Americaland
Frivolity
Last week was a spin of retail, cookery and travel. I went to G Street Fabrics, which I found altered a great deal. There were almost no inexpensive specials tables, too few helpers and I think that-s the reason why there were also few shoppers. They are preparing to move in July to a nearby location, but that doesn’t justify a 95% depletion of one brand of patterns. If you haven’t the patterns, I think you should remove the pattern catalogs and not cause customers to spend an hour poring over unavailable choices. See how fast I become an impatient American who expects customer service? I wanted some basic fitting patterns because in Italy I have to buy magazines and then trace patterns out of them onto paper. I found three to buy. I almost had to mortgage eg to pay for them, and then I found one length of cotton in a Japanese print with which to make one of them. I still have quite a lot of fabric I carried with me 8+ years ago when I didn-t know I wouldn’t find patterns in Italy. The problem was the fabrics were so expensive that added to the price of the pattern, I would have $100 invested in a garment before I even knew whether it was any good or not. Back in the day, you could make a “muslin” or fitting pattern with cheap remnant fabric and if it were wearable when properly fitted, great. If not, you only had a few dollars tied up in it. When did my era pass on?
My find of the day, however, was bags of assorted buttons which I used once to indulge myself with in those years of high tension career. I loved to open them and sort them on a tabletop. I still do. Buttons are often little works of art, complete in themselves, and even when they are not they are still useful and can become part of a work of art. I made little lamp shades covered with layers of buttons years ago. I have made earrings, necklaces, brecelets and changed clothes from ordinary to eyecatching with buttons. Many times you can’t tell it began with buttons. I have banks of tiny drawers filled with buttons sorted into types that mean something to me. There are thousands and now there will be a few hundred more. I have been looking for a neck and shoulder bust (with a head would be super, but for the immediate project not necessary) upon which to build a design I made some years back. I have never found one I could buy. If anyone knows where I could get such a thing inexpensively, I’d be very grateful.
The only thing I had not yet bought was cheddar, and I ordered that, so it’s ready to go. In the meantime I was given lavish gifts for Mother’s Day, so I will have to do a dry-run sample packing to see what will work, with all expansion zippers released. I can put all the heaviest things in my carry-on backpack, which is a literal pain in the neck but helps reach that 44 kilo limit. Coming, my bags weighed 32 kilos, but I have since then cooked and served a large part of that.
Gettysburg
I had never been to Gettysburg, PA before. Everything there was a surprise to me, including the fact that ticks are a large problem in the parkland! I am afraid of Lyme’s disease, which it sounds like 25% of that population may have, and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, too. I stayed inside a car while looking at the many memorials and statues that commemorate the fallen.
I am deeply divided about Gettysburg. My hostess is an accomplished guide and knows the grounds and the battle frontwards and backwards. That is a very good thing, and it’s pretty terrific that people from everywhere send their adolescent children to see these historical sites and that there are experts to help them understand what they are seeing. We should, I believe, pay attention to the mistakes that we as a people made in the past and we should try to understand the dreadful sacrifices our antecedents felt like they had to make to save our country.
Gettysburg was bloody, horrible and deadly in 1863. It could be said to be the nadir of our society. We should, I think, know and account for what happened there, in which so many people died for a piece of land that is now populated by about 7500 people. Hundreds of thousands of citizens of the same country shot at each other, slashed each other down with swords and bayonetted each other. Cannons roared, the wounded screamed as surgeons practiced rough medicine of the time, horses were killed, and one civilian was shot dead as she baked bread inside her sister’s house. In those few days almost 60,000 casualties occurred. Everyone must know of a small city with a population of about 60,000. Imagine if everyone in that city disappeared. For every one of the mostly very young men who died there was a family who had lost the life they’d built and nurtured for twenty years or more. Sixty thousand young women did not find their true loves and many babies were never born. Our lives today are impacted by the genetic loss and unresolved grief of our ancestors.
On the one hand I think we should not forget. On the other hand I am very unhappy about any glorification of the battle, the heroes, and war in general. No one won, no one ever wins. Some overfed, blustering men decided that a political issue was worth killing almost an entire generation of young men for. How does that make sense? I feel that every monument would be better as a grieving woman or child instead of a soldier with his bayonet at ready or a Colonel on horseback. Dying in the mud and dust of July is not glorious. Killing is not a reason to be proud. The many re-enactors might better re-enact how people lived in 1863 instead of how they killed and died. The truest image is the cemetary where Lincoln made the Gettysburg Address with its row upon row of tiny white stones marking where our children lie. The most shocking image is the “Colored Cemetary” where eventually Black soldiers were buried after they were disinterred from the paupers’ graves they were originally given. I felt sick when I realized that even the north didn’t feel it was necessary to recognize their contributions.
