drifting off to sleep. The boy had no idea why I thought this was so funny.

“Can you just tell him I love him?” he asked, when my giggles subsided. 

“Well, I can teach you how,” I said. “First, stroke his ears very gently.  Animals rely on their keen hearing to alert them to danger.  An animal that allows you to touch his ears feels safe enough to let that go for a minute.  Then put your head on his head and rest it there without pressing. Send the energy of loving him through your body and just breathe next to him.  He will feel safe and loved.”  He did as I said and the puppy cuddled closer, closing its eyes and sighing. 

“Can you say you love me in Doglish too?” He asked. I lay down next to him and put my head on his head and rubbed his ears gently between my thumb and forefingers, while he licked his chops and pawed and pretended he was a dog. “This feels amazing,” he growled, “How many other animals can you speak?”

“I’m pretty fluent in horse, sheep, and goats; I speak a little bit of cow and a smattering of chicken. I have enough rabbit and cat to get by in a pinch.”

“How about Boy?” he asked. “Do you speak Boy?”

“Not so much,” I admitted. “But you are teaching me every day.” 

_____________

I think about the innocence of that time, years ago, as I worry now about that Boy, whom I love so very much.  Will he speak enough “Self-ish” to wash his hands, stockpile enough beans, keep himself isolated and safe?  How will we (all) say we love each other now? Love, as the animals teach us, is very little about what we Say and everything about what we Do.  I marvel at how circumstances always seem to place us at the crossroads of Changes that inspire either our growth or resistance. What will we DO? Can we trust that others will do it too?

The most selfish thing we can do is try to be with those we love when it is not safe for them.  The most loving thing we can do for others is keep ourselves to ourselves.  The ironies (as well as the wrinklies) are convoluted and intense but boil themselves down to the most interesting interpretation of the Golden Rule that I have ever witnessed.

Basically, we must treat ourselves Well (quite literally) in order to save “others.” We must give up our nasty habits of sneezing and coughing into our hands and then using those same hands to pick our noses and extend friendship greetings to our friends.  (Prudence gags) Hugging our family members close, inhaling their familiar scents, while breathing moist garlic breath down their necks and cheeks is now frowned upon. “It should be anyway,” mutters Prudence, who views garlic breath as an act of aggression. “No more “farmer’s hanky” for the farmers either!” she adds shrilly.

The facts, as I understand them, are that many hundreds of thousands of people, OUR people, in our beloved country, in our beloved world, on our precious planet,  have just received a death sentence.  We know not who and we know not when. We must stay in our homes, anxiously washing everything from hands to doorknobs, so that people can get sick (and die) at a pace convenient for our medical establishment whose personnel, in the face of regrettable shortages, is going to have to be more heroic and self-sacrificing than usual.  We need to sicken slowly so that we can share limited resources and let those who must die do so with dignity and the best care they can get, given the circumstances.  

For those suffering from survivor guilt, the good news is that taking time off, meditating, spending time alone, taking walks, reading, having leisure time to rest, create, or play is nolonger considered Slacking. It’s now a Patriotic Duty.  Unlike previous generations, we are not being asked to die for our fellow men and women, we are being asked to LIVE--to eat mindfully, build our immunity, minimize our own risk.  No trudging through Valley Forge with bloody rags for shoes for this generation! No… Our cruel fate involves watching “The Great British Bake-Off” while stuck at home in small groups of humans we either chose for ourselves as eternal companions or created one night after a few too many Margheritas…

Now, more than ever, we must be the guardians of each other’s light.  There is a big difference between living in Fear and being wisely Careful—i.e. full of Care for others.  We must be Clear and On Purpose. Courage is not the opposite of fear; Love is.  When we make Love (not fear) our guiding principle, we pave the way for miracles. 

This crisis, like any, is bringing out both the best and the worst in us.  Some use their gift of Free Will to choose to stampede shops, pawing the earth with their hooves and harrumphing because there is no more tofu (just kidding, I mean guns and toilet paper). Bless these frantic souls.  They think this is only about them.  They are like my dear sheep, running in circles, bleating and butting when they discover I don’t have an endless supply of oatcakes in my pockets. Others among us rise higher.  I am in awe of the musicians I know who are organizing online concerts and ceilidhs and sharing music from their homes.  A wonderful storyteller I know is putting out a table of free books in front of his home and organizing conference calls to tell children stories over the phone. Artists, writers, poets, and crafters are using this time to channel exquisite creativity and beauty as a balm.  We have Choices.  Share your Loveliness, not your fear.

Look on the bright side, My Darlings, now is a great time to practice social-distancing instruments like Bagpipes and Accordions and to wear all those clothes you really shouldn’t be seen wearing in public!  Enjoy those unitards, lederhosen, leather hot pants, and corduroy pinafores. If they don’t fit after stress-eating buckets of hoarded beans and rice, I’ll be open for business as soon as it’s safe.  That is, if I still have to work after making my millions in Botty Blotters…

You may not be within the reach of my arms any time soon but you are ever within the reach of my heart and prayers.  I love you so much. Wash your hands; clean your house; give yourself the great big hug I wish I could.

Yours aye,

Nancy

Fool's Gold

“What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives everything its value.” Thomas Paine

Greetings Dear Ones!

It’s been a topsy-turvy week!  Schools are closing and opening then closing again; concerts and parades are being cancelled; people are not allowed to hug or touch each other; and Common Sense is struggling for breath as if it too was infected with Covid-19.   Prudence, in her resplendent snarkiness, is absolutely Delighted to think that most of America is now feverishly washing its hands for at least two “Happy Birthdays,” disinfecting all hard surfaces, and not touching its face. “Cleanliness is next to Godliness,” she chirps smugly, “What this country needs is a damn good scrubbing!”  She doesn’t even care if Happy Birthday is out of tune or the only song the average person can audiate without help.  (And she’s always detested hugging.)

The sad thing is that St. Patrick’s Day is fast approaching and those of us who have side-hustles dependent on the “shamrock crop” are finding our gigs post-poned or cancelled altogether.  Our adoring fans, terrified of Corona (and light beers in general), are now severely hampered in their ability to give themselves the annual “Guinness Flu,” whose symptoms include dancing jigs while drinking until you match the color of your shirt, followed by a moderate amount of vomiting and singing “Danny Boy.”  The loss of these gigs will hit the musicians I know with more economic savagery than any millionaire losing percentages in the Stock market.   As in 1847, the potato eaters will suffer the worst.

This is the one time of year publicans don’t question what a folk-musician charges for the excruciating privilege of singing Dubliner’s songs for three days straight or playing guitar until one’s arms feel like cord wood.  It’s the one time of year we feel like we have value that is not questioned.  The rest of the year we have to deal with things like: “Oh, you won’t play for my daughter’s wedding for free? But it’s going to be so much fun! And you just told me you were not doing anything that day. There are some really high-powered people who will be there so it will be great exposure for you.  We’ll even throw in dinner…”

Even in the sweet sanctity of my shop, now that my first projects are completed and people have started coming to retrieve their finished orders, that awkward spectre of “Value” translated as “Money” rears its head. A lovely man comes in to collect nine pairs of pants he’s had hemmed.  He takes out his wallet and peels off a wad of cash to pay for them. “Cash is King!” he announces smiling. Then he looks at me and asks “Do you like how I never even asked you what you charged?”  I look at him quizzically, wondering why he might be saying something like that.  Is he trying to make a statement about how wealthy he is, to impress me?  When I swallow hard and give him the grand total, his eyebrows wiggle towards each other to meet like kissing caterpillars and the rest of his face settles into a very serious, almost parental expression of fond-lecturing, what some might call “man-splaining.” His voice drops and his intensity rises. “You’re just starting out on your own in this location. Don’t let anyone question what you are worth! And don’t let anyone tell you how to deal with your money. These are very fair, even modest prices. Stand your ground. You’re going to get flack for charging anything at all.  I know. So hold onto yourself.  Take the money up front.  I was surprised you never asked for a down payment. You should do that,” said the man who was telling me I should not take money advice from anyone.  Then he continued for several minutes about how “no one values honest work anymore” and how he loves to support local business.  I nod cautiously. 

Harder than any actual “work” the “self-employed” ever do is putting a value on that work.  Yes, I play music and teach and learn and sew and create for the sheer joy of it.  Yes, these things are for “me” and I could not be “me” without doing them.  Yes, I do them “for no money,” for myself at home and for those I love, all over the place and all the time.  I cannot help it. So, when I sell these services off, I am selling off a part of myself in a way that is as much “me” as if I were a nineteenth-century heroine selling her hair.  But they are never “Free.” Assigning a value to them is assigning a value to the time I spend doing them—as well as passively, by implication, assigning a value to all the things I am simultaneously NOT doing as well.  (If I “hate” to do these things, yet sacrifice my values to do them anyway merely because of sheer financial desperation, would that not be the definition of prostitution?)  

A woman comes in to ask if I can resize a beautiful skirt she has found in a thrift store. It’s approximately 4 inches too big for her but she could not pass it up—it’s vintage Pendleton wool!  Taking it apart and remaking it from scratch, which is what I am going to have to do, is going to take me at least an hour, probably two. I tell her my hourly rate (which is roughly equivalent to what a person flipping burgers gets) and she slumps.  “But I only paid 5 bucks for it,” she says hesitantly.  So what is this thing worth to her?  It’s A Pendleton skirt that will fit her perfectly, like, um… it was made for her.   She hesitates. She wants two hours worth of work done to it but she does not want it to cost her more than a burger at McDonald’s, not even what the burger flipper gets.  Where can one go to get five dollars worth of work done to a vintage Pendleton skirt??

Someone I consider to be a dear friend, bless his heart, said to me recently, “I have a whole stack of things for you to do for me.  I just wish I knew you wanted to do them for the love of it—because it made you happy—not for the money—you know, while you’re not busy.”  He acts like exchanging money might somehow sully our friendship.  I had no answer for him.  I could not help feeling stung by his comment, which clearly came from the most innocent of intentions. Firstly, “While I’m not busy” is a thing that never happens to me.  Does he do his professional work for people “for the love of it, not for money?” I know he doesn’t. He can’t. None of us can.  It’s cruel to insinuate that those of us whose livelihoods occur in the intersections of art/craft/public service should be penalized for also enjoying what we do.  The prevailing attitude is that if we are having fun, we must not need money.

