#and also on a very laborious sewing project that is taking me a long time

[gay-ppl-real]

Just remembered that the reason I came on here in the first place was to post art

Cuz I've been drawing still! I just ain't been posting it sdkfjgnsdjf

This is inspired by a Clown post lol Something something Frank's sense of humour being what it is he can't always pay Howdy and sometimes has to ask Julie to pay for him. Hilarious detail. I reference it in fics often enough LOL

Silly lil sketch doodle I did of the friends ever

He stole his hat!

[bixbythemartian]

If you’ve been moderately following my semi lucid blogging of my sewing adventures of the last week or so, you will know that I have a big long list of projects to work on right now. I’ve been making masks, I have a messenger bag to make for 7 year old, and those are just the most urgent things, there’s like a dozen things that I need to/want to make.

I may not have mentioned that this newer surge of this type of creativity is not new. I’ve been sewing most of my life, it’s just recently that I’ve been able to set up a more permanent space for my sewing stuff. I don’t really have a sewing or crafting room but I have a cutting table in the kitchen area and I have a sewing table in my room and having access to both has made it so much more natural for me to be working on sewing things in general, because apparently if I have a setup that lets me sew then I just sort of do that when I’m not doing other stuff (and sometimes when I should be). Before I would do sewing projects and then put all the stuff away because we needed the space for other things, but we don’t need this space for other things so I can just claim it for me and apparently it means that I sew like at a pretty steady clip. Even if I’m not using those surfaces, just knowing I have access to a cutting table and a sewing machine makes me more likely to do sewing projects even if they won’t involve either for some reason.

at any rate, I have several projects that are somewhat urgent and should be working on, but I was talking to a friend about an ancient project that I still had around and had gone... poorly, and -

okay the other thing is that I’ve been watching all of these historical sewing/costume youtubers in my free time. and I’ve been telling myself that like oh I’m not going to get into historical costuming and oh I’m not going to hand sew anything, that takes so much time and I have this nice sewing machine I don’t see the point. I cannot remember if I mentioned this in some of my previous sewing posts, but it’s worth stating here because if you understand people in general or know me at all you will probably get to the punchline well before I do.

the project that I was reminded of is well over 7 years old in inception. Before I moved to California in 2013 at some point I picked up a long green kind of sheath dress made out of a heavy stretch spandex polyester knit kind of fabric. I have no idea what this fabric is technically called, I’m sure it has a specific name, it’s especially prevalent in plus size clothing for some reason. It has a really lovely stretch and drapes fairly nicely and has a nice weighty sensation when you wear it breathes about as well as plastic ever breathes, which is to say that it does not

anyway, it’s a deep emerald green that’s a very lovely color but it was absolutely shapeless and I do not like clothing items which are shapeless, but it was cheap and mostly fit me and was a beautiful color, so I picked it up resolving to do something with it.

I believe when I was living in California is when I attempted to split the seams up the side so it’s like a maxi length side split tank top thing, with the vague idea of making it part of some kind of fairy/fantasy costume piece. Oh I also removed the sleeves because just in general I don’t like wearing short sleeves. I either want long sleeves or tank tops and I don’t really have much of a middle ground.

(If you remember my long list of things you may recall that one of my projects is to remove sleeves and collars from most of my t-shirts, so this is fairly on brand for me)

anyway, sometime in 2013 or 2014 (I think? I’m fairly certain it was relatively early in my brief stay in California) I attempted to finish the seams for the split and hem the arm holes, but I did it on a machine with white thread.

Using a thick stretchy material in a sewing machine is a hell of a gamble, it didn’t turn out well, and because I used white thread and not, like, black or a matching dark green it was really obvious that I had made at least two massive errors in judgement. it’s really kind of embarrassing and I just put it in the back of my closet where it has lingered for years when I could have just been wearing it around because it’s a really fun thing to wear if I can get over the embarrassment of how abysmal the sewing is.

so now, instead of all the things I should be doing, I am laboriously picking out all of the stitches (difficult due to the stretch material, I’ve probably put 10+ hours in and I’m still not done) and then I’m going to hand stitch the hem because I think there’s a technique I can use that will perhaps be messy as I learn it (on a stretch material, no less) but will at least be less obvious from the outside.

the humor of me going ‘I’m not going to get into historical dress and not going to hand sew things’ is probably not lost on you by this point, but I do want to further clarify that I have in fact made historical clothing before.

yeah, I drafted patterns from diagrams I found on the internet (probably more of an SCA thing than a historical thing) and made an apron skirt (which I still have) and a shift (which was probably much more historically accurate, sans the machine sewing, based on what I remember of the pattern drafting, though since then the material was sacrificed to some other project that i don’t recall)

it is absolutely an interest of mine, and has been, and I have dipped my toe in this before, and for some reason I have been pretending that it isn’t and won’t be and never will be because????????????

