Lately my bone to pick has been regarding elitism. Today is no different, although it might be a bit more brutal than normal. Since moving from a very liberal small town to a bigger (*cough* extremely conservative *cough*) town for the timebeing, I’ve been having some interesting conversations. There were even a few events where I was the only one wearing hot pink and red simultaneously.

While it has taught me how to eloquently sidestep political commentary, it has also highlighted the fact that a) in some circles the world “craft” is still pastoral and b) through time I have become blinded by the world I hold so dear. I’m going to save the ‘art vs. craft’ debate for another day, however, and skip over to the fact that sometimes elitism resides where we least expect it.

Despite what the internet or local indie boutique might seem to tell you, the current world of craft is tiny. Although I can tell someone from my own craft demographic (generally the combination of handmade and thrifted is a tellall) from 50 paces, that’s not the case for other craft demographics. What we often forget while we exchange links and discuss proper product placement and stall location at the upcoming kickass craft fair, is that we owe a great homage to the other world of craft that is overlooked.

What is commonly called ‘country crafts.’

The ‘country crafter’ is often ridiculed and mocked, bringing about visions of ill-dried glue, crooked balsa wood, and small animals made from fallen trees. In subverting the genre and creating ‘ironic craft’ we are just damning our forebears.

Martha Stewart seemed to push the hand-folded envelope with her perfectly moisturized hands, by showing that it is possible to combine the words “craft” and “cool.” Even if you have no clue what the term ‘hipster’ means. She made it okay to weave your own damn basket and acceptable to actually care about intricate place settings. For brunch. It’s like someone put Emily Post and Ma Kettle in a blender and then decked her out in beige with some kicky color like aubergine or nettle as an accent.

Overlooked at your local craft market or arts fair are scores of ‘country crafters’ who have been whittling or dying or sewing since birth, making so many ill-suited shirts with Bedazzlers and pottery pinch pots for your dresser that combined with a reclamation of the domestic, an ironic craft resurgence was born. It’s now hip to embroider sequins on tank tops and crochet tea cozies in the name of irony.

And it’s getting old.

Really old.

While I love irony more than most people, for the love of God, please stop mass manufacturing ironic t-shirts with your Gocco and selling them in Williamsburg. Eliminate “it’s so bad it’s hip” from your vocabulary. Your elitism is beginning to wear thin, when from the very beginning all you were doing was stealing from history anyway.

I call for more excitement and embracement of the craft of our forebears (even the ‘country crafters’) and trying to learn how to adapt it without the scathing and righteous attitude. So what if you don’t like Uncle Jim’s footstools that he handpainted with a trail of geese wearing bonnets. Instead of re-creating the wheel and making a footstool with punkrock geese wearing bonnets (geese with liberty spikes, perhaps?), take a minute to talk to your uncle about why he choose to paint those geese. Or how he learned. Or why he chose to forego a stencil.

Instead of griping about something like the old chestnut “Record purses were my idea!” take a minute to recollect your creativity. Because I promise, if you open up your conversation to crafters beyond your own demographic, you might just be ahead of the curve and opened up to new techniques you could never learn from googling “indie craft.”

This is the 4th (and sadly, therefore, last!) Friday post from my dear friend Kerri, on issues that arise when trying to raise a children ethically. I actually saw them both earlier today and had the opportunity to play hide-and-seek with Kaleb who was hiding from me under the bed when I arrived. When I found him, I laid down on the floor next to the bed and we talked about his big upcoming trip and how great it is to be awake. So hurrah for being awake, and hurrah for explorers everywhere, big and small. Thanks Kerri! x

My older brother, his wife, 8 year old son and 5 year old daughter flew in from South Dakota last weekend. It has been nice having them around this week. Kaleb has particularly enjoyed his beloved cousins. I babysat them, while their mom went back to school, from the time K was 1 until he was 3. So Niccoli and Hallie were like siblings for Kaleb.

In May my sister-in-law took a job as a traveling nurse and accepted a position in Sioux Falls, S.D. They sold their 2,500 sq ft house and most of their possessions and took off. Since May they have lived in a 3 bedroom apartment and spent many, many nights camping around the mid-west. They have LOVED it, no regrets at all. Niccoli said the Crazy Horse memorial was his favorite place, but agrees with his sister that the waterfall in Sioux Falls Park is pretty awesome.