We who bargain hunt among our friends and fellow-artists (and we all do it!) are actually squeezing each other in painful ways we may not recognize. We are stealing from each other, even as we appear to be promoting each other.  We are making sad and resentful bargains which cause the opposite of Flourishing and Empowering and erode those bonds of friendship we wish to strengthen.  Writing a book, creating a music CD, cutting down trees, treating sick animals, advising people on the law, building a house, tending sick humans, is exhausting enough. Justifying our prices should not have to be part of the deal.  Those lucky, salaried people, whose pay magically shows up electronically in their bank accounts each month, have no idea the angst that comes with every single personal transaction in a self-employed person’s life.   This may not be totally accurate, but it feels to me that the only prices we never question are the plumber’s and the car mechanic’s.  Sure, we moan and groan privately, but we fork it over because Heaven Forbid our cars won’t go or our poopy won’t flush.  Everything else, from veterinary care to carpentry, is up for as much haggling as an open air market in Cairo. 

Last weekend, I spent 25 hours in three days doing a refresher course for a music program I have been involved with for more than twenty years.  There were seven new trainees who were there to learn about how children learn music and how to manage a classroom full of toddlers and their chatty parents.  I was shocked by how many poignant and touching memories were evoked by the familiar songs and rituals we practiced. I fell in love with children, music-making, and the whole program all over again. 

Then…

We talked “Biz-ness.” Biz…biz...biz… We talked about marketing strategies, pricing, costs and the need for a “Plan.”  We talked about how much legal and professional support or mentoring we would require from the program headquarters, which we all lovingly refer to as “The Mothership.”   We briefly discussed the ironies of charging clients for our services and how to offer scholarships in ways that simultaneously allow people of meager means to participate without devaluing the program. 

I cringed. I gave SO much away in my early days, when I was on fire with the prophet’s zeal for getting people to sing to their children.  (It’s a way harder sell than you might think!) Let me tell you, it did not work.  For more than ten years, sometimes with as many as seventy five families per semester, I played and sang and gave away my services.  I offered free classes weekly for my neighbors for years, often with only cursory thanks. I did classes, at my own expense, in Spanish for the Hispanic population downtown. People do not appreciate what they get at a discount; they value even less what they get for free.  It’s a sad fact that took me many years to learn the hard way.  I wanted to be generous.  I still cry when I think of it. 

I want to tell the young dreamers around me: PLEASE value who you are and what you have to contribute.  People will take their cues from YOU and you alone about what you are worth.  What you share—even if it is the premier, research-based, most advanced music program for young children in the world—will have utterly NO value if you do not teach people that it does.  Doing things “for friends” causes you to burn out those friendships in the end.  Putting food out in bird feeders is a nice thing to do—it probably even means you are a good person—but it does not make those birds your “friends.”  You will attract a lot of takers who will go elsewhere as soon as the wind changes.

It’s tragic to sound so cynical and bitter.  Honestly, I’m not that kind of person. But having to defend a self-worth that feels constantly like it is under assault, and to witness it happening to other artists and craftspeople I respect, causes me to have the kind of rage Sarah Blackwood wrote about in her New Yorker article of December 24, 2019 entitled “The Marmie Problem.” I would expand her arguments to say that women in business for themselves have pretty much the same constraints as those nineteenth century housewives “frowned down into stiff quiet and peace-less order” as they struggle with anger, misrecognition, and powerlessness. 

Of all the characters in Little Women, I wanted to be Marmee most of all.  Not for me, Jo’s radical feminist vision of womanly independence.  I wanted that role of creativity, love, home, and world-making from behind a freshly-pressed apron.  With gentle bovine matronliness, I want to do everything “freely” with a mix of pure generosity and noblesse oblige.  I want to be that indefatigable font of femininity, scones, skills, and Grace, yet Marmee-dom eludes me still. 

The fact is I’m torn by the need to “professionalize” my old-fashioned Mothering. Not long ago, within a single generation, most American homes possessed both a piano and a sewing machine and someone, usually the mother, knew how to use them both.  Now, music is something we watch “professionals” do, and sewing is going the same way, but there is an inherent core of resentment around the fact that these were both once “free” in our homes.  Let me tell you, they were NOT free.  We just, collectively, did not value our Marmees. And now, we need research programs to teach us lullabyes and seamstresses to fix our clothes.  And the irony is that “would-be Marmees” like myself now have to battle the often harsh bewildering and demeaning world of “Biz-ness” to survive.  Personally, I DO wish I could do this “from home,” purely for love.

Many of you darlings who read this blog are involved in similar struggles—you are creative, skilled, passionate, talented, and people make you feel obligated to give these things to them for nothing—like you somehow owe it to them because you can perform a task they are unwilling or unable to do for themselves.  Unfortunately, your electric company, your phone company, your landlords—none of these barter.  Since Alexander Hamilton instituted a national banking system in this country, we have been expected to pay in cash not cows, coins not carrots, Ven-mo not perfectly hemmed jeans with the designer stitching preserved.

Some, like greedy leprechauns, insist we are (wrongfully) wishing for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.  What a fool’s errand!  The best thing we can do is provide the best services we can, at fair market value, while doing what we love, and loving those for whom we do it.  Valuing our customers, while valuing our work, does not preclude us from valuing ourselves.

Stay clean and safe and dry, my loves! I wish you all the Health, Peace & Prosperity in the world. Give yourselves a great big hug, with Sew Much Love, from me.  Let the Mending Continue!!!

Yours aye,

Nancy

A Grand Adventure

“A Grand Adventure is about to begin.” –Winnie the Pooh

Greetings Dear Ones!

Sooner or later the shock is going to wear off.  I am going to stop being totally surprised each time a new customer finds his or her way to my door and knocks and says “are you the Seamstress?”  I had seven customers the first three days and I asked all seven of them “how did you find out about this?” I have yet to advertise! Word is spreading—through social media, through gossip, through disturbances in the energy fields around the granola factory:  Attention Gentle Brattleborians, there is a woman here who can make clothes fit you.  All you have to do is roam the cavernous halls of the old Cotton mill, clutching your pants and calling her name.  Work your way to the North end of the building, there will be a picture of a sewing machine above her door.  That is the place.  Enter and find THREAD. So much thread. Some of it snagging her ankles as she staggers towards you, bewildered, wondering what you are doing here and how you found her.  It’s like a twin flame/soul mate journey—only in polyester and rayon.  That which we seek is seeking us too. 

Setting up a new business is so much like becoming a new parent it boggles my mind. I have to think of everything—fear fears I never imagined before, nurture and protect what is nascent and above all, Be Responsible! It also means establishing firm limits around what I can and cannot do: I can do only soft leather items—only some of those big, gnarly Harley jackets can fit under my machines without breaking all sorts of needles.  I am getting so many calls for leather work. A woman calls to see if I can create leather cushions for her family room. NO. “I just do clothing—no domestic items, no cushions, no draperies, no slip-covers for Volkswagons. I want to manage expectations so I can do the things I’m properly good at.  Even then, I’m terrified of making a mistake.  I’ve been triple and quadruple checking my work, really missing my buddies in the old shop.  We all helped each other with “Quality control,” which was not so much about controlling the “quality” as its Lack. (Have you taken the pins out of the bust pads? Have you snipped all hanging threads? Have you closed up that hole in the lining you used to get in under that jacket?)  As far as I am concerned, one can never have Too Much quality—though I see now that it does affect the bottom line, as I remake a woman’s skirt from scratch and realize I cannot charge her a living wage for my time or her “Thrift store find” will cost her more than a Dolce & Gabbana. There has to be a balance.

A contractor friend told me—“When you go into business for yourself watch out.  You do a great job and they will tell ten people.  You make a mistake, and they tell a hundred. Word travels fast.  I got a friend who cuts trees—no matter how many enormous elms he’s dropped in tricky suburban situations, nobody knows about him until he drops one log through someone’s back deck. That’s business for you.”

Just to play with my machines and to get my gravity fed Iron up and running, I hem some curtains for my son.  I cannot get them even and they wind up too short. Prudence grumbles the entire time, “Let this be a lesson to you, Lassie!” So, I agree: CLOTHING ONLY!  I have a fair shot at having that turn out ok.

Imagine my astonishment when a sweaty young woman, my very first customer in fact, staggers up the stairs and heaves onto my pristine cutting table two HUGE chunks of a futon mattress she has, in a fit of mad ambition, cut up with a saws-all. They lie there, open on two sides each, hemorrhaging hunks of wool and foam all over the shop.  “Can you cover these with fabric so I can make bench cushions out of them?” she wants to know.  She’s a friend, so I roll my eyes, bite my tongue, and agree.   I had told her months ago I would help her with this project and here it is, Day One, to haunt me.  She has brought some fabric but it is not nearly enough.  I will have to go shopping for her, since she is leaving the country for a month and does not have time to do this before she leaves and she’d like these cushions done before she returns. (Of course she would.) She is amazing and talented and I love her so much. Have I mentioned she’s on a Tight Budget, which is why she hasn’t gone to a “Real” professional who could actually do a good job at this?

Now, every second person in the door looks at the mountain of dead futon on my table and says “Oh! You do cushions!!! GREAT!” and I have to explain that no, I do NOT do cushions.  “But…” they say, indicating the heaps of leaking foam and wool. “That is for a Friend,” I hiss, “a friend I currently want to clobber.”  “How can I get to be your friend?” they ask, teasingly, hoping they can entice me to do some shitty little job that is not on my menu.  Like sheep, they are testing the fences to see if the electricity is really On today.  I can see I will have to be Firm or wind up eating a lot of  tear-stained trifle with my bare hands, while moaning that people don’t respect my lax boundaries.