I honestly don’t know but clearly I have been lying to myself about multiple aspects of this

anyway I think I am almost done with the first part of this project (picking out the seams) and can start the sewing, which I believe will go much faster even if I don’t know what I’m doing (I kinda think I do, which is not the same thing) and trying to combat being mildly embarrassed about fooling myself into somehow genuinely believing that I was just watching the videos because they were relaxing and not like squarely within several spheres of interest of mine that I was starting to get back into.

Perhaps, sometimes, you need to trick yourself into remembering the things you’re interested in, I guess.

I mostly typed this up to give my hands a bit of a break from the seam picking because even with my fancy ergonomic seam ripper, spending hours and hours at this has definitely caused some aching and cramping.

[jiangsspace]

Pins and Needles | 04

>> Taehyung gets hurt and Na-Eun is furious at you.

Pairing: Kim Taehyung x fem!reader

Word count: 2,6K

Genre: angst, fluff, actor!taehyung

Warning! Not gender inclusive. This fiction does not include gender neutral terms nor gender neutral concepts. The entertainment business has a long way to go, in providing equality, although progress has been made. This is only fictional and should not be taken very seriously.

Plot: Taehyung gets his first role in a big movie production. He is excited but he knows he’s on it, because his girlfriend, Na-Eun, negotiated with the producers of the movie. What happens when a seasoned costumier with a dark past and an actor with severe seizures meet in the brutal world of entertainment?

Note! All resemblance to real life people is unintentional and all characters, for the exception of Taehyung of course, are the fruit of my imagination.

Two months into the production and Taehyung had managed to crack open your wall and shed some light in you. He would try and steal glances from you from time to time, when you stood in the shadows, ready to help if someone needed to fix their costume. They rarely did, so most of the day you lingered in your room sewing for your own pleasure.

Taehyung was in the middle of a battle scene and the director was monitoring his performance with keen hawk eyes. Taehyung’s physique definitely suited these kinds of movies. He had a lean build and was fairly muscular. Something the entertainment industry liked to call a Robin Hood-build.

The scene was cut and immediately stylists rushed over to him and started pampering him, asking him if he needed anything and patted his skin dry from sweat. You were looking from afar thinking Taehyung hadn’t noticed you, but he had taken the habit of always inspecting his surroundings to see if you were there. When you weren’t there he felt a little uneasy, and when you were he thought his performance was better.

One of the stylists, ever so obviously placed their hand on his arm when patting his forehead with a cold cloth. She was laughing and trying to spark a conversation, which went in vain since Taehyung was stealing glances at you.

Suddenly uninterested by the flirting scene in front of you you turned on your heels and walked back to your room to finish the medieval dress-project you had began the other night when you didn’t feel like going home to your demons.

Not even fifteen minutes passed that Taehyung was knocking on your door. You opened it slowly, no need to encourage his visits when he had a girlfriend. Someone would still get ideas and it would be the end of your career. Maybe his too.

“Hey, you left.” Taehyung’s statement stayed in the air as an awkward filler. “What are you making?” He quickly tried to change the subject by focusing on the dress on the mannequin.

You followed his gaze and registered where it landed. You laughed awkwardly and went between Taehyung and the floor-length dress, as if to protect it from view.

“It’s not done yet. No one was supposed to see it.” You felt bad for him. He was only trying to be nice and you shot him down. “I don’t feel confident enough yet to show my work like this.”

He noticed how your voice had grown quieter as you spoke and you were being shy around him. He had already noticed that when he placed his hand on your arm after laughing together. You had winced and asked him not to touch using the excuse that you were sensitive.

“I say we make a deal.” Taehyung offered his hand and spoke in a more relaxed tone to calm you. “I don’t get to see your unfinished work until they are done, but could you come watch me shoot? It calms me for some reason.”

Your head snapped up in confusion. Your eyes were curious yet suspicious. Taehyung figured you weren’t the kind to take things like that as a compliment.

“What do you mean it calms you when I’m around?” Your voice was small and Taehyung could almost see how you wrapped yourself in yourself and closed off from the world. As if to protect.

“I like to know you’re watching me when I shoot.” Taehyung flashed a friendly smile. He always seemed to have a smile on his face, except when Na-Eun was at the studio. It wouldn’t have surprised you if she was one of the producers of this movie or her father’s company was.

“But like, not in a creepy way,” he laughed throwing his head back. He was showing so much genuine emotion that you little by little loosened your grip on the prejudice you had of him. “You calm me, that’s all.”

You nodded shyly. “If you want I can show you the sketches I made for this dress.” You walked over to a drawer in the side room and pulled out a piece of paper. The drawing was in black and white but you had wrote the colors down. Taehyung had followed you in and leaned over your shoulder to look at it.

“I love it!” he ran his fingers along the lines and stared at the picture for a while without saying anything. He took one step closer to stick his face closer.

You felt his front pressing against your behind and it made you sick to the stomach. Not because it was Taehyung but because the contact was too sudden and explicit. It felt so raw and threw you off guard. In fear and disgust you let the paper fall and turned around like a whip.

