Oligarchs like Tim Cook and Elon Musk have shown us their ass. But when you show someone your ass you end up also exposing your neck. America has one neck, and it’s capitalism. Which runs on your dollar. If you want to change how America works, change where you’re putting your dollar.
3. How about a Rebecca Solnit quote to take us into the weekend?
The fact that we cannot save everything does not mean that we cannot save anything and everything we can save is worth saving. You may need to grieve or scream or take time off, but you have a role, no matter what, and right now good friends and good principles are worth gathering in. Remember what you love. Remember what loves you. Remember in this tide of hate what love is. The pain you feel is because of love.
Everything is bad but we have friends. If you need to, come over. (We’ll show you the basement!)
We Have Enough Friends
by Lena Oleanderson
Come over. The doors are open,
my flat’s a mess and
so is my heart
but the doors are always open.
Come over. I will make soup,
probably from frozen but
the important thing is
we will both eat.
You don’t have to be dying,
but if you are,
or feel like you are,
or if living’s been hard,
call me, and I will show up.
It doesn’t have to be that bad,
it doesn’t have to be bad at all,
but if it is, please call.
Do you want me to do the groceries?
Do you want me to mop the floors?
Do you need to be held;
you don’t have to be dying to be held.
If you want me to be there, I want to.
I’m on the bathroom floor again,
and breathing is hard,
and eating’s been hard, and sleeping,
the world is a laden thing
rolling around on my chest lately.
Just being alive is heavy tonight,
but we have enough dead friends.
Come over.
I’ve been hanging pictures and drilling cabinets for hardware instead of sewing (or even knitting) but the new Luxury Sewing Lair in the basement is all set up!
This is what you see when you walk in. I need to make machine covers (the fabric is just draped here) and I’m waiting for a tabletop ironing board to arrive to go on that far left desk. (My regular ironing board is huge and I don’t need it unless I’m ironing lengths of fabric, so that’s going to stay in the closet.)
On the other side of the room, we have the thing that gave me the idea to finish the basement in the first place: I wanted a guest room. Sure, I ended up making a Luxury Sewing Lair instead but I still wanted the ability to turn this into a space for guests. So there’s an ensuite bathroom down here and that blue chaise opens like a book into a queen bed. (Still need to make some throw pillow covers.)
And on the far end of the room, there’s fabric storage and the record player. I’m debating adding a TV over there, too, but the decorating budget is maxed out for a while.
I love this space, though. Other than the chaise and the doors to the cabinets, I had all the other furniture pieces; they just got shuffled around the house. I can wheel the little coffee table out of the way and cut stuff out on a nice thick rug and generally luxuriate in a room I dreamed about when I bought the house 15 years ago.
Let’s ignore the fact that we’re seeing green because there hasn’t been any snow this winter and yesterday was 50 degrees in the mountains and instead just enjoy some growing things:
This piece by Adam Serwer in The Atlanticis worth your time today. He rides along with a few volunteers–some delivering food, some watching ICE–and, in a very dry Atlantic way, absolutely destroys the assholes responsible for this occupation.
For example:
[The] remarks reminded me of something Stephen Miller, the Trump adviser, had written: “Migrants and their descendants recreate the conditions, and terrors, of their broken homelands.” In Minnesota, the opposite was happening. The “conditions and terrors” of immigrants’ “broken homelands” weren’t being re-created by immigrants. They were being re-created by people like Miller. The immigrants simply have the experience to recognize them.
and:
The federal surge into Minneapolis reflects a series of mistaken MAGA assumptions. The first is the belief that diverse communities aren’t possible: “Social bonds form among people who have something in common,” Vance said in a speech last July. “If you stop importing millions of foreigners into the country, you allow social cohesion to form naturally.” Vance’s remarks are the antithesis to the neighborism of the Twin Cities, whose people do not share the narcissism of being capable of loving only those who are exactly like them.
But the quote from this piece that I see going around the most is near the end, and it’s circulating for good reason:
The secret fear of the morally depraved is that virtue is actually common, and that they’re the ones who are alone. In Minnesota, all of the ideological cornerstones of MAGA have been proved false at once. Minnesotans, not the armed thugs of ICE and the Border Patrol, are brave. Minnesotans have shown that their community is socially cohesive—because of its diversity and not in spite of it. Minnesotans have found and loved one another in a world atomized by social media, where empty men have tried to fill their lonely soul with lies about their own inherent superiority. Minnesotans have preserved everything worthwhile about “Western civilization,” while armed brutes try to tear it down by force.
And if that didn’t get you fired up enough, listen to this song Bruce Springsteen wrote Saturday, recorded Sunday, mixed Monday, and dropped Tuesday. Solidarity!
I saw a phrase over the weekend floating around Instagram: “Micro joys are how we survive macro grief.” And it’s the same idea as collecting wonderful things or that there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. So I humbly present a source of joy: the label maker my dad got me for Christmas.
Yes those first few labels were just me goofing around, but it’s really coming into its own as I re-do all the sewing storage in the new space:
But as the great Elizabeth Zimmerman said, “Knit on with confidence and hope through all crises,” so that’s what I’m doing.
I’m down to the final ribbing on my rainbow stripe sweater that took one entire year so expect pictures of that soon. And instead of doomscrolling at night for the last few days, I’ve been scrolling knitting patterns to find my next sweater that will take another year.
I do love the PetiteKnit patterns and she has a mariner stripe sweater that could be great in an orange and white–but I also saw this neutral (!) cardigan that pulled up memories of my two favorite Banana Republic sweaters in high school, a gray cardigan and a marled b&w turtleneck:
If I could BUY this I would have already, but I’m not sure about making it: Those black flecks are actually colorwork, i.e. knitted into the fabric using two yarns vs. just using a speckled yarn, so this might not be a fun relaxing knit for me.
But wow did it bring back nostalgia and make me want to cuddle into a cardigan and read some J. Peterman catalogs.
Things are bad in America, friends, but we’re still here. This is from a collection di Prima started writing in 1968, which is really comforting for me (in a “We survived that” sense, not that they’re still applicable even today.) You can find most of the poems as a PDF in a few places.
REVOLUTIONARY LETTER #100 REALITY IS NO OBSTACLE
by Diane di Prima
refuse to obey
refuse to die
refuse to sleep
refuse to turn away
refuse to close your eyes
refuse to shut your ears
refuse silence when you can still sing
refuse discourse in lieu of embracement
come to no end that is not
a Beginning