In any case, I can now reveal a Secret Dread I have been having—a dread that almost rivals the dread of disappointing people or making mistakes.  I have been deeply Concerned that the good people of Vermont are so amazingly Aware and Sincere—Socially Sensitive, Politically Active, Environmentally Conscious, and Spiritually Centered—so individually Responsible yet so Community-minded—that I was deeply concerned all my blog fodder would dry up in the total Absence of Nuttiness.  Earnest People actually took the time to inform me with all Seriousness, “You’ll have no blog material here. Everyone is Different in Vermont. It’s not like Massachusetts.”  I’ll admit, I was a little worried. There is a deeply laid-back, groovy, “our fashion is a blend of Pategonia, Thrift Store, and Tractor Supply” vibe that makes me think I will never have people in the dressing room wearing wellington boots and obsessing over hemlines. (Wrong! It’s Already happened!) I’ve learned an important lesson in my first week: never assume that just because people wear thirty-seven layers of responsibly-harvested up-cycled wool and shop at a co-op does not mean they are sane.  Praise Be! What a relief!!!

With every phone call, text, or email that says “I have a suit that needs altering.  How soon can you do it and how much will that be?” I grin and feel more at home.  People everywhere want to know “how long is a piece of yarn?”

One woman calls and wants to know if I can tailor three old suits for her son. They belonged to his grandfather.

“Sure,” I say.

“How much will that be?” she wants to know.

“What are we doing to them?” I ask. “Are they being let out? Shortened? Hemmed? Tapered? Taken in?”

“Well, how would I know?” she asks testily. “You’re the tailor!”

“The best thing to do is bring them in here and let me take a look at them. I can’t give estimates over the phone,” I advise as gently as possible. “A consultation will cost you nothing.  I can give you an estimate and then you can decide.”

“Great,” she says. “That sounds fine.” She pauses, then adds “Do I have to bring the boy in too???”

“Um…. Yes, ma’am, that would be helpful.” She can’t see me over the phone but I am doing a fist-pump into the air. YES!!! I just knew it! People are the same everywhere.  And I LOVE them all SO MUCH.

Sadly, I never get to meet this woman and enquire about whether or not she was actually born and raised in Vermont, or transplanted from a Nutty State, because she calls back to tell me that the suits have been eaten by moths and they are going to have to buy the boy a new one after all. She wants to know where she can donate the moth-eaten suits. “Maybe some poor person has a job interview and won’t care how he looks,” she says hopefully.

As week one ends and another begins, I am feeling cautiously optimistic and extremely Grateful. People around here are terribly clever, resourceful, and resilient.  They all seem to sew or know someone who does, though they admit they don’t get around to it often.  They tell me familiar stories I have come to know and love, that help me know and love them as people too.   

It’s thrilling to feel so welcomed in this community.  Random strangers at the bank, in the hardware store, even the insurance agency, seem happy there is a seamstress coming to town.  Folks are also excited about the upcoming mending circle I am starting at the end of the month. We will meet monthly on Monday Evenings to help each other Mend. People are excited to learn, excited to share, excited about fitting into things in their closets or repurposing them for some other Good. 

In general, when I allow myself to breathe, to hope, to feel even a shred of competency, I realize it’s just like that day the doctors kicked me out of the hospital and insisted I take my two-day-old daughter with me. All I have to do is keep this precious baby alive, one day at a time.  When I stop being scared, I can look at what I am creating and feel SO, SEW happy! What an adventure now begins!  I’ll take the jobs as they come, one by one, chopped up futons and all.

Let the Mending Continue!  With Sew much love…

Yours aye,

Nancy

Trash Friends

Greetings Dear Ones!

There is no unified or coordinated rubbish disposal or pick-up service at the Cotton Mill. Since the tenants produce differing amounts of waste, we are each on our own to subcontract accordingly.  Out the back of the building, the long row of varying-sized dumpsters hunched together like linebackers on a defensive end is a mute testament to the variety of needs.  When the building manager explains all this to me, I sigh.  I will never need a dumpster’s worth of rubbish removal on an annual never mind a monthly basis.  I save most of my scraps and it takes a long time to fill a contractor bag with threads and floor sweepings. I resign myself to dragging a single bag to the dump and paying for it whenever I happen to accumulate that much.  Strangely, the sight of all those dumpsters in a row makes me feel very much alone and small, sad that so much is getting thrown away. 

I think of a dear friend of mine who gathers food from her local grocery store that must be discarded because it is past its sell-by date.  She feeds it to her farm animals so as not to waste it. Many times we have dined together on the gleanings that are too good for the chickens and yet deemed unsuitable for other humans.   “No food can hurt you if you bless it,” she announces, taking a large, cheerful bite of stale bread, “Our society is too quick to dispose of good stuff.”

Later, some folks stop by my open door and invite me to share one of those dumpsters! Five other tenants, who produce as little trash as I do, have joined together to share a single small dumpster.  Like I said, I don’t so much need the trash outlet but I feel incredibly happy to be invited to belong to the group.  We stand there chatting, comparing notes about our businesses and what it is like to work and thrive in this wonderful old building. One woman’s grandmother actually worked in the mill, in its day.  They tell me which dumpster is ours, how to work the combination lock, and to call on them if I need any help.

“Hallelujah!” I think, no longer feeling so solitary, “I have TRASH friends!”

A day later, to my surprise, a customer wanders in the door with a pair of pants he wants hemmed.  “You’re open, right?” he asks.

“Yes, sir, I am—as of Saturday.  But I’ve been a little under the weather and behind on things.  I have not yet done much advertising.  And by much, I really mean any. How did you find out about this place?  It’s not exactly easy to find. I don’t even have all my signs up yet.”

“Tell me about it,” he says. “I had to wander through the entire building. But I saw it on FaceBook this morning and I was so excited, I came down right away.  I’ve been looking for someone and I heard good things about you.”

“Well, thank you so much!” I say, blushing with confusion, wondering who could be spreading such rumors?

When he leaves, I scan all my local friend’s pages to see if they have been promoting me on their sites.  They haven’t.  Who then???

The mystery is later solved when one of my trash friends stops by to introduce some more fellow tenants.  “Have you been posting about this shop on social media?” I ask.  He claps his hands and grins. “We GOT you, little trash buddy!” he says happily. “Word is spreading really quickly. I got over two hundred ‘likes’ and comments from one post.”

His kind words filled me with about 80% joy and 20% panic, if I’m honest. I gaze around the shop.  Clearly, I thought I had a few more days to slack off and put things away, perhaps clean a little (and by that, I really mean clean A LOT). But no, appointments are rolling in and the rack already has seven things on it.  My trash friends are extremely well-connected in town.  I guess it pays to have friends in Low Places!

How lucky am I that, in the space of a short week, my life leads me from pots to dumpsters for deep communal bonds? Last week, at PDB, it was all about being part of a Pot. How funny that both are big things made of metal that hold space for what we need to consume or get rid of.

I did not know there was such a thing as “being a pot” until sweet Nora danced into the kitchen this year and announced, “I just realized YOU’RE the pot!  I’m so happy because I’m usually the one who has to be the pot. It’s so relaxing to have someone else be the pot for a change!”

Er???

She laughed at my confusion. “You are not so much the “boss” of this kitchen as the “container” for this energy. You give this thing shape. You hold it all together—we all throw in what we can and somehow you cook it. YOU’RE the Pot.” 

“WE cook it,” I insisted, “I don’t want that much credit…” I feel uncomfortable with Credit because its close cousins are excessive Pride and potential Blame—both of which scare the crap out of me! “Seriously,” I said, “aren’t we ALL the pot this time? Can’t we hold hands and make this a really big pot? I don’t feel like being a lone Pot works all that well for me. Besides, I don’t want to be thanked; I’d rather be helped!”

She cocked her head and considered me with bright eyes the color of pilot lights. “Wow,” she said, “perhaps that is the beauty of Community—that we all hold space for each other so that one person doesn’t have to hold all the space for everyone. We can all be the Pot WITH you.”  I looked around the circle of women who were listening.  They were nodding sagely. Yes. They all knew what it is like individually to “be the pot” in their daily lives—at work, at home, or both—and they know how to contain the ingredients and withstand the heat and pressure so that everyone else may be fed.  They knew the dangers of getting burned and of boiling over.  They knew what it was like to wake up feeling full of sludge yet deliberately light a fire under themselves so as to keep on cooking.

Yes, it’s one thing to exclaim over the Deliciousness of “Stone Soup” and all the contributions made by our fellow diners, but the truth is that the soup itself needs a vessel and that vessel needs both strength and capacity. “Being a pot” can be unsustainably hard and draining at times, especially when people are constantly dumping on or into you and you are trying to go it alone.  And there is no way that “One Pot” can feed a horde of a hundred and thirty people unless it is a capacious pot, large enough to bathe a goat in if needed.

I feel incredibly passionate about the need to create food together as a means of forging communal bonds.  Some think “good food” is just sort of a nice thing to have at camp—we’ve all been to those camps where the food is terrible.  But other than that, they aren’t much interested. They think such food will magically appear and be satisfying without their personal involvement.  They expect others to provide for their wishes. These are the first people to come through the line and say “what’s for supper? Oh, ___x___? Yuck. I hate x.”  They think you can purchase wholesale food with the G minor fiddle tunes baked right in. You can’t.  It’s true that we can buy all the ingredients—but they taste different out of different pots.   When everyone takes part in seasoning, with music or service, the result is different. (As far as I am concerned, anyone who complains about the spices is auditioning for leadership!)

There is a big difference between thanking someone and heart-fully participating in her mission—in much the same way that saying “sorry” is not at all the same as Doing sorry (i.e. changing one’s behavior). Such beliefs create awkward inconveniences for people who want to sit around and let other people do all the heavy lifting. Claiming your place in the tribe means YOU are now Responsible. We are equals, you and I—this camp is not something you attend or “purchase”—it’s something WE co-create musically, socially, spiritually, communally.  I don’t think we should ALL work in the kitchen any more than I think we should all play the same instrument—what kind of orchestra would that be?  But we can create Harmony through sharing, sensitively, the burdens of hospitality—those corporal acts of Mercy: feeding the hungry, welcoming the lonely, clothing the naked, wiping up that tea-time biscuit table that looks like a storm of locusts just departed.

