CLOTHING CLOTH CLOUGH January 27 2024

Mina Angelene Sheary and Forrest William (Bill) Clough, June 13, 1950.

Fifty years ago, after moving from Oregon to Alaska, at my request, my mother sent me her wedding dress with the admonition that it was worthless because of the stains. I had a fantasy of wearing her dress when I got married (the first time, 1977). Turns out her waistline at age 17 was way smaller than mine at 25. The dress stayed in a trunk for 30 years until I moved again, from Alaska to Colorado.

Brenda Roper and the wedding dress reimagined.

I gifted the dress to my Santa Fe based artist friend, Brenda Roper, whose artwork often utilizes vintage clothing to inform her investigations of “social relationships, identity, family secrets, and feminism.” I wrote a blog about it in 2012 titled “Giving Away the Bride, Giving Away the Dress….Or….how artists will make art out of most anything!”

Nard and I loading the dress to relocate from Santa Fe to Colorado Springs.

Roper embellished the dress with bells and buttons and reshaped it sculpturally on a vintage metal dress form. She exhibited it but always with a “NFS” tag even though I insisted it was perfectly fine to pass it on. Eight years later, in March of 2020, Roper needed to downsize, and so the dress in its new form came back to me to live in my Colorado Springs studio.

Colorado Springs based visual artist, Wendy Mike, adopts the wedding dress.

And then in 2023, it was my turn to downsize when Nard and I made the surprise decision to move to Oregon. And yet another caretaker/guardian took custody, Colorado Springs artist and friend, Wendy Mike.

One month ago, the woman who first owned that dress, my mother, Mina Angeline Clough, died at age 90, of complications from dementia.

The passing of a parent gives pause and reflection on one's own progress through life, especially when there is a house full of 90 years of accumulation to deal with.

In her cedar hope chest, a cultural relic in and of itself, I discovered her bridal veil. A piece of the wedding dress ensemble that I hadn't asked for or received in 1977. I brought it home and it now lives on the cardboard cutout of “me” I gave to mom a few years ago hoping seeing my image daily would help her remember she had a daughter named Sheary. I dressed it up with my father's bowling team shirt that I also found in the hope chest.

The significance of all this wedding dress's travels and why I feel compelled to write about the journey this dress has taken is still unclear to me. Part and parcel of the process of considering one's own mortality after a parent's passing, I'm sure. Intertwined with measures of time, movement, and spaces within, and without.

THE BEAUTY OF DECOMPOSITION

Are you attracted to old rusty objects? I think many people are. Or is it that many people in my circle are also Baby Boomers, who are themselves becoming rusty objects? Hmmm.

Anyway, I'm attracted not only to the colors, patinas, patterns but the shapes of objects that have been around long enough to rust. Here in the Southwest USA, that means barbed wire, spirals and wheels from old mines, square headed nails and so many other old objects I can't even identify by name.

For years---yes, years!----I've held onto boxes of rusty metal finds that I've collected during Nard's and my travels, which I've tried and tried to figure out how to make them into art pieces that wouldn't just look like something from a weekend craft show booth.

Having reached the phase of life in which I'm more interested in diminishing than acquiring , last year I made a commitment to either do something definite with the boxes of rusty objects or get rid of them.

Rusty items as I prepare to bury them with an assortment of vintage textiles.

Harvesting my “crop!”

Aware of artists such as Canadian Caitlin Ffrench (@ffrench) who are distressing textiles with water and fire, I thought why not with soil? Our tomato garden area had long gone unused and so last spring (eek, a year ago already!) I got excited by the idea of “planting” my collection of vintage textiles (also sitting unused in a box) underneath rusty objects and our red Colorado dirt.

Work in Progress from “harvested” Rust Garden: “She’s Come Undone.”

Fall came and I “harvested” my “crops!”

In Progress: slow stitching on “Mending Mother Earth.”

I'm still working on what to do with my “new” materials, but I do have some observations and swirling thoughts about utilizing this decomposed cloth in my work to conceptualize humankind's degradation of Mother Earth.

The rust garden feels like I'm connecting with history and nature in tangible ways. These textiles have stories to tell, and by working with them, I'm connecting with that history in a very real way. When I buried the cloth and rusty objects, I allowed nature to take control of the outcome. Waiting to see what emerged months later gave honor to the power of nature, and to the importance of patience and surrender. The rust and soil, and I'm guessing rodents chewing on the cloth to create holes, created unexpected patterns and color variations that would be impossible to replicate through any other means.

