A bit of a rant.

I got an email a couple of weeks ago from Madesmith, promoting workwear designed by a woman “on a mission to create clothing for women that balances style and comfort.” On first read, this really excited me...since I work from home, in a profession that makes me somewhat of a creative type (at least I like to think so), I am always looking for a workwear alternative to (let’s be honest here, people) paint-stained sweatshirts and leggings. After all, it’s nice to look good for the dog. And the UPS guy. Oh, and my husband. I clicked on over, and found that the new line, Nativen, was pitched ostensibly towards women who 'work on their feet all day performing a number of manual jobs.' I know a number of people who work thus—from nurses to ceramists—and so I was further intrigued. Plus, the pictures (moodily shot, beautifully styled, one featuring a bulldog) really got me. And I loved the look of the 'Build Your Adventure bandana' (which turned out to have been designed by the ever-amazing Lisa Congdon). So I clicked through to purchase. Brace yourself. The bandana costs… $88. That’s eighty-eight dollars, folks. For a 21” square of cotton. Admittedly, ‘100% American grown and made.’ But still. I have been feeling for some time that the fetishization of the maker has reached its apotheosis, and I think we have perhaps found here the moment where it has jumped the shark. Let me be clear...I have spent the bulk of my professional life advocating for makers in one way or another. Their work is all over my house. And I count them as some of my best friends (yes, I know what that sounds like, but it’s true). But not one I can think of would for one second entertain the idea of spending $88 for a square piece of cotton that would soon become irreparably stained with stock; caked with glaze; burnt by a soldering iron; or chewed up by the dog. What has happened to bring us to the point where the idea of workwear for the maker and doer is more important than the creation of workwear that working women can actually afford? Understand that I do not mean to denigrate the work of Nativen’s founder, who is undoubtedly a lovely person who believes in her mission. But $88 for a bandana is not reality in my world; nor is it reality in the world of people who work on their feet all day. And in a world where most of the makers I know don’t earn a fraction of what their work is worth and can’t, because of market forces, that $88 is downright insulting. Now, if 50% of the purchase price went toward supporting continuing education for independent makers in America, perhaps I’d feel differently. How about it, Nativen?

Welcome, fellow expats.

The end of 2014 brought the unwelcome but not unexpected news that Brooklyn is now the most unaffordable place in America to buy a home. I'm not at all surprised; the spouse and I were priced out quite a while ago, and I figured things would just get worse. And, unsurprisingly, we weren't the last people to trade the borough of our dreams for a vastly more wallet-friendly, if not quite as dynamic, place to live. For the past year or so, it's seemed that every second person I've met up here in Vermont has recently immigrated…from Brooklyn. The guy who helps me out at Sephora in South Burlington. The people who own Three Penny Taproom in Montpelier. The program director at our local public library (OK, she’s been here 20 years, but only 20 years, so I think she counts). We got our own Trader Joe's last spring, and I swear most of the staff hails from the Court Street store. (Except for Kelsey, who used to be a manager at the Chelsea store. What’s that, Manhattan? You miss her? Sorry. She's ours now.) But the growing exodus, although it is a great story, wouldn't be enough in and of itself to make me abandon my old blog and head on over here. So what's the back story, you ask? When we moved north a few years ago, I was a starry-eyed novitiate in the convent of All Things Vermont, eager to make my mark on my adopted home. I dove into our new community with both feet, offering my skills on a volunteer basis left and right and accepting pro bono consulting assignments with abandon. To my surprise, the reality of living full-time in a community that had been so welcoming when it was our home away from home was much harder than I thought it would be. My willingness to serve the common good was often met with skepticism; my desire to compliment the pioneer spirit I saw everywhere around me was often mistaken for condescension; and far too many times, I was told that I 'just didn't understand' the way things worked in Vermont. I’ve spent the last couple of years going through a bunch of changes in order to reconcile my past with my present, and three years on, I’m happy to report that I've learned my lesson. I don't shrink from my identity as a ‘foreigner;’ in fact, I embrace it. I cheerfully admit that I don't understand the way things work here a lot of the time, and I'll probably never figure it out. I volunteer almost as much as I ever did, but only when I really feel that my work will make a difference. I talk about my identity as a Brooklyn expatriate whenever I feel like it without worrying (too much) that someone will think I’m weird. I wear makeup on a regular basis, and my toenails are rarely without polish. I’m open about the challenges of living here as…

MAD about the boy.