Taehyung was surprised and knelt down to pick the picture up and give it back to you, but seeing Taehyung on his knees in front of you made you lose it. You had to get out and take a breather. Taehyung on his knees changed into another man on his knees pleading to get a taste of you and caressing your thighs. He kept repeating how his wife didn’t need to know and that you were so beautiful he couldn’t help himself.

Crying was for the weak and you didn’t want to show Taehyung how weak you were, in fact. But the emotions were so strong the tears came down on their own and stained your cheeks. Your breath was hitched in your throat and breathing became very laborious.

Taehyung got up like an arrow and made the mistake of trying to hug you. He hadn’t realized he was partly the reason you were so distressed. When his arms wrapped around you, your hands flew up to his chest to create some distance between you.

“Get off me!” Your tears were preventing you from seeing clearly and making you more anxious than you already were. You pushed him away, but he didn’t move. To an outsider it must’ve looked like Taehyung was comforting you, but it felt more like an attack. Taehyung’s arms around you made you think of someone else. It made you want to cry out in anger.

You pushed again harder, and Taehyung gave in and stumbled away from the force your fists elicited. At that, you dropped to the floor trying to gather yourself.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t-” Taehyung couldn’t finish his sentence. He dropped to the floor with you with sad eyes. Pity was the first feeling he must’ve felt.

The next morning Taehyung knocked on the door again. Shooting hadn’t started yet and he wanted to offer you a coffee. But no one answered the door even when he knocked for the third time. His eyebrows scrunched in disappointment as the coffee in his hand became colder and colder.

He had to be on set in five minutes and he decided to leave the coffee by the door for you to see. He got a pen and wrote your name on it.

He was tired and out of breath by the second take. No one seemed to notice his heavy breathing and sloppily moving limbs. Action was shouted time after time and Taehyung thought his body would soon collapse. His partner was also unaware of his state and kept striking ruthlessly like during rehearsals.

Taehyung was now completely aware if he was one beat late he would get the punch of his life. The thought seemed funny enough to consider, but Taehyung was too tired to really know what was smart and what wasn’t.

If it wasn’t the will of someone higher than humans Na-Eun walked to the studio and locked eyes with Taehyung, as his supporting actor punched him straight in the face. Taehyung’s lip explosed and the blow was strong enough to leave him unconscious.

A scream of agony could be heard from the main studio as you sat in your room watching intently at the coffee cup which had your name written on it. Taehyung’s handwriting was neat and clear, easily readable. Just like him.

Quick steps were heard from the corridor and you knew they belonged to Na-Eun. No stylist wore high heels during the day at work.

You were still sat on your chair, needle and thread in hand. You had taken a break from the medieval dress as it made you nauseous to look at it. Socks were the perfect cure for nausea and stress. And right now you had the feeling Na-Eun was coming to you.

The noise grew louder and louder the closer the source approached your door. Before you knew it, a bull-like raging Na-Eun appeared in the doorway and stormed in to grab you by the hair, but you expected that kind of behavior so you spun around in your chair and escaped her barely. Luckily you had shorter hair, so she couldn’t grab your ponytail.

“You bitch!” She was raging and lava was pouring out of her ears. “Because of you Taehyung had another bout at home and now he’s too tired to shoot.” 

You stood wordless in front of her. Na-Eun hadn’t witnessed anything that happened yesterday.

“Taehyung just received a punch in the face, because of you.” Her words were dripping with poison and her eyes glared at you. Still, you were unable to say a word. She really was a terrifying person. “He’s so tired, because he stayed here with you last night. He’s my boyfriend, keep your hands off of him!” she snapped with such force that she stumbled backwards.

She was fuming with rage and your reaction wasn’t the one she had hoped to witness. You were cold and nonchalant but Na-Eun wanted to see you on the floor crawling at her feet, begging for forgiveness. It was the least she expected from you, from Taehyung, from everyone.

She tried to take a step forward to intimidate you, but you stood your ground with an expression of steel. Not one muscle moved on your face even though you screamed from the inside. Na-Eun stared at you, clearly calculating whether you were a fight worth fighting.

“Keep your hands off of him. He’s mine!” She took one more step forward but surrendered quickly when she noticed you still hadn’t moved. Na-Eun lifted her hand to slap you as a sign of warning, but her hand never touched you because someone’s hand was keeping her from hitting you.

Na-Eun gasped in surprise as she felt Taehyung’s long fingers wrapped around her slender white wrist.

“Don’t touch her, Na-Eun,” voice full of dominance he growled “or you’ll regret it.”

“Tae-?” she winced as his grip on her tightened. “Taehyung, you’re hurting me.” He let go approaching you carefully. Like a hunter trying to soothe a scared animal, he didn’t touch you. Simply whispered in a calm tone to bring you back to this moment. 

Na-Eun scoffed and crossed her arms across her chest, clearly annoyed. Taehyung paid no attention to her, she was air to him. You were the only thing that mattered. Taehyung didn’t know what had happened to you in the past, but he was determined never to see such pain on your face as yesterday.

