ROBOTS DON’T MAKE YOUR STUFF, PEOPLE (SLAVES) DO

I consider myself a writer and I’m excited and working hard on the release of my novel, Karma. But design is a big part of who I am too and so every once in awhile I get drawn into a big design project and I virtually check out of life until it’s done.

I’m from California and I detest snow and cold, but our whippets, Charlotte Brontë and India hate it even more as they are bony, with little body fat and scant hair. Prior to moving to Boston two years ago I knitted them sweaters and made them fleece jammies and overcoats but as it turned out, these California-made items of clothing were not enough to spare them the shivers.

With winter on it’s way I had to act. I bought two down jackets at T.J. Max. I cut them up in my office and began the design process, figuring out the engineering of a garment that would fit their funny bodies. The first twelve-hour day was devoted to the easy part of the design, which I had already pretty much done from the last coats I made. This time I wanted the coats to have front legs and a hood. The second twelve-hour day was more challenging. It wasn’t just the design, but the working conditions. At first I was joking about my office being a chicken coop, but after a short period of time the feathers really started to bother me.

Fifteen years of my career were spent in various aspects of design from fashion, to working as a stylist/costumer in the film industry, and then having my own cottage industry to manufacture my line of felt appliquéd Christmas stockings. I am very familiar with production and not just from the sidelines. I’ve worked many grueling stints, including months of seven-day-a-week production and all-nighters under pressure to execute a project. And so working on my dog’s parkas took me right back to that period of my life. The thing is, as uncomfortable, tired, and miserable I got, it was voluntary.

After the second twelve-hour day I went to bed at 10. My back hurt a lot from hunching over my task all day. I had microscopic feathers in my lungs and sinuses and one eyeball felt like it had a feather stuck on it. It was an uncomfortable sleep and I woke up at 2 a.m. It was Friday and I wanted the project to end because I just didn’t have more time to devote to it. Plus as exciting and fun as it is to figure out a design, I couldn’t bear the thought of yet another day of those working conditions. I decided to get up.

My office was ankle-deep in feathers. I put a scarf over my face like a bandit and worked from 2:30 until 6. I finally cracked the nut of how to execute the chest and legs. I went downstairs to the kitchen to get something to eat. Kitchens are surreal at 6 a.m. when you’ve been up since 2:30. I stood there and all of a sudden started looking at the dog’s toys scattered over the floor, their little monkeys and sharks and “Ugly Dolls”. Some poor downtrodden person in some far away country had to make those toys!

Back upstairs I focused. It was a fourteen-hour day. As the hours churned on, the fact that there were slaves working harder than I was stuck in my head. It was tape, running over and over. At the end of the day I was exhausted, my hands were swollen and pin-stuck. My back hurt even more, my stomach stuck out from slouching, my sinuses, lungs, and eyeball throbbed. But my office got cleaned up, I took a soothing bath in Epsom salts, heated up some soup from Whole Foods and went to bed at 8 p.m. all proud of myself and feeling heroic for finishing the winter parkas for my doggies.

I still couldn’t stop thinking about the slaves working around the clock in sweltering factories for little or no money, who have no home to go to, who can’t take a nice hot bath and heat up soup, and flop into bed in a nice comfy room, who suffer health problems from breathing feathers and from exposure to innumerable toxic insults. All so we can have our stuff, and so our kids and dogs can be happy and indulged.

I’ve read many books on slavery and there are all kinds of proposed strategies to combat slavery. According to Dr. Kevin Bales, the leading authority on slavery, boycotting products is not the appropriate tactic as it penalizes legitimate third world businesses. In my opinion the most expeditious way to make a difference is to donate, even just a few dollars, to organizations that know the world of slavery, the politics, and the best strategies for penetrating government policies, like Dr. Bales’s FREE THE SLAVES.

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