This experiment has turned into a reminder that some things in life cannot be rushed or forced, and that the passage of time and the forces of nature can create something brilliant out of something seemingly ordinary.

The epitome of slow stitching! The tea towel is quite fragile. My interest is in preserving the chunks of dirt and sticks that adhered to the cloth during the 7 months’ it matured underground. I feel I am “suturing” and “splinting” Mother Earth, symbolic of the urgent need I feel as we approach yet another “Earth Day.”

WEARING YOUR CONVICTIONS

My first “visible mended” jeans.

These jeans were purchased for $5 at our local charity shop, ARC, here in Colorado Springs.

Maria giving her butter soft but worn to the point of fragility jeans some love before handing them over to me for repair.

Last year I was inspired by a podcast about the artist Celia Pym who discussed her practice of offering to mend others' beloved articles of clothing, at no charge, just because. Here is the link, if you'd like to listen for yourself.

Shortly afterward, Nard and I were in Camas, Washington, delivering some new art to Attic Gallery. I was wearing my newly stitched visible mended jeans (pictured above) that I had made as an example for my upcoming Green Box Arts Festival workshop, “Visible Mending.”

When gallerist Maria Gonsor exclaimed that I could easily sell the jeans in a local boutique, and that she had some beloved jeans that had been at her seamstress' shop across the street for over six months because the woman was nervous that they would fall apart if she added anymore machine stitching to them, I saw my opportunity to try my hand at Celia's form of generosity.

With the agreement that I would have no time limit on the repair process, as well as complete artistic freedom, Maria collected the jeans and handed them over with trust and faith. Those jeans have since traveled with me from Washington state to Alaska, through Canada, down through North and South Dakota back to Colorado, where they are nearing completion, hopefully in time to mail back to Maria before Christmas.

Maria’s jeans, mending in progress.

But the true inspiration for why I'm telling you about these jeans came from the book “How to be a Craftivist; The art of gentle protest” by Sarah Corbett, which I began reading in 2020 while I was working toward defining the concepts for my art-activist installation “The Clothes We Wear,” calling out the ills of Fast Fashion in a manner I hoped would be informative rather than aggressive. You can re-visit the exhibition here.

In my Oct 19, 2021 blog, “Mending a Sock” I spoke about the shame my generation and earlier ones felt about being seen in public wearing clothes that were second-hand or mended. The increasing acceptance, even pride, current generations exhibit with their endeavors to shop resale and to mend contribute to decreasing landfills, air pollution, water pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions.

Wearing visibly mended clothing with pride promotes normalcy surrounding the idea of re-using and re-imagining one's wardrobe. The clothing invites discussion that can lead to a gentle inspiration to others who may not have considered or been aware of the impact that the fashion industry has on the environment and on third world vulnerable laborers.

More and more, mending our existing clothes and/or those of friends is a trend that is making a positive impact on the fight against the over consumption of cheaply made Fast Fashion clothing.

I’d love to hear from you if you are doing any mending or upcycling. Also, Fyi, I’ve been invited back to teach “Visible Mending” at the 2023 Green Box Arts Festival June 30 - July 15. Subscribe to my e-newsletter to be the first to know when registration opens; last year’s workshop was sold out immediately.

I've been enjoying working slowly but steadily on repairing Maria’s jeans since last March.

BICYCLE TRAVEL: Some observations and Reflections

“Touring”, Ink, Encaustic, on Sumi Paper, by Sheary Clough Suiter

I've been bike touring for over ten years now. Bike touring options are varied, from self contained in which one carries everything….clothes, food and water, tent, sleeping bag, tools and repair kits....to supported, in which one carries basically nothing but oneself on the bike and someone else drives all your stuff from point to point. My touring has mostly been the former and on every trip I experience a “strong woman” ego rush that feeds feelings of joyful independence.

Beyond that aspect, the primary joy of moving oneself from point to point by pedal power is that you see things, and things see you. I love how cows in the pasture will stop eating and look up directly at the cyclist, watching intently until they've passed. Humans will often do the same, and if you're stopped, and if they've stopped and are outside of their cars, they want to engage, and that's one of the ultimate joys of bicycle travel, the people you meet along the way. But that's another story, a book possibly.