I have been thinking a lot about what it means to be “a pot”—which is a role that often (but not always) falls to the Feminine characters in a group.  They Receive—then they churn; they heat; they mix and brew; they contain and hold safe during the transformation. Ultimately, they Serve. This is a hard and deep Privilege—for a person or a kitchen; for a community; for a town; or for a country.

When I was growing up, I was taught that America is a melting pot.  I loved that image. It sounded comforting and yummy, like Good Soup—a real Cream of Yesterday, hobnail boots and all. My great grandparents (as well as my mediocre ones) and all their hopes and dreams and weird, ethnic spices got added to the broth and Uncle Sam and Lady Liberty took turns stirring and adding salt until my relatives dissolved, lost their distinctive flavors, and became part of the nameless, hollow-eyed homogenous mush filling the mills and factories and railways.  But their dreams were our Food.  Their stories are our Bread.

Today, I’ve been told by modern fifth-graders that we are no longer a melting pot.  We are a salad—we get tossed in together but the peppers still stay peppers. We don’t need to lose our individual flavors to become American.  In fact, it’s better if we don’t.  I like this fresh take on things.  I like that our taste buds mature and change as we age and get exposed to delicacies we never heard of in our youth.  I love that this Mill building is filled with artists and creators, descendents of former immigrant workers, who are now unconstrained by homogeny for survival.

Even salads still need bowls—bowls outline a Space. Every aspect of being part of a Community requires that we give it Space, whether we are nominally “in charge” or not. I look at my cluttered little shop and wonder—how can I clear Space for a local high school student who wants to come learn tailoring? (My first mentoring job is already happening!) Politically, I look at our Leadership and wonder, how are we going to hold the space we need to HEAR each other?   And most importantly, how are we going to keep this great POT we live in from becoming a Dumpster? Who will be our trash buddies who band together and help us look out for one another?  How will we find the words, and songs, and deeds, and services to turn to one another and say “You Belong, little Trash Buddy! Your needs are not too small. We Got you!”

Be Well my Darlings! Keep up your Good Work!

Yours aye,

Nancy

Our Winter Fodder

“Music is our Winter Fodder!”—a wizened man in a pub in Ireland to fiddler Nora Revenaugh

Greetings Dear Ones!

Sadly, recovering from getting 130 people to eat over three-hundred pounds of potatoes in three days has taken me longer than I thought, or I would have written sooner.  The burns and scratches on my arms are fading (golly, it sounds like I was force-feeding a violent mob!) and the time looms suddenly for the Grand Opening of my shop.

Pretending to be a cook for a large camp is a REALLY fun game—almost as much fun as the game of being a Seamstress—and it turns out that one learns pretty much the same life lessons, though taught in food metaphors, rather than seam allowances. For many years now, this “Tribe” has been gathering in the dark of winter to feast on tunes and leftovers turned into soups we call “Cream of Yesterday.”  We had your usual Venn diagram of dietary restrictions to consider—vegans, dairy-free, gluten-free, nut-free, soy-free, sugar-free, (with each thing some contingent of the population was “free” of, we cooks were more constrained) luckily, we could all agree on POTATOES, so we served them three times a day and at midnight. (And Beans. But more on this later…) As A.A. Milne pointed out, “What I say is that, if a man really likes potatoes, he must be a pretty decent sort of fellow.” Or a Scottish Fiddler!

I am a pot so full of ideas at the moment—ideas about Tribe, Food, Music—how the three come together in Sacred Sharing that tells each participant: You are Home; you Belong; LIFE is SO DELICIOUS; Come and be FED. These ideas simmer in a rich stew that I don’t know if I can bring myself to serve up yet.  It’s all still a little raw and needs spicing.  But time is getting away from me and I must dribble Big Things thinly into gruel and the few words that come.  For now, I’ll just give you the random pop Quiz to prove to you that all the Wisdom you need is within you already anyway. You don’t need me to digest it for you:

PDB Quiz:

1.     PDB stands for:

a.      Potatoes Diced Badly

b.     People Dancing Beautifully

c.      Perfectly Dropped Beans

d.     Pure Dead Brilliant

2.     Pure Dead Brilliant is Scottish for:

a.      Unsullied, Perished & Luminous

b.     Flawless, Lifeless & Dazzling

c.      Unadulterated, Deceased & Radiant

d.     Just plain WICKED AWESOME

3.     The Staff at the Grotonwood camp graciously allow us to rent their kitchen for the weekend so that we can (in their words) “use it to provide our people with our own unique ethnic Scottish foods.” These “Scottish” delicacies are:

a.      Baked Potatoes, Salmon & Oatmeal

b.     Spanish tortillas

c.      Lamb CURRY

d.     All of the above

4.     Potatoes are a major staple of the event.  Which of the following statements is NOT true?

a.      This crowd eats approximately 50-60 pounds of potatoes per meal.

b.     We have been known to serve at least two species in as many as three different forms all at the same meal: boiled, baked, and fried.

c.      What you don’t eat at dinner just gets cut up smaller and turned into home fries for breakfast

d.     We even sneak them into the fruit salad

5.     The official mission of this weekend is to:

a.      Present, Invent, Preserve, and  Promote Scottish music in North America

b.     Have advanced, late-night jams at unholy speeds until all hours of the morning

c.      Keep North American potato farmers in business

d.     All of the above

6.     The spices we use to enhance our “Scottish Cuisine” are:

a.      Oregano, Basil, Parsley—if we want to make it taste Italian

b.     Tarragon, Thyme, Bay—if we want to make it taste French

c.      Coriander, Cardamom, Cumin—if we want to make it taste Indian

d.     Cilantro, Chili powder, Cumin—if we want to make it taste Mexican

e.      GARLIC—if we want it to taste GOOD.

7.     Hair must be tied back and covered in the kitchen

a.      Because Nancy is a control freak who secretly enjoys seeing people look ridiculous in hats

b.     She figures if she looks terrible, so should everyone else

c.      To prevent accidental shedding of other people’s gross hair into YOUR food

d.     It’s the Rule in every good commercial kitchen, including this one.

8.     People must wash their hands before preparing food because:

a.      They have been touching cell phones, noses, and other vile things we’re too polite to mention here

b.     Good hand hygiene helps reduce the risk of things like flu, salmonella, and other infections

c.      We don’t want to be responsible for anyone’s blow-out diarrhea—it’s bad enough we serve them beans three times a day.

d.     All of the above

9.     Making Food together:

a.      Brings nourishment not only to our bodies but to our spirits

b.     Builds deep bond of friendship and community

c.      “Is a way of loving others, in the same way that feeding ourselves is a way of honoring our own createdness and fragility.”-- Shauna Niequist, author of Bittersweet: Thoughts on Change, Grace, and Learning the Hard Way

d.     Gives people too tired to fiddle and too over-stimulated to sleep something to do in the mean time.

e.      All of the above

10.    There is no question that good food heals. In addition to being Delicious, Garlic has many anti-microbial properties.  As a health precaution, to protect our dear “family” members who have flown in from around the globe, who are over-tired or immune-suppressed, we add garlic to pretty much everything. After much discussion amongst the Kitchen Magicians, we determined that The Correct Amount of garlic in any dish is:

a.      Enough to make a dish taste flavourful but not be overpowered

b.     Ok, a little over-powering is not such a bad thing

c.      Hell, let’s make it a truly Anti-Fornication Amount and then we won’t have to worry about anyone having carnal desires for each other

d.     All of the above

11.    People I fall madly in love with on the spot

a.      Those who say “here, I see what you’re doing, I’ll take over. Go do the next thing.”

b.     People who CLEAN any thing, any time, any where

c.      People who see what needs to be done and do it without being told—they sweep, chop, light sternos, label food—they say music to my ears like “that job you taught me how to do yesterday? Well, I figured it had to get done today too, so I did it already.”

d.     Anyone who knows how to make a horrible chore FUN (like those who totally ROCKED it with the dish washing!)

e.      All of the above

12.    People who contribute significantly to the growth of my soul, who make me realize I am dangerously susceptible to unfair judgments, uncharitable thoughts, and not-easily-repressed urges to bop someone over the head with a frying pan:

a.      People who expect other people to clean up after them

b.     People who smirk and say “I’d love to help in the kitchen but I just don’t want a hat to ruin my hair”

c.      Those who say, “I’d love to come help you. Just come get me whenever you need me. You tell me when. If you need anything, just let me know—I’m here for you…” like I’m supposed to leave ten pots boiling while I roam the campus searching for them…

d.     Those who criticize what they have not attempted to fix first

e.      All of the above

13.    In addition to three hundred pounds of potatoes in three days, this clan also consumed

a.      An average of 16 pounds of beans per meal

b.     75 pounds of chopped onions (Blessings and eternal gratitude Dear Onion Choppers!!!)

c.      25 pounds of steel cut oats

d.     All of the above

14.   The recipes we served were

a.      Carefully researched

b.     Accurately measured

c.      Thoroughly planned ahead of time

d.     Absolutely NONE of the Above

15.    Each and every soup (apart from Katie Bell’s mushroom soup on Friday night) was called “Cream of Yesterday” because

a.      It contained all the leftovers we didn’t know what to do with

b.     It was as ephemeral, collaborative, magical, and “once-upon-a-happening” as the music sessions themselves and depended entirely upon who was there and what spices she/he chose to toss into the pot

c.      Can never be repeated

d.     All of the above

16.   Many people feel a sense of bereavement at the end of the weekend

a.      Mainly because they are exhausted and need a big fat nap

b.     Because they must now say farewell to dear friends who live far

c.      It’s over and they have to return to their “primary” lives/spouses/jobs/children

d.     All of the above

17.    When one is recovering from such an event, the best thing to do is

a.      TAKE a NAP!!

b.     Eat some leftover potatoes

c.      Watch Facebook uploads of all the moments you missed while you were having too much fun doing something else.

d.     Open your own Tailoring shop in five days’ time!

