mary e. robbins :: moth written

bundling, cleaning.

it's time.  imagine the music from 2001: a space odyssey, and then focus on the sheer puffiness of this photo. i took it just about 25 minutes ago, before gus and i headed out for our morning walk.  it's time for the hats, neckwarmers, gloves, duofold thermal underwear, smart wool socks, turtleneck sweaters and fleece jackets for gus to come out of their hiding places and find their spots on our dry-skinned, quickly whitening bodies for the next six months.  this photo, in fact, not only includes all of the above mentioned winter accoutrements, it conceals my nightgown--which i was too cold to change out of this morning--so i put my jeans and (second) sweater on over it, tucking it into my (you guessed it) duofold thermal underwear.  here we stand, ready for winter, puffy and proud.  it has started snowing in the mountains near us, and we are not far behind.  do your worst, winter!  i'm dressed! (and since it takes about 10 + minutes to get undressed, i might as well stay this way for the next couple of months, at least). 

***

the 'cleaning' of the basement continues. that is, if cleaning can mean moving all of the hundreds of thousands of tiny unrecognizable-to-me pieces of electrical equipment from one spot to another mounting heap of things.  for months now, i have been determined to make myself a proper darkroom in the old 'root cellar' section of the basement for exposing screens.  yesterday i went down early in the morning and had at it for hours until the clearing job was done.  this photo was taken about mid way through.  each one of the tiny boxes was opened and inspected. 

one result of the day included salvaging and washing of several canning jars from my grandmother's supply.  with each year, i am promising myself that i will become a bit more adept at the preparations for winter, including the process of putting food away from the summer harvest.  and with these newly emptied and cleaned shelves just calling out for pantry items, i have the motivation!  what i can do (at the very least) this year is make applesauce from the abundance of apples still flooding the markets from local orchards, and can it.  i hope to do so early next week.

look at that crisco jar up there.  oh the pies that likely resulted from that jar...perfect pies.

and so the lightbox that i built this past weekend (after the lovely gorham art fair) now has a home, in a nice clear space just waiting to be painted.  maybe that can wait until next year...

early.

on friday, nabil and i went to vote.  it was his first election here in the u.s.--as a new citizen, it was significant and powerful for him.  we choose to look beyond the corruption that we have come to accept, we choose to hope. 

on the day that bush was elected into his second term in office, i stood before a class of highly educated, professional moroccans, all at least 10 years my senior.  this was an advanced ESL class, and these moroccan doctors, lawyers, and professors had paid a significant fee to learn english from a very young american, straight out of college, who probably made a salary at least equal to if not more than their own.  they were choosing to learn english because we live in a world where the language i speak by random virtue of birth dictates world politics and business.  and there i stood in my jeans, t shirt,  and zip up sweater, facing a group who knew my country had just reelected a man responsible for so much suffering in the arab-islamic world.  they asked me why.

i reflected then on the corruption that exists worldwide, and its hand in the great distance between joy and suffering.  no nation is exempt from corruption.  none.  and it was a difficult reality to swallow.

but i choose to remain hopeful.  my students chose to continue to have respect for and faith in me, and i continue to  honor their goodness of heart and depth of character in the face of such a resounding blow to their culture and worldwide community.  i thank them for their humanity, and their most excellent humor. 

and so i went with hope to the polls on friday with nabil, and watched as he cast his first ballot.  he put his sticker on his jacket, and then transferred it to his wallet. he carries it with him.

anniversary.

nearly one year ago to the day, i participated in my very first craft show--the first annual gorham art fair, 2007.  at that time, i found myself in transition yet again, a more important and positive transition than many which preceded it the first year and a half following my return to the united states.  it was a transition in which i allowed myself to follow my heart and my creative drive, finding the strength to trust my instincts and let what i love be what i do.

just about one year later, here i am.  today i participated in the second annual gorham art fair, 2008.  it was a wonderful, peaceful, celebratory day, filled with so many beautiful faces and hearts.  it was significant.  over the past year i have worked steadily to develop moth designs.  the exciting thing is--there is still (always) so much to learn and do--so much room to grow.  with feet stepping just a bit more confidently into the craftivist and small business arenas, i am walking in the company of a community so rich with goodness and integrity.  fulfilled.

to those of you who organized such a successful event--thank you.  to those of you who stopped by the moth designs table and said hello--i am so glad you did, and i look forward to seeing you again.  you make my days of sewing and silkscreening on my kitchen table worth every moment.  your appreciation for the message and your pride in wearing the designs is the greatest compliment i can receive.   a piece of me is with you as you bring your hopes for a more accepting world to the public eye.

misty eyed, i now prepare to sleep after a wonderful day.  transitions, growth.

and...the gorham art fair! this saturday.

goodness, how could i have neglected to post about this this week?  this saturday i will be setting up moth designs at the gorham art fair, at the gorham municipal center, 75 south street, gorham, maine.  i'd love to see you there!  if i have time tomorrow morning, i'll post and remind again.  now back to work for me...