There are two main places to bike tour: along smaller back-roads or along off-road trails designed for walkers and cyclists. Just as with trying to find a campsite without a prior reservation in a National Park these days, the noticeable increase in population, thus the increase in numbers of cars on the road in just the last ten years, has made back-road travel less safe. And just as with driving anywhere, road rage is a real thing and so I just feel less and less safe even on highways with wide shoulders. Once, in Texas, a driver actually purposefully swerved into the shoulder area, over the rumble strips, to, I don't know, scare me, intimidate me, prove his idiocy? The noise of his wheels on the rumble strip itself was such a shock, I could have crashed just from that. The moments after when I realized it was an intentional act of aggression with his ¾ ton pick up truck against my defenselessness saw me shaking all right!

But even an asshole like that didn't kill the joy of that experience of traveling from Austin, TX to St Augustine, FL all via the power of my own short legs. And definitely the good people along the way far outweighed the bad. Travel angels who went far out of their way to help us with a breakdown that couldn't be repaired with a travel kit. Another time, a man protectively tailed us with his big pick up truck, at our pace, across a busy two lane bridge that had no shoulders, but plenty of semi's.

Even dedicated and protected bike lanes can be crowded these days. Montreal at rush hour was a big surprise as cyclists zoomed past Nard and me as we came into town, toodling along with our fully loaded tour bikes. Here in Springs when there is street construction, the road crews put up cones and a sign that reads “Bike Lane Closed, Merge With Traffic.” I always wonder when I read that sign, do the cars driving in what they have always known to be THEIR car lane, notice the sign? Sure they see the cones and all, but hey, they're trying to get to work, school, late for an appointment. It's not unreasonable to say that most motorists consider bikes on the road a nuisance and most maybe think they shouldn't have the rights they really do. It is a way of thinking that our car culture has created. Whereas, when we encountered Montreal street construction that closed the dedicated bike lane route, the city had already placed cones to create a new bike lane, with detour signage, retaining a protected bike lane. Same amount of cones, way different approach to problem solving.

Of course, most of my time on a bicycle is spent riding locally….errands around the Springs, rides just for the fun and daily exercise. Most of the time I wear clothing that I reserve just for bike riding: a pair of cargo shorts to easily carry a wallet, keys, and phone, and a bright UPF 50+ long sleeved t shirt that is protective, but cool in our hot Colorado sun.

“Dressed For the Destination”, Ink, Encaustic, on Sumi Paper, by Sheary Clough Suiter

Recently however, Nard and I attended a Porch Party at the Trails and Open Spaces Coalition, about 6 miles from our home. It was a push pull as to whether we would drive our car or ride our bikes to the 4p event. There were on and off rains passing through this September afternoon and so the inclination was to drive. But we said, heck, let's just pretend we're in Anacortes, WA and go for it (a quaint town where we spent last March and rode in the rain regularly with no problem because in the Pacific Northwest, it's a matter of ride in the rain or don't ride at all).

And because it was an “event” I decided at the last minute to dress for the destination rather than for a bike ride. I wore a cute top, a skort, and my new bright yellow rain boots. As we cruised down Midland Trail with a tail wind that made it feel as if we had e-bikes, Nard looked over and said, “You look so European!” I smiled back at him and called out, “And I like it!”

Deja Vu of a trip some years ago when we had the privilege of bike touring in the Netherlands. What a revelation regarding how bicycles can supersede motor cars. The order of priority for the right away is flipped. It goes: bicycles, pedestrians, then cars. Anytime we happened to be off of the dedicated bike lanes, which were plentiful, if we came to an intersection, all cars immediately stopped to let us cross first. It was uncanny.

Netherlands is easy pedaling along a lot of flatness. The biggest “hills” were the highway overpasses. As Nard and I were pedaling up one of those, another cyclist who looked to be in her 90's buzzed past us. As we turned to look at her she grinned widely and shouted out gleefully, “Electric!”