(ok, maybe the last one is just me…)

18.   Whatever you do,

a.      Be Gentle with yourself and others until you re-acclimate. You are like a newly-bought fish from a pet-store being introduced to a tank that is not the right temperature for you yet. Stay in your little bag until it is safe for you to swim out without shock.

b.     PRACTICE your new tunes!

c.      Practice your old ones too!

d.     Bring that love and light back into your own home community and Share It

e.      All of the Above

In the meanwhile, I’m going to keep Digesting…Oh, yeah, and scrambling to clean my little shop for its Grand Opening TOMORROW! (Yipe!) (Why did “January Nancy” think that opening a business four days after returning from an Epic Weekend of 4 18-hour days in a row made perfect sense to her?)  

I’ve misplaced 250 strut hangers, and might not be capable of doing any actual sewing tomorrow but we shall make an Event of it.  My dear friend Amanda has agreed to come help us “Sing” this shop into being with her vast repertoire of appropriately-themed songs and her gorgeous voice.  There will be scones and cider, apples and a happy welcome for those who can come join us any time between 2-4:pm. (I promise, NO curry, garlic, or potatoes!!) There might even be door prizes if I can get off the computer and get my act together!  Stop by or think of us from wherever you are.

Alright then, my lovelies, Let the Mending continue!!!

With so much love,

Yours aye,

Nancy

“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”― J.R.R. Tolkien

With Buckets of Love...

“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” Lao Tzu

Dear Hearts,

We are only half-way through February, the Longest shortest month of the year.  As I write, the snow is again falling on the sheep outside my window.  They lie down in it, eat it, sleep in it… They roam around like wooly tortoises with unmelted crusts of it riding on their backs. They don’t have the sense to go inside their little clubhouse and huddle together complaining, like we do.  They have the Right Clothes.  Around here, they say “there’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing.”  When we are well-insulated, we don’t feel the things that give others such pain.  What a perfect metaphor for Valentine’s Day, eh?  The shadow side of this holiday is the amount of Loneliness it brings into focus for people who are already feeling down, sunlight-deprived, and—despite the passage of six weeks of calorie-crushing Cold—still  swollen from too many Christmas cookies. (Nevertheless, they persist!) Flu Season is in full swing. Whose idea was it to have a whole festival dedicated to kissing and cuddling at this time of year anyway?  The British term “snogging,” as disgustingly onomatopoeic as it sounds, was probably invented by people making out with full noses in February. Might as well hide, wait for the chocolate to go on sale on the 15th and eat it all in quarantine.

Yet, Hallmark and Tradition would have us waxing lyrical in this frigid Darkness, as our planet rolls heavily around the outermost reaches of our orbit in black Space—composing ballads, writing poetry, making cambric shirts, or purchasing over-priced shrub trimmings and Swiss confections to prove our love to fellow humans.  Those who insist “you cannot buy love,” are out there paying heavily.  I cannot help wondering just a little, why roses? Why not Thistles? Why Chocolates? Why not roasted Brussel Sprouts? To some, (Like me) roasted brussel sprouts with sea salt and a truly maggot-gagging amount of garlic would be more welcome—though the repercussions are hardly what most might call Romantic.  But…why deal in facades? If a person can love you in the midst of a brussel sprout fog (which smells the same whether it was freshly cooked or digested four days ago), isn’t that worth an acre of land between the salt water and the sea strand?  I think so.

Love has as many translations as there are souls to convey it. For some, love takes the form of “Because I love you, I will be with you no matter what.” For others, it’s “Because I love you, I will leave you the hell alone.”  For others it simply comes down to “I’d rather continue to argue with you than kiss anyone else.” Sometimes it’s a Molotov cocktail of all three.

Besides the odd Cambric Shirt or two, there has never been much sewing to do specifically for Valentine’s Day—which is a Good Thing, since my studio will not be open for another week yet. It’s challenging to argue that “love is blind” with such a brisk trade in lingerie this time of year. The costumes people don for their adventures on V-day are generally things that one can only wear with the central heating turned up high.  Who the hell wants to put on something slinky when it’s seventeen degrees out?  The Beatles said “All you need is Love,” but in my experience, chocolate, flowers, and plenty of wood in the stove help a lot, even if underwear that rides up your ass and tangles with your long-johns doesn’t.

There is a nostalgic part of me that can’t help looking backwards to Valentine’s days of yore and wanting to send a little Valentine to a person I should have loved better then, and to anyone Now, who still hopes for dreams coming true despite the rubble of dashed hopes and empty Cadbury’s boxes:

My Love…When you gaze backwards over the sweeping melodrama of your romantic past—with each contestant on your sullied game show, everything in your life has taken a back seat to the mission “Make THIS person LOVE me—make him/her realize (they) hit the jackpot with me and must NEVER leave me.” You cook, you bake, you send cute little things in the mail so they are reminded of how thoughtful and fun you are. Painstakingly, you make little traps for their feet, called socks, with bits of your own hair spun into the yarn as an ancient love-charm to bind you together for all time.  It’s wretchedly sneaky of you but you do it anyway. This takes hours and hours and every single episode of “Bojack Horseman” and “The Good Place” ever made.  You care not. You would do ANYTHING for love (except have a shred of self-respect) and then the bastards, with their cozy, multi-colored feet, Walk Away anyway, damn them.  NOT that you are bitter. Certainly not.  Bitterness is not part of your package. It’s simply not allowed. You are sugar and spice and everything NICE, so you eat that bitterness right up with a sweet pint (what the hell, make it two) of Ben & Jerry’s Raspberry Rage. What’s left, you drown in Premium Scotch or beer.  Later, you realize how lousy you feel so you load a hate-mix of “he-done-me-wrong-songs” in your headphones and go for something that is supposed to look like a run but is really more of a lurching, burping plod. Then, because you have little enough sense of consequences to believe that this might go well for you this time, you load Netflix, grab your needles, and cast on another sock/net. Maybe it was the wool?  Should you try alpaca instead? Maybe THIS time you will snare a partner who agrees that Science and Spirituality are compatible, that literary deconstruction is imperative, and that sheep really are no worse than Jack Russells as house pets… At the end of the day, if you cannot WIN, why not find a more beautiful way to Lose? Immeditately start scanning Ravelry knitting sites for better patterns.

Love is not what’s complicated, my Dearest. People are.  Except for you. You’re not complicated at ALL.  All you require is everything you need, whenever you need it.  You’re not sure what that is—because you only get the updates moment by moment yourself—but if someone REALLY loves you, s/he’ll figure it out with no difficulty what-so-ever, right? You should not have to say a word. You are the kind of person Oscar Wilde was referring to when he said “Women are made to be loved, not understood.”  You never asked to be Understood. You just want to be loved. (And allowed to purchase unlimited amounts of yarn, fabric, and farm animals…)

So what’s the problem?  You are not finding the wrong people, Dear One. You are finding yourself. Realizing that you are Incapable of being attracted to healthy people is the Best News Ever.  It’s genuinely Helpful information. It’s like realizing high-waisted pants are coming back in and that low-rise was never made for people with actual Bums. Finally, we will be able to achieve a proper Fit.  Change your clothing, Dear one, not yourself.

You finally Stop, take a good look at yourself closely, and what do you see? HOLES.  There it is. Yes, my love, you are what I lovingly call A Leaky Bucket. You have so many holes, you would actually make a more decent colander for rinsing beans than a bucket of any sort.  You leak time, energy, enthusiasm, effort all over the place.  Any farm girl will tell you that the leaky buckets have to be carried extra fast in order to deliver any water.  So you run.  You run and run, hoping no one will notice the steady drip of tears you are leaving behind.  You deliver as much water to the flowers as the saner, whole buckets who manage to sleep at nights. But you have to race to do it.  You know that if you Stop, you will completely drain out. Then what??? My God… THEN WHAT???

But It happens. It must.

You Dry Out.

Completely.

You think you die, but you are only resting. Maybe you lie there for a bit and you sing “there’s a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza…” thirty-nine times first, as a way of stalling and feeling sorry for yourself. Eventually, you get up and begin to patch the holes, one by one. You go to support groups and discuss life-changing ideas like how scotch and ice cream don’t make very good plaster. You mix a little mortar of lime and Prayer and Blame and begin to plug those holes. Each time you patch a spot where you are weak, where you define the very Edge of You and the beginning of something else, you give yourself a Boundary.  You enjoy the Defiance of fixing yourself in a world where so much is broken then discarded. Well, YOU are not going to waste this Life.  YOU are going to Re-use, Re-cycle—you look down—you definitely plan to Reduce! You get stronger. You look around you and see, to your humble amazement that it’s not just you—that Every bucket is leaking a little somewhere… You are stirred to pity and compassion. You heal.

One day, a Magical Thing happens.  You realize that you weren’t meant to carry water after all!  You can abandon the plaster, lime, and vitriol.  There is no longer a need to patch ANY of the holes.  In fact, it’s better for the ones you fixed to crack open again. You, my Dearest, were never meant to be a bucket—but a LANTERN. You need those holes to allow the Light to shine out.  Forget hauling ass and water..LOVE is the very best thing to carry—especially if it leaks and shines over all you and those with whom you come in contact.  It is the Best thing to be sloppy about.  Now, when you see other vessels, you don’t look at their holes, you look for their Light.  You see the really “holey” ones and think “Wow…Good job! This is definitely one of the better models!”

To my leaky-bucket friends, I say: Never regret the love you spilled, no matter how blind you find out you once were. It improved your vision.  All those people who could not love you in return?  They were just giving you the opportunity to learn to love Yourself.  What a GIFT!!!  Who needs the damn chocolate or flowers Now? (burp)

If this is your story too, then this Valentine is for you. (It’s all you get, as I seem to have eaten the flowers as well…) In your sewing, in your Giving, even in your planning of the Utmost for the Unworthy—Shine On!  They might not “deserve” it, but YOU deserve what you will learn from it.  With each heartbreak, thank the Blessing that helps you remember who you really are and reminds you of what you are really capable of doing. One day, you will stop your rushing and bargaining and grieving and Be Still because you will have found True Love hidden Within You, where it has been all this time (along with those fermented Brussel sprouts you’ve been holding back).  

