Hiya Lovely Lovelies!

It’s good to write to you again.

I was just cleaning out the fuzz from the bobbin case of my sewing machine, Judy.
Yes, my sewing machine has a name, doesn’t yours??

Anyway I was starting a new project and one of my starting procedures is to pop up the plate beneath the needle and pop out the bobbin case and carefully swab all the surfaces I can reach with a small white brush.
As easy as this sounds, there is a technique, born of past problems created by what I thought was the correct way to do this.
Does that ever happen to you? You have learned through experience a better way to do something? I thought so. It couldn’t be just me. . .
Back to the sewing machine—
You have to brush it slowly because if you go too fast, the fuzz can fly around and settle into an area that the little brush can’t reach, which is, of course, counter productive.
And the brush is white so you can see the gray fuzzies you pick up in order to remove them from the brush.
Don’t worry, I am way beyond the flip flip flip of rapid fuzz removal from the brush. That just makes it airbourne and then gravity can pull it down into said lower cavity of the machine.
No, I slowly pull the fuzz from the brush.
This time I accumulated just the fuzz from inside the bobbin case case—you know, where the bobbin case fits into.
And here it is, joined together with its siblings to make the larger fuzz.

 

It’s in the middle. More about the kitty cookie later.

I am amazed at how it accumulates!!  It’s all from fabric and not, as most dust is,  from dead skin cells. I know this to be true because for the most part,  this is locked under the machine with the plate that covers the bobbin. So, I guess it truly  is dead fabric cells.

But, just like I don’t grieve for the my dead skin cells which are now the dust on my mantle, I don’t grieve for the dead fabric cells in my bobbin case. I just move them out slowly and carefully, and move on to a new project.

Speaking of which, and this really is an honest to goodness transition, I just finished River of Doubt and am on to reading an autobiography about being an apprentice cook in France. The former book is about Teddy Roosevelt and the latter is about Jacques Pepin.

Now one of these was a much revered American hero from the early years of the twentieth century. River of Doubt is the account of Colonel  ( a title which I was not aware of, but was used frequently)  Roosevelt’s expedition down an unexplored tributary of the Amazon. He was as always a boisterous leader in any room he entered, but in this expedition, he was co-leader with Candido  Rondon, a beloved Brazilian explorer, who with the many expeditions  he led, mapped the great interior of Brazil and tried to do so without destroying the native Indian culture.  The two respected each other, but often disagreed on how the expedition needed to proceed.

The story is one of resilience,  leadership, and teamwork under the very worst of physical hardships including nearly constant rain, back breaking portages, ever present biting bugs, malaria,  and starvation because of dwindling food resources.

I learned about human courage of spirit and old fashioned grit.

Which brings me to Teddy Roosevelt. I confess that I didn’t know much about him from my American History classes other than his familiar, “Bully!”  and  “Speak softly and carry a big stick!” uttered at the Minnesota State Fair, by the way.  I knew about his Rough Riders and his involvement in the Spanish American War.  And I knew he was President.

But I had no idea of the magnetism of the man or the crowds that packed lecture halls when he came to speak.  I had no idea what a raconteur he was, telling stories to the camaradas  who carried the heavy canoes on the portages in Brazil. I had no idea of the physical energy and power of the man who jumped up from his fevered rainforest  sick bed to grab a gun, running off to protect one of the Brazilian men on the expedition from another bent on his murder.

He seemed indestructible, a bull moose, typifying the American spirit, always moving forward despite the odds.

And when he died, his friend  and fellow naturalist, John Burroughs  said, ” Never before in my life has it been so hard for me to accept the death of any man as it has been for me to accept the death of Theodore Roosevelt.  A pall seems to settle upon the very sky.  The world is bleaker  and colder for his absence from it.  We shall not look upon his like again.”

I understand Mr. Burroughs and his raw feelings.  If I were alive at that time, perhaps I would have felt the same way.

But, I don’t.  I live now.

And  I marvel at Colonel Roosevelt and celebrate his life  and the effect he had upon this country.  I believe that the world is less bleak and cold because he was in it.  The National Park system is  his  legacy which we can all agree is  inestimable in its value.

I celebrate that America produced this individual and that a nation loved him as his exuberant self.

I think more youngsters ——and adults ——need to read about his story just like our generation read Profiles in Courage when Jack Kennedy was President.  We need to know about our heroes.

I quite frankly was surprised at how reading about this man and his grit made a difference in my outlook.

I think reading about Jacques Pepin will be similar—– a good man who struggled to succeed in a tough business.

 

Which brings me back to getting the fuzz out of the sewing machine before starting a new project, and yes, another transition. Don’t worry, I don’t envision it becoming a habit!

I think that all this negativity and unwillingness to see the other side as anything other than wrong is like the fuzz in the machine. It, like the fuzz, has the possibility of gumming up the machine so it doesn’t work.

Getting rid of the fuzz is the first step in a new sewing project. Reading about Roosevelt reminded me of the potential of the country to produce the leaders it needs to move forward. It got rid of the fuzz of negativity in my mind.

Maybe getting rid of the anger and mistrust and working on collaboration and compromise would get us going again.

It’s worth a try.

And, along with the eliminating the fuzz, we  need to break bread together, or, in this case, eat those little chocolate kitty cookies from Trader Joes.

I’ve been doing that and I feel better.

It’s just an idea. . .

Well,  have a wonderful weekend and a fabulous fuzz-less Father’s Day!!

Love,

Janet

P.S. This was  published today before I heard the jury’s decision in the Castile-Yanez  case.  Any flippancy in the post does not reflect the seriousness with which I take this decision. JW