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 Getting
off the Target Tit Part 1½ Posted on 5-15-06
by Melissa Halvorson
I’m not a writer,
I’m a knitter. I knit so that I don’t have to write; craft doesn’t have a
voice. Craft has utility; most writing doesn’t, and yet, as s a
non-professional writer, not even a writer really, I seem to be collecting
editors. Almost a month late with the next installment of this completely
self-indulgent rant against commercialism for our kindly local blog:
www.newpaltznation.com, I’ve found
myself attempting to duck from Erin Quinn at numerous hot spots (thrift shops,
daycare centers, bus stop cafes) in an effort to escape the guilt and shame
associated with missed deadlines. Always accommodating and compassionate, she
gave me her usual slap on the procrastinator’s wrist and extended me until
yesterday. Guess I showed her.
While secretly
congratulating myself for putting the writing off still another day, a regular
customer of mine reappeared at the yarn shop today, after months of absence. A
writer (of course) worse yet--an editor. We discussed her last visit to my
place of business and how she found me in much the same predicament:
hating my
writer’s voice, incredulous as to why I’ve been asked to submit it to the
public, and wholly incapable of forcing out the words. Her advice last time;
simply: “don’t suffer.” This time, she mentioned she would start bombarding me
with cajoling emails.
What neither of
these women seem to get is that my weapon is the needle, not the pen. Craft is
my medium for social critique, radical protest and the occasional expression of
abiding love. What can you say with words that you can’t say with an undulating
cable stitch?
What about
entertainment, you say? Fuck entertainment—we don’t have time for it. Reading
prose on a fluffy, sun-drenched bed late into Sunday morning sound good? Me
too, but there’s a paradigm that needs shifting. Get up, shred some plastic
two-liter bottles and make your own insulation or something. (Alright, some
reading is okay, as long as it’s good [by my standards]). What else could we
cut out besides reading and writing? There must be something we do instead of
converting our automobiles to bio-diesel, lovingly mending our clothes and
liberating Cambodian sex slaves. What could it possibly be?
Yesterday, I
overheard a girl in my shop lamenting about fuel prices, ”my gas hates my
freedom,” then chastising herself for complaining about it. We’re all caught in
a bind between our ideals and our habitual practices. As with anything
difficult, the first step is the worst. The first time you make something
instead of buying it, it might be really ugly. The first time you buy something
handmade by your neighbor instead of buying it at Target, it might sting a
little bit.
All of a sudden I
feel perched on the crumbling ledge of liberal elitism; sounding, even to
myself, like someone I wouldn’t want to spend a Sunday morning in bed with. The
truth is, I want to believe we’re all doing the best we can. Negotiating a
world so profoundly uncomfortable to live in most of the time is difficult. This week, all
the righteousness I could muster besides a hell of a lot of craft was a measly
letter to the Village Board about my beloved Church Street. Here it is:
May 5, 2006
Honorable Mayor Jason West and the Village of New Paltz
Board;
As you may remember, the merchants of Church Street
came before you last spring with the request to host a weekly street festival.
Thankfully, it was approved and we witnessed a tremendous upsurge not only in
business, but in our collective sense of community during those nine Sundays.
Small, unique establishments, such as those found on Church Street, are the
counterpoint to mass cultural conformity. In spite of the constant threat from
multinational retail behemoths that make it virtually impossible to compete, our
doors stay open because we are part of something larger than the free market.
The atmosphere of small town life that New Paltz offers has become elsewhere
extinct; people come here for its character and openness. We believe that
events like the weekly street festival enhance this feeling, and enable ALL
businesses in New Paltz to thrive and compete.
Once again, we ask your approval to close Church
Street to traffic from Barner Books to Vintage Studio every Sunday between the
hours of 10am and 5pm beginning the second week in June. Naturally, we would
observe the same agreements made last year in regard to emergency vehicle access
down one side of the street. As before, we need the Police Department to
provide barricades, which would be installed, removed and stored by the
merchants themselves.
Thank you in advance for your consideration; we
anxiously await your approval in order to take full advantage of the summer
season upon us.
Sincerely,
Barner Books; Rhino Records; Suruchi Indian Restaurant;
Medusa Antiques; Vintage Studio; Year of the Goat; Isabella’s Treasures; One of
a Kind Antiques; The Owl & Serpent
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