Received Saturday when the Maryland Board of Elections counted my drop off ballot.
Many have asked me what I’m doing for Election Day. And I have no real answer for them.
There are plenty of options between the two extremes of either watching every minute of television coverage, spiced with occasional doomscrolling, or avoiding coverage altogether in favor of reading, video games, hot baths, or other self-care. The only part most parties seem to agree on is that there will be massive drinking late Tuesday/early Wednesday, either in celebration or despair.
I…honestly have no idea. I diligently wrote and mailed off ~65 letters for the VoteForward effort and I’ve kept up with news as best as I can stand. As an anxious person, I’m accustomed to trying to imagine every eventuality in a (futile) attempt to predict the future but this year (hell, the past 4 years but especially 2020) has been so (cliché alert!) unprecedented that I find myself ironically trying like hell to stay in the moment.
Because it feels like tomorrow night (even though we all logically know the results won’t be known for days) will herald either the end of the world or a new beginning.
I’ll decide tomorrow how and how much I’m going to follow what looks to be a very slow-moving trainwreck when I read the AM news. And likely reconsider my decision every time I look at the news tomorrow, no matter how frequent or seldom.
I may not be on social media though. If I’m smart, I won’t be.
She voted in every election – local and national – from the time she was eligible to vote. I remember her taking me once to the polls when I was too little to understand why the big room was so full of tall tables with little shields around three sides.
She worked in a public library where among her duties were registering other people to vote. She didn’t wait for patrons to ask—if their records showed they weren’t already registered she always asked and encouraged them to vote, whatever their political inclinations.
Right up to her last day, she told anyone who would listen—family, friends, doctors, nurses—that they must vote, that our votes matter and we shouldn’t throw away our vote out of apathy.
And I followed in her footsteps. This sticker is from several elections ago.
***
At long last I found a (feeble? Fabulous?) way to honor my mother.
I’ve mentioned Mom’s desire that I write something about voting before but I’ve had a hell of a time figuring out just what and where. Right after her death, it was just too close, too raw. Then as the months passed, the project was too daunting. What if I got it wrong? What if it wasn’t enough? What if it wasn’t good?
So I spun my wheels. Then a friend pointed me at VoteForward, and there I found a medium that felt right.
VoteForward is a grassroots effort to get out the vote through handwritten letters to registered but inactive Democrats. Handwritten anything is novel enough to get noticed in this world of email and texts. They’re also more intimate (and hopefully effective) than shouting into the void of social media, or winding up in someone’s spam filter or deleted voicemail.
So I’m writing an abbreviated version of what’s at the start of this post (minus the photo) in each of these letters. I can only write about 5 at a time before my handwriting becomes illegible, but if I can crank out 5 a day between now and the October 17 mailing date I’m still going to reach more people than I would be posting to my blog.*
Some might say I’m cynically exploiting my mother’s death, but she would have wanted this. It’s coming from a place of hope and optimism that she had that I often severely lack.
Because yes, I know—the American system of voting is broken. Given the disparity between the popular and Electoral College results in 2016 and the vote-counting debacle of 2000 I think Mom realized this too. But this is the only system of voting we’ve got, and if we want any chance of fixing it we have to keep using it. She would have, and I will continue to.
Mom called this faith that it would all turn out for the best if we just tried hard enough her “inner Pollyanna”. When I was younger it used to make me roll my eyes but with age, I’ve developed my own inner Pollyanna. She’s smaller and weaker than Mom’s but in times like these, I need every little shred of gladness I can get.
So maybe I’m working my hands to carpal tunnel with these letters for no reason. Maybe my writing sucks, maybe every one of these letters will wind up in the garbage. But I think it’s worth the risk. So to honor my mother I’ll keep sharing her dying wish.
*I love y’all and I’d still rather have only 10 readers who “get” me than have to water myself down to attract thousands! But this is the vote. I need reach. I hope you’ll share this, but I hope more that you’ll join VoteForward (or something like it) yourself!
There’s a lot of talk in my circles about the “Before Time” vs. the “After Time”. Namely, our lives before coronavirus, and what we want them to be when it’s over.
I find both conversations unbearably bittersweet.
Don’t get me wrong, I have happy memories of the Before Time. But reminiscing only reminds me of what I can’t have right now and makes me itch.
But dwelling on what happens in the After Time is even worse.
It’s not fear of the unknown, it’s my intense dislike of not being able to predict what will happen next. I don’t know where/when/if the virus will surge again. I can’t foresee if there will be new and thrilling improvements in sanitizing public places or where/when/if we’ll have an outbreak of anti-mask idiocy. And while multiple vaccines are in the works there’s no telling when they’ll be available either.
As such I can’t plan more than a week or two ahead at best (let’s set aside that I was usually bad at planning more than a week or two ahead even in the Before Time).
Fantasizing about who I’ll see for the holidays or what fencing competition I’ll go to next just…grates. It’s like revving my engines only to stay stuck on cement blocks. It changes nothing and wastes energy I need to just to get through the inconveniences and irritations of the next few days.