The wait is over. After months of collectively holding its breath, the art world woke up earlier this week to the news that Glenn Adamson, head of research at London’s august Victoria and Albert Museum, is the new director of New York’s Museum of Arts and Design. Perhaps summarizing the skepticism many feel about this appointment, Robin Pogrebin led off the announcement in the New York Times with the following: The Museum of Arts and Design has named Glenn Adamson as its director, choosing a researcher without the typical executive experience who has been one of the museum’s most scathing critics. Well, yes, on all counts. Dr. Adamson is a 41-year-old professional art historian whose resume does not, to put it kindly, show the type of fundraising and board experience one would expect the board of a major New York City museum to expect in a CEO. As for the 'scathing criticism:' No sh*t. I remember well the stunned looks around the office on the day Dr. Adamson’s review of The Global Africa Project came out (whoops; I forgot to mention that MAD was my employer, and my spiritual home, for a good eight years). Dr. Adamson concluded his meticulously crafted (sorry, couldn’t resist) excoriation of MAD’s name change (from ‘American Craft Museum’) with this: ‘Having abandoned its former raison d’être [‘craft’], the museum has little more than indiscrimination to call its own.’ Aside from the pat snarkiness (and his own statement about craft, made less than a year later, that ‘that sense of operating from a category or from a disciplinary basis has essentially gone away’*), it’s too bad that Dr. Adamson chose to hijack a review of a pretty important show with an ex post facto discussion of an event nine years prior. Besides that, I don’t think that beating out Donald Trump for the right to develop a site designated by New York City’s Economic Development Corporation as critical to the revitalization of Columbus Circle and the Upper West Side would have been possible for a cultural institution with ‘little more than indiscrimination to call its own.’ But what do I know? I haven’t really spent any time in academia since I graduated from Yale thirty years ago. But I digress (equally snarkily, and possibly unfairly). Let us discuss Dr. Adamson’s appointment on its own merits and using his own words. Two things in particular bother me: One, Dr. Adamson’s very first tweet after he was appointed, which referenced ‘Craftsmanship in a Changing World,’ the title of MAD’s 1956 inaugural show, and second, a quote from an interview conducted with him on the day the Times learned of his appointment. As to the first: Sorry, Dr. Adamson; the reverence you displayed for the past didn’t imply continuity so much as stagnation. As to the second: In his interview with Robin Pogrebin, ‘Dr. Adamson said that he would like to see the museum “put greater emphasis on the core mission,” that is, “making.”’ Well. I spent years in…

  • Post category:Culture

Allow natural death.

