a little red hen

We Appear on the Web...Tuesday

How many professionals did it take to make an 8-minute (?) story about our retirement in New York City?  Cameraman, soundman, and interviewer all tucked into our small living room.  Next trucked over to KNITTY CITY for Wednesday night's Men's Knitting Circle.

The result will have a brief life on a cable program, Retirement Living TV  on Tuesday, February 27 at Noon.   Only known for sure is that Ron Bloom and the guys will appear because the show's associate producer thought that was so unusual.  When the CD arrives, we'll discover if the insightful questions asked by Chip Cronkite, Producer and interviewer, survived the cut.

UPDATE  Joared courageously (see comment below) tried to access the program.  It's all been a mystery to us. "Ron Bloom Knits" may disappoint men over 60 who expect a how-to lesson.  My resident yarn guy happened to be home to see the show.  He was pleased.  And surprised by the artful way the piece interwove  our relationship with our  creative work--together and separately.  That  is our story.

Thanks to Chip...and his crew--who negotiated a busy yarn shop after our stuff-filled apartment.  Pearl Chin at Knitty City plans to show the CD from this interview.  More later....

Leslie Cuts My Hair, Etcetera

Once the basic challenge of finding an apartment was solved and  we moved back to New York City, the next was finding a good hair cutter.  That's all I need--no styling, drying--just great scissors.  At the theatre, on the street, I'd stop women around my age, "Great haircut!  Where?"

One woman surprised me with,   "I'd rather not say," in the tradition of my college roommate's mother who made a fabulous pumpkin pie:  don't ask for the recipe.  More useful was an address, name of "this marvelous man," and a price that widened my eyes.  On my own, I added to a life history of bad cuts.  How did I find Leslie F, former art student, pictured above in her own unique setting?

Joelle Wallach, first woman composer I'd ever met, sat next to me at a noisy party in the late 1990s.  She had graying hair, beautifully cut, shared her with me.  Joelle was one of the women over 50 who wore red wiggler worms for the Free Lunch, You May Qualify, part of my environmental installation.  (For a more glamorous photo, scores, and text from her choral work, click on her name.)

Leslie would never do that--and she was too young to qualify.  More important is what she wil do.   Continuing the tradition of beauty parlors, a phrase some prefer to salons, her chair is a space for free-form thinking.  Talk about creative work, my family, how her neighborhood, Chelsea, cannot possibly squeeze in one more over-priced restaurant.  Mostly Leslie listens, comments a bit.  She is busy thinking about her craft, my hair.  Leslie has no problem sharing her own opinions but most of the air time is left to the person in the chair. We have exchanged how her work resembles therapy, my own old craft.

This week I brought her 20+ NYC Condoms.  She found a funky container, gave them place of honor on the sacred shelf in front of the mirror, "My customers will love these!"  Thanks to Leslie for launching me on Plan B ... distribution of the 1,000 condoms resting in my front hall.

Your ideas appreciated.

Solara Interviews Us

The universe is pretty amazing.  Unstructured in my life as an aging public artist, where I go next is free form.  Who arrives?  How will this person/email/phone call shape the work?

Solara Calderone  visited us yesterday.  In her last year of high school, she needed subjects for a jounralism class interview.  Solara's mother is Gwen, my knitting guru, who has held my hand through many traditional knit projects.  I think we first met when I was deep into the Corn Cob Baby Bunting for my first grandchild.  She helped Ron in his early learning-to-purl struggles.

That she suggested us as subjects for Solara was flattering.  We share a neighborhood  and craft; our lives and interests diverge.  Poised and confident like her mother, Solara asked about how we chose our respective crafts.  Her questions gave us a chance to consider what would engage a younger person.  We talked about the urge to return home and our decision to move back to the City from Baltimore--where she'll be going to college next falland leaving home for the first time.

Ron spun during our visit, explained his journey as described in the article, "The Accidental Spinner: Husband Discovers Wheel," I wrote for this book.  Solara chose the small version of my 1991 No War patch which marks the beginning of my political activism outside feminism--though peace and women's issues are inextricably related in my mind.  Looking at the Condom Amulets, she asked if I'd thought about my next project.

After she left, I read how Dr. Gao Yaojie, the 80 year old Chinese AIDS doctor, will finally be allowed to visit Washington D. C. for an award ceremony in March.  Aha!  Decided to knit a large amulet in red with a yellow design, colors of the Chinese flag, and figure out how it might be presented to Dr. Gao--with NYC's new condoms.

