nostalgia

One + One + One + One.

| Betsy

Today, I turn 34. I think getting older is always amusing when you compare your current age to your childhood thoughts concerning it. For example, when I was young, I couldn’t even comprehend the age 34 because it seemed so old. And the people on Thirtysomething? Wow… they were arguing about affairs and layoffs and childcare, which seemed unthinkable when all I wanted to do was run around like a feral child playing hide-and-seek in my neighbor’s front yard, an acre of forest. On a hill, no less. We had our own world of fake leaf money and dead trees to take refuge in and branches to swing on where time seemed to stop, especially the land of adults and bills and jobs.

Now, solidly in adulthood we try and navigate our ways outside our wilds of childhood, amazed and delighted when we find rare moments of those past days where our very present seemed so impossible to imagine. Those were the days when we could count our friends on one hand, two if we were lucky. The world was still made up of individuals not a seething mass of humanity and all its permutations. Well, despite appearances, the world is still made up of individuals. One + one + one + one = revolution. The news presents culture en masse with news blips and panoramic photos and photos of unknown people on the street, and we are not worth 2 seconds of soundbites or a camera span or an anonymous photo.

We are individuals. And in joining together we connect and form a revolution made up of individuals, not unknown people. Instead of one large knot we are like George Seurat’s adventures in pointilism each providing a vital part of the whole. With that in mind, the link below takes you to an incredible interactive map of the dead and detained from events surrounding the Iranian election. And by no means is it a comprehensive list. I think breaking down the anonymity helps to remind us that no matter what the news may so often tells us, we do not go unnoticed.

Breaking the masses down into individual faces and names makes us face the individual parts, made up of individual friends and relatives and co-workers. When so often faced with the nameless, it’s hard to see yourself in the person on the street in Tehran or fighting against a Chinese police officer or any of the countless places news stories take us. In the giganticness of it all, it can be hard to make sense of everything, how we grow from children of our neighborhoods to adults of the world. Yesterday I came across a quote from Arundhati Roy from The Cost of Living that perfectly explains the joys and tragedies and truths of living life:

“The only dream worth having is to dream that you will live while you’re alive and die only when you’re dead. […] To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.”— Arundhati Roy, The Cost of Living

Perfect. Just perfect.

Ho-Ho-Holly Days.

| Betsy

Every year it happens. Although I keep trying to replace them with my favorite holiday song, Feliz Navidad, because it’s a bit kickier, two songs get stuck in my head for the entire holiday season.

Today I’m getting ready to head to my parents for the week to meet my brother’s new puppy, wish for snow even though we’re in the South, sleep in my childhood room that still looks kind of like 11th grade, drive relatives around town even though Charlotte has grown so much I keep getting lost, and to generally spend a few days surrounded by family to celebrate Christmas.

While craft and book stuff are still well in my thoughts, for a few days I’ll be offline and enjoying talking and knitting by the fire instead of checking my inbox or answering email. It’s a nice reboot at the end of the year where I embrace the tactile and face-to-face contact and try to get in as many hugs as possible.

So I leave you for a few days with best wishes for the holidays and the two songs that no holiday has been complete without since I was in junior high.


1. Run DMC’s “Christmas in Hollis” from A Very Special Christmas

We burned up the highway in the family station wagon for years listening to this album, and this song always was put on repeat atleast once. The part we all like the best and would belt out is: “It’s Christmas time in Hollis Queens, Mom’s cooking chicken and collard greens…” After all, we are Southern.




2. “I Have a Little Dreidel”, (the Dreidel song)

When I was in 6th grade, the mother of a Jewish classmate came in to talk to us about Hannukah. She gave us little plastic dreidels. We spun them. She also taught us this song, of which I only know the chorus, but still find myself singing each winter. It’s pretty darn kicky, too, especially this jazzy version I found.

Weekend, We Hardly Knew Ye.

| Betsy

I grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina and spent a good half hour every Christmas holiday with the bears above, watching them sing their songs at the mall. As this was in the early 80s, these bears were super cool because they were better than the band at Chuck E. Cheese.

I had the pleasure of finding them while with a friend’s 5 year old not too long ago and it was indeed a very happy reunion as they still sang all the same songs. In the same order.

The run-up to the holidays this year will be spent wrapping packages and trying to sell people pretty handmade things in a little local shop as opposed to mass-produced things. I’m trying to remind myself of the excitement like the bears above bring, not the freakout, what-the-heck-do-I-get-for-this-person excitement which is not as fun.

Am off to work again perfecting my package wrapping and bow placement, but wanted to quickly say thank you to Etsy for the wonderful Q & A they did with me!

Also, if you’re still trying to find a pretty calendar for 2009, check out this one that you can receive from Mibo when you sign up for the newsletter over here.