Everything Else - Jo B. Paoletti

Where did February go?

2/21/2020

So much for promises. I pledged to Facebook less and blog more. But then came January, and even more important, February. I did keep the first part of my promise, deleting the Facebook app from my mobile devices and only checking in once or twice a day on my laptop. But my intention to focus on my research and writing was disrupted by our decision to move to a nearby retirement community. It happens in almost exactly one month, and the last two months have been consumed with downsizing thirty-five years of stuff and getting our house ready to sell. I won’t bore you with the details. Suffice it to say it takes up significant bandwidth, no matter how organized you are or how much you are looking forward to the next chapter.

But now I am sitting in a coffee shop thinking about my research for the first time this year, and it feels good. Watch this space!

PS: If you need our new mailing address, DM or email me.

Greetings from 2019

12/31/2019

Because you need a message from a friend in the middle of all those end-of-the-year solicitations for money.

I checked my email inbox today, and it was so sad. it was even sadder than my actual mailbox, which has been stuffed with “mail” from charities, noble causes, pleas from political candidates, and grocery store coupons. (No, I have not discarded the Oxford comma, and I never will.) Here’s a some random news and speculation from me to brighten up your New Year’s Eve Day, because who doesn’t need some real mail?

“Family holiday letters are so 20th century, but I still love them.”
— Jo Paoletti

Random News

Jim and I are getting the hang of this retirement thing. He’s figured out when all of the major soccer games are televised, and I have binge-watched all of the Great English Baking Show. We did a bit of traveling, some together, some not. (“Let there be spaces in your togetherness”, Kahlil Gibran. Best couples advice ever.) Highlights were Mexico and Chautauqua, NY (just me), Spokane and Costa Rica (just him), and Raleigh, NC, Star Island, NH, and Rehoboth Beach, DE (both of us), topped by a week in West Virginia with family and friends at Thanksgiving.
I continue to slog away at my third book, Que Sera,Sera: A generational autobiography, about how the clothing of the last 70 years reveals how I learned to be female, feminine, and white. Don’t hold your breath for a copy: it HAS been a slog.
We both turned 70 this year (how terribly strange, as Paul Simon observed in his 20s), Jim with little fanfare, me with a backyard party with ice cream, cake, and a professional clown. (Who’s the introvert now?)

Speculation

The coming year is going to be a challenge, on every level. How could it not be? If our parents were still living, we’d get a lecture about the Great Depression and the Second World War, as a reminder of the power in community and unity. The power is still there, as is the realization that we never know if it will be enough to make a difference. As Geraldine Brooks writes in March (one of the best books I read in 2019):
The outcome is not the point.
The point is the effort…To believe to act, and to have events confound you — I grant you, that is hard to bear. But to believe, and not to act, or to act in a way that every fiber of your soul held was wrong — how can you not see? That is what would have been reprehensible.
That’s a heavy thought for a holiday letter, but there’s no sugarcoating the mess we are in: our country, humanity, the earth. So I plan to hold tighter to the good people around me, and balance my need to turn inward for restoration and to direct my energy outward for positive change.

Friends

“Make new friends, but keep the old; one is silver and the other gold.”
I used to joke that I could never figure out which was which. A recent conversation finally switched on the light. My really indispensable friends - the “golden” ones - are a mix of ages, and they came into my life anywhere from middle school to last year. What they have in common is the way we fit together, the comfort we enjoy in our interactions. Sometimes it happens quickly: you hit it off at a first meeting. But you can also know someone for years or decades before you finally get a chance to connect on that magical level that leads to close friendship.
So make new friends and keep the old; cherish the ones that turn out to be gold.
Friend, I hope 2020 brings you good times, resilience, community, and golden friendships galore.

Love,

Jo

Stepping away from Facebook

11/11/2019

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to delete the Facebook app from my mobile devices. Besides being too much temptation to procrastinate, the shady “news” practices and generally evil attitude of Mark Z. were getting on my last nerve. This was a tough decision; I was a very early adopter, way back when it was being rolled out campus by campus and you could only connect with other users from the same email domain. It is also my main connection with far-flung friends, family, and former students. But now that is going to change a bit. Here’s how:

Facebook is still on my laptop, but I am only going to be checking it once a day. So time-sensitive messages will have to get to me by other means. My nearest and dearest know that I detest telephones and voicemail with a white hot passion, so please use that as a last resort, and be prepared to wait while I steel myself for the ordeal of replying.

Better alternatives: Fb Messenger, text, email. Even better: buy some stamps and write me an actual letter. Stamps are so cool.