lunch.

yesterday was my mum's birthday.  plans for the day included lunch with sister, niece, auntie, and mum--and i ended up devoting nearly all of the morning up to said date creating this birthday card.  sometimes projects that i am sure will take me only moments last much longer, involving much paper, ink, and some swearing.  but it's always worth it in the end.

the above photo was created with yearbook yourself, which allows you to upload a photo of your own face and transpose it onto a seemingly endless array of bad old yearbook photos from the 1950's through the 1980's. (go there when you have some time to kill. it's fun.)  although what you are seeing is, in fact, my mother's face, this photo looks nothing like her actual high school yearbook photo, in which her natural beauty shines forth with long, straight brown hair (parted in the center), makeup-free face, and small, graceful smile.  my father has carried his worn, aged copy of that photo in his wallet since 1971, and if memory serves me correctly, she wore a simple ribbed turtleneck sweater.  she did not have glasses, she did not have any product in her hair.  and she most certainly didn't look like the church lady, as she uncannily does here. 

if she were, however, to have wished at that tender age of eighteen that her daughters would be stylish, smart, sexy, and have bitchin' taste in eyewear, she surely would not have been disappointed. 

here we are, circa 1984-ish.  what did i tell you?  my sister and i--we got style.  i wish i had an adult sized version of the skirt that carrie is wearing in this photo! for that matter, i really wish i had an adult sized version of those pink dr. dentons.  and those ronald mcdonald sunglasses?  i fear they will never be found again.  immortalized in the robbins family photo albums, over and over again.  i loved them.  i still do.

it was a great little birthday lunch with three generations present.  little niecey was cute as pie and showed us all of her tricks and smiles.  happy birthday mum--we love you!

seeing, saying.

colin  powell  was on meet the press this past sunday, and endorsed barack obama.  i post the video of his endorsement here (certainly) not due to any  historical agreement/alignment with  this man's politics.  i post it not even to further solidify my position on the current election.  i post it because when i have children, i would like them to hear what colin powell very adroitly stated:

"i am troubled by not what senator mccain says, but what members of the party say.  it is permitted to be said, "well, you know that mr. obama is a muslim."  well, the correct answer is, he is not a muslim.  he is a christian.  he has always been a christian.  but the really right answer is, "what if he is?"  is there something wrong with being a muslim in this country?  the answer is no, that's not america.  is there something wrong with some seven-year-old muslim american kid believing that he or she could be president?  yet i have heard senior members of my own party drop this suggestion --'he's a muslim, and he might be associated with terrorists.' this is not the way we should be doing it in america.

i feel strongly about this because of a picture i saw in a magazine.  it was a photo essay about troops who were serving in iraq and afghanistan.  and one picture at the tail end of this photo essay was of a mother in arlington cemetery, and she had her head on the headstone of her son's grave.  as the picture focused in, you could see the writing on the headstone.  it gave his awards: purple heart, bronze star...it showed that he died in iraq...it gave his date of birth, date of death.  he was twenty years old.  ...and then at the very top of the headstone, it didn't have a christian cross, it didn't have a star of david, it had a crescent and a star of the islamic faith.  his name was karim rashad sultan khan, and he was an american.  he was born in new jersey."

i have been considering this post over the past two days--mulling over my own thoughts.  saddened by the fact that humankind is destined to continue our long history of warfare and power mongering.  the realist within me, however, sees the good, the hope, and the peace in these words, from the mind and heart of a general.

blood and bones.

as mentioned in the past, my grandfather was a sound and cinema technician for altec service corporation.  always on the up and up with the latest film, photo, and sound equipment, he fostered a love and passion for documenting, and has left behind a lifetime of memories on reels.  his three sons--my father and two uncles--went on to work as projectionists at various times in their lives, and my father became a prominent figure in the local chapter of the projectionists' union. 

yesterday found me once again in the basement, trying in vain to make any bit of headway on the ever-elusive 'basement studio project.'  most urgently, i am in need of a darkroom for exposing my screens, and as luck would have it--grampa used to develop film too, so the space is there.  perfectly sized, perfectly void of light.  perfectly ... jammed full of 900,000 tiny pieces of cinema equipment.  sigh.  and so the sorting through continues.  i hope to go back down today.

near the end of my day of cleaning yesterday, i opened the projection screen which has been lying rolled up against the wall in the basement since we moved in.  with the screen in place and an old wingback chair right there to sit in, i turned to the projector box and films.  i had never operated this projector, nor taken it from its box, for that matter.  as i took it out and inspected the knobs and parts, gingerly plugging it into the sprawling web of antiquated, barely legal wiring crisscrossing the ceiling, i knew instinctively where to place my hands, how to handle the reels, where to thread the film.  it is in my blood and bones.  with a few tries and some patient tinkering, the machine was whirring and clicking, an ever familiar sound.  the dust on the bulb burned off and there on the screen walked my father as a toddler, grammie walking behing him in shorts and a white button up shirt tied at the waist.  her face was smooth and her brown hair was thick and wavy, blowing in the breeze.  she laid on the lawn laughing, one leg stretched out.  the tree in the front yard was young, and there was no fence between this house and our neighbor's.  the garage had double doors. 