He had stayed with you for what seemed like hours, to soothe you and talk to you about himself and his problems. He didn’t think you were actually listening, so letting his guard down he poured his soul into your hands and a little bit into your heart. Truth is, you had listened to every word and tasted the bitter taste of each and every one of them. Taehyung really was trapped in a lie of a relationship and a maze with no way out.

“Can you hear me?” he used your name for the first and it seemed to work since your eyes snapped up to his in confusion. As if you had just woken up. “I’m here with you now.”

“You two really are something,” Na-Eun laughed coldly “Your mind is crippled and she can’t speak.”

Taehyung turned to look at her with a passion she had never seen in him. Something he had never even experienced in his life. This feeling of rebellion and standing up to himself gave him the courage to stand in front of Na-Eun and stare at her in the eyes. She had dark brown eyes which were considered beautiful, but Taehyung knew what she was like in private.

“We’re done. This- this sick deal we have is over. I don’t care what rumors you decide to spread about me, I know I’m the better person here.” Taehyung received strength from every word he uttered and his posture now made him look enormous. Na-Eun didn’t quiver, but her lips were shaking. She was clearly intimidated by him and the sudden power he had wielded.

When Na-Eun had left the room you fell to your knees, supporting your body with your arms extended straight and your hair fell to your face. Taehyung knelt down to be at eye level with you but didn’t initiate contact. If you were going to touch him, the action had to begin by you.

“I don’t need to be saved.” You managed to mutter out. Embarrassed to know that Taehyung had witnessed you at your worst, unable to defend yourself and standing like a terrified deer that wanted nothing but to run away.

“Even the strongest need to be saved,” Taehyung laughed. “You aren’t alone in this world.” Taehyung hesitated to confess what he had wanted to say for so long. You hadn’t lifted your head the entire time you were left alone. “And I need you to save me.”

The winter passed and spring flowers were blooming when the production was just at its end. The almost two year long project had taken a toll on everyone, but the results turned out successful. Taehyung received an award for his performance and the movie was a box-office hit. Na-Eun and Taehyung still had to work together as she was one of the producers, but further major conflicts were avoided. Taehyung had you to ground him.

He spent every night with you, in your room watching you work. He no longer called you needle fairy, but used your real name. 

“Taehyung, you did well.” With a smile you offered a cup of coffee to the exhausted actor. The last scene had just been wrapped and the actor was dripping with sweat. Before coming to you, he had shooed away all the attention-seeking stylists who wished to be close to him. He only wanted you.

“Thank- thank you,” he had yet to steady his breathing as his chest was rising and falling at inconsistent intervals. “I feel drained.”

He took the paper cup from your hands and your fingers brushed together. It felt extremely cliché, but you thought someone had plugged a wire in your spine to send electric shocks across your entire body. The contact felt so new and pure. For the first time in ten years, touching someone else felt natural and good.

Taehyung never asked about your past which made you respect him even more. He didn’t necessarily need to know what had happened to you, in order to establish a true relationship with him. Over time you would be so comfortable around each other that touching wouldn’t be a problem. 

And if you were being honest, you had deprived yourself from human contact for so long in the fear of getting hurt again. No one could be trusted in the business and you practically breathed the costumes you created and took pride in the work you did. Taehyung didn’t want to hurt you or make you fear him. He needed you as much as you needed him.

“Do you want to come to my room and try this new jacket I made?” He whined like a tired child but followed you anyway, his needle fairy.

one | two | three | four

 this concludes the final installment of Pins and Needles. It’s been quite a ride, but I made it. Some of you might know that I’m not very talented when it comes to these long pieces, so I hope it made some sense and that the text was good. Thank you xxx

[trebaolsmovingcastle]

If there is a constant in my writing about the news and modern society it isn’t my contempt for the conservatives of the world, it’s my hatred of automation. Which is to say that I appreciate and understand the drive towards it, but as this article unintentionally lays out, automation is a shitty gift of the magi where you can buy well made shirts for cheap, but you lost all your jobs to t-shirt making robots.

The article spends most of its time focusing on Softwear, an Atlanta based clothing automation manufacturing company.

The company grew out of the drive to get all the things our military wears and uses made domestically...but the DOD basically discovered almost immediately that the reason we make everything overseas is that...

Making clothes in the US is prohibitively expensive, because workers expect to receive decent wages for their labor. So what did the military do? It invested in automation. The Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency granted Georgia Tech with $1.26 million to develop robotic sewing machines.

Mysteriously the article then explains that Softwear’s machines also don’t produce clothes domestically...but it doesn’t explain where they produce them. Anyway, the company founder, Palaniswamy Rajan is the Eli Whitney of modern manufacturing.

He's unapologetic about eliminating mechanical jobs like sewing, arguing that automation lets workers focus on more interesting, bigger-picture tasks — and often in better, higher-paying jobs. 

(...)

“Most young people nowadays would rather work in services than in a factory,” he says, “so why try to recreate a world that is long gone and wasn't all that great to begin with? 

