I’ve talked before about how James Sullivan’s book Jeans is a little too much into the Americaness of jeans, but really it’s hard to argue with him too much. Here’s a passage:
All blue jeans, whether they are rough as sidewalk or burnished to a hand as fine as cashmere, share an “Americana” feel. They may be cut and sewn in Japan, Vietnam, or Hong Kong, using denim from mills in Mexico, India, Italy, or Turkey and synthetic indigo dye from Germany or Brazil. Yet wherever its origins, a pair of blue jeans embodies two centuries’ worth of the myths and ideals of American culture. Jeans are the surviving relic of the western frontier. The epitomize our present-day pre-occupations – celebrity and consumer culture…
Remember that movie with Sally Fields? The one where she is a successful businesswoman or doctor and she marries a fella, specifically Dr. Octopus, from Iran. And when they move to Iran her social status and her face take a few hits. She’s not allowed to eat with the men or join in their conversations and other stuff like that. When she oversteps her bounds she gets a beat down. This is all I knew about the role of women in an Islamic culture until I actually spent some time in Bangladesh.
In Bangladesh, some women wouldn’t shake my hand or make eye contact. (Yes, it was pretty touronic of me to try and shake their hand, but hey,…
You know all of those signs at temples in places like Nepal and India that say or show some version of “No Touch Monkey,”? Well, they mean business. Because the monkeys…umm…mean business.
Today seems like the first day of fall. The breeze is cool and the leaves seemed to have turned color overnight. I wish I was hiking! I wish I was here…
Plumpy Nut is a peanut butter, powder milk past that is saving Niger children from dying of malnutrition. I heard about it on this evening’s 60 Minutes.
My agent and I are going back and forth with the proposal right now and we hope to send it out before the end of the month. Her latest version included the following sentences:
I can be the “everyman” for any American consumer out there, I’m just that humanly accessible! Although I am quite ordinary in many ways, I do have some credentials to back up the credibility of Where am I Wearing? …
This passage cracked me up. I’m that humanly accessible, but in a way, you know, I’m super-humanly normal.
Is there anything less normal than a normal guy that will tell you how normal he is?
I see where she is going with this: we need to set myself as the average American consumer. Although, I got…
It’s good to see a public official do something that’s not in the best interest of trade and money now and then. Go Bush!
How can you not just love the Dalai Lama? He’s always wearing that holy smile that has a bit of mischief behind it like he might have slipped a whoopee cushion onto some dignitaries chair.
Speaking of monks…below the cut you’ll find a story I wrote way back in 2004 about one that is Bulletproof.
Things are things, but they often tell a story. Stories makes things special.
I ran across a piece today in the CS Monitor titled “All the stories my wardrobe could tell.” It’s a title that I could definitely write a piece under, but this one isn’t mine. The piece by Miriam C. Daum is touching and a reminder of the close bond we form with our things, including our clothes.
An excerpt:
A puffy piece of blue down jacket pokes out from its matching nylon bag (called a “stuff sack,” I am told). I pull out the jacket and pause to chuckle at the zigzag tear on its sleeve, which even careful stitchery could not completely hide.
The accidental rip was courtesy of Max, our dog. It happened on…
An excerpt on a bus ride from my sample chapter on Bangladesh:
The bus ride, of course, is nuts. We nearly die every few miles. But it’s nothing new in Bangladesh. I would just really hate to die doing something as stupid as pretending to be a garment buyer and eating it in a bus crash.
20-30% of each paper bill in the USA is made from blue jean scrap. Really, is there a more American item of clothing? We love blue jeans. We love money. We love money made of blue jeans.
I finished Jeansby James Sullivan today and I know way too much about, well…jeans.
(note: There has to be a better title for this post. Apparently, I’m all outta clever today)…
…
