Take away a man’s actu­al sense of manhood–which is con­ven­tion­al­ly based on the abil­i­ty to work, to earn mon­ey, to be self-suf­fi­cient, to pro­vide for children–and you’ve got to give them some­thing else. And they did.

This hideous reli­gion that’s all over the country–these huge church-malls–that’s what sub­sti­tutes for these lost towns. But that’s not a town. That’s a cult. A town is diverse, in a real way, not in this fake way we have now. A com­mu­ni­ty is a butch­er and a doc­tor, a min­is­ter, a town trou­ble­mak­er. A ‘com­mu­ni­ty’ is not a bunch of peo­ple unit­ed by some griev­ance. That’s just self-righteousness–incredibly dan­ger­ous and anti­de­mo­c­ra­t­ic. Peo­ple have become so rigid; their opin­ions seem to them like them­selves. When that hap­pens (and it has hap­pened) peo­ple can’t change their minds. If you are iden­ti­fied by your opinions–if that is the very basis of yourself–how can you change your mind?

Fran Lebowitz, Rumi­na­tor Mag­a­zine inter­view with Susan­nah McNeely (August/September 2005)

This week’s Stitch­ing Blog­gers Ques­tion is:

Since you start­ed blog­ging, have you noticed any dif­fer­ence in your stitch­ing habits? Tell us about them.
Blog­ging has­n’t real­ly changed my stitch­ing habits, but I haven’t got­ten to know a great many oth­er stitch­ing blog­gers — yet 🙂

When that hap­pens, though, I expect that it may have the same effect that sub­scrib­ing to rec.crafts.textiles.needlework did back in 1995. I dis­cov­ered Q‑Snaps and Ott Lites and new tech­niques and fibers and fab­rics! And there were design­ers who actu­al­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed in the news­group!

I’d been stitch­ing for over a decade then, but r.c.t.n. sparked a peri­od of growth and renew­al that has con­tin­ued to this day. I’m excit­ed about the new inspi­ra­tion I’m sure I’ll find from read­ing the blogs of oth­er stitch­ers!