The Moment Bernie Lost My Vote

First I have to admit that Bernie never had my vote sewn up.   I'm not his demographic in the first place; being a registered Democrat and a female boomer, I'm more likely to be for Hillary anyway.

I am certainly sick of Citizens United, and the outsized role of money in politics, and the favoritism the U.S. shows sinking corporations over sinking schools and infrastructure.  And I favor lots of other things Bernie espouses, with the glaring exception of his stand on gun control.

Tipping point: Wrong holiday, right metaphor,
right letter.

But then there's the electability thing.   A friend down in Atlanta, outside my blue Northeastern bubble, tells me there's no way America is ready for President Bernie. I surely don't want to risk a Trump or a Cruz or a Kasich presidency, and I frankly can't believe that Hillary hatred is so strong that Bernie would make a better bet against the Donald.

And there's the nuance thing.  A story in the Times reports that according to studies of their delivered speeches, Hillary's show much more actual cogitation and careful weighing of complexities, as opposed to the more single-minded notes struck repeatedly by Bernie.

I think it was David Brooks who wrote, also in the Times,about the importance of being able to hold competing truths in your head at one time, and to navigate to the best trade-offs between them. That's where things actually happen. Thanks, Bernie, for pulling Hillary to the left.  But I really like thinkers; the nuanced ambivalences of Obama in his Dreams for My Father book made me extra happy to vote for him.

The specific instant that I decided against Bernie was the one that demonstrated that single, simplified story line... the moment he quoted that  grossly exaggerated death toll of Gazans during the last Israeli response to Hamas shelling and bombing.

You want to call that response disproportionate, that's your right and your call.

But like we say, you're not entitled to your own facts.   And the fact that you would just repeat whatever was handed to you, by propagandists, shows a disinterest in the fine points.  And in accuracy.  .

Being anti-Netanyahu would not have cost you my vote.  Being against Israeli policies, ditto.  You got props for standing up to AIPAC and if you demonstrated that being critical of Israel is now a politically survivable thing to do, that would also have been all right with me.  I even believe you when you say that long-term, you have Israel's best interests at heart. Most left-of-center Jews do.

But you can't just repeat what's shoved at you. That tipped me over into the camp I was leaning toward, anyway.  So bye-bye, Bernie.

Renegade Curves

I joined my local Curves for the typical goals of weight loss and fitness; getting back into clothes that had hung patiently for years, while I failed to return to the size I had bought them in.

They're still hanging. I'm still doing the machines on the circuit,  three days a week on a good week, two good weeks a month, two not as good. Andrea, or Susan, or Pat say hello from behind the desk. I scan in my bar code, and if it's anywhere near the 24th of the month the computer reminds me to get weighed and measured. 

None of us regulars are ever seen being weighed or measured.  I haven't done that since month three, about four and a half years ago.  The numerical results are not encouraging. We rather measure our success by the assumed number of pounds we haven't gained. 

More tangible is wind.  If I've been a good about doing the 14 machines on the circuit, 30 seconds each, two times around with aerobic moving in between and three pulse checks, I can run up the stairs at home without breathing hard.  I can pedal up small hills.  If I've let a week go without, I breathe hard, sweat, and walk the bike uphill. 

That alone would be good enough reason to go to Curves, but if cardio exercise

was all I cared about, I could pay far less to go to Planet Fitness.  I could push and pull against fancier machines for longer periods, hear better music and stare at TV screens with close-captioned scrolling on the bottom.

Don't want to do that.  Don't want to see strangers, or men, or start staring at screens half an hour earlier in the day than I do already.  I want to see the familiar faces of the same women I've been facing across the circuit for years.  If we get to talking about something, I barely notice that I've finished all my least-favorite machines and the 30 minutes flashes by in what feels like 10. That sociability is the not-so-secret sauce of Curves.

A lot of the women at Curves are retired teachers; I envy them their pensions and their frequent, teacher-discounted cruises. They’re very big on cruises at Curves. Seems everyone’s been to the Caribbean and Italy.  Some are up to Thailand and Viet Nam.

Of the women who come my time of week, maybe two and a half are black, two Asian, one Indian.  Most are over 60, some surprisingly into their 80’s. Some stay for Zumba, led by a supremely toned woman whose sexy moves are very roughly approximated, wearing pants with ribbons on the back pockets that fly as she bumps and lunges. Some of the women wear belly dancer coin sashes. 

The Spanish music for Zumba is a big improvement over the disco-fied Beatles medleys and other annoying recordings we often move to, in between the every-30-second "change stations now" lady. I imagine silence is very beautiful after a day of this.