If your main interest is my professional stuff, follow my Jo Paoletti, Author page instead of friending me. If you think you might need to contact me for collaboration or a recommendation, I am on LinkedIn. For those nice people who said they will miss my pithy and insightful posts on Facebook, you can find a smattering of those on Twitter and Instagram. (Yes, I know Facebook owns Instagram, but the political air is less rancid there.)

Finally, I promise to blog more regularly here in the future. See ya around!

Writer's block

9/16/2019

I have no idea what to say
or how
or who might be listening
or might want to listen.
If they knew I had something to say.
If I had something to day.

The Great Dismal Swamp has nothing on you.

Coming up for air (briefly)

9/4/2019

I am in the throes of writing a chapter that is KICKING MY ASS. But I have also been reading Robin, by David Itzkoff, a wonderful biography of Robin Williams that unexpectedly offers parallels with Indian star Shah Rukh Khan (my not-secret obsession). They both share layers of sadness, deep loneliness, manic tendencies to overact, and a genius for hiding themselves in their characters. Not to mention their movie choices (“one for the masses/money, one for me”). And somehow I ended up rewatching “Oh Darling Yeh Hai India” (available on Netflix) and “Jab Tak Hai Jaan” (Amazon Prime, as "As Long as I Live". There can not be two more different films, but such was my mood. I adore ODYHI for all of its Brechtian Dr. Strangelove craziness, for Amrish Puri chewing the scenery, the fountain scene, and SRK’s magnificent jail monologue. Not to mention Javed Jaffrey’s dancing. And I watch JTHJ mainly for the soundtrack — not just the songs, but the underlying score, which is so amazing (yesssss A.R. Rahman is a genius!!). It’s also great fun to watch knowing that SRK and Anushka finally get together in JHMS. (The airport scene in JTHJ is even better now that you know…)
Thinking: how hard it is to stay grounded in ordinary work and life while the world is burning up and our leaders have lost their minds.
Too dark? C’est la vie…

I will leave you with a fun happy song from Jab Tak Hai Jaan!

From iconoclast to icon: my moment of reflection

3/25/2019

A long time ago (sometime in the 1980s), I gave a paper at a regional Costume Society of America meeting. I can't remember the topic, and it isn't even listed on my CV. Only one thing stands out in my memory: I was introduced by Richard Martin, at that time one of the brightest stars in the fashion studies firmament. Only one year my senior, Richard was an established curator and scholar, producing several blockbuster exhibits a year at the Fashion Institute of Technology. He had graduated from college the same year I graduated from high school, and earned two master's degrees while I was still waiting tables. In short, he was brilliant. He was also gracious and generous; there are many "stars" in academic fields who are willing to lower themselves to occasional brief appearances at conferences, where they hang out with the other stars and ignore everyone else. Richard was not that person.

So it was that Richard Martin (THE Richard Martin) was at a regional meeting presiding over a session of papers by junior scholars and graduate students. I was probably the most senior presenter, but still an assistant professor; my very first article about boys' clothing and gender had just been published in Dress. And he introduced me not just with a list of my degrees and positions, but a description of my work. WHICH HE CLEARLY HAD READ. And he called me an iconoclast. On my secret, imaginary business cards ever since, is the line "Richard Martin called me an iconoclast".

Yesterday I got this message via Linkedin from Rob Smith, founder of The Phluid Project, a gender-free store in New York.

Greetings!

I’m working on a Ted X talk on why do we gender clothing. I want to thank you for your work and insight.
It’s extremely helpful as I finesse my language around this topic.

I opened The Phluid Project a year ago with the mission to eliminate gender barriers and restrictions around fashion.

For me, and many others, you are an icon.

Rob

So: iconoclast icon? Iconic iconoclast? I think what it means is "don't stop". So I won't!

Vulnerability #UULent2019 poem

3/7/2019

How those figures became hidden

3/3/2019

I have been writing less these days because mostly I am doing research, either for my next book or for a series of church history articles for my congregation's newsletter. So poor "Everything Else" has been sadly neglected. This little lagniappe will have to do for now. On page 224 of The New Seventeen Book of Etiquette and Young Living (1970), in the chapter about manners on the working world, author Enid Haupt lists a range of exciting career opportunities now open to women, especially in science and engineering. She offers this anecdote:

A young career girl barely out of college, with a brilliant bent for math, helps bring astronauts back from the moon through computer calculations at a space center.

