July 19

Thank heaven I’m not still an octopus.

1966

Went to the Club.Eh! Skool, eh!

Alvaro called - he says he wants to see me again. His cousin had to translate for him. I hoped he would speak English well, I I knew what I was in for when he said, “Bueno! Good night!”.

Talked to my brother substitutes for 1 1/2 hours.

Me: “Guidebooks always paint Mexican men as crazy about women.”

Raul: “I don’t love women; I love me.”

Juan: “ I don’t love women: I love scotch.”

They are so kind.

1982

I’ve been feeling very snoozy lately; must be the pollution/pollen outside sneaking in. Once I’m up, that usually it, though.

My data collection is done, for the moment. I’m not really happy with the amount. It might be good to double the sample. It wouldn’t take that long. The work is going along nicely, except that there is both more and less material than I expected. There’s less written information and more contradiction in what little there is. But it’s a fascinating area. So far I’ve only found one style explicitly identified as a Little Lord Fauntleroy suit. I wonder if it really made that much of an impact, or if it loomed larger in the memories of boys>men of that era than it did in reality.

2023

July 19 is the closest I have come to a day with no journal entries. It seems like a good opportunity to pause and reflect on what I am learning from this exercise. Sometimes, it is the patterns that stick out: all those years of my futile pursuit of an organized life. Today, I see myself at 17 and at 33 and marvel that these were the same person. The summer of 1966 was all culture shock and hormones. I imagined myself in love with every young man who showed the least bit of interest. And they were all “young men”, not boys; the youngest was Juan #1, who was 20 or 21. I went back to my senior year of high school a very different person!

1982 Jo was a new mother and a newly-minted assistant professor, already being crushed by the threat of “publish or perish”. The project I was working on was “Clothes Make the Boy, 1860-1910”, supported by a small summer grant which freed me from summer school during Kiddo’s first few months. It would eventually turn into 15 articles and book chapters, countless conferences papers, and two books. In July, 1982, it didn’t seem very promising.

2023 is an octopus who writes and knits. I have five works in progress: a cowl, a shawl, a hat, a book of essays, and two Substacks. With my remaining tentacle I and creating a short course on “Simplicity and Anti-consumption in America”. Thank heaven I’m not a decapod.

2024

Right now, 2024 is calmer. Was it the two weeks at Star Island? The loss of so many friends in the last year? It certainly isn’t the never-ending political campaign news!

I have just one knitting project, by choice. I am still working on the book of essays, and incorporating it into my other Substack, Gender Mystique. I have only a few scattered diary entries to add to this one, so it is taking much less of my time and energy. I enjoyed the course, but will not offer another one until the book is done. 

So she says, today.