On the pathways here in Springs, we are seeing a huge increase in e-bike cyclists. Partly a result of the pandemic creating a need in people to find ways to get outdoors, for a while you couldn't even find a bike to buy the demand was so high. Now we are seeing e-bike rentals and retail sales all over town. The difficulty for us “old timers” is that there is little to no process such as motor vehicle licensing that provides education to new riders regarding the courtesies of riding on a shared off-road path. It is a danger to all parties if a rider passes without calling out or ringing the bike bell to let the slower one know to be sure to stay to one side of the lane, or to warn a pedestrian with a dog (leashed or unleashed, despite laws that say they are to be leashed) who is prone to wander back and forth across the path. And the homemade bikes on the paths are also increasing. There are no regulations on these gas-motor-powered speedsters with their noise, noxious fumes which are not only an annoyance but a danger. So, although I champion the concept of an uptick in bicycle ridership, I admit to a mildly derisive inner dialogue that labels e bike riders as not “real” bike riders.

However, as I enter my 70's I now face the question of how to reconcile that judgmental response with the reality of seeing more and more of my cycling friends show up at rides with electric assist bicycles. At last, curiosity got the best of me and I gave one a test ride at REI the other day. And I'm not (very) embarrassed to admit that I really liked the automatic oomph the bike provided when I pedaled up a hill. I liked it a lot. And I missed it a lot all the way home where I must climb the hill above Old Colorado City each time I return home.

Hmmmmmm. I see visions of a future in which an e-assist facilitates more frequent “dressing for the destination” without concern that I'll arrive all sweaty from tackling those uphill climbs!

I’d love to receive comments about your e bike experiences or feelings on the subject.

THE BEAUTY OF LIMITATIONS

We're all familiar with the concept of diminishment inherent in tiny homes. During the month of March, Nard and I lived in a 600 square foot cottage in Anacortes, Washington. We became personally familiar with what it's like to reduce one's footprint by residing and working in the space of a single room.

Cottage living gave limitation on what artwork we could choose to pursue. The Anacortes cottage does have a deck area that expanded our possible usable space, but it's uncovered and if you are familiar with the weather patterns of the Pacific Northwest, you know that nine times out of ten, the space would be unusable unless you are a duck. Here you see the lovely Puget Sound views we enjoyed on a rain-free day.

The tiny cottage kitchen was a limitation of how many pots and pans Nard could use (read: get dirty for me to wash in the teeny tiny sink) to prepare our meals.

Turns out, when we returned to our Colorado Springs spacious home and art studio, I felt a little overwhelmed the first few days. So…...much…...stuff. I was reminded of the axiom that whatever space one has, that's how much stuff one keeps around.

Simplification is complicated….ironic, I know. Everyone's experienced the phenomena of finally getting rid of an object you've had around the house and never used for years. Shortly thereafter, it's exactly what you needed for this project or that.

The idea of seeing limitations as a positive thing isn't new to my way of thinking. In the interest of pushing my work beyond the usual, I regularly set limitations on myself when I'm creating a new painting series. Sometimes it's a limited color palette, sometimes it's a decision regarding design elements that must or must not be included in the final piece, sometimes it's something as simple as a show deadline.

Less stuff, fewer choices, fewer decisions, more time for reading a book or making art or visiting with friends or taking a hike or riding a bike. View of Anacortes, Washington, from Cap Sante Park.

So it seems to me that seeking limitations is actually all about pushing boundaries. What limitations have you initiated, or are thinking of initiating, to facilitate stretching beyond your usual?

FLIGHT OF THE INNOCENTS (People Move)

INNOCENT #1 This installation of seven suspended sculptures conceptualizes the impact of climate change on women and children forced to flee from homelands impacted by drought and flood.
Reclaimed vintage baby dress sourced from Who Gives A Scrap, encaustic, hand waxed threads, hand stitched embroidery, wire,18 x14 x 13 (+22” descending threads). Available December 2021 from Kreuser Gallery.

An apropos quote I discovered while reviewing my personal 1991 journal written by Ralph Ellison, pg 85, “The Second Black Renaissance:”
“Flight is an inherently ambiguous term, connecting freedom and desertion alike.”

People Move. They move for many reasons. They always have.

In the USA, we're lucky. We have big space, big options, to move for any reason...jobs, family, personal preferences regarding city vs. country, ocean vs desert vs mountains vs prairies.

In the last two years, how many people do you know who have moved? I have friends who have moved from Alaska to here (Colorado Springs), from here to Phoenix, from here to Washington state, from NYC to here.

In other parts of the world, people must cross borders to move the distances we Americans take for granted as possibilities. Ken Burn's film “The Dust Bowl” documents the man-made ecological disaster that precipitated the mass migrations of the 1930's. For instance, Colorado farmers from the San Luis Valley moved north to the mountains become miners. And for generations in America, families have moved “up,” seeking safer neighborhoods to raise their children.