I spend a fair amount of time reading other writers’ blogs—something that’s always entertaining, sometimes voyeuristic, and occasionally deeply thought-provoking. In the latter vein, I was delighted to learn last week, courtesy of Joanna Goddard, that some very smart people across the country are trying to change how we perceive and react to end of life issues by getting rid of ‘DNR.’ ‘DNR’ stands for ‘do not resuscitate.’ For people who have signed a ‘DNR’ order as part of a hospital admission, or who have written it into their advance health directives, it means that they will not be brought back to life if they die. It does not mean that no heroic measures will be taken to keep them alive (that’s a separate set of requests—and, if you don't enjoy the idea of breathing via a ventilator, a good reason to get going with an advance directive if you don’t already have one). Although the spouse and I have advance directives on file with our doctors, our attorney, our fiscal agent, and our health care agent, and although I am an enthusiastic advocate of pretty much every kind of choice being available to those who don’t have long to live, I have never been a fan of the ‘DNR’ acronym, much less the phrase it denotes. ‘Do not resuscitate’ sounds, to me, ominously close to something you might hear on ER (‘BP's going nowhere, still 50 over 30.’ ‘Pulse ox 90.’ ‘Well, let’s hope there’s a do not resuscitate.’) or in 2001: A Space Odyssey (‘Open the pod bay door, Hal!’ ‘Sorry, David; I’m putting in a do not resuscitate order for you.’). It’s medical-ese masquerading as caring. Clunky, inelegant, overly clinical, and harsh, it simply doesn’t convey the image you want when you’re a doctor or family member dealing with what is, for many, a difficult and painful transition. So what’s replacing ‘do not resuscitate?’ ‘Allow natural death,’ a phrase suggested and championed by the late Reverend Chuck Meyer, a hospital chaplain who, if you read between the lines, apparently got tired of having to explain what exactly ‘DNR’ meant to already-grieving families and suggested that something more compassionate replace the tired old acronym. As Meyer wrote, by using the more accurate phrase, ‘physicians and other medical professionals would be acknowledging that the person is dying….’ Not always the easiest thing to do if you’re a doctor and used to playing God, but a good idea, especially when it’s the truth. (Come on, guys—you can’t save everyone.) I don’t know about you, but I like the idea of a doctor admitting that a person will be leaving this earth soon, and of being given a chance, a real chance, to say goodbye when someone I love is dying. I also welcome the concept of allowing someone to complete a natural process—in a sense, empowering the dying person in his final days. And finally, I have always been uncomfortable with the implication that ‘do not resuscitate’ gives of somehow withholding…

Let’s all get married.

It’s almost June, and therefore full-on Wedding Season. I am and have always been a huge wedding junkie, and now, thanks to the miracle of the interwebs, I am able—despite not having received a single wedding invitation for this year (they do tend to drop off with age)—to follow the wedding fortunes of people I’ve never even met. Therefore, I’m thrilled to report that a couple of very nice people whom I don’t know (but would like to) are getting married. The estimable Lisa Congdon is a little farther along in the process than Renaissance Man Daniel Kanter, but—happily—they are equally enthusiastic about their nuptials. Both Lisa and Daniel have written recently and touchingly about their journeys toward marriage (journeys that, in the slow realization that they didn’t have to spend their lives alone, mirrored my own). Both have, despite considerable odds both internal and external, found their soul mates and are prepared to throw in their lot with them, now and forever. Both believe in the transformative power of love, and in the coming together of two people to create and nurture something bigger than the sum of their two parts. Oh, and both are gay. Anyone who knows me at all knows that I am a somewhat aggressively vocal supporter of gay marriage—of marriage in general, in fact. It seems to me that any two people who are crazy enough to take that kind of a chance on love, in an age when pretty much nothing is certain, deserve all the support we can give them. It has long angered me that, in an era where we have progressed so much in so many ways, we still have to put any sort of qualifier before the word ‘marriage.’ ‘Gay marriage’ shouldn’t have to be. ‘Marriage’ ought to be—ought to be able to be—good enough for everybody. Why, despite the best efforts of pretty much everyone I know, are so many people still so scared of broadening the reach of this state-sanctioned institution? I guess rather than just ridiculing the arguments, I should address them (call me crazy, but heck, let’s just go for it). Let’s see. First off, there’s ‘gay marriage will corrupt children.’ Funny, none of the children I know who are growing up with two moms or two dads seem to know they’re being corrupted. They do seem to know they’re loved and wanted, though…sometimes more than you’d think. One of my closest friends bravely adopted his partner’s niece a while back (she had been raised up until then by her grandparents, but evolving family circumstances forced a reconsideration), forming for the couple an instant family; someone I know recently began fostering and plans to adopt, with her wife, two siblings deemed hard to place because of their birth mother’s drug addiction; another friend and her wife have two children of their own by the same sperm donor, both lovingly conceived, lovingly (if painfully) birthed, and superbly well-adjusted (which is to say, as nutty as most…