I learn good neighborhood things at Curves; good stores, sales, specialists, restaurants, movies. I start a mainly solitary working day by checking in with people. I also learn about things that go on outside my mainly Jewish bubble: the women from Italian families talk about how they'll make the seven fishes for Christmas dinner, and how nobody makes the food their grandmothers made anymore.  Well of course, I can relate.

But of course I also bring the bubble with me; that film of outsiderly self-consciousness, tinged with cynicism. Curves is a pretty goyish place; its founders forbade opening on Sunday and they’re still closed then. Not bad in itself, but their politics smack of Sarah Palin's. The music they play is often corny or country. The owner installed a vibrating machine called a Theravibe and right next to it, on the wall, is a list of conditions that are supposed to be alleviated by standing on this thing in your stocking feet and being shaken at various speeds; it's got everything written there but cancer.  Some women pay an extra $50 a month to use it. I haven't taken the free trial. Yet.

We seem to voluntarily avoid talking politics and religion. But, this being New Jersey, it turns out that quite a few of my fellow exercisers and even a Zumbanik or two are Jewish. And Jewish and non, most are no slouches; some are or have been in the arts, some musicians, some business, some academe, in addition to the great preponderance of retired teachers. One of the women who works behind the desk organizes trips into New York to see Broadway plays. (Some of which aren't even musicals.) They also organized a group lunch in the struggling new Indian restaurant two doors down, whose food is excellent. I'm beginning to suspect that many of them voted for Obama, in a county that always goes Republican.

Because this Curves is even showing small signs of rebellion. You can't find this branch listed on the corporate website. Why? Because the owner of this Curves doesn't comply with the official regulations that say you can't put your own posters and decorations on the walls. You can't invite urologists in to come in and give talks on prolapsed bladders. You can't offer field trips or have a suction-cup dartboard or, well… a Theravibe. I’ve also heard -- although I can’t confirm -- that corporate wants to drop the circuit idea and be a more regular gym. The site nowadays certainly deemphasizes the circuit.

Curves corporate hasn't gone so far as to pull its machines and strip the owner of her franchise; too many others have gone under and this one absorbs the displaced members. They've just dropped her from the website. And nobody, behind the desk or on the circuit, seems to care about that or about corporate in general. So after four years, I’m no thinner but I’m not fatter either, and I've adjusted my attitude if not my body mass index. This place is beginning to feel more like home.

My sewing history

My mother has kept her sewing supplies in the same dark brown cookie tin since my earliest memory, which is now over 50 years old.  The tin probably contains at least some wooden spools of that vintage, now wound with brittle, dried-out Coats & Clark’s thread in several colors, assorted hand needles, and a tape 

McCall's 3584

.measure. Also a pin cushion; probably a tomato model

With these, she sewed on buttons and sewed up hems.  For real, from-scratch dressmaking, you have to go back a generation to my grandmother, whose knee-activated, table-hidden Singer is also still tucked away in my mother’s house.  But Grandma never taught my mom to sew, and my mom never taught me.

   

Could it be that Jewish women who immigrated to the US in the 1920’s associated machine sewing with sweat shops, and so never encouraged their daughters to sew? My junior high school friend Laura sewed some, and her Italian female immigrant ancestors might have treadled shoulder to shoulder with mine. The first sewing machine I saw in active use, however, belonged to Chris, my luck-of-the-draw roommate of sophomore year at college. She had a nice sturdy portable Necchi, and I can picture it on her desk in our dorm room. Chris was the country mouse to my city mouse; a common cross-cultural introduction at our upstate state school.

Some old pattern with front and back pleats.. in progress.

Chris was so bedrock American that her mother actually braided rugs. She also canned fruit, grew asparagus, sheered sheep and spun wool. Chris' father had built at least part of their house; perhaps the loft we slept in, overlooking the braided rug and the spinning wheel. I think that this degree of self reliance was unusual even for Tully, pop. about 800 back then, 20 minutes south of Syracuse. I visited for a weekend once or twice. My first up-close Republicans, judging by the newspapers they read. In any case, Chris sewed beautifully finished seams and perfectly turned, pointed collars.  Many years later, when I was pregnant, she sent me her home-sewn maternity clothes to wear.  Came in handy, too.

Butterick 5588

So I was inspired by Chris, and after using her Necchi to make an enormous womb of a stuffed chair for our dorm room, I went out and got my first machine. I bought a Singer 503  in the basement of the beautiful Pfaff sewing machine and fabric store in the middle of Rockefeller Center, near the skating rink.  Of Jetson-style, tapered design circa 1960, it was a trade-in that the Pfaff store clerks were glad to hustle out the door for $300.  It came with interchangeable cams that performed all kinds of stitches mechanically.  I’ve been buying patterns and learning by doing, off and on, ever since. 