Next week my whole family (parents, both brothers and their families, Daren, Kaleb and I, 16 of us total) is going to Disney World. Yikes! This is my parents’ birthday gift to all the children who have or will turn five this year.

After Disney my older brother and his family are moving to Anchorage, Alaska for at least 3 months. Hallie wants to try dog sledding and Niccoli wants to play hockey. They both want to learn about Eskimo culture. This time they will also be sharing a bedroom and are happy about it. Yes, they are also homeschooled, by my brother no less.

Next, their eye is on Hawaii for a few months before looking for a more long term placement. Part of me truly, deeply envies their life right now. It takes a brave person to just uproot, shed the excess material “stuff” and go exploring.

So I’ve delved back into the world of books….

as a bookseller.

Much of my life has centered around the written word and sometimes I think I’m funnier or more personable or easier to understand on the page (screen?) than in person, so I guess it’s apt.

Since I was 15, I’ve:
*written music/culture reviews/articles/poetry (high school, college, zines, 1991-present)
*worked at my hometown newspaper (there was something exhilirating about holding the freshly inked and still wet pages in my hands)
*taken more literature classes than I care to remember
*written more short stories than I care to remember
*worked for a major international publishing house
*returned to academia to write some more
*written bits in other people’s books
*worked in a bookstore

Sometimes I wonder if the universe is trying to tell me that even though sometimes I try to ignore it (and sometimes succeed), there is no escaping constructing sentences and paragraphs in my head for purposes other than conversation. Even if I write little but emails for weeks, at some point I will end up scribbling thoughts for a work that may or may not materialize.

Working in the bookstore has had two effects:

1. reminded just how many people out there have written books, articles and essays
2. reminded me how somewhere along the way I let fear stop me from developing my own work more

On my dinner break tonight, I was reading the new Oprah magazine. I admit it, I love the woman. There seemed to be a recurring theme regarding getting over fears.

After I had finished my sandwich and coffee, the magazine lingered with me as I walked through the aisles continuing to catch glimpses of random titles, many dealing with the topic of fear.

Why do we let fear rule our lives?

I mean, really, it holds so many of us in its talons that numerous people are writing books about it. And continuing to get them published.

Is it jadedness that holds us from our dreams (and perhaps, destiny)? Is it sloth? Or is it just an extension of what happens when we completely ignore that this is our *life*, and that we’re not meant to repeatedly tuck our dreams into a corner?

I find it amazing that fear has become a construct of life. That daily we listen to people go on and on about how miserable they are, when perhaps they would be more fulfilled if they stood up to fear and complacency?

I, for one, am sick of hearing myself and others, play a tape loop that is dominated by fear. Imagine what could happen if we challenged the fear instead of gave into it? Because I think that if we sat down and wrote down our own fears and faced them on paper, they might just begin to seem less intimidating.

This entry isn’t due to spending all evening straightening up the self-help section (I didn’t), it’s due to the fact that after spending many hours surrounded by the work of individuals who conquered my own particular fear. I’ve decided to challenge my fear instead of acquiescing, because sometimes the only one that can change the tape loop is you.

The other day someone asked me “how I described myself.” Although I wrote about the question of labeling the other week, that doesn’t mean I haven’t been thinking about it since. Answering this question causes me to stumble a bit because I know that by providing a precise answer I am not only limiting how others see me, but how I view myself as well. Each time I pick one or the other, I am putting one descriptor (writer? ethnographer? researcher? crafter? artist?) first, instead of welcoming the host of things I have crafted my life around.

At times I am each of those things, sometimes I am all of those at once. Of course, I also recognize that perhaps I might be more successful if I was more adept at picking one direction and sticking with it instead of eyeing the world through multiple lenses. But embracing the more interdisciplinary aspects of my practice not only serves to keep things interesting, it also keeps my life going on the right course holistically. Because not only do I think it is imperative to act consciously in praxis, I also think that your work should have some synchronicity with how you live (craft?) your life.

And, of course, when that world is opened to you, everything becomes clearer, but not necessarily easier. When I started reading the works of individuals like Roland Barthes and Walter Benjamin and Susan Sontag and Sharon Zukin, I was at first astounded to be reading something so copacetic to my own thoughts, inviting instead of alienating. The irony was that in welcoming their work, I had to shed an old skin that I had been harboring for years- as it made me view the world as a whole entity again instead of just disparate pieces.