Solara's question is answered.  Her visit was a kind of proto-grandparenting that enriched our day.  We wished her well in the years ahead--and thank Gwen for thinking of us.

Knitting without Buttons

                                                               

This is the flower on a shared knit project, a poncho for Zoe. Ron did the bigger part--two rectangles for the body; I did the flower.  Fits our different skills/interests.  Knitting scarves or any straight piece leaves me restless.  He enjoys that; my favorite is decoration. 

Gently Zoe's mother asked on  the phone last night, "Could you do this without a button?"  Puzzled, I learned that my under-two granddaughter tries to put objects in her mouth--even those on clothes.   Oops, the second time I've but a cute button on a Zoe sweater; yarn, instead, is a safer alternative.  Another reminder of how much I've forgotten in the thirty-plus years since our children were small.

Yarn is Baghdad Blue worsted by Peace Fleece, " a yarn company committed to helping historic enemies cooperate and prosper through trade."  Even if you are not a knitter, a visit to their site is inspirational.

One Thousand Condoms...PLAN B

What is it about February 14 in New York City?  Last year it was freezing on Valentine's Day.  I danced on rockhard ice with the Granny Peace Brigade in Times Square--to protest THE WAR. 

A year later, I thought I'd help NYC distribute the new NYC Condom as part of the Health Department's effort to control the spread of AIDS in New York.  Their plan was to distribute 100,000 this morning at subway entrances across the city.    But the icy, sleet-filled view of 125th Street & Amsterdam Avenue changed my own Plan A-- perky departure from my apartment to the 116th Street station at Columbia University.  I'd double-knit (purl stitch) a Condom Amulet in the university's colors.     

This is the closely guardednew condom design revealed today, reflecting our incomparable subway system.  Our grandson had a wonderful time at the MTA Transit Museum last fall.  Much memorabilia connectedwith the various lines in the 5 boroughs is on sale--sadly,  not including  these condoms.  A limited edition, I now possess 1,000 of them; Plan B, the challenge of distribution lies ahead.

*Reminding  me that Safe Sex is not only about HIV, my neighbor, Mary D.,  sent along this well-timed hilarious video from Belgium.  You many want to lower your volume for this one!

So, What about the FEMALE* Condom?

                                        

VALENTINE'S DAY,  usually centered on candy,  jewelry, and other heart-shaped novelties has an unusual focus this year in New York City.  Tomorrow the NYC Health Department will release its new design for a condom package.  It's been a secret for months.  What might be a collectable condom wrapper?

Would you be likely to long for a photo of the Statue of Liberty?  Probably not, that would be more appropriate for a female condom (illustrated above ).  So what about the female condom?  Sadly, it does not have a good reputation among women I have asked.  "Hard to use," is the most common complaint.

Its use is popular among overseas organizations concerned with the control of the STDs that cause HIV.  There is a comprehensive discussion about disseminating them in Africa and other sub-Sahara countries at the Family Health International website.  FHI emphasizes "...women may have more control over negotiating use of the female condom than the male condom."  Are American women  not ready for this much influence over  reproduction and disease control?

Long past a personal role in condom use,  I have two agendas in promoting safe sex.   I continue to be alarmed by the educated, smart women in this particular group who are surprised to learn of the crisis of HIV in women over 50.  "STDs?  What's that?"  We need new kinds of assertiveness training to help boomers/seniors (your choice) become comfortable with insisting that partners always use protection--and get tested.  Would a female condom be a more effective way to protect yourself? 

As a grandmother or an aunt to adolescents, safe sex is something we need to keep informed about.  That's my other agenda:  the future of my grandchildren.  We could have an opportunity to act as support to parents of adolescents.

Politically, we have a role in making condom distribution more common in our communities.   Even though New York City public schools are required to make condoms available to high school students, studies here find that this is not happening.  Tomorrow's Valentine's Day effort by the City's Health Department is good PR but insufficient to the need.  I encourage you to join in A Little Red Hen effort, an intergenerational one, about Safe Sex.

*Female Condom Amulet illustration by LISA DAEHLIN, opera singer/knitter.  The shape began as a doily (!), then folded in half, both knit and crocheted from Euroflax linen.  "Las Vegas sperm guy" is her description of the glamorous surface design of beads and pearls.

Boomer & Senior Grannies Unite!

One of the unsettling thoughts about the future and myself in that future is the question, "Will anyone look like me?"