Be assured I do have plans for the After Time! Lots of people I want to see, things I want to do, and places I want to go. But it’s just painful to dwell on so if I’m mute about them, this is why.
Even though the county’s been opening up, I’m still cagey about going anywhere. Evidence suggests that much of the mandated disinfection may only be so much “hygiene theater“*-the real problem is disinfecting the air.
But given the importance of oral hygiene I decided to keep a months-delayed dental appointment last week, and here’s why.
Yes, there are a lot of open mouths and water droplets and all other manner of nasty virus-spreading activity that goes on in dental offices. Even so, I’d have to take my mask off for a good chunk of time. But my dentist (IMHO, one of the best in the state) spent the months they were shut preparing for reopening.
Plexiglass barriers for the administrative staff, when they’re there at all. I gather they’re limiting hours because my hygenist handled my checkout.No more magazines, which aren’t necessary as no one waits in the waiting room anymore
But in addition to disinfecting every conceivable surface multiple ways multiple times a day and the requisite PPE (masks AND visors) you’d expect, they had these:
HEPA filters in every room, with additional UV light in exam rooms. And they fogged between patients with hypochlorous acid, a proven virus killer that dissipates into salt water.
Air treatment was the deciding factor between neglecting my teeth and taking my mask off.
Pending a vaccine, I think air treatment like this is going to become mandatory for any semblance of safe return to normal life and movement, at least in the near future.
At the same time, I recognize that it would be time-consuming and expensive to retrofit every public building for this, so I don’t expect HEPA filters etc. to happen outside of medical settings.
At some point we’re all going to have to do risk assessment for us and ours because we can’t stay locked down forever (even if we do have a national lockdown to get this thing under control, a move I support).
Given how potentially nasty covid infections can get, though, I’m not sure how much I’m willing to risk.
What do you think?
*Which I still engage in because I’m an idiot who can’t keep their hands off their face. Besides, I like to control what I can.
The beaded trim on Fortuny’s Delphos gowns isn’t just decorative.
Silk (or, at least, the silk I used) gets very springy when pleated and stands away from the body. This works against the iconic slim silhouette. The seams need weight to hug the body, and the beads provide the weight.
I used plastic beads on my ages-ago polyester Fortuny but they weren’t hefty enough to do the job. They really need to be glass or clay, and I was determined to use the Murano glass beads Fortuny traditionally used.
Easier said than done.
Almost every original Delphos shows a pale, matte, square bead with subdued stripes, and every modern bead sold as “murano glass” was either the wrong shape, too glossy, or had too much contrast. If they make ’em like they used to, I couldn’t find them. Disappointing. But I found a reasonable alternative.
African gooseberry beads (link is to the ones I ordered, but Google nets a variety of vendors and color combinations) provide an adequate substitute. They’re matte glass and the orange and brown stripes were about as subtle as I could find.
As near as I can tell from examining Fortuny originals, the beads are strung on a cord that is couched to the seam with beads secured at regular intervals. Couching sewing machine feet notwithstanding I am again doing these by hand to avoid crushing these hard to find beads. I’m using a ruler to ensure that they’re evenly spaced.
I sewed the 4 panels together. This was time-consuming but simple as it was all selvage to selvage, so no hand finishing was needed on top of that. But then I needed to shape this tube into something resembling a dress.
I opted to go the simple route: opening all 4 seams about 10″ at the top gave me a v neck, v back, and armholes, easily adjusted later if they cut too deep or not deep enough. The original Fortunys from the 1910s-40s seldom had a v neck but I didn’t want to mess with the (likely?) difficulty of shaping a scoop neck in already-pleated fabric! However, the v-neck is consistent with the “reimagined” dress* they made for Lady Mary in the Downton Abbey movie**.
So, I needed to shape 2 raw edges into 2 tapered shoulders, how to do that? I turned under the raw edges and then sewed a running stitch on either side of the seam to pull into tight gathers. Once gathered, I sewed the pleats to a strip of twill tape as I not only needed some kind of reinforcement for the delicate fabric but something stronger than only thread to keep the gathers in place in slippery silk.
Yes, the stitching is ugly, but the tape was wider than the seam allowance so I improvised.
I think it turned out rather well.
Next up: turning under the edges of the neckline and armholes and reinforcing these if needed.
*My heart leaps at the thought that the Fortuny company might start making the Delphos/Peplos again! But this article is from 2017 and I’m not seeing any movement in that direction.
I’m sewing it together by hand. There’s no way to do this by machine, if for no other reason that the pleating makes it almost impossible to line up the edges correctly.
Ultimately I gave up on pins and just held the pieces together by hand about an inch at a time. If I ever do this again I’m not going to pleat the seam allowances.Cotton thread because 1) Mariano Fortuny didn’t have polyester in the 1920s and 2) to create a deliberate point of weakness. If the dress ever tears it will be along the seam first because cotton is weaker than silk.
The edges are finished so no complicated raw edges to turn under. I sewed it with running stitch with a 1/4″-3/8″ seam. I could only use 12-18″ length of thread at a time because it wanted to twist up on itself at any longer than that.
And yeah, I’m sewing all 4 pieces long edge to long edge into a big tube. I’ll figure out armholes, shoulder seams, and neckline after I get the large pieces together.