Part of that discovery comes over the old archives of this here blog, which I started out of little but curiosity and a passion for craft theory and how individuals embrace their lives once they welcome craft and creativity into it. The other day I wrote this in comment to someone’s blog post:

the interesting part about blogging is that to me it’s part sociology experiment and part love letter to the world. because you’re writing little posts about the way *you* view the world, which is most likely unique to anyone else’s and you’re also casting it out to the world and random wierd google searches that random people find you through.

and while i get comments and emails from friends, it’s always lovely to hear from someone who found you haphazardly who just says something along the lines of ‘wow.’ that’s definitely worth all the scary spam about poker and refinancing.

After I wrote it I felt like a big dork, but at the same time, couldn’t shake the phrase “little tiny love letters.” And how the internet has allowed us to more holistically embrace our lives via discovering (sometimes quite randomly) individuals who blur the lines just as much as we do. Lately I have been conducting more dialogue about craft theory than I ever thought possible several years ago. And it’s been beautiful.

And part of me knows that if I had labeled myself intially and stuck firm, I would have pinned myself in a corner. In this era where the web allows us to make connections and collaborate from afar, the more labels we construct, the less likely we are to stumble on one another’s paths that may run parallel. And who knows, in running parallel, we might just one day connect and run together, collectively gaining strength on little else but a refusal of self-definition and an embracement of creativity.

Here we are at the 3rd installment of my friend Kerri’s take on raising a kid crafty and ethically. I had the good fortune of accompanying K to a local Greek festival last Friday where he told me to “behave” and to not “act too crazy.” We also ate too much baklava and drank too much apple juice. Before talking to Kerri’s husband, Daren, on the phone on Wednesday, Kaleb and I had a hot debate about what goes best on tacos.

Regarding the 2nd, somewhat random photograph, Kerri notes, “The pic of the Linkin’ Log houses is one K insisted on sending although I didn’t mention them in the blog, he made them himself Tuesday.”

Wow! Here it is Friday and I’m still trying to catch up on sleep from last weekend and feeling rather pathetic about it. My sister-in-law and I took the kids (5, 4, 4 & 10 months) apple picking camping in the mountains. There was bear poop in the apple orchard and the kids could not have been happier about it. We could see seeds in the poop which really seemed to strike the boys as funny. We laughed so much at silly nothings like this all weekend that my sides and cheeks hurt for days. If nothing else we are all sure now that laughing at ourselves is much better than pouting and fuming.

Wednesday Kaleb and I visited a relaxed homeschooling group’s play day at the park. We had to drive 40 minutes out of the city to get there, but enjoyed it much more than any group we’ve checked out in the city. Go figure live in the city so we don�t have to drive everywhere only to discover all the homeschoolers are in the ‘burbs. Kaleb played with a girl from his gymnastics class and a 6 year old boy named Darrin. They took turns on the tire swing and occasionally Darrin’s 9 year old brother came over and pushed them all at once before returning to his friends.

I sat at a picnic table with the other mom’s and talked while keeping an eye on the kids getting up to play at K’s request from time to time. Many of the moms were knitting which is something I find everywhere I go. Sometimes my rebellious nature rises up and makes me want to do some more obscure craft instead.

Yesterday we stayed home taking care of many neglected chores and toys. After lunch K and built a balance out of a couple of train supports, a ruler and some paper plates tied on with string. Acorns and beans were easy enough to balance, but we found the train track was too heavy, causing the whole thing to fall apart. Later on our friends Duncan and Preston stopped by. K and Duncan ran around like maniacs for awhile before settling in to build the marble tower. We finished the day at my grandparents eating apple pie made from the apples we picked on Sunday.

I am so glad we made the choice for me to stay home. So happy to be here to enjoy all of life’s joys watching K grow and learn everyday. Glad I went through the identity crisis and feminist/misogynist challenging upon deciding my “career” is my child for now. It isn’t always easy or exciting but it is very rewarding. Daren and I are much more awake, pay more attention and make more conscious choices about our lives now than when we were both working before Kaleb was born. We acquire so much less needless stuff. We are still trying to take control of our time better, ensuring that Daren and I both get much needed time of our own, but it gets easier as we go along.