Already a small part of the aging population, pre-boomer and post-"the greatest," I worry about not being counted.  Maybe I'm prickly about the flurry (read "latest report") of oddly-placed adjectives occurring more frequently over the past year.

                              

Is there a reason for Lion Brand yarn to call a pattern Boomer Granny Throw?  Is this reliable compay, Famous for Quality Since 1878, worried about its image?  Do they worry that an object as inocuous as a throw might seem dated without an age-skewed explanation?  Would it seem old-fashioned like this 1943 Ski Set? 

[Knitter alert:  everything--except the poles--is knit.  Sweater and mittens on #13 wooden needles" with #8 bone needles added for hood.  Email if you want pattern.]

Silly on one level, the growing efforts to separate me, a "senior" from them.  On another level seems a ploy to let one group know they are not really old.

When will they get there?  How will they know?  Will it be like "The Picture of Dorian Gray"--one day, whoosh, the artificial smoothness disappears, wrinkles pop up? I like that my grandchildren can see that I am definitely an old lady, mother of their mother.  I feel sad for women who want to create a new, better boomer-grandmother persona.  Let's push aside the media and talk about what we share.

                              

                       Grandmother PK and I meet for lunch in New York City.

Grandma Knitter & All of Us

Oh, we old ladies who knit are really, really tired of being denigrated by publishers and media in their efforts to make knitting more palatable to 20 and 30-somethings.  Just when, yours truly, clicking needles since the 1940s, when I'm so pleased by new yarns, better instructions (some places), and the enthusiasm of younger women and men about the craft, THOSE PEOPLE decide to use "grandma" as a negative reference point.

"Flair and Flash, Not Frumpiness," read the New York Times headline for its January 27 review of the knit show at the Museum of Arts and Design: 

Long viewed as the domain of grandmothers, needlework has undergone an image makeover...coffehouses and subways are filled with fashion-conscious types busily knitting or doing needlepoint....And conteporary artists...have given crafts a cooly conceptual edge.

More gratuituous foolishness reveals the reviewer as ahistorical in describing Judy Chicago and Sonia Delaunay as "dated."  But enough!  I want to talk about the power of intergenerational connections through fiber.  Sabrina Gschwandtner, pictured above, describes her installation, "Wartime Knitting Circle" at the show's opening.  Click on her name and listen to Sabrina interviewed by BBC Radio and a New York City TV news show.

It was through a younger friend from the Upper West Side knit circle, that I learned of Sabrina's project.   Most of the time I've discovered that knitters themselves are not caught up in the narrow age-skewed notions of the print media folks always in search of a catchy headline or lead.  Most online fiber bloggers and listservs are free of age bias.  We seem to be best served and understood by electronic media.  Last Thursday, my favorite, the weekly Knitter's Review appeared with a view of "Radical Lace, etc." by a real, live knitter--and writer, Lela Nargi.

Her take on the exhbition was close to mine.  She described Sabrina's installation as the "heart" of the show because she focused on what the craft is about and has been--primarily for women.  We like making things for ourselves, for others.  We express our powerless in wartime through making helmet liners for soldiers, Afghans for Afghans, or Condom Amulets.  Lela's review also sent many KR readers to my blog through her description of my knitting at the opening and her discovery of the crisis of HIV among women over 50.

Even if you're not a knitter, read Women's Work: the first 20,000 Years by Elizabeth Wayland Barber for a window into the history of cloth.  Very inspirational for me.

Sometimes it all comes together.  Like finding these "lost" photos (see January 27 post)--thanks to my daughter-in-law who suggested taking my memory stick to a camera store and  once again the images surfaced on my camera and computer. 

Nick Bloom, Historian & Artist

Phew!  Some January-- wonderfully  hectic for me,  beyond description for my son, first-time father.  Barely three weeks after Roxie was born, Nick's ceramic work was included in a faculty exhibition at New York Institute of Technology.  He's an urban historian who began working with clay when he was ten years old.      

A group of artists started Baltimore Clayworks in an old library a mile from our home.  Nick went to the first class for children.  Clay became his medium; he has always found a place for it--Boston, Santa Fe, New Orleans--in and around his "day" job.  He once made a card, "Potter-historian."

Ron and I have watched his style evolve.  Even in his latest work, clocks and indescrible figures, we see echoes of earlier pieces, often architectural.  Roxie, in her mother's arms, slept through the event.        

Some of the time it was my turn!