A stitch in time

As I’ve mentioned before, I had a traumatic home ec experience as a preteen, and I haven’t touched a sewing machine since. In the last year, though, I’ve found myself wanting to face that fear directly. That’s why later tonight I’m heading over to a sewing class, where apparently I will relearn the basics of hand and machine sewing by making a sock monkey.

I know a couple of dogs who’d be delighted to sink their teeth into Mr. Sock Monkey, and they won’t care if he’s a little lopsided or mutated, so I won’t, either. Let’s face it, it’s so much easier to enjoy trying new things when the stakes are low!

My larger goal, though, is to learn enough simple sewing skills to alter my own clothes. I’ve been fascinated for years by people who can put their own stamp on otherwise generic clothing and refashion old clothes into new. I have a friend who turned a floral romper from the ’90s into an adorable dress. I have another friend who bought her wedding dress from a bridal salon that specializes in making old dresses modern. I’m always finding things in vintage and thrift stores that don’t fit me right or simply aren’t flattering but have so much potential (great bones, gorgeous fabric, whatever) if only I knew how to bring it out.

In part it’s about wanting to be both thrifty and eco-conscious, and in part it’s about wanting yet another creative outlet. But mostly it’s because in the last year or so, I’ve been inspired by various stylish sources to get a lot braver about exploring and expanding my personal look. For a long time, my wardrobe has basically consisted of basic jeans, basic t-shirts, basic cardigans. Classic, yes, but Bo. Ring.

Now I’m adding dresses, mixing patterns, exploring the wonderful world of legwear, and trying outfits that might seem odd, like belting a lightweight short-sleeved cotton shirtdress over a long-sleeved t-shirt with tights and boots. (Clothing swaps are great for this. Hey, it was free; if I can’t figure out a good way to wear a swap find, I can just pass it on at the next one.)

I’m allowing myself the occasional splurge, like the amazing All Saints cardigan I just picked up 2 weeks ago and have already worn in 4 different outfits, but my budget doesn’t have a lot of room for the expensively unusual. And that brings me back to learning how to sew. I don’t expect to become an expert dressmaker. I just want to be able to play.

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Fearlessly dorky

Gather ’round, children, while I tell you a story about the olden days.

Okay, I’m kidding. I’m only going to tell you a story from 1990. Which is, to my surprise, 20 years ago (damn, how did that happen?) and therefore almost half my lifetime ago already (I say again, damn, how did that happen?). Yes, it was pre-Internet, but otherwise, I wouldn’t call it olden. Retro, maybe. But I digress.

It was 1990. In fact, since we do now have the Internet, I can date the story precisely: May 1, 1990. The location: Northampton, Mass., where I was living because I was working at the newspaper in nearby Holyoke. I’d bought a ticket to see Michelle Shocked on her Captain Swing tour. She had two opening acts. One was a band from Hawaii called Poi Dog Pondering. The other was an English singer/songwriter who called himself John Wesley Harding.

I don’t know what Michelle Shocked is doing these days, and the last time I saw PDP was at the Fillmore in late 2001. But I saw John Wesley Harding this past weekend doing a set at the Red Devil Lounge, and it was — I have no better word for it — delightful.

See, here’s the thing: the second he walked out onto that stage in 1990 and started singing, I became an instant fan. Those tunes! Those lyrics! That voice! (I’m a sucker for a British accent, I admit it.) Also, it didn’t hurt that he was also preposterously attractive. From that point on, I followed his career. Not in the creepy stalkerish way, and not in the “learn every detail about his personal life” way, just in a “go see the guy whenever he plays a local show, and drop some cash on his music” way.

Since then, I’ve had a handful of entertaining fangirlish encounters, most of them in the mid-90s, when the man was performing a lot more often than he does now. I bought him a beer before a show at Bill’s Bar in Boston when a friend and I accidentally arrived far too early and walked into the bar during the sound check. I got to hang out backstage for an hour at another Boston venue because my housemate was dating a producer at the radio station sponsoring the appearance, although I didn’t want to be rude by striking up an actual conversation with someone who was trying to rehearse. And then there was the night I hung around a certain Central Square club for several hours after the show for no better reason than that he was also hanging around, jamming with some of the local musicians. Okay, maybe that was borderline groupie-like, but come on, an extra show by a favorite performer at no additional charge? Who would pass that up?

Anyway, what I’m saying is, I’ve been enjoying his music for 20 years now, which seemed to deserve a little bit more than just the occasional purchase on Amazon. So on Saturday night, after an engaging performance to far too small an audience, I waited at the merchandise table until I spotted my chance, and then I said something to the effect of, “Hey, Wes, I first saw you opening for Michelle Shocked in 1990 and I’ve been listening to your stuff ever since, and I just wanted to say thanks. Really. Thanks.”

And he was very nice about it and thanked me in return, which more than made up for my fear that I was being creepy or groupie-ish.

P.S. None of us are as young as we used to be, but he’s still pretty darn attractive. Whatever his secret is, I want some.

P.P.S. It turns out Bill Wadman has taken his picture. Is there anyone I know, or would like to know, whose picture Bill Wadman hasn’t taken? And why hasn’t he taken mine?

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Freelanciversary

It was 20 years ago today Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play…no, wait, that’s not right.

*sound of backwards tape loop*

It was 20 years ago today that the Holyoke (MA) Transcript-Telegram laid off half its newsroom, including me. It was my second post-college job; I was all of 23.

I celebrate what I call my “freelanciversary” today because I started beating the bushes for freelance work within hours of losing my job, and in fact landed a couple of assignments within a week or two. I didn’t truly commit myself to self-employment until the following spring, when I turned down an offer from a newspaper in semi-rural Pennsylvania. In the depths of a recession it was the only offer I’d gotten in nine months, but I knew if I moved there, this city girl would be stuck in the sticks, possibly permanently, so I said no. And that, as they say, was that. I’ve neither had nor looked for a “real” job since.