Our world has been getting a little darker and more Torn.  We need more light by which to Stitch and Patch. We need more Lanterns.  Get your Hottest Pants on and Let Rip—Darlings, it’s time to Shine.

With SEW much love on this Valentine’s Day and every day,

Yours aye,

Nancy

Finding the right Pro-Verbs

"me, pro. The objectionable case of I. The personal pronoun in English has three cases, the dominative, the objectionable and the oppressive. Each is all three." ~ Ambrose Bierce

Greetings Dear Ones!

It’s been a mild winter so far and in my over-heated, granola-scented “Stitchery,” I’ve actually had the windows open quite a lot to enjoy the fresh air. The shop is finally coming along, despite all the upheaval and inertia I have had to overcome. The thread and bobbins have arrived. I’m going to set the Grand Opening for February 22nd 2020 whether I am ready or not.  I can’t wait to get sewing again!

In the mean time, my next two weekends will be filled with Cooking—it’s time for the annual Pure Dead Brilliant potato marathon in the Grotonwood kitchens, where I get a hundred and twenty-five Scottish fiddlers to peel and eat their weight in potatoes by the end of the weekend. Oh, and some darn good fiddling happens too!

I’ve been so happy at the Cottonmill already— I’m in the “getting to know you phase” with my fellow tenants, which is so much fun. This vast, old building is filled with an amazing blend of old-fashioned skills and startling modernity with its artists, craftspeople, and entrepreneurs. I met a glass blower and a potter the Sunday evening I locked myself out of my studio and the main office was closed and maintenance staff off duty.  The glass-blower phoned a pal on the third floor who told us how “everyone here knows how to pick the locks to get themselves back in,” information which was vaguely unsettling and reassuring at the same time. Using that information, we got in the door in seconds, with the bonus that I now have a new friend enthusiastically interested in attending my Monthly Mending Frolics!  I am going to use that big conference room on the second floor to host free monthly Mending sessions where everyone can bring their clothing to repair Themselves, with access to my enormous rainbow of thread spools and my tools. (More on all this soon.)

When I met one of my neighbors down the hall, we shook hands excitedly and talked about our respective businesses and discovered that we had a lot in common.  They make undergarments for people wishing to change the shape of their bodies. Within minutes, we were talking about possible collaborations. The energy coming off this person was so alive and warm and kind—so full of Creativity and Light.  They took my arm and said “Come on in to our space—I want to introduce you to all of our other workers.  We went down the hall and through the open door, where I saw about five other people all working away at sewing machines. They looked up and smiled at me. “What are your preferred pronouns,” my new friend asked me suddenly.

“My what?”

“What pronouns do you like?”

I paused, panicked. Why would we be talking about parts of speech at a time like this? If you must know, I thought, I like ALL pronouns. Is there such a thing as an Un-likeable pronoun?? Suddenly, I could feel the sweat running down my back.  The whole class was watching me, expecting an answer.  Without warning, I was back in seventh grade, with socks that refused to stay up above my scuffed oxfords, and a blue plaid pinafore that was too big for me. I had the kind of haircut (thanks, Mom!) that made strangers near public restrooms tell me “hey, Sonny, you’re in the wrong line—the men’s room is over there!” if I was not wearing a dress.  After lunch each day, we had to stand by our desks reciting The Parts of Speech, while Sister Regina Caeli slapped a diagramed sentence on blackboard with her pointer. All the words in the English language are divided into nine categories called the Parts of Speech. They are Article, Noun, Adjective, Pronoun, Verb, Adverb, Preposition, Conjunction and Interjection—each with a myriad of mystifying subdivisions. Anyone who got one wrong had to remain standing.  I lived in terror of not being able to name all the conjuctions or past participles.   I stared at my new acquaintance beseechingly.  In my flus-tration, all I could think of to recite was “Be, Am, Is, Are, Was, Were…” but I knew that was not right so I stayed silent.

They smiled patiently. 

“Is it Ok to assume ‘She’ and ‘Her?’”

“Oh! For ME,” I said stupidly, getting it far too late, looking down and thinking that the combination of menopausal chin hairs and my winter wardrobe must be doing quite a number on me if people cannot figure out what gender I am!

“We don’t like to assume. We like to ask,” they explained.

“How kind,” I mumbled, humbly.  I had never been asked that question before.  Throughout my life, people have either assumed I was a little old lady or a young boy, no matter what age I happen to be at the time.  Mostly it amuses me. I figure if one is over fifty and has built a quarter mile of split-rail fence by hand, she doesn’t have to explain herself anymore. Don’t get me wrong, I sympathize with those who have felt the sting of being mislabeled. One of my sisters recently reminded me about the time a man came to our family farm, observed us girls working, and remarked to our father “what fine sons he had,” and my dad, either not wishing to correct the gentleman or with that efficient attitude of a-little-inaccuracy-saves-tons-of-explanation, simply AGREED with him!

I never ask. I never assume either—I just don’t actually know how such information has any relevance in my conversations with customers—conversations that are basically one-on-one, tete a tete, “You and I” based.  One only requires pronouns like he, she, it, when one is discussing Someone Else who is perceived as “other” to the You-or-I dyad.  This is also known as Gossip in some circles and it is a Most Dangerous thing. A seamstress is, or should be a sacred counselor/confidante. We are “Women of the cloth”—we keep the Silence of a Priestess. (Please keep in mind that I distort the personal descriptions of occasional subjects of this blog so that they are “recognizeable” only in a universal, rather than specific, sense.) My work generally does not require such references, so I have no practice asking. Also, I never want to risk offending people who think the answer should be obvious.

In the old shop, we would say “that customer with the (fill in the blank) wedding gown/black sport coat/unitard….” We would skip the “he/she” “him/her” and just refer to them by their clothing. I suppose it might have been kinder, cleaner, and definitely more “woke” to just ASK the customers what they preferred when we had to talk about them behind their backs, but we never did.  There wasn’t the need.  The nouns we used to help identify a person were not Pro (or con), they were just the relevant nouns to the garments and bodies. I revel in the fact that some bodies are noticeably “strong” and well-muscled, and others are delicately boned or softer.  In this industry, which is NOT a competitive sports federation (though it can feel like that at times!), who really gives a Rip if some apples have stems and others do not?

 “Who’s SHE then? The Cat’s mother?” a friend used to say whenever I used the word ‘she’ in front of someone who was present. Like when there were three of us and I called the other one ‘she.’ I learned never to refer to anyone in the third person pronoun form while he or she was present.  It’s not polite.  (Frankly, it’s not polite when “she” is not there either!)

After I left their workspace and returned down the hall to my own, I reflected on my original interpretation of my new neighbor’s question. What are my preferred pronouns?  I went through all the pronouns (I can remember them when I am not stressed!) There are personal subject pronouns (I, you, he, she, it, we, they), personal object pronouns (me, you, him, her, it, us, you, them) demonstrative pronouns (this, that, these, those), interrogative pronouns (who, whom, which, whose, that), relative pronouns, indefinite pronouns (anybody/anyone), reflexive and intensive pronouns (myself, yourself, itself etc…).  They tend to come in batches of four: like “they, them, theirs, and themselves” I tried to determine if I have any favorites. I do. They are WE, US, OUR and anything that emphasizes inter-connection and collectivity. I know a lot of people now refer to themselves as they/them but that feels distant, cold, isolated or excluded from me/mine. It grates on my sense of “number” that an individual cannot be a group.  And yet, aren’t we each a “collective” of sorts? My wise inner “matriarchal tree sprite,” inner Child, inner Sinner, and Prudence concur.  Oops.  No, Prudence does NOT concur. Sister Regina with her pointer and Tight-lipped Prudence insist that a pronoun always reflects the number of its antecedent: "they" does not refer to one person, no matter how many personalities she or he has, or how anxious we may be to avoid gender turmoil. I might just be sentenced to some sentencing for that.

I love how in certain parts of the British isles, people call each other by their name plus “our,” such as “our Michael” (see, Poppet? I told you I would work him into a blog one day!) and “our Sheila.” “Our” is definitely a Possessive pronoun but it feels more inclusive.

I was talking to a fiddler about this recently.  She had a good point. Pronouns exist as linguistic shortcuts.  Instead of saying the full name or title every sentence, we have devised these ways of referring to each other and ourselves in smaller, more compact syllables. Maybe some of us just don’t fit into smaller. Maybe, we need (and deserve) all expansive, lush description we require, for people to identify us properly.  Maybe we need to be called “The Fiddler,” “The dancer” “The Sewer” (and by that, I mean “one-who-sews” not the place the potty empties into!).  We need Bigger Nouns, not personal pronouns.

Or MaybeVerbs might be the answer!  Ulysses S. Grant, Civil War General, said “The fact is I think I am a verb instead of a personal pronoun. A verb is anything that signifies to be; to do; or to suffer. I signify all three.”  Grammar is what snares us—that science of qualitative interpolation of something Living.  Language must evolve to conform to Life, to the qualities, differentiations, nuances and inherent rhythmic structures of the symbolism we mean to convey.  At least English nouns are relatively genderless.  In other languages, there is a gender for everything from a ship (feminine) to a garden (masculine) (What?? Yes, a garden is “masculine”! Take that, Eve!)  In olden times, like when Beowulf was written, people were described as a noun-verb hyphenated unit like “Earth-stepper.”  I love this.  My mind goes wild with the possibilities—Fiber-Artist, Fashion-Fitter, Scrap-Slapper.  John Fowles had it so right in The French Lieutenant’s Woman: “I say "her," but the pronoun is one of the most terrifying masks man has invented; what came to Charles was not a pronoun, but eyes, looks, the line of the hair over a temple, a nimble step, a sleeping face.”
If only we could all see each other in such detail—with such grace. In the meantime, if I need shortcuts, I will continue to use genderless pronouns, like "dear," "darling," and “hon”—like some kind of granny or waitress slinging hash in a truck stop. Because YOU are so Dear and Darling to ME, mine, myself.  As for me, as an old friend liked to say, “You can call me anything as long as it’s not late for dinner!”

