So I had a wonderful day off yesterday. I started off with taking a chemise and pattern to a friend who is going to be doing Dickens Fair this year. It is my favorite chemise pattern because (a) it has minimal sleeves, so it can go under anything; and (b) there isn't a yoke that makes the bust start in the wrong place. She now loves it for the same reason, and she doesn't have to shop for the pattern. I love helping people this way--just give them the tools and they can make their choices. It's a friendlier way of doing things than being a period Nazi. There are places where being perfectly period matters, and there are places where it's time to recognize that you should be period to a point. Unless you handstitched everything or used a treadle machine, you're cheating anyway. Pick and choose and remember that you're there to have a good time, not to audition for a museum exhibit. Rant #1 completed.
Then I headed off to the antique mall, which is in an old railway car. It's fun, and they tend to have solid wood furniture for not-terrible prices. I got my stunning antique rocking chair there last year for what I considered to be a good price (comparable to the new ones, which were all festooned with hearts, which isn't really my deal). This time, I found Lu a cute little child-size rocker, since she enjoyed the ones at her grandmother's house so much. I then wandered around to see what else I could see.
Okay. When did the stuff at my mother's house become fodder for antique malls? I saw my mother's spice canisters (the little metal boxes that spices come in, nothing fancy), the wood basket that stood next to our fireplace, Masonic pins from the 1990s, and a few small furniture pieces. I stood in front of my grandmother's ordinary footstool and seriously considered it for my living room, since I remember being able to sit on it from toddlerhood forward, so Lu might enjoy it. These are the fancy antiques and vintage finds? How did they pry them away from the people who were probably still using them? And then I remembered that my family is considered odd to the outside world.
My mother, as taught by my grandmother, believes in "buy decent, keep until it falls apart." There are very few pieces of furniture in the house that I recall her buying in my lifetime. What was purchased was usually picked up at neighborhood rummage sales and surplus sales at the university. As a result, almost everything in her house is solid wood, built to last (with the exception of the bookcases in the basement, which did not react well to the moisture or my parents' penchant for storing actual books on their bookcases. That's a tale of bad particleboard waiting to be told). When the place needs updating, you add new throws and lamps, maybe reupholster, but you don't just throw everything out and try again. That's just not done. Those spice cans? They're still in the house because Mom buys her spices in bulk and then refills the little cans in the spice cupboard. It seems foolish to her to pay twice as much in order to throw things into the recycling bin.
This is what people need to realize about the green movement--it's not about buying green--it's about buying less and more intelligently. I shop at rummage sales for a lot of things because it means that a new item doesn't have to be manufactured. J and I tend to pick out furniture pieces that can be set up in new and different ways so we don't have to buy all over again if our lives change. Does it make us unhip? Perhaps. Does it keep us just a little more financially afloat? Definitely.
Back to my mother. She also picks out clothes she likes that she also knows will be reasonably in style for a few years. She then wears them until they wear out, and when she can't wear them outside even to rake the lawn, it's time to let them go. Some of the towels from her wedding are still in the hall closet, though most of them are used as rags now.
J observed to me the other day that it's time to get a new microwave. When pressed for a reason, he told me that it makes "a funny noise." I still can't figure out what funny noise the microwave is making, since it sounds precisely the same to me. It's not even ten years old. I don't completely see the issue here. It heats things up in a reasonable time, doesn't cost much to run and isn't smoking. Maybe it's not as fancy as some, and maybe it takes a little longer than his parents' microwave, but that doesn't mean it has to get ditched, right? I told him we could look at a new one at the sales over the next three months, but I still don't completely believe there's a problem.
Next, I saw The Help, which is a pretty good movie. I can see the stereotypes that people were complaining about, but I still enjoyed myself. I was only taken out of the story once. At one point, one character pours another a cup of tea, and I said to myself, "Hey! That's my Mom's teacup!" It was one of the white and blue Corelle unbreakables with the gold band from the mid-fifties. Mom inherited her set from her grandmother after she died, because there was still a lot of good use in them. Grandma has the red set. Part of what took me out of it was this: who drinks tea out of those cups when they are so clearly perfect for dyeing Easter eggs? I mean, duh. I bet that the prop master was tickled to bits to find the one teacup and saucer in such great condition, since dishwashers take all the gold bits off and anyone who owns this set and has a lick of sense isn't letting it go. I think those things are going to be around after the nuclear apocalypse. Honestly. If they survived the four of us, they are going to live forever. Thanks, movie. Now I want to go home and dye some Easter eggs. No other cup is as good for it--short and wide with a nice little handle and the base is shaped just so that the egg doesn't drift around much.
Then I thrift shopped and came home to my adoring family. I feel much better.
I also spent some time remembering September 11, 2001. I was twenty, a junior in college, and using the TV as background noise while I did my theatre history homework. What really struck me was how casual they were about it on the Today Show at the start. They had just finished touring some starlet's home or something, and Matt Lauer showed up on screen saying that there would be a special report right after the commercial. At that point, they thought like we all did, that this was some kind of crazy navigational issue and that there was no way it was as big as it was. Then they showed the second plane hitting live and everyone started to look scared. I called my Dad, because I knew my parents' routine: as soon as Mom left for school, Dad would turn off the morning news, mostly because he couldn't stand Katie Couric, and go into the living room to read in the morning sun. Mom would have left for work an hour before, and he needed to know what was going on. We talked about what it could all mean, and then I hung up with him. I still needed to shower before class. It wasn't like class was cancelled or anything. When I got back to my dorm room, he called me. "Turn the TV back on. This just turned into a Tom Clancy novel."
Frankly, I'm conflicted about 9/11. I don't doubt that a lot of innocent people died, and I don't doubt that it changed the world, but I also worry that it made war just a little too convenient. It also gave rise to the self consciously patriotic movement. In some sections of our society, the situation quickly devolved from "What can I do?" to "What can I buy?" The 9/11 anthem none of the radio stations were playing yesterday was Barenaked Ladies' "Shopping," which was written as a reaction to George W. Bush telling Americans to go out and buy stuff to defeat the terrorists. What?
Lu wants to play. More later.
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