I could cut the tension with a pair of scissors but held off because you did can’t undo a cut.
Last week I lost a good bit of length in the pleating process, shrinking my 8 yards to around 6 1/2. After a week of letting the fabric “relax” it stretched(?) back out to a final length of 7 yards, 11 inches.
So Sunday I spent about 2 hours draping it on my dress form (calibrated to my height and dimensions) to see if I had enough for 4 lengths. In the end, I had just enough. I maybe could have done it with a bit less than 7 yards but I want the dress to be long enough to flute out over my feet the way you see in some displays.
Each length is roughly 1 yard, 29 inches. I can only estimate because the pleating gives the fabric a “springy” quality that also makes it difficult to mark and cut it perfectly straight across. Good thing I have a little extra length to work with!
After twisting it up for pleating at the beginning of what ended up being a very eventful time for me, I am finally getting back to the Fortuny-style pleated gown (check the Fortuny tag for other posts). Last summer’s project becomes this summer’s project, and hopefully this leg of it won’t take as long as the last.
First I had to unwind this fabric that had been locked in a tube sock for 6 months. It took about a month to dry completely, and I was a little afraid it might have gone moldy in the process. No such bad luck:
It took about 2 hours to pull all the thread out and off of it.
Ziploced for disposal, as I have 3 cats that MUST NOT get hold of any thread. Photo, like all the others, my own.
Gathering every ~3″ or so did result in very tight pleats but as with my polyester version, the gathering places are pretty obvious, creating horizontal lines that aren’t evident in Fortuny’s originals. I’m hoping these might become less obvious after the fabric is unwound for a while:
Also due to broken threads or gathering placed too far apart I wound up with the odd unpleated “blob”, which I’m accepting as just one of those imperfections of the handmaking process:
My original 45″ wide fabric pleated down to 7″ wide, and shortened by about a yard and a half(!)
My research suggests that Fortuny made his gown of 4-5 widths of already-pleated fabric, sewn selvedge to selvedge by hand. Given that I am not 21″ around, it had better stretch some! I hope it gains a little length as well as at 5’6″ I don’t think I can get more than 3 widths fabric out of 6 1/2 yards.
To these ends I’m letting the fabric relax for a week or so, first horizontally and then vertically. I don’t really have room for either so I’m having to improvise.
This solution didn’t work out as my cats couldn’t leave it alone.
TL;DR: the fabric lost a lot of width and a good chunk of length in the pleating process, suggesting that should I do this again I start with 10 yards! It’s very finely pleated, though somewhat unevenly. It needs to relax some before I can cut it.
As I type this on the Monday morning after the riots, I find myself at a loss for words.
Which is a tragedy for a writer. After all, I moved this blog away from (temporarily, I hope) being mostly about writing and weird history into current events and politics simply because ignoring the pandemic is not only living in fairyland but as a history buff I feel obliged to leave a record.
But my posts on the coronavirus include my opinions but precious little about what I feel. Recitations of facts and dates: so many coronavirus cases by this day, a list of things opening up in phase I, etc.
Except that last one (my county started phase I today as of 6 am) seems so insignificant in the face of all the rioting.
Understand: after the umpteenth example of police brutality against black people protesting is called for and completely understandable. I’m even finding it hard to fault violent protests – when you shove people into a corner for generations you can’t really expect much better. Trashing a police station must feel really good if you’ve spent a lifetime fearing the police.
But then I read that a lot of the looting was likely due to outside actors – likely privileged white kids or outright white supremacists taking advantage of the chaos. And cops attacking not only protestors but quiet neighborhoods and journalists just trying to do their jobs. It’s not clear who’s doing what, or why.
No, I’m not going to link to any of this; you have the same Google-fu I do and I’m running on 5 hours sleep. That, and there’s just so damn much of it that I haven’t had the chance to figure out what’s news, what’s crap, what’s speculation, and what’s outright propaganda.
Short version: I’m numb. I have no observations that others haven’t made far more cogently than I could, I have no deep-rooted feelings of rage or fear or anything else because I’ve tripped over all that into just staring into space.
Are we going to have another civil war? I don’t know. I’ve never lived through a pre-war situation before. Never lived through a pandemic either. Nothing I’ve experienced has prepared me for all this, so as far as I’m concerned all bets are off.
What will I do? I’ll go back to posting silly memes and black humor because I have to find something to laugh at to keep going. If I’m really smart I’ll take a break from social media. But I doubt I’ll be that smart.
I’ll make donations to food banks and Black Lives Matter and keep making my masks because I need to feel effective in some way (wait a minute, there’s a feeling! Or is it just an artifact of my general anxiety?)
I’ll binge watch something fun and familiar to make sure I stay at numb and don’t trip over into paralyzed because work and laundry and breakfast still have to happen no matter what.
Writing? Pfft. I’ll try. It’s hard to care or see the point, let alone summon the depth of feeling to write compelling fiction.
But I can’t stop any of this. I can’t fix it. I’m stuck in react mode.
We’re barely at the halfpoint of 2020 and it’s a shitshow.