I’m going to be honest: I was a shitty employee when I was one. I wasn’t good at prioritizing the paper’s needs — in fact, I’m pretty sure I was first on the layoff list not just because I was the last hired, but because the previous month, I had refused my editor’s request to cancel my vacation on two days’ notice. He wanted me to stick around to cover what I vaguely remember was a predicted severe storm system. I was young, stubborn, and too poor to eat what I’d already spent on a non-refundable airfare. In retrospect, it was probably a test. Did I fail? Well, yes, in the sense that I lost my job three weeks later.

In the larger sense, though, I think I passed the test with flying colors. In 1993, the T-T laid off everyone else, too, and joined the long list of defunct newspapers. By then, I had moved back to the Boston area, was writing weekly features for the Boston Herald’s careers section, and had earned my first national byline with a piece in Cosmopolitan. Money was excruciatingly tight — I was sharing a three-bedroom in Somerville, filling in the gaps between assignments by temping as a legal secretary, and eating a lot of rice and beans — but I no longer had to work long hours, navigate confusing office politics, or, some days, get dressed at all.

A lot has changed in 20 years. The Internet has come along to make some things easier (I do not miss the days of snail-mailing printed-out manuscripts a week before deadline to make sure they arrived on time, nor — much as I love libraries — do I miss hours of fruitless research there), but it’s also deeply fucked up the publishing industry as a whole. Writing for consumer publications is less glamorous and more grinding than it used to be; as my friend Mary Beth tweeted just this morning, “Recently rejected prestige assignment for no pay & lucrative one from mag that treats writers like shit.” On the other hand, while I never imagined I’d spend about half my time writing web content, case studies, and other marketing communications for high tech companies, my bank account finds it very satisfying — and I can actually understand what my techie friends are talking about. I’ve written a book for which I still get the occasional thank you email eight years later. I still get paid to do fun stuff now and then, like talking to pizza-obsessed entrepreneurs and learning to make chocolate truffles. And I still don’t have to get dressed if I don’t want to. (You’ve heard of Casual Friday? I like to have Pantsless Wednesday.) All in all, I love my job. And how many people do you know who can say that?

So here’s to you, editor who now seems to be working for a newspaper on Cape Cod. Thanks for canning my ass 20 years ago this afternoon. It didn’t seem like it at the time, but it was actually the greatest thing anyone’s ever done for me.

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Sherd you? Why not!

On an archaeological dig, everything is a feature or a context (and sometimes both). A dark spot that might be a filled-in pit is a feature. The stuff that you dig out of it is a context. Anything from a context gets recorded as coming from that context. So if something gets dug up, kicked “out of context,” and trampled down elsewhere, or bulldozed out of the way to get down to the next layer of archaeology, or whatever, it’s basically trash — it no longer has any archaeological value, because you can’t relate it to anything else. On the dig I volunteered on, anything that was out of context ended up on the big mound of dirt which will eventually be used to backfill the site once the excavation is over and construction starts. So we were allowed to sort of kick at the dirt to see what we could find.

Over the week, I plucked out three small souvenirs. One was a thick chunk of iridescent glass which one of the archaeologists immediately identified as the bottom of a beer bottle from the brewery that was on the site in the 1800s. It makes a very nice paperweight. Another was a fingertip-sized bit of blue and white ceramic that was obviously part of a dinner plate (probably also Victorian), which I think I’d like to set into silver to wear as a pendant. The third was a piece of fired red clay pottery with a bit of greenish brown glaze at the edge. I snagged that on my final day on the dig and didn’t have a chance to show it to anyone there, so I had no clue what it was. I figured since my other two souvenirs were Victorian, this one probably was, too. Maybe a bit of a clay roof tile or something.

Before I left York, though, I visited the Yorkshire Museum and ended up chatting with one of the employees, a nice young guy named Barry who, as it turned out, happened to be an archaeologist specializing in old pottery. When I told him about my mystery object (which was already packed away in my luggage), he gave me his card and told me that if I sent him photos of it, he’d try to identify it for me. So I did.

And lo, this afternoon, I got this very exciting email from him:

What you have there looks like a sherd of locally made Post Medieval Red Coarseware, with a crude splash glaze decoration. Roughly 1450 to 1600s, it was a ‘functional’ type of pottery, similar to Humberware, made at a time when metal vessels had become fashionable and pottery cheap.

Unfortunately it’s hard to tell what it would be part of without part of the rim, base, or handle (and it’s hard to judge the curvature from a photo), but in the absence of any distinguishing features, it’s most likely from a jug.

So I now have a roughly 500-year-old bit of broken pottery sitting on my mantelpiece. How cool is that?

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Now on offer

You may have noticed this blog looks a little different lately. There’s an extra something in the right-hand column, something with several photos on it. It’s a widget which, if you click on it, will take you to my new shop on Zazzle.

This is a big step for me. It’s all part of my effort to put my photography out into the world, and I’m nervous and excited about it. At first, I hesitated, because I thought, “What if no one wants to buy?” But half a dozen different people have asked me in the last month where they can buy cards with my work, so maybe someone will! At the very least, I can get some for my own use, right?

I’m gradually stocking the store with greeting cards (5″x7″), folded notecards (4″x5.6″), and postcards (you know, postcard-sized) featuring my best photographs. All the cards are blank so you can write whatever the heck you like to your favorite correspondents. You can also frame the cards, but if you want an actual print, you can contact me through Zazzle or right here on this blog and request one in any size up to 16″x20″.

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