In most of the world, people are born into families that reside in small geographic countries in which climate change has impacted their ability to raise the traditional crops that sustained their ancestors. As Mother Nature demonstrates that climate change is here to stay, the impacts on a population's ability to survive a location with flooding or famine will continue to create climate refugees.

Bottom line: People don't just naturally want to pick up and abandon the place they've lived for generations without good reason. The artificial borders we define as countries are barriers that kill.

Women and children, the innocents, are fleeing countries not because they want to live in another country, but because they must, for survival. It's a problem without an answer.

Solutions can only begin once we understand that these climate refugees are acting out of desperation rather than criminality.

Raising awareness of the global refugee crisis through Art. The full installation provided a visual way to process the enormity of 25 million – the approximate number of refugees estimated by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees when this project commenced.My contribution to the international collaborative art project, “25 Million Stitches.”

MENDING A SOCK

“THINGS FALL APART,” Encaustic on Panel, 24 x 24. From “The Clothes We Wear,” upcoming December 2021 solo exhibition at Kreuser Gallery. A percentage of all sales from this exhibition will be donated to Who Gives a SCRAP/Art SWAP 501c3 to support children's local programming.

Like many whose childhood occurred during the 1950's and 1960's, I grew up with hand-me-downs from an older cousin or sibling. It was a make-do concept championed by parents whose own childhood was shaped by the 1930's depression era. We shopped for new apparel once a year, school clothing and shoes, at JC Penney's, Wards, or Sears.

Thus for me, all I dreamt of was buying new. By the time I was living on my own, a transformation in the clothing industry was emerging that suited my desire (and thin budget) for all things new. With the 1992 signing of NAFTA and the outsourcing of American garment manufacturing, a new era in clothing manufacturing erupted. Fast Fashion arrived with the emergence of retailers such as Zara, H&M, Old Navy and American Eagle, companies born of cheap overseas labor.

Over the last forty years, marketing and cut-rate pricing has created our see now, buy now, discard now approach to contemporary fashion. For the past two years, I have been working on creating an exhibition that calls our attention to viable alternatives to a closet full of cheaply made, unsustainably sourced clothing.

One such approach is to extend the life of an article of clothing with mending. Although I learned how to sew in my teens, and my mother made many of our family's clothing with her Singer sewing machine, I don't remember much mending.

Mending was not part of my way of being; my generation viewed mending as a signifier of poverty in that one could not afford to buy new. Presently, however, the tide has turned and the term “visible mending” is trending as a badge of honor. So how is it that I've moved from feeling shame at the thought of wearing mended clothing, to this present sense of deep satisfaction at accomplishing a small, funky mending of my favorite Darn Tough Vermont merino wool socks?

Kate Sekules (clothes historian, writer, mender), in an 8/26/21 Selvedge Magazine Newsletter article “Why Do We Mend?” states it best: “mending is coming back as more and more people understand the mess we're in with our metastasized fashion industry. It's insane to keep consuming. Creative interventions in the trillions of existing garments can keep us going for decades….we forget how incredibly valuable fabric always was, until not much more than a century ago, how universal was the need to preserve the precious resource.”

She goes on to note that “taking control of one's own wardrobe and relationship to fashion via visible mending is a link to one's deeper self, the freedom, the permission to play. Mending is also an art form—a scrappy one. It's extemporizing with cloth and thread, a creative, personal process that's way more than repairing.”

Thusly, when I look down at my foot and see the healed tear in my sock, the visible mending signifies courage and strength, a beauty mark even. A smartness and skill to extend life. A rebel even, against our over consumptive culture. My part in keeping a piece of clothing out of the landfill.

I'd love to hear if you've taken up mending, your history towards the skill, and what you're doing to battle the environmental ills of Fast Fashion.

Blog #7: Week 58... Keeping Secrets Close

Pocket Keep Beatrix, (detail)
Encaustic, Deconstructed Fast Fashion Clothing, Thread, Wire, Hand and Machine Stitch. 23 (36 including threads) x 12 x 5”.

In January, I completed online workshops with Joel S Allen of Steamboat Springs, (see Blog #3) to shore up my wire working skills, a necessity to effectively structure of a series of suspended sculptures, “Pocket Keeps.”