It's an idealization of the past, as if the past were always so rosy," he said."Do we really want phone operators plugging in your phone connection, people having hard physical-labor jobs in factories," he said, that are physically straining and often unhealthy?

Whitney of course produced the cotton gin, designed to automate the process of cleaning and picking burs from cotton, a laborious and difficult job done by slaves in the south. The gin was so good at its job that it saved slavery as an institution and brought about the unintended consequence of reinvigorating a slowing slave trade and guaranteed Civil War 50 odd years later.

In this case Rajan makes the false claim that the factory worker has freedom of choice now. No longer obliged to work at the factory the laborer can kick back, pop open a beer, then dream up the next great American novel, or go and work at a tech start up where the real cash was.

In Rajan’s universe the difference between the old time factory worker on the line and J.D. Rockefeller was one of time, it was an accident of circumstance that that laborer was a laborer, remove the labor, and the laborer becomes free to be a tycoon.

Trump of course has pledged a return to manufacturing, but as is becoming evident, manufacturing now is automated, meaning very little labor is involved, and its been this way for 40 plus years. When I grouse about rust belt dumb fucks blaming Obama for not opening factories, it’s because this ‘factory’ problem is older than I am, meaning that there haven’t been factories, with good jobs, and strong unions, since well before I was born in the 80′s...so who all is opining around the burning meth lab for the good ol’ days of manufacturing when most of the people who’d be talking about it...never had it to begin with.

"The fact that the U.S. manufacturing sector has been succeeding by many measures in recent years makes Trump's promises seem like false dreams," Mark Muro, a senior fellow and the director of policy at the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution, wrote in MIT's Technology Review. "No one should be under the illusion that millions of manufacturing jobs are coming back to America."

Indeed, despite Trump's public rhetoric about pressuring the air-conditioner maker Carrier to keep jobs in Indiana instead of sending them to Mexico, the company's CEO later acknowledged the result would be, you guessed it, greater automation.

Meanwhile Trump insists that the real problem are the god damned sonofabitchin Mexicans, secretly toiling away at secret american factories that are forever cloaked because of their proximity to the latins notoriously advanced ‘labor tech.’ Except of course...

...one study from Ball State University finds "almost 88% of job losses in manufacturing in recent years can be attributable to productivity growth, and the long-term changes to manufacturing employment are mostly linked to the productivity of American factories." In other words, robots, not outsourcing or trade competition, are the culprit.

FUCKIN’ JOHNNY FIVE ALIVE AND TAKING OUR JOBS!

YOU AREN’T FOOLING ME DEMON! (I can’t...I love Johnny 5 too much to stay angry at him, take my jobs you lovable scamp.)

The author of one of these studies however feels pretty good about what’s happening...

optimistic about the prospects for automation to generate better, higher-paying jobs. He wrote in a separate paper that the rapid pace of recent technological growth had not, for the most part, wiped out a significant portion of jobs but instead changed the labor market in myriad ways, many positive: "Automation does indeed substitute for labor — as it is typically intended to do. However, automation also complements labor, raises output in ways that lead to higher demand for labor, and interacts with adjustments in labor supply."

That may be especially the case in the services economy, which accounts for some 80% of spending in the nearly $19 trillion US economy.

Except....whoopsidoodle...

Service industries, even complicated ones like food service are getting automated simultaneously.

Also, I should probably reiterate what should be painfully obvious here, factory jobs in America were traditionally middle class jobs, they were higher paying and offered superior benefits to service industry jobs. Service industries were what you got in high school before college. Now they’re becoming the only job...and they’re being automated too. So when you eliminate middle class labor, the laborers don’t ‘level up’ into service industry, they get sorted down economically...except that soon, in essence simultaneously to industrial automation killing jobs, service industry automation will kill service labor.

You, if you read this, noticed that service industries are our economy. 19 trillion bucks my friends...you going out to buy a shirt and some french fries, that’s our economy. Except what happens when you automate large portions of that industry and thus eliminate the jobs held by the people who operate the businesses you are generating profit for...and by extension...what happens to you, because the idea is that these ‘Service’ jobs can also be automated, and are being automated...so...if you can’t work in factories, and the tech industry is glutted on engineering graduates and outsourcing, as well as using contract work to avoid long term job security...and you can’t support all the people in the service industries as they dry up...what do you do?

According to Rajan you are suddenly free to do what you want.

In a capitalist system that demands you sell your labor for wages to buy goods and services, which you can no longer labor in. What happens when money stops going into the service industry that our economy is fundamentally based on now? Because, remember, the service industry isn’t just the fry cooks and store clerks, it’s those same laborers spending money in other service industry supporting businesses. With no work for service industry workers, there’s no money circulating at Target, McDonald’s, or any of the other service based jobs. 

One critical hole, that I can not get, and god knows I’ve tried, any economist or tech futurist to talk about is ‘what happens when you kill all the low paying, low level jobs in a capitalist society with no safety nets?’ 