in just 3 minutes the reel ended and it was time to put on another.  after four or five reels of history, nabil called me upstairs to dinner, bringing me instantly to present.  the chair, screen, and  projector remain, waiting patiently to take me back. 

pride.

before we moved to the united states, i had many fears, doubts, and reservations.  nabil had never lived outside of his hometown rabat, had never been to the u.s., and we had recently endured a rather difficult failed attempt to relocate and work in istanbul, turkey.  i was taking the largest leap of faith imaginable.  before we married, nabil had met my mother during her 10 day whirlwind tour of morocco, but he had yet to meet the remaining large and sprawling network of my family and friends.

i had assumed that new york would be the place for us.  i had graduated from NYU just two years earlier, and many of my friends were starting their careers there.  surely, i thought, new york.  yes.  greater diversity, larger muslim and arab population, even a burgeoning moroccan population.  yes.  new york.  the plan quickly fell into place.  though he had his immigrant visa and we could very well have traveled together, my plan was this: i would come home to the u.s. before nabil.  i would come up to maine, visit my family, rest a bit, and then head back down to new york, stay with lisa for a bit until i found an apartment, simultaneously find a job (any job), move into the apartment, set up a bit, and then have nabil come to a calm, well-planned, smooth transition. 

err.  scratch that.

it didn't quite work out that way, to say the least.  though i had successfully lived on my own in new york after my year long sojourn in morocco and india the first time around, finding housing and a job in record time, this time i just couldn't swing all those factors.  i became truly human, truly weak, and collapsed under the stress of the recent months--marriage, immigration, work, winter.  at home in maine, i let it all finally be.  one month into my time back in the u.s., i was still at my parents' house.  we called for nabil, and he came, and we started life, real and raw.

we visited new york and to my surprise, nabil's reaction was that of assuredness-- without my having asked him-- 'i couldn't live here.'  in maine it is calm, and there are many places to play soccer.  the beach is close to where we live, and our home is quiet.  these are simple things that are so important to nabil.  to date, no one else i know has proclaimed maine pride with such enthusiasm.  it is here that he first experienced all of the things which make up our american life--a mystery to me before we left morocco nearly 4 years ago.  it is here that he became a citizen, and it is here that he will cast his first vote in an election, just twenty days from now.  maine pride.

new.

some things are happening in the moth headquarters.  a lot has come together over the past weeks, and things are moving forward, which is always a thrilling (and therefore emotionally exhausting!) experience.  i have been holding on and pushing ahead in equal parts.

in preparation for this season's shows, i have created a few new designs and kept them in careful organized spaces to ensure inventory.  it is now time to share them with the etsy community!  today i will be posting a few of these new designs in the shop.  the white onesies are, as always, made to order and readily available from my stock of blanks.  the adult tees pictured here, however, are ready made and in stock!  this means--if you want to order a shirt and have it within a few days, it will happen.  until now, nearly all t shirts in the moth designs shop have been made to order.  this works well, but for those who would like an item on a more immediate basis, not so.  now armed with proper business license and resale certificate, i am able to move toward stocking more ready made items--and--goodness of goodness--sweat shop free, super soft, american apparel t shirts.  coming soon to the moth shop! 

for now, these items are here and proud, printed on lovely ultra cotton gildan t shirts.  the women's cut is particularly flattering--not to tight, nice and long, with shorter sleeves and a more feminine cut. 

introducing:

the peace arabic onesie.  available in sizes 0-3, 3-6, 6-9, and 9-12 months.
the 'intelligent and loving' arabic t shirt.  available in unisex adult and youth sizes.
the 'whale in love' arabic t shirt.  available in unisex adult, women's, and youth sizes.

and the 'cloud, lightning, heart' arabic t shirt.  available in women's sizes, in avocado (pictured) and sky blue.

i also continue to work on images of recent saadiyya carryalls and naima totes to upload.  let's hope my human hands can manage it!

walking it out.

it has taken me some time to adjust to the ever-changing schedule of working from home, and fitting days off around nabil's shift work as assistant seafood manager at hannaford.  this process has forced me to accept how regimented i had become--how dependent on the structure of a full-time- job-outside-the-home i was.  i feel that in my unlearning, i have gained enormously in the way of self-trust and true motivation.

nabil had the day off today and upon waking up we decided to go for a walk and to visit grammie.  it was not a very sunny day, but the colors were beautiful--exploding everywhere we looked.  the beach was grey and smelled of salt.  grammie was asleep when we got to her new residence.  we left her a bag of chocolates and i promised myself that i would bring gus back in a day or so, hoping to bring in the color from outdoors to her cheeks.