Technically, the series began as an exploration utilizing deconstructed fast-fashion clothing as a substrate for encaustic paint, rather than my customary 2D wood painting panels.

Conceptually, the work is about the secrets we keep. Pockets represent what we carry concealed inside – our sense of self, our memories, fears, hopes, and dreams.

I learned from “The Pocket, A Hidden History of Women's Lives” by Barbara Burman & Ariane Fennetaux, that from 1660 to 1900, Tie-on Pockets were worn by women of all social classes, generally hidden under one's skirts, accessed via a slit in the volumes of fabric.

Historically, prior to the 20th century, while men's clothing were regularly designed with pockets, women's garments lacked built-in pocket construction.

Keeps are the inner stronghold of a castle. Usually either square or round, keeps are the place of last refuge when defending the castle.

An artist's studio is somewhat like a keep, in that it is often a place isolated from others, where an artist is protected from the extreme sensory overload of the outside world. During Covid, many more of us have been working in isolation, keeping refuge from exposure to the virus.

Are you also feeling pocketed inside some kind of private Keep? Are you sharing secret worries and concerns with loved ones, or holding them close?

This body of work has been a way for me to create form to an otherwise vague sense of keeping closed from the outside world. I'd love to hear from you either in the below comments box, or privately to my email.

Blog #6: Week 44 of “Staying In”...To Wax or Not To Wax.

White Gypsy beer, image snagged from @eirebrews. But that could’ve been my hand!

“A White Gypsy
Sits Beside A Constant Stream
Under A Bi-Polar Sky
With That Broken-Doll Look”

“White Gypsy,” Work in Progress, Hand embroidery on Vintage Linen, 2020 - 2021.

Inspired by the Irish craft beer “White Gypsy,” I wrote this poem in 2016 during Nard's and my month-long residency in Listowel, Ireland. I'm using it as the embroidered text for a Work-In-Progress on vintage linen, which also utilizes a figure drawn from a 2007 painting I made when acrylic was my primary medium. Interesting to note the many ways in which an artist's repertoire gets re-imagined over time.

Figure Study, Acrylic on Wood, 2007.

As with much of my current body of work, I plan to suspend the finished piece as a free hanging form so that both the front and back sides of the stitching are visible. This is a carrying forth of the concept initiated with the “Baby Talk” series I did for my 2019 installation, “I Never Played With Dolls.” The need for considerations of “both sides” is a concept that has been a thing for me over the course of the past four years of deepening societal polarization.

“White Gypsy,” WIP, front side.

“White Gypsy,” WIP, back side.

Installation of “Baby Talk” series, 2019. Hand stitched embroidery on Vintage Linens, waxed and suspended to reveal both sides.

A willingness to view both sides symbolizes my hope for citizens of our country to lean in to characteristics such as respect, acceptance, consideration, and kindness. It also means that during last week's January 6th insurgency on our nation's Capitol, I spent the day with the tv remote control in my hand constantly switching channels, with the intention of viewing disparate points of view regarding the deeper implications of the event. With less than a week until President-Elect Joe Biden's inauguration, we are all waiting to see how the politics of our country plays out.

Parallel to this historic moment, I stand here in my studio fussing and fuming over seemingly inconsequential decisions such as how to proceed on this “White Gypsy” piece. Should I wax the entire piece as I did the “Baby Talk” pieces, or should I preserve the softness of the linen and hand stitching by waxing only the center figure. Or, perhaps, no wax at all? After all, once waxed, there's no going back.

“Test” piece to examine how the wax vs no wax looks on linen. You can see the transparency effect upon the waxed fabric and tissue paper image.

Further, I even question myself about the PC of the phrase “white gypsy.” Might some consider combining “white” and “gypsy” an offensive labeling of the Irish ethnic minority group known as “Travellers?” Like many young teen girls of the 1960's, my favorite Halloween garb was dressing in the stereotype of a gypsy woman. The concept of a nomadic, free-from-societal norms gypsy woman was incredibly appealing to a girl seeking to break free from then-current societal expectations that suitable vocational aspirations included careers such as becoming a teacher or a secretary. Thus, in my mind, PC or not, the poetic suggestion of psychic conflict within the concept of a free spirited White Gypsy jives quite compactly within my own very white personal iconography.

I'm curious and open to your feedback on any of these thoughts.