I’ve seen a few arguments that you’d have more jobs repairing the robots...except it’s not a directly comparable number, it’s not like every robot generates a thousand jobs, the robot may generate a percentage of a job, because a single repairman or service center can repair and do work on multiple robots.

Also, because I come from a working class family, I don’t pay special attention to the wealthy and jobs performed by ‘professional’ or white collar workers.

Guess what you fucks, those are getting automated too...

JPMorgan said on February 27 that it was launching software that could accomplish in seconds the same amount of work it would take lawyers 360,000 hours to do. This kind of surge in productivity is hard to fathom — and lawyers aren't even part of the manufacturing industry.

So...lawyers now can be marginally hedged down in favor of automation, we know also that in the tech industry and  stock market similar automated number crunching and data analysis is becoming common. That would have been done by the larger portion of white collar workers in those offices in the past and is now becoming obviously the way to go, thus...fewer of those guys around the office. But don’t worry, they’re finally free from the crushing weight of office work and can finally cycle into the better labor of the service industry...oh wait, that’s a step down the economic ladder, and also those jobs are disappearing.

I should mention that futurists will cite the fact that the world didn’t end when the industrial revolution happened, we went from agrarian and craftsman based societies to industrial ones. The artisans and farmers of yesteryear were crushed and used to oil the machines of industry. It worked out, because your talented shoe maker went on to work at a shoe factory, your farmers all filed in and filled positions in dangerous factories...they had jobs literally generated for them, awful jobs, their labor was undervalued, but there were jobs present to keep at least a majority of them from dying in their now machine plowed fields and empty workshops.

The problem with this ‘NEW INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION’ is that there aren’t factories. We aren’t creating a new industry or job market for the displaced ‘craftsman’ and ‘farmers’ instead we’re eliminating labor, unskilled and otherwise, and we’re not generating a new workplace and new economy to support these displaced workers, and the system we have is notorious for devaluing labor, especially desperate labor.

So what happens? What do you do when your economy is built on low wage, low skill workers...and you take their jobs, and the jobs of the strata above them, and the jobs of the strata above them...but...you also have a society fundamentally flawed, that can be in the midst of this crisis and blame it all on ‘immigrant’ labor?

Find someone, anyone that can provide an answer that is honest, and isn’t ‘we move past capitalism into a utopia where there is no work and everyone is free’ and I will gladly read what they have to say and try to add it to my understanding of this problem...because so far...I’ve only seen the out of touch try and explain that everything will work out great, while not answering the question of ‘what do you do when no one can afford basic necessities...and there isn’t enough work to go around, and your government is literally antagonistic towards your existence?’ 

[janiklandre-blog]

Saturday, April 8, 2017

8:50 a.m.  sunny still cool   the computer room must have been left open last night by mistake - I noticed it when I came down to the second floor - I leave yesterday's nyt with a neighbor whom I rarely see - and also this morning I made use of a bathroom on the second floor. This is the next to last day of my house guests and at least one of them got up earlier than usual - until now I never saw them before late in the morning. This house here does have many amenities - mostly used by the Chinese - here on the second floor this here computer room, next door some room for the yard sales, then the laundry room, bathrooms, a library with a sewing machine - then on every floor a garbage shoot - next door to my apartment - and downstairs a community room with three stationary bicycles - there used to be upholstered furniture, but no more - were I to go to the occasional tenent meetings called by the administrator I might know why what is happening and also find out about the obscure projects why in very short intervals 16 apartments have to be inspected - by lottery - to find out about the state of the house.

Then there is a room with a pool table, vending machines and a table the Chinese use to play cards. Beautiful plants - a project taken on by a fellow tenant whom I knew long before moving here. At a young age she was seriously injured falling from a swing - was able to be classified disabled and receive government support - supplemented it by baby sitting - and became a very active activist - with the aids group act up, with active disabled - who successfully lobbied to make all places accessible to disabled - our wars, countless automobile accidents, also workplace accidents have contributed to their number - and now: old age group rapidly growing. Also Indian affairs. She never married and loves plants - once asked me to water her thirty plants while she had one of several operations - every plant with a special plan - I told her I was the wrong person. Also at first she wanted me as company to go to shows, museums, exhibits, concerts - people do think that as a German with an M.Phil from Columbia U I must enjoy New York's countless - many free - offerings - and I disappoint them when I tell them, I go to parks, my Society Library, the Catholic Worker - that is enough for me. She did give a couple of nice parties, now has given up - is involved in affairs of this - she chides me for my lack of interests - I do point out to her, she is in her 60's to my 80's - born into an affluent New York family,her father I believe had something to do with radio - born around 1950 in New York City she hung around Washington Square park as a teenager in the 60's. Yesterday the nyt times drew attention to a book by Joyce Johnson, a memoir, Minor Characters - a bit older than my neighbor - 21 in 1957 when she got involved with Kerouac of later On the Road fame - and also gives an excellent description of Washington Square in the 1960's - the Beats.

