American Flannel

In an effort to read more non-fiction, I went over to the shelf Thursday night and just randomly grabbed this. I was into this by the end of the first chapter, and I couldn't figure out why. I'm old enough to remember the “Made in America” labels and the buy American campaigns. I did not grow up in a factory town or have family that worked in manufacturing, but still this idea, it was resonating with something that is deep inside of me. Something that comes out when I look to buy something I need locally and I can't find it (case in point: none of the local stores near me sell woman's tights- I HAD to go to a box store).
This quote, from page 202 by Farhad Manjoo, which I will now paraphrase. He's talking about when covid first landed, how incredibly unprepared the US was to deal with it-because we send so much of our manufacturing overseas. He said, “What a small, shameful way for a strong nation to falter...For want of a seventy-five-cent face mask, the kingdom was lost.”
And now I find myself shopping brands that are produced here in the US and, I'm not going to lie, I'm a civil servant, I can't afford 228 trendy jeans, but I can afford one 115 flannel shirt, if I get years of wear out of it. I can afford a beautiful pair of 20 socks if they will last more than a few weeks.
It's time to change my priorities (let's open the conversation about why American workers would have trouble affording brands made in their own country-both because of their low wages and because of how hard it is to produce textiles here.)
This was a great, well written read.