It just goes to show that no matter how old you get there’s always something else to learn. It took me a lot of years to learn this one.
While you are in DC, I ask that you temporarily set aside your bias, and see one other war memorial. When I first saw it, tucked behind what looks like a tiny hill, it seemed nondescript. Then I stood before it and wept… not for the memory of some of my classmates and comrades-in-arms, not for over 55,000 names chipped into the stone, not for the notes/ flowers/ memorabilia left as tribute to the lost son/father/daughter/nephew, but for the quiet, reverent, simplicity of it, for its inherent humility and unobtrusive nature. The Vietnam Memorial is for the warriors who returned home unwelcomed, disrespected, and ignored to publicly and eternally provide the respect, honor and remembrance due those who paid the ultimate price for doing their duty.
As I walked away that day (and the other times I visited), I turned back, tears streaming down my face (as they threaten to now), stood at attention, and gave the sharpest salute I could muster.
Go see it, and tell me what you think.
War is a horrible and cruel thing, but sometimes it is necessary. Every year as I mourn the loss of my family and my past, I think that my grandfather would have preferred to die in a war rather than a gas chamber and I am grateful, no matter how political the entry of the US, that the Americans prevented the total annihilation of my people. I am pretty certain, as we look tp our Black president and his wife, a descendent of slaves, that we can all be grateful that the Civil War, no matter how politically motivated, allowed the Abolitionists to push their agenda. This week, an Austriam innkeeper refused to rent a room to a Jewish family because they were Jewish. In my lifetime, that happened to both Jews and Blacks in the US. My thanks and deep gratitude that Americans died to change my society for the better and to give people the freedom that they died for.
G’s last blog post..The View
You know I’ve never been to Gettysburg either although I lived pretty close to it most of my life (first in central PA then in Philly). Your reflections on visiting, though, alternately make me want to go immediately and never to go. Well written.
Aw geez, my comment luv didn’ t load in time, so here it is :)
Michelle | Bleeding Espresso’s last blog post..Guest Blogger Dianne Hales: My Italian Brain and How It Grew
I know the Viet Nam memorial very well, and it is very moving and masterful, indeed. I lived here a long time before I moved to Italy.
G, I know that about Austria, and it surprises me that so many don’t. Germans are rarely like that, because they were forced to face up to what happened, but Austria pulled a (fake) victim card and retired with prejudices intact. I think we ought to work hard at finding ways to tackle problems like Hitler, etc. (I won’t insert other names) before war becomes necessary. I am proud to have a Black President and I have always wondered why other countries could eliminate slavery 20-odd years before we finally did. I also think that saving Jews was not number one on the list of reasons we fought WWII and that we could have done much more to save more people, but of course when things reached the pitch they did with the fall of Polans, war became inevitable. Politicians of all stripes played with lives and borders well beforehand and afterward. In fact it looks to me like diplomacy was just about useless and not very determined. But civil war is even more inexplicable, IMO.
Thank you Michelle.
Is it awfully prosaic to comment on fabric and buttons instead of slavery and war? I suppose so, but anyway, I sympathize over the fabric problem. I was stunned at the cost of fabric in Italy, and despondent over the lack of patterns. Now I tend to carry both back, though sometimes I find a little piece of something nice at the mercato for not too much. I’ve found muslin here and there in the States – some Walmarts (I know), and Joanne’s Fabrics. I’m trying to remember if Ikea here in Italy has it, but I think not. While not sharing your interest (passion?), it’s nice to know there’s a place where homeless buttons could be sent to live out their days with others of their ilk.
I second Brad’s comments on the VWM – it is moving in the extreme – as is the unsung Korean War Monument.
Fern’s last blog post..One Year and Counting
Judith – I don’t think of Gettysburg as a place that glorifies war. For me it is a place of sadness. The first time I took a tour I had tears in my eyes as I imagined the dead and wounded on the fields. I think the men who fought there were haunted by the place and thus the memorials. At the time I imagine they had a “We showed them!” attitude but the memories of so much blood, chaos, and pain had to be there behind the machismo.
There is much about Gettysburg that is tasteless: the shops selling war souvenirs, etc. But the battlefield itself as described by a guide we know is a lesson in what war really entails. And that lesson is that it’s not glorious. Many men died and many were changed forever. War isn’t always avoidable but we damned well better understand what it entails before we send our young people to fight. I hope the West Point cadets who tour there are not just taught war tactics but that they also get a sense of the pain and suffering. That’s Gettysburg to me.
I didn’t mean to say that Gettysburg IS about glorifying war, only that I do not like any part that is glorifying war. War to me is sad, desperate and mostly has been avoidable if “something” is done early enough. I am surrounded right now by people who were kids during WWII. Their memories are all of fear and suffering.
.-= Judith in Umbria´s last blog ..CSA box: zucchine and lettuce =-.