When we returned from Geneva to New York in 1962 as per the wishes of my then husband, we came to live on the Upper East Side - social climber territory. My children were young and then I fell in love with nearby Central Park - a total, wonderful, wild mess in those days - considered a crime scene where few ventured. It was a crime scene. Growing up in the streets of Prague in wartime, my mother out of commission doing forced labor, relegated to the school for imbeciles and half Jews - an icy apartment, hardly any coal - I came to roam the streets and parks - and spending time at a wonderful friend, Marianne - a heated home, her father the Jew and her mother at home, cooking wonderful food. But the life in the streets has made me the tough - and yes also often angry - woman I have turned into. I grew up with a very early awareness of the concentration camps, the war, the killing - early lost all respect for HIGH CULTURE - also the enjoyment of that culture. I was a street urchin - to my mother's greatest dismay - she dreamed of me as a lady, the woman who would do it all - have a brilliant academic career, a brilliant marriage, brilliant children - a beauty! - well urged on by her I made a stab at it all - much blamed by her for my failures - told by many around me how much more I could have done with my talents and looks. My psychiatrist friend Edmund not long ago: You were a knockout - what you could not have done with your looks - well, for one thing my mother, luckily was insistant I use my mind rather than my looks. 

Once again - totally off topic - no focus, no discipline - describing my house here. Until recently downstairs was a huge industrial kitchen - occasionally used by Chinese - removed for reasons unknown to me - nowstanding empty - used - by the Chinese - they installed a ping pong table, they do tai chi - I have joined them on the roof - should join them more, they smile and do encourage me.

Last not least there is the community room I have reserved at $75 for my June birthday party - there is a grand piano at times used by a woman - whom I - utterly dismayed by the state of psychiatry - geld fressers - hungry for money - do call mentally ill - I call her disturbed. A good looking woman - who has made attempts to befriend me - she is a good piano player and has a kind heart - yet her outbursts - about men flying into her room and beating her up - are not easy to deal with. Her sense of reality is off - by now I've met a number of such people, especially at the Catholic Worker - they want - need - your attention - yet don't have a clue as to who I am .

Much is being on this topic by people deeply involved with the problem - and also truly trying to help them to be happier - mostly of course these days with medications - that are so questionable yet I too must admit can be helpful. Often you hear the phrase: he/she is off the meds and acting crazy - and attempts are made to force people to take their meds. The reason people stop taking them because they make them gain weight and feel bad.

Many of them to avoid "the system" live in the streets - in the mornings while who knows how many rooms in the fancy hotels stand empty I find more and more people sleeping on the side walks.

At the CW they are offered a lot of cake and comfort food - a table where they can rest their head and sleep - at night it is the streets - women often abused, at times murdered.

Yes, there are a few model set ups - but many memoirs that I have read mostlyby people from rich families - end up in all kinds of horrors. In Dostoyevski's novels we can read about "the village idiot" - often laughed at for follies - but mostly it seems happier than in all the situations created in modern times.

But back to me in the 1960's in New York - I knew so little of what I have learned over the years observing - at first my domain was rather districted between - well I might get to places like Wall Street, the Staten Island ferry - knew really nothing of the areas of the Bohemians - the West Village, Washington Square Park - where many people I know now were hanging out as teenagers, or in their 20's - some of course also older.

I knew next to nothing about mental illness until I met Ari at Columbia U. in the spring semester of 1967 - in Middle High German two. For him it was a requirement in his studies of comparative medieval literature. He was officially mentally ill - and totally ignorant I believed I could help him - did help him - many of these people do have an excellent instinct for tolerance - I have a lot - a soft spot - and a deep wish to help. I have written in my memoirs about it. He was born in 1942 and died in 1998. Lived a turbulent life - at last making good money writing copy for Saatchi and Saatchi - famous advertising agency - left his 8th wife, a Chinese woman with an owned apartment on Riverside Drive with river view and also stocks and bonds. Me he caused serious trouble.

He introduced me to the American world of mental illness, he introduced me to the East Village where I came to live in 1973 . In many situations I have been the only with a driver's licence, knowing to drive - he never drove - and always an iron reserve in the bank - he had a friend on Avenue B - in 1967 dangerous territory - I rented a car, helped the guy move - the first of a good number of such situations.

Still back to the house here - the community room with the piano is used for many different occasions - community meetings, concerts, tenant meetings, all kinds of JASA events - a voting place - with collapsable chairs and tables it can be used for many functions - and it gives on a garden, very rarely used by anybody. I gave my 75th birthday party there - a beautiful, warm day in June - we all sat outside and did not use the room inside at all. Next to the room is also a functional kitchen - Chinese New Years was celebrated with much decoration and also lolts of good food.

My friends these days tend to upset me - in the nyt profile of man 107 - his advice - turn the other cheek. Perhaps that is the way to go.

It's beautiful weather - I may head uptown - library - park - my house guests - one still asleep, the other unable to commit - luckily I now have long gotten used to going to Central Park by myself - do remember the days - 70's? - when I strenuously would call people, trying to meet someone - now have long realized - it only causes annoyance - they are late, cannot find me - forget and so - forget it.