I've owned three sewing machines now.  Two of them came to bad ends. The first, Jane Jetson model got swiped from my car when I foolishly left it visible on the back seat, parked in the vicinity of Macy's Herald Square. I was left with only the cams to remember it by. The second, a $300 Viking trade-in rescued from another Pfaffs store (follow the money), was caught needle-deep in water on the basement floor during our first-ever flood.  I replaced it with a flashier Viking; my first new machine. I never leave even the foot pedal on the floor now.

I can’t be sewing to save money.  Clothes made on the other side of the world can hardly cost more money than I can earn in equivalent hours. I just like to make things, to see and feel the potential hiding in bolts of fabric, to get away from the damn computer screen and do something low-tech but semi-high-skilled and produce something tangible, to escape from the demands of more typical, contemporary accomplishment. Sewing may not have been the absolute best use of my time. I admit, though, that making cute clothes for my daughters when they were little felt virtuous. Also fun.

Like sewers everywhere, I have fabric stashes that go back years, some of which -- it’s becoming increasingly clear -- will survive me. I still can’t resist a fabric store.  But fabric stores have gotten a lot rarer.  Here in the Jersey burbs, just off the NYC map, I can point out four places where there used to be a fabric store. When So-Fro in the mall closed, decades ago, I pounded on the shut gate like Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate.

Now, even if all you want is a certain color thread or seam binding like Woolworth’s used to sell in every neighborhood, you’re out of luck or stuck online. If you want it today, you’ve got to schlep to Joanne’s, twenty minutes west of here on the edge of the countryside, where sewing stores remain and my demographic thins out. 

I don’t bump into Jewish friends in fabric stores.  I’ve met one or two who sew, curtains or even clothes if they happen to be hard to fit. But they’re rare, too.  Look at the 25 different English-speaking women you can find demonstrating the use of the narrow hem foot on YouTube.  No Jews. Black, Hispanic, lapsed and practicing Catholic and Protestant women are shopping with me at Joanne's, but not my people, much. Nor Asians, come to think of it. My sister tells of an Indian friend who bought fabulous fabric for her daughter’s wedding, but she actually went back to India to buy it.

I don’t really care so much -- I can be New Jersey’s only Jewish sewing blogger of 2013 --  but a) I’m probably not -- Come out, come out, wherever you are; and b) some of us Jewish women may be getting lured by the new online courses, social media contests and Project Runway. (Is that still on? They’re promoting patterns with it.) Some of us may enjoy just doing something slow, some like to show off.  Somebody’s got to be buying that blue bolt of cotton Hannukah print. There’s also a recent book of Jewish sewing crafts -- I actually contributed to it -- and I hear Joanne’s is moving into a bigger store, one strip mall closer.  

Yiddish Class: a Forshpeis

I taught my “one-shot Introduction to Yiddish” Sunday, billed as a “forshpeis” -- an appetizer.  13 people showed up, mostly friends from book club or the women’s Rosh Chodesh group or the Hebrew reading course I taught a couple times.  But there were also two new faces, including one of two whole men, allowing us to demonstrate that Yiddish, like other respectable European languages, has gendered verbs and nouns.

My Sholem Aleichem
Bobble Head Doll

Me teaching Yiddish is something of a chutzpeh; I took all of one year of Yiddish in college, all of thirty-something years ago. I’ve tried to keep it fresh since then with the occasional Sholem Aleichem story, song, conversation, class, or the occasional Folksbeine show on the upper west side.  But in my shul, this makes me resident mayven; me with my tattered/tserisseneh Uriel Weinreich College Yiddish text book and dictionary.  Maybe -- efsher -- there’s someone in the congregation who’s more fluent. But they don’t have my compulsion to do stand-up. Or they literally can’t stand up that long. In any case, it’s an easy, friendly audience and on Sunday we laughed and learned a lot.   

No classroom rows for my students and no textbook; they sat in a circle with their names written at their feet, so they could spend the two hours talking to each other, cultivating their seedling vocabularies.  I prepared sheets with a couple of verbs and phrases, pronouns, who-what-when and some nouns, using my old Hebrew word processor. DavkaWriter, circa Windows 95, conveniently includes a keyboard with the subtle Yiddish variations on the Alephbet:  the paired yuds that say “ay” (no line beneath) and “ei” (little flat line vowel beneath); the paired vovs that read as “v.”  Reclaim your Ashkenazic “aw” vowel -- the one modern Israeli Hebrew turned to “ah” -- change ayin from dumb silent letter to “e” as in egg, and you’re mostly good to go. 

