February's NaBloPoMo - Make!

This month's theme is "make" -- whatever that means.

What's interesting is that there is so little that America manufactures anymore and most people have a tendency to not make things, but purchase them as needed and discard them with abandon. Once upon a time -- as recently as the turn of the century -- everyone made their own clothes.  They also grew much of their own food. When my mother was a kid growing up in the rural South, you weren't allowed in stores to buy clothes off the rack. You had a sewing machine, you learned how to sew what you wanted and mend your hand-me-downs. If you really had to have it, you ordered it in a Sears and Roebuck catalog. You got resourceful. You made what you wanted.

This was the Southern way, the way I was raised. To be able to make things with your hands, whether it was the curtains in the living room or the pretty dress you saw in the window.  To cook, to bake. To keep a garden seasonally, grow a fruit tree and eat what you grow.  I have all of that in me and have embraced some part of that somewhere along the way in my life -- but I live in a city that doesn't necessarily give me free rein to live that way.

Of course, this got me to thinking about what I make and as it turns out, it's a lot. I would like to add clothes to that list.  I was taught to sew as a child and I'd love to pick it back up.  Knitting, too.

It's kind of wacky that we need a website to scour the nation to find American manufacturers and then have them plead with us to buy American in this really jingoistic way -- like you're less of an American if you don't -- but here it is.  They should have that conversation with the American manufacturers that take their business to other countries.

And then there's The Buy Black Movement. But that's another conversation...

Quote of the Day: "I'm not watching all-white movies anymore."

"When you do the math it just doesn’t add up.  A movie costs about $13.75. Plus parking and snacks.  On average, I’m spending about $25 every time I go see a movie.  I usually see a movie at least 4 times a month.  That’s $100 a month.  Multiply that by 12 months and I’m spending $1200 a year on movies alone.  That’s rent money.

I’m wasting rent money on these films that purposefully exclude me.  Why would I do that?  That’s completely insane.  

If I took that $1200 every year and put it in my savings account I could invest in my own original content.  I wish I’d thought of doing this years ago.  I’d probably be directing a feature film by now.  But as they say, there’s no time like the present."

Read more at winefinedarkchicks.com

The Fourth Day of Kwanzaa: Ujamaa

today's principle: to build our own businesses, control the economics of our own community and share in all our work and wealth.

in other words, buy black. 

once upon a time, we had our own black doctors and dentists and midwives. we ate at our own restaurants, drank in our own bars and juke houses and attended our own churches and schools. we frequented our own businesses and shopped in our own grocery stores. because we weren't allowed to do so anywhere else. well -- legally, we could go anywhere. but if we did go to the white part of town, we were quite literally taking our lives into our own hands. 

in too many instances, prosperous black communities were obliterated by angry whites who resented their industriousness and financial independence and/or who wanted their land and resources.  remember the rosewood massacre of 1923?  an entire prosperous self-sufficient black community in florida, slaughtered on the supposed infallable word of a white woman who cried rape.  and no, that wasn't an isolated incident. for more on the subject, read buried in the bitter waters: the hidden history of ethnic cleansing in america by elliot jaspin.

buying black -- like buying american -- isn't as easy as you might think. the story of one chicago family's effort to buy black is the stuff of what some would like to think of as urban myth. or an impossible dream, maybe. i buy things mindfully.  i want to know where it comes from, what corporate entity is behind it, who's getting my dollar. i'd prefer to empower a black female but hey -- that's just me.