Yesterday - Molly came it turned out to be very laborious to find my memoirs that are digitally in the archives of LBI - Leo Baeck Institute - it took her great skills to find them - they are combined with my mother's memoirs - that had to be scanned, also some her hand written parts are there - finally we did get to mine, in very good shape - double spaced, very readable if you can find them, she did set up some link that she posted on my facebook page and also in this here blog - if any of you find it, let me know.

Then we went to Gesine Schulz - the once upon a time NY Goethe House librarian - 1983 to 1985 - then she had to return to her sick mother in Essen, Germany, had serious health problems herself - but has taken the greatest of pains to further my stalled? writing - cannot even call it career - but Gesine has tried so hard to put me on the map, she has created a website for me - Marianne Goldscheider - perhaps Marianne Landre Goldscheider - I am so bad at this - so quickly and easily get frustrated - hopeless.

Anyway, she is a much published writer - born once upon a time in Pommern - close to 1950 - no, of course she was not born in Pommern, her parents had fled Pommern and I think her father came to work in coal mines in what we call the Ruhr Gebiet - western German industrrial area - must have died quite young - Gesine, please forgive me knowing so little about you - you have done so much for me - so, yesterday with the help of Molly at long last I found all of your books that I can buy on Amazon - for 6 Euro and change - I would not have the vaguest idea how to buy something on Amazon - but perhaps next Friday we will try.

Sadly this exercise totally exhausted me - then I checked some of my undeliverable mail - I alwsys delete - now found a long list - I hope she deleted it - tried to figure out who thedgay was - this is my Thursday Toughts list that had 75 - some died, many switched to gmail and since I don't dare touch the list - some it seems keep their earlier email address - some don't - the once who don't no longer get my email - those who keep old address very occasionally check it - well, I've referred to myself as a blind hen - in German ein blindes Huhn findet auch ein Korn - all in all with the help of so many - my son, my grandson, Ken, Gesine and now Molly and probably some more I have found a few corns by now - Molly posting this as a beautiful blog - tumblr - Gesine at times with worldpress - now my grandson also with worldpress, Molly posted on facebook - did show me responses I get - forget how to get to those responses - cannot learn ipad, struggle with iphone - fall asleep get terribly old

Molly came at 11 a.m. by 1 p.m. I was exhausted then a rare moment Pim had a little time to talk - he is terribly busy helping people - as unpaid volunteer - then did fall asleep, walked to Washington Square, great accordion player singing songs I like - yes, I do like music, I like singing - simple singing - folk singing - it was chilly, walked past Cooper Union, saw something about exhibit about the Czech man who immolated himself in Prague in 1969 - much remembered - a man immolated himself in the common in Amherst, Mass. protesting war - he was declared unhinged, no trace of him - then also a Catholic Worker - considered questionable - I found the exhibit, photographs, by, about the artists commemorating him, not much about the Czech.

On to supermarket, got baby spinach mesnt for salad in plastic box, $2.99 - a piece of salmon $5.04 - a can of beer, a yogurt - came to $12 and change - there is less expensive food - takes more effort - home - Pim had mopped, they had left - some bicycle - wondering about my eye - computer, message from my friend indicating she was around, but she was not around, she was in Brooklyn - why not say so, I wonder. Also more and more people no longer call, only message - email - try to avoid contact with another human - I answered her - after a while text, I am in Brooklyn - I took the chance to write a long German letter - about all kind of things I avoid writing about on this here blog - lest I step on toes - German: ins Fettnaepfchen treten - an artist, I think Buys, or Buyes was his name, a German, had art cslled Fettnaepfchen - to step into a little container with fat - I do like all these sayings - and I may do already too much of that. Getting too careful gets boring - and of course some suggest keep a locked up journal and make sure to burn it before you die. That is what my friend does - it's too bad she will not share with me what is on her mind. Wonder how she describes me in this locked up journal - I've often pointed out - silence can also be very disturbing - silence kills - she sees herself more virtuous than I am - and so be it.

Enough - she now angrily tells me Felton reads what I write - maybe also tells her - she tells me antrily "he sends it all over the place" - well - that is what I am trying to do  - and if only I ever had had a computer savvy person next to me - the "wife" who saves me from being indiscreet - who does everything technical - Paco used to say: I paint, I make art - someone else has to sell it - he had put hopes into me - and I found out how hard it is to sell art, writing, music - some find a good seller, he had Dorsky for a while who did a lot for him, then it was not enough, he insulted Dorsky on the advice of a psychiatrist, confront the man, he was told - and thst was the end of Dorsky - anyway - if the friend would not find reading anything I write a total waste of time (perhaps secretly she does) - she would find out how I struggle with - justifying writing and sending it out - in East Germany - that is after East Germany - people found out about all the Stasi had read - the secret police - and how many of their friends worked for them - well, I never have believed in secrets, never in privacy and do see virtue in sharing my thoughts. Off to the park. Marianne