Happy New year Again! Its the chinese new year of the Buffalo, or is it an Ox?, I guess it depends where you live.
For those of us living in Asia Chinese New Year is a sort of a second chance at New Beginnings and all those Resolutions that we didn’t quite get around to making back in January.
Those people that “know” are telling us all that this year is going to be difficult, already over the world we are reading of lay offs, people are worried. I was shocked to read of the man who shot his children and his wife and then himself… The Japanese are predicting that more men this year will kill themselves over job stress and financial security than every before.
I read in the local newspapers here that entire handicraft villages are hungry because the containers they used to fill with their pottery, their lacquer ware, or their baskets are no longer leaving the shores of Vietnam, or if they are, they are not being paid for.
Here at Velvet Underground we employ 25 Women, directly, and indirectly hundreds of women in villages earn their living by producing for us their taffetas, their velvets and their silks. Women in villages far from Hanoi sit together in groups whilst their children are at school and embroider the sheets that you see on the pages of our website or have already on your beds at home.
I have to admit that the responsibility I feel towards these women is sometimes overwhelming. I have lived and worked with them for over 5 years now, watched their babies grow, listened to their stories of their other lives that is not our workshop. I am continually amazed by their skills, each her own. Some of us are hearing impaired, and I love the way we manage to convey the possibility of new products and ideas with huge gestures of are hands.. an international and wonderful tool for communication; it beats miss pronunciation any day.
Over the years people have tied to convince me that I should seek subsidies and aid because I employ handicapped women. I laugh. In my eyes they are far from handicapped. They are quite simply talented. the only real draw back is that when there is too much to talk the work, that requires their hands, is laid down.
We try, and I consider that we succeed, in being flexible. A sick baby, or a flash flood, are all good enough reasons to require a mother to stay at home without fear of losing her job, though I am not sure how we will fair in this recession.
For my part I am going to have to concentrate on being creative this year. it is not enough to just expect that people will buy are products, beautiful though they may be, lets face it, we produce products of desire, rather than need.
And then there is TET, or Chinese New year as the rest of the world knows it by. I didn’t take heed on monday and Tuesday, I was too busy blowing out the candles on my boys birthday cakes. they turned 17 and 15 earlier this week. But by friday the lull in our email account was audible. I hesitatingly mentioned to Van. “don’t you think its strange that we have received no emails this week?” “No its TET” she said “people are busy praying or not back at work yet…” It was then that I had to remind her that for the rest of the world TET is just another new moon, one of 12 in the year.
“Ring our email server provider” I said. and sure enough, they had cut us off. Our website no longer opens at the click of a button.. it might be off enjoying jupiter for all I know cyberspace being such a vast unknown for me. Incoming emails are returned directly to their sources as being “undeliverable” and the requests for bespoke velvet goods are hence seemingly ignored.
So, please, if you have written to us this week, please write again soon. Were not out too lunch. were not even home sick. we’ve just been inadvertently out of touch, and on behalf of our email server provider (who shall remain nameless for obvious reasons) we apologize.
In the mean time, happy new year from all of us!
x
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