The official site of Kelly Sedinger: Reader, writer, photographer, and dreamer
…to yesterday’s post about my new tablet!
Given that I want to use that device primarily as a secondary writing device for longer-form work, I will not be keeping any social networking apps on it at all, with the exceptions of the photo-based Instagram and Flickr. This seems to me a healthier way of going about things, moving forward.
So one thing I’ve been saving money for is a new tablet. My old one is pushing five years old (and may be over that already, as I’m not entirely sure when I bought it in 2015), so it’s getting up there. Battery life isn’t awesome anymore and apps don’t always update, and in fact eventually a lot of apps become unwinnable. I’ve been squirreling away money so I could buy the new tablet outright, and now it’s mine! In fact, I am writing this very post on the new tablet.
There are a number of favorite subjects of mine that I haven’t used this blog to geek out about in a long time, so let’s go ahead and do some of that right now, OK? Time to talk about bib overalls!
I think it’s long past time to admit that my acquisition of overalls has come to a point where there’s really only one way to describe it without making myself seem like a weirdo (or, maybe at least a little less of a weirdo), and that’s to assert that I am a collector of overalls. That doesn’t seem weird at all, right? When you’re an avowed collector of a thing, owning lots of it and being willing to go to odd lengths to procure it aren’t nearly as weird as if you’re just some goof who owns a whole lot of a particular thing.
Well, that’s what I’m telling myself, anyway.
Which brings me to one recent acquisition for my overalls collection: a pair of Hickory-striped overalls by the Washington Dee Cee company. I haven’t been able to find much information out there about the Dee Cee company, but they were based in Nashville and they made a lot of denim Western-wear and workwear back in the day.
What makes their overalls distinctive is the styling of the large pocket on the bib. Instead of a dual-compartment pocket with two snap enclosures, which tends to be the norm (see Dickies or, my eternal favorite, Lee overalls for examples), the pocket is mainly one large enclosure with a snap in the middle over which a narrow flap fastens. It’s a neat look that’s a nice change from the usual style. Washington Dee Cee overalls were notably modeled by actress Michelle Meyrink in the wonderful 80s nerd-comedy Real Genius…
…and by Mr. T on The A-Team!
I’ve kept an eye out on eBay and other places for a pair of Dee Cee overalls, but usually they were either not in my size, or not in my price range. I did occasionally see this interesting variation, though–and never in my price range. It seems that the Washington Dee Cee people made versions of their overalls but to be branded for another great Tennessee institution:
Well, anyway, luck finally turned my way and I got my hands on a pair of Hickory-striped Washington Dee Cee overalls! I’ve really taken a keen liking to Hickory stripes over the years (commonly thought of as “engineer stripes”, because they’re commonly seen on railroad worker clothing). Here are my new ones!
Some neat bib details here: While the Hickory-stripe pattern is always vertical on overalls, the Washington Dee Cee ones break with this in one place: the flap enclosure on the bib pocket. That makes for a neat visual contrast. At the far left of the bib pocket (the wearer’s left, on the right as you look at them), there is a pencil-slot, and though it can’t really be seen here, there is the traditional pocket-watch pocket that tucks into the seam just above the center tag. (For years I didn’t know that this is what the “button hole” present on most pairs of “traditional” overalls, somewhere across the top of the bib, is for: the fob of a watch chain. It’s one of those details that has held on for tradition’s sake, even though most people who wear overalls aren’t also carrying pocket watches.)
Close-up of the center snap. Back in the day, manufacturers engraved their names on the snaps and buckles.
Center tag. I love tags on overalls. Some people cut them off their overalls! I don’t understand that. But, whatever. [shrugs]
I like them a lot, even if they are just ever so slightly too small, but they’re definitely wearable and I like the way they look. So, huzzah!
More new arrivals to the collection to come!
Pianist Leon Fleischer has died, at the age of 92.
There are two possibilities with regard to this amazing piece of music, which I’ve just heard for the first time ever the day before yesterday: Either this amazing work has been studiously ignored for decades since its composition, when it should be heard every year around Passover time, much as The Ten Commandments is screened each year; or, it is heard every year around that time, and White Musical America is just that good at ignoring the amazing work of Black composers.
Today is Martin Sheen’s birthday! He turns 80 years old, which I can hardly believe. In his honor, I’d like to note just one scene from his amazing life of work. This is from The West Wing‘s Season Two opener, called “In the Shadow of Two Gunmen”. The previous season had ended with an assassination attempt on President Bartlet (Sheen), and as the finale ended we didn’t know who had been shot or even killed.
Author Samira Ahmed, writer of the amazing YA novel Love, Hate, and Other Filters as well as others, recently appeared on one of my favorite podcasts, 88 Cups of Tea. Her main takeaway that she pushed hard was the need for creative people to “say yes to themselves”, because we live in a world that puts up an awful lot of roadblocks in front of creatives. We don’t need to add to the roadblocks ourselves; self-obstruction is not healthy. It was a wonderful conversation (this podcast is always full of them), but there was one particular quote from Ms. Ahmed that knocked my breath away. Seriously, I almost had to pull my car over, so amazed was I to hear this.
SAMIRA AHMED: One piece of that kindness to myself–and I say that this is just for me, but I hope maybe it can speak to just one of the other storytellers out there–which is, I am gentle with the language that I use about my writing. So what that means is, I never say to myself that my first draft is ‘trash’. This is something for me; maybe this is OK with everybody else, your mileage may vary, but for me, when I was little one of those racist experiences that I had was a grown-ass man telling me, a kid, that I was ‘trash that America needed to take out.’ Words can be weapons, and I’m not going to use weaponized language against myself. So I don’t say that my first draft is ‘trash.’ I don’t say it’s ‘garbage’. I say it needs improvement. I say it needs work. I say I could make it better…but I don’t say that it’s trash.
For John Lewis.
You may remember a hilarious sketch comedy show from the 2000s called Key and Peele; and if you do, then you likely know that Jordan Peele, one half of the comedy duo from that show, has gone on to an impressive career in filmmaking, mostly in the horror genre. He even won an Oscar for one of his screenplays a couple of years ago.