Have a wonderful week, My Darlings!  Keep up your Good Work!

YOURS aye,

Nancy

Key-Seeker, Day-Dreamer, and…

The Devil is in the Details

“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.”

–Robert Louis Stevenson

Greetings Dear Ones!

I am writing to you from the waiting area of an automotive repair shop for several key reasons—mostly because I have an automotive in need of repair, and because I need to keep busy while the mechanics decide how many of their children they need to fund through college with this latest bill, and finally, because I have no knitting here.    I am praying that these nice men don’t keep their own secret blog about nutty customers and the things they keep in their cars! Ha!  Let’s just say that I have never broken down moments after I have thoroughly cleaned and detailed the vehicle.  No, some poor bloke is in there, knees by his ears as he tries to get the seat back, amidst all the schrapnel of a Woman On The Move.   All the popcorn that did not manage to lodge itself in my bra as I munched while driving, is now on the floor.  There are still a few sheep turds in crevices I won’t reach until Spring, since nothing really smells bad below five degrees here.  (As I am editing, I want to clarify that the sheep turds are in the CAR, not my bra!!)

I had no idea how much work it was going to be to “not” go to work anymore.   For several weeks now, I have been without a “real” job (I don’t count music or teaching gigs because they are way too much fun!) and I have never worked harder in my life.  Going into business for myself is an 80-hour-a-week endeavour and I am still feeling like a slacker. Each day, there are a myriad of things I have to do to get ready to do what it is I want to do.  Spiritual Teachers talk about the need to “get ready to get Ready.” I’m getting ready to get ready to get ready to get ready…  Mostly, I am getting ready to kick one of those teachers. Quotes like “you are exactly where you are meant to Be; trust in the Divine Timing of all things” have no relevance for a person wandering the sunless acres of a nameless big-box-retailer in search of mirror brackets, or getting notifications from suppliers that my merchandise has “been returned to sender” because the delivery van, with the full power of a Global Positioning Satellite at its command, cannot locate Hermit Hollow. 

Naturally, Red Alerts have gone out to all the members of The Committee Dedicated to Thwarting the Forward Movement of Nancy Bell: Need a business phone line? Visit Verizon a minimum of three times for ninety minutes each only to find out SON (a founding member of the committee) has dropped his phone in the toilet and nothing can proceed on the account until his claim is processed. (Have we mentioned he dropped it in NOVEMBER???)  Need insurance? This will take at least two meetings. Ditto bank. Ditto landlords about how to use the commercial lift or mail boxes. Want to get wool and alpaca fur carded into roving locally by people who advertise this service? The resulting email chain will rival the Bible in length. Committee Members have been on stand-by, working round the clock to ensure I am perpetually dancing that dance of one-step-forward-two-steps-back which is only fun if one is in the arms of a really hot cowboy on Tequila night.  (Oh, my Achy-Breaky heart… ) But No.

It’s 6:30 am, no tequila in sight, and my car is the first to volunteer to make sure nothing much gets done today. Brakes and something called “rear bushings”, which sounds vaguely horticultural, or like the car has grown excessive leg-hair since it moved to Vermont, are the new priority. 

It’s tempting to get down in the dumps at times like this.  It’s tempting to think that the world is against having a cute little, mostly harmless, seamstress shop fully operational.  For a start, when my car IS functioning, the moment I leave the secluded drive that leads to Hermit Hollow, the first thing I encounter… (drum roll) is OTHER CARS. I don’t know why but it startles me to find the roads here occupied by Other Vehicles.  Who are these people? Where are they going at 6:30 in the morning?  What could they possibly be DOING at this hour that requires them to drive in FIRST GEAR in front of me for TEN MILES? (it’s not like I’ve already over-caffeinated myself on Tea & Tarot  by that point…)

I start feeling very “woe is me…” until I realize that only someone of Unbelievably Grand Magnificence would require an Entire Empire to intervene between her and her mission to get to a hardware store.  Clearly, I am Someone to be reckoned with. My little innocuous doings have attracted the attention of a mighty power—is it… Satan, maybe??? (Please read that last bit in Dana Carvey’s Church Lady Voice!)  The nuns I grew up with—The Sisters of Perpetual Dread—would have said it was the Devil, trying to thwart Good Work, since the Forces of Darkness are attempting, always, to extinguish the Light. (Basically, if you are having a hard time trying to do some Good, it’s a sign that the Good is Very Good. So keep going. This is so you can feel Magnificent while you are feeling damned.)

I have had some good conversations with Scientists since then and I now accept that  Darkness can never extinguish the light.  Darkness is merely the absence of Light.  It is not the black crayon that can scribble over a clean page.  One can lie down in an entire field of Summer Darkness and still spot the lightening bugs (or fireflies, as some like to call them).

Right now, the only Black and White that interest me are in the paint cans I must find.  I need white for the walls, black for the steps, and colonial green for the walls of the new dressing room.   I also need a box of  2 ½ inch GRK screws, a handrail, and a curtain rod.   Experience has taught me not to march into a hardware store and announce that I am looking for a screw, so I produce a sample from my pocket and say to the gentleman before me, “Got any of these?” He nods and leads me to the right section.  On the way, I notice a stack of hog panels. I have been looking for hog panels for months now! I have scanned online for free ones, used ones, old ones.  I have been to three local feed stores, a Tractor Supply, and something that used to be an Agway, all in vain.  The Agway place had a couple of sixteen-footers and the clerk said if I bought one, I could come back with a saws-all and cut it any length I liked.  Instead, I just gave up. Stopped searching. Stopped caring. That was months ago.  And now, in the quirky way that the Law of Attraction works, BOOM. Here they are! Sweet little eight-footers! No need to cut them!  I stop, clap my hands, and squeal with glee. My enthusiastic rapture alarms the man who is leading me to the screws.  This is a place where Serious Carpenters shop. My leather gloves, work boots, and filthy Carhartt jacket don’t fool him one bit.   Momentarily, I completely forget all about the other items I need as I rejoice over the Benevolent Abundance of a Universe that has Magically bestowed the Hog Panels of My Dreams upon me!

What are hog panels, you ask? And why the devil would a middle-aged woman who has never owned a hog in her life need one?  Well, briefly, they are welded wire livestock panels, made from heavy-weight galvanized wire rods, ideal for creating temporary chutes or barriers when one needs to treat stock animals.  They are almost a MUST on a little farm or homestead.  Hermit Hollow does not have any, which is shocking, because it has pretty much Everything Else one could imagine and too much of other things besides. (Have I mentioned that Hermit Hollow is not actually all that Hollow?) Those friends who have ever come to help shear and spent the afternoon losing ten pounds of sweat and sanity will thank me! These panels will make shearing in the Spring a far easier task. 

Back to the paint: I need white paint and black paint. “We don’t have such things anymore, Ma’am,” I am informed by the paint clerk.

“Isn’t there just a basic…?”

“No.  They all have names.  They are numbered and labeled.  You have to choose a specific shade,” he says, shrugging.

For the next twenty-two minutes, I peer at paint chips, trying to decide which one is “white.”  I finally settle on one called “Mountain Peak,” though I am sorely tempted by “Bavarian Cream,” if only for the name. I have to decide which will be more important—climbing these walls or licking them? The decision takes longer than I’d like to admit.   In the end, I like the idea of being surrounded by mountains—my walls can talk to the hills outside the window, which are beautiful.  I start singing “Climb Every Mountain” then get distracted by trying to find out what color matches my own skin tone. I have always wanted to know what “color” I am.   It turns out that I am different all over--parts of me are “Antique White” (of course they are!) and parts are “Pelican Beach,” presumably after the Pelicans have left.  I check my inner wrist—“Vapor”, my neck—“Grandma’s China”, my upper arm—“Stoneware” ; I am just bending over, trying to figure out how I am going to match my inner thigh, which I hope will be “Royal Silk,” when the clerk returns to check on me.  Suddenly, all my “whites” flush deep pink hues instead.  To distract him, I ask if he knows what color he is. He is not amused. “Speckled,” he says without blinking.   First the hog panels, now This.   Neither of us can wait for me to leave. 

Eventually, I load the screws and other purchases into the car, along with the hog panel, which barely fits, and squeeze myself beneath it all to breathe, re-center, and read some quotes. I have been relying heavily on inspirational quotes (and popcorn) to re-ignite my motivation on rough days. I have to read things like “One day at a Time,” many more times in a Day than Prudence thinks is necessary.

What if everyone out there is like I am, I wonder? It boggles the mind to think about the synchronicity of a capitalistic system at play with thousands of people doing their little errands, accumulating “stuff” without which they cannot use their “other stuff.” How many of us, are driving crouched beneath impulse buys like hog panels?  How many of us are doing our best but manifesting things out of synch? How many of us are giving up on dreams only to have the surprise of having them come true? How many are trying to find and show their “True Colors?” 

I have the colors of a Mountain in my paint bucket but before I can move it, as Confucius says, I must carry away endless buckets of little stones.  So many dreary little jobs clog the way.  The “prep” seems endless.  I know that “the extra mile” is the exact distance between those who accomplish everything they want and everyone else but I am limping.  I would rather feel sorry for myself and find a REAL gallon of something labeled Bavarian Cream in the Frozen Food Section of my local market. So I look at my damn quotes and see that Saint Francis, that goody-goody, is reputed to have said, “Start by doing what is necessary, then what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.”   Somehow, this feels like Useful Information.  Nothing takes the place of Perseverance.    I remember the summer in college when I worked on a farm with over a thousand ex-racehorses.  The only way to do anything quickly was to go SLOW.   If I proceed calmly, and rein myself in gently, I will make progress.

There IS a Devil in all these details.  But it cannot touch our Light. Bless us, it CANNOT.  Shine on my darlings!  Shine On! Keep up your Good Work.

