Amanda is taking a two day class at WEBS in Northampton on spinning. Now that she's mastered dying, weaving, knitting, she is taking it one step further, learning have to take fleece (or is it roving?) and converting the fluffy mass into usable strands of yarn. I decided to go along for the ride and as an excuse to spend the whole day in one of the largest and best organized yarn stores in the U.S. We were just here a few months ago. At that trip I was lost in the famous "back room" for hours and emerged with multiple additions to my stash. So this time, I exercised restraint. Spent hours trolling the shelves but emerged with only one stash add - a meltingly light and very soft pure alpaca. Yes, I know that the advice is not to knit with 100% alpaca but I figured, why not?
Anyway, that is not the point of this entry. As I spend more and more time in Northampton, I am more and more convinced that I've landed in some alien territory. You have to understand, I grew up in New York City. In NY, like it or not, everything is driven by, influenced by or nuanced by money. Where you live (McMansions are de rigeur), how you dress (Bruno Cucinelli or knockoffs), what schools you went to (only ivy leagues), what vacations you take, how you spend your Sundays (the Hamptons of course) are all markers in NY. Even ranting against the tyranny of success and money is an integral part of the NY life. But here in Northampton I am impressed that everyone doesn't seem to care. Here perfection and one-upsmanship is not the Holy Grail. This is a place where people dress as they please and more often than not bodies are lumpy and comfortable. Does the average body seem more plump here? Here I see a lot of yoga mats slung over shoulders but somehow they seem more authentic than the yoga mats slung over shoulders of twenty year olds in New York who are perfectly slim, toned and clad in pricy "outfits" more expensive than my former work clothes. Here everyone seems more relaxed in their skins. I also see more older folks. In NY, anyone over 40 is beyond comprehension and banished from public eyes. NY is a city of the young and ferocious. Maybe this parallel universe is because five colleges are clustered here and business and commerce is dwarfed by academia. Don't get me wrong, academia is also a bizarre microcosm with its own rites and hidden hand signals, but that is another topic for another time.
I spent an hour in the local bookstore obviously struggling to survive in the face of Amazon and Internet competition. A store filled with funny and informative handwritten cursive notes from the staff and a small shrine to Bernie Sanders (of course, this area is a hippie holdout). This is a locus of writers, artists, craftspeople. There's even an avenue called "Crafts Avenue" for goodness sake. And city hall is built in the shape of a fort/castle. The town is dominated by tattoo parlors, palm readers and psychics and coffee/tea places.
Where am I?
- Chee Mee
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