Used only for reference -
but it's good.

Under my prodding, my students asked and told each other their names, what they did for a living, what they and others were or were not (mothers, fathers, aunts, daughters, sons, Jews, students, teachers, nurses, doctors). 

Also nudniks, goniffs, bubbes and zaydes.  That’s the fun thing about teaching Yiddish to over-fifties;  when they tickle the right neurons, even those who can’t read Hebrew letters -- even those who might not have grown up Jewish but merely lived near New York -- realize they have vestigial vocabulary to draw on; enough to recognize words and phrases I throw out without introduction or warning.  Those who haven’t been pretty little girls for 40 years remember “Shayne maydl.”  They remember being told to eat, my child; to go to sleep, to come here, to come home, by doting grandparents using little bits of Yiddish for extra sweetness or intimacy.

Then we have two students -- bright professional women, in their eighties and nineties -- who can actually take off in whole if imperfect, grammar-free sentences.  My Yiddish was artificially induced at Rutgers; theirs was born at home in Brooklyn. These two enjoy the class as much as anyone, hearing the language of their long-gone parents.  And we love to have them with us, reminding us how authentic the language can sound.  They thank me profusely and encourage us to continue with a course.  And most participants say they agree.  We’ll see…

Making it Under Deadline

The most important thing is to get started, right? Because I have resolved to start this blog by New year’s Day, 2013, and thrown every conceivable procrastination device in the path of this goal, acting no better than Congress over this Christmas vacation week.

I’ve tried first to learn a CMS (content management system). Someone told me to learn Joomla, and I’m up to Chapter Ten in an actual book I bought at an actual, brick-and-mortar Barnes & Noble. I might eventually move my blog and my website into Joomla … but that may take another week. Better to start writing.

Border print from Tanzania

I’ve sewn several skirts and a dress first, because daughter #2 was over for part of the week, and who can argue with time spent sewing clothes for and with one’s daughter? She had this wonderful dark green border print that her friend the adventurer had brought her from her six months volunteer teaching in Tanzania -- a trip that included scaling Mt. Kilimanjaro; something the girl had to accomplish before starting law school at Tulane. The same night my kid returned home to DC, she finished the skirt on her new machine. She texted me a picture around midnight. Ta da! Beautiful orange birds hiding among beautiful dark green pleats.

I have another skirt in the works for my sister, with wool so fine the nearest I can find to it at Joanne’s (not nearly as nice) was going for over $29 a yard. My sister picked up acres of this in grey and tan at a garage sale for $5. Her skirt is 80% done -- but I won’t see her for a while. Better to start writing.

I have to finish preparing for a “Are You Smarter than a Fifth-Grader”-style game show I’m organizing for the Hebrew School kids and parents of my congregation, but that’s not for two weeks. Better to start writing.

Then there’s the news. I have to know about the fiscal cliff and Hillary’s blood clot and “Gangnam Style” promotion in South Korea and Indian women protesting outrageous treatment and Russian Jews in Israel and stories much more arcane than these because they’re all there tempting me in the margins of Google News or in print on the kitchen table.

Could I cop the writer plea? Procrastination is what writers do. And in other media and for other purposes, writing is what I get paid for.

McCalls 6570

But as with most who write for money, it’s the non-paid, extracurricular prose that’s where the heart lies and the ego feeds. And if I don’t get that started, I’ll be remembered as the one who sewed. Not what I intended. I’ll remember myself (less eternally) as the one who fled from the keyboard to the sewing machine for the less iffy and much more tangible proposition of DIY wardrobe. Considering Lord & Taylor can’t lure me out of the house with screaming good sales, I’d call that avoidance. Fair statement?

I’ve also delayed blogging because it’s embarrassingly narcissistic: I strongly suspect that more people write blogs than read them. If I want to attract any readers, I’ve got to put some value in here.

M6579 pattern envelope pic

Notwithstanding my use of sewing as a procrastination device, I hope to attract some fellow sewers. Making clothes is a whole new ball game, now that sewing’s gone social like everything else. People review patterns and pin up pictures of their projects. You can see, before you cut, how things look on bodies like your own around the Latin-lettered sewing world, not models or drawings. You can find 25 Youtube demonstrations of the narrow hemming foot -- and those are just the ones in English. I can’t believe the number of sewing blogs out there, some miserably spelled, some wonderfully written. I’ll gladly contribute to this conversation.

I also hope to attract some readers with the other broad, recurring themes of my life, some introduced or hinted at here. Taken all together, I share them with a good chunk of the reading world.

There. I’ve started, just a tad past deadline.  Just like Congress...