Yours aye, with sew much love,

Nancy

A Mending Library

If we cannot by reason, by influence, by example, by strenuous effort, and by personal sacrifice, mend the bad places of civilization, we certainly cannot do it by force. —Auberon Herbert

Greetings Dear Ones!

I know it’s not like me, but I had actually started writing this entry several days ago—I was 400 words into a convoluted ramble about how I accidentally bought hog panels instead of paint for my new sewing studio (the hog panel was NOT for the studio! It was an impulse buy…) Since then, I have been driving like a circus clown, crouching beneath the hog panel, which extends from the windshield to the back window until I realized I had two flat tires… But that story will have to wait until next week…

I have fallen so Madly, Deeply, and Hopelessly IN LOVE that I now have to write about That instead.

As luck would have it, I drove (after I had pumped up the tires, yet still beneath the hog panel) all the way to my local library, only to find out it was NOT, in fact, my local library after all. (Perhaps the ten-mile drive should have been my first clue.)  Apparently, I had passed at least two other libraries en route to this one but, to my surprise, they were not my “local” library either. I explain to the cheerful librarian that what threw me off is that the town listed on my address and the name of this library were the same. “Yes,” she says, “we get that all the time. I used to work in your local library; that’s how I know that this is not it.  Your library is in a different town, with a completely different name. In fact, it isn’t even a town, really; technically it’s a village.”  We chat a while longer and my eyes keep straying to a display of books on clothing and fashion near her desk.

“Can I join this one anyway?” I ask. “You have some books here I would love to borrow.”

“Are you interested in fashion?” she inquires.  She is far too polite to look me up and down as she says so—but I certainly do NOT resemble anyone “interested” in fashion.  I am headed to the co-op next door to buy vegetables and have on my big leather farm boots, a canvas barn coat, and at least a Spring lamb’s worth of wool around my upper torso.  We’re swinging from sixteen to twenty-seven degrees Farenheit here in southern Vermont—NO one is interested in fashion. Asking someone “what pronouns” they use to refer to themselves is not just a polite thing to do—this time of year it is literally impossible to tell males from females in this part of the country.  Forget genders—we don’t even look human. Throw in a menopausal mustache or two and no one dares to speculate.

“Not really,” I admit.  “I’m more interested in sewing and preserving our heritage than actual fashion.  I’m appalled by the waste and the cost to the environment.  I refuse to buy new clothes that are basically plastic and last three washings. I’d rather save the old.”

She nods vehemently.

“It’s a small fee to join,” she says, “And you can take out anything you want today.”

“Great!” I say, gladly forking over the money. I love libraries. Absolutely LOVE them.  I’d join them all if I could.   (As of this writing, I now have joined every library within a ten-mile radius of Hermit Hollow.)  Libraries and I go way back.  There is something about the smell of a library that makes me feel very young and comforted. I love the Grand Silence of shelves, books, and padded chairs all Full of stories…whispering…. I especially love cracking open the binding on an old book in its cellophane sheath and falling headlong into another world… Going to a library is an instant mini-vacation.

She helps me check out a few books on the fashion industry.  I am particularly drawn to Elizabeth Kline’s books on the high cost of cheap fashion.

“You are welcome to join our Mending Bee on Sunday, if you like to sew,” she offers kindly.  “We don’t have a seamstress near here so we all get together once a month on a Sunday afternoon to mend our clothes.  We gather to share thread, machines, and know-how.  Some of the women are really quite good and they help the others.  I keep my own machine here in the office.  Our big tables are perfect for a work space.”

My jaw hits the floor so hard, it abrades any menopausal chin hairs right off.  I won’t have to pluck for a week.

“Are you kidding me?” I gasp.

“No,” she smiles shyly. “We’ve been going for three years now.  I had to stop advertising because we were having as many as forty people at a time show up and we can’t deal with that kind of volume.  Now, we’re down to about twenty, which is easier to manage. But you should feel free to come.  It would be a great way for you to meet people in the area who like to sew and who share similar ethics about mending or repurposing things before they discard them.”

I am not exactly sure how I managed to get back to my car and squeeze myself under the hog panel again.  I think I floated rather than walked.   I could not wait for Sunday.  It was worse than having to wait for Christmas as a child.

On Sunday, I pack a big basket of things to mend but I can’t immediately locate my tiny basket of tools.  In my current state of Upheaval (the heaval one experiences when attempting to rise UP), anything could be anywhere. So, I assume it is in the car already. I usually have it with me. I have taken out the hog panel but replaced its volume in the car with painting equipment, three plastic totes of musical instruments for toddlers (for a little “strengthening families” music gig I had recently), an overnight bag, and my usual load of crap that consists of yarn, knitting, empty bottles of Kombucha, bags of half-eaten granola, spare boots, the tire-pumper-upper-thing, jumper cables, blankets and first aid equipment. When I get to the Library, I dig through the piles and still cannot find the case that contains my scissors, pin cushion, glasses and thimble. What am I going to do??? Frantically, to my increasing shame, I wind up unpacking Everything in the parking lot like I am setting up camp for winter.  Are they already looking out the window at me, wondering who is that Mad Lady with the jumper cables and a sleeping bag? I can hear them now—“Why does she have a whole tote full of plastic egg shakers? Is she planning to paint something? A bag of sheep feed? What the…? She seems to be chasing a ball of yarn into a snow bank now!”

In despair, I realize I am going to have to go in empty-handed or not at all.  How dumb will that look? Should I just wait until next month? No. I decide, I might be the ‘new kid’ all over again but I’m a Big Girl now. I square my shoulders, adjust my Big-Girl panties, take a deep breath, and go in.  Libraries are safe spaces.  I can always hide out in the history section and spy on them through the racks. 

The oak door swings open and there they are, as foretold by the Wise Woman.   About 14 of the most Magnificent people I have ever seen have dragged in their mending baskets full of holey socks and other projects, to sit around the table and fix things.  They fix their clothing, they make new stuff out of old, and they give me something I had not realized I so desperately need:  “Welcome!” they say, “come join us!”

“I didn’t bring my work,” I lie, “but I’m happy to help anyone who needs help.” A lady graciously lets me darn a rash of moth holes in a cashmere sweater for her and within minutes, we are all talking and trading as if this is a reunion rather than a first meeting.  One woman is making the most Gorgeous tunics out of repurposed old T-shirts she has collected from thrift stores.  Two are darning socks and sharing wool threads of different colors.  Another is a talented costume designer from a local theatre group, working on a costume.  A young woman is needle-felting an art project of stunning beauty.  Everyone is busy with hand-sewing of some sort, while shared machines sit idly by.  The energy is fantastic. 

It strikes me that what we are doing is a very “Political Act”—let’s face it, what is NOT political these days? It seems anti-Capitalist to fix things, to mend what is broken, rather than discard it and buy new so that the economy can keep running.  Yet the sense of gentleness and strength in this group is so nourishing, so sustaining. They are determined, rather than angry; laughing rather than resentful.  Their sense of “economy” is not typical. They see things in a global perspective, rather than local—and yet, they gather Locally to make their changes. They see Big, but act Little.  It’s so simple it blows my mind. 

A spokesperson makes an announcement and we all agree that in two weeks time, we will have a supplemental meeting to make bags out of T-shirts for a second-hand clothing store whose profits support Hospice Care in this area.   The shop receives many wonderful donations they sell but they also receive great numbers of old or stained t-shirts they cannot.  With the ban on plastic shopping bags here, they have taken to converting these old t-shirts to shopping bags.  The mending group at our library is joining forces with area students looking to get the requisite Community Service Points they need for graduation. Our plan is to repurpose at least two-hundred T-shirts that otherwise would have gone in the trash. We will teach the teens how to cut off the sleeves, cut out the neck, and stitch the bottoms shut on these t-shirts so that shoppers will have a convenient (and reusable!) way to carry their purchases; the T-shirts won’t be wasted; and both Hospice and the Environment win. And the teens learn to sew. We all win. Actually, there are too many wins to count here. I LOVE it.

THAT’s my new-found love—that’s why I am swooning. Because overwhelmingly Giant and depressing situations can have such manageably SMALL and FUN and LOVELY solutions when we gather together to do our Mending. The layers of what is “Economical” to our survival can be unpacked in so many ways and skewed by pundits who confuse us with their agendas.  The benefits of Mending Together are simple, local, social, communal, environmental, global, and Spiritual. Is there any better form of Gratitude than of taking care of what we have?

During the next three hours, I learn more about the Thoughtful Doers of this town—that many are musical (there’s even another fiddler in the group!); many speak multiple languages; many are involved in a variety of other communities, churches, or groups.  A Quaker woman has just been to a mid-west conference on the “Gay Bible”—just to see what scholars had to say about that topic. Two others have been traveling recently. Some have children the same ages as mine, others are grandparents.  “What brings you to Vermont?” they all want to know.  When I try to explain, stammeringly, as best I can (sometimes even I don’t know the answer to this question!) my closest neighbor looks at me and says, “Well, Home calls us all from within as we make our way along the path.  It sounds like you are coming Home.”  I look around the table as she says this—all the faces are smiling at me kindly at the same time. It’s almost more than I can bear.

In a Library… Surrounded by preserved trees full of preserved stories... Sewing…with Wise and Giving people who care about each other and the land… I’m not sure I have ever felt so At Home in my life. I think about that mess I have in the car and briefly consider setting up camp in the parking lot for good!

Why isn’t every library a “Mending Library”?  I’m pretty sure Anyone can start this in his or her own library, school, grange or communal space.  You don’t even need to know how to sew or possess any tools. Just invite people to come and they will bring what they have and teach each other what they know!  It’s that simple and Magnificent. Instead of clamoring at rallies and protesting about “what is…” why not get out our needles and threads and quietly mend it? Together? Who needs “the government” when WE are the People?  Everyone knows that mending we leave to do alone or “later” never gets done.  Let’s do it Now. With Friends. Hell, it might even be fun.

Button up and ‘aye be cheerie’ my Darlings.  I hope this finds you warm, inside and out!  Keep doing your Good Work.   I love you Sew much,

Yours aye,

Nancy