I doubt that Haupt was making up that story; as Seventeen's publisher and the author of a regular column in the magazine, she must have known about the "computers" at NASA - women hired to do the extensive complex calculations that made space exploration possible. As we know from the Hollywood film "Hidden Figures", many of these women were African American. In fact, the "computer" who performed the trajectory calculations that assisted the 1969 moon landing was Katherine Johnson, played by Taraji P. Henson in the film. Knowing this, I could not help but wonder why Haupt had "hidden" her race? Why depict her in the anecdote simply as "a young career girl"?

Haupt does not completely ignore race in her 321-page book. Chapter 5, "Pride and Prejudice", devotes its entire three pages to racial and religious discrimination, and it is a reminder of the cultural environment that shaped today's older adults, especially the white women who were Seventeen's predominant readers.

Her points:

"old barriers" are being chipped away. She offers Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm as both proof if this progress and as an example of optimism for improved race relations.
to overcome prejudice, young people should focus on their own attitudes and behavior, not "the big issues" (My take: This makes it easy to ignore institutional racism...)
In a section "You the Victim", which comprises half of this short chapter, Haupt offers advice to readers who feel they have been the objects of discrimination. "Give the person the benefit of the doubt...maybe it was an honest mistake". "...brush any chip off your own shoulder and look inward...". "Don't look for slights by others". Minorities living in a hostile neighborhood should "not give others reason to criticize". "You can win the respect of others if, through steady determination, you become outstanding in something".

Perhaps like Katherine Johnson became an outstanding mathematician, only to be rendered invisible 200 pages later.

Katherine Johnson in 2008. By NASA/Sean Smith - http://www.nasa.gov/centers/langley/news/researchernews/rn_kjohnson.html, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40422586

I can't imagine that many of Haupt's white readers in 1970 would argue with her advice. Speaking for myself, in the first part of the chapter, she pretty much describes how I was "taught" to deal with difference. Prejudice was a personal flaw to be addressed in the same way as poor posture, through individual effort. The Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act had eliminated the "big issues", and all that remained was a bit of attitude adjustment. People just needed to be more open-minded, and some people needed to get that chip off their shoulder. By now we should know better.

ETA: The phrase "politics of respectability" seems appropriate to what I am finding in etiquette books.

Enough - my life as a minimalist

2/21/2019

It is 1970, and I am working at my first waitressing job at the Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. I am wearing the classic black maid’s dress, complete with white apron and frilly white cap. It is the first time I have ever worn a uniform for a job, and I like it. During the day I wear my faded bell-bottoms and one of a number of colorful shirts, and on the job I have my uniform. Bliss. So blissful am I that I find myself making lists on my 3 by 5 inch notepad. They look like packing lists for a trip, but they are really a plan for my ideal wardrobe – one that is ENOUGH but never TOO MUCH. I don’t have the lists today, but remember the basics:

1 pair old jeans
1 pair new jeans
Skirt
Black turtleneck
Blue work shirt
White dress shirt
T-shirts (How many? One laundry span plus a couple of extras, so 9?)
Pretty shirts (How many?)
1 pair sandals
1 pair boots
1 pair loafers or oxfords
2 sweaters (one pullover, one cardigan)
1 coat

The only ominous thing about this fixation with the minimalist wardrobe is that I was, at the time, a fashion design major.

Fast-forward to my life as a retired professor in 2019. Most days, I wear comfortable casual clothes, usually jeans and one of several turtlenecks or tees I own in different colors. I have six linear feet of hanging clothing (half for cold weather, half for warmer months), 12 pairs of shoes, one winter coat and one bathrobe. Am I in possession of enough, or still in its pursuit?

Stay tuned for more.

I promised I’d come back to Mexico

1/18/2019

Of course, it’s taken me a while. The last time I was there was the summer of 1966, as an exchange student attending classes and seeing the sights, living in a crowded apartment with two university students and their sister who worked at the Volkswagen plant. There’s a story there, for sure, but it will have to wait for another time. I am heading to Oaxaca to hang out with a couple of friends for ten days, and it seemed as good a time as any to start blogging again.

Airport adventures: I arrived at Baltimore-Washington airport the requested three hours ahead of time, fearing long lines due to the government shutdown. There were two people ahead of me. Two people. I was probably through security before my husband was outside the airport limits. That was ok; it gave me time for a leisurely lunch, after finishing a movie I’d started the night before. Now I am in Atlanta waiting for my flight to Mexico City. The Atlanta airport is big, crowded, and lacks decent food choices, at least in the international terminal. I checked out a couple of places and ended up deciding I was not very hungry.

On the the other hand, there is currently an exhibit of “book art” that is exactly my cup of tea. Every few yards along each concourse there is a display of altered books, books on handmade paper, pop-up books, hand-printed books, even a gorgeous column of laser-cut Arabic calligraphy.