by Virginia Postrel

Virginia Postrel writes here a sweeping overview of all aspects of textile production, something I understand normal people seldom think about.

It’s a unique book in that Postrel barely inserts herself into the story at all – no “My Year of Trying to Learn Spinning, Weaving, and Other Fabricky Things” this. She might begin a chapter or section describing her attendance at some textile-related class, or getting food poisoning in India while researching some dye method, but then poof – it is quickly no longer about her at all. Refreshing!

Not that I wouldn’t want to hear about Postrel. Long ago I enjoyed a book of hers called THE FUTURE & ITS ENEMIES, and I used to read REASON magazine when she was editor. I listened to an interview with her promoting this book a short time ago. She learned to weave & spin, too, as part of her research. She was fun to listen to.

But the book jumps all over. The chapters are: Fiber, Thread, Cloth, Dye, Traders, & Consumers; and within the chapters themselves she also does a lot of jumping. I would have preferred more depth and more narrative arc, somehow.

My favorite chapter was “Dye.” I love this observation: “‘Any weed can be a dye,’ fifteenth-century Florentine dyers used to say. But that’s only if you want yellows, browns, or grays…” Ha! That’s always my complaint about natural dyeing with things you can find in Vermont: all I ever got was yellow.

And her dye class in India: “Rinse and dump, rinse and dump – tub after tub of water gets hurled into the yard. To my drought-trained Angeleno eyes, it seems like a disturbingly thirsty process.” I’ve often thought how different my hobbies might be if I lived out west – the washing and the dyeing of fiber uses tubs full of water. Happily, I live in a place that dumps snow during the winter in ample amounts that I feel perfectly happy pulling all the water I like out of our well all summer long.

It also seemed to me that the book was a bit Eurocentric. I wished there had been an exploration of how they made calico in India – instead, all that’s discussed is how it changed fashions and spurred competing industries in Europe.

There are copious pictures and a beautiful cover. I would recommend jumping around as the interest takes you. (  )

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Did you stay home today?  100%

What local business or charity did you support?  None yet – I’d better get on it

What’s for dinner? Pasta, nature’s most perfect food

by Anthony Bourdain

This was a re-read for me. My book club is doing it. I have no idea how many people will cotton to it. I forgot how much profanity is in it. It’s a pretty staid group.

Now that Tony Bourdain is dead, I was hyper-alert to the plentiful self-hatred and couple of overt references to suicide. At one point Bourdain considers jumping out his apartment window; and at another, recounts a chef killing himself the night he gets fired. And then there’s all the substance abuse, even more than I remembered; that goes along with mental illness.

But this is supposed to be a FUN read! Shocking tales of what really goes on in restaurant kitchens!

I ate many times at Les Halles, Bourdain’s steak frites place, when it was on John Street steps from my NYC workplace. I always had steak frites. I loved it.

And I loved Tony Bourdain! I watched many episodes of his travel show, Nooooooooo Reservations (he used to draw out the “Nooooo” during the intro). He used to go to exotic places and eat interesting things. He’d show up somewhere, stay up late drinking and eating, sleep in, then get up and don his leather jacket and hit the streets again looking for breakfast. He was a guy even older than me, yet slim, tattooed, and beleathered – OK, I had a thing for him. He dug the Ramones. He was a New Yorker. I bet in one of my parallel lives, I dated him. What am I saying? Plain Janes like me never hook up with guys like that – we just sigh at them from afar, and watch our best friends make out with them.

But that’s all neither here or there… He’s dead now. I couldn’t believe it when I heard – this was 2018 – he had these super-successful TV shows, and a young daughter for Pete’s sake. But after this re-read, yeah, I do believe it. Guy was messed up. RIP. Hope he’s rocking out with Joey Ramone.