My mom Sherry was the type of person who could (and consistently willed herself to) find gold in a shitpile. Even decades before "recycling" and "repurposing" was a thing, she'd eye a pile of beat up stuff as we did "elderly chore aid" and realize...oh, I'm going to be decorating for the Fifties Dance at the kids school, that somewhat broken lamp with the poodle, that's perfect. "What's perfect?" We'd ask just seeing a depressed old person's old stuff that us young people were going to have to muscle up and cart. "Oh, you'll see," she'd say. And then in the lighting, with themed table centerpieces, and 1950s mood music...wal-ah! The poodle was "spit shined" and a glorious focal point helping us overlook more Tang and sgetti.
In the 1990s there were enough people who'd survived the ravages of the 1980s that their ideas and practices about recovery and building something better shone on the humdrum get her done work days, and we all, across America, got something going!
We also got more confident about what makes us unique, not just all-the-same-kind-of-American. There was still a lot of fear of the "other" (even between States) and there was a healthy dose of that's my story and I'm sticking to it. In other words, honoring each others' boundaries but also honoring "progress" in a forward direction. The past is the past could be said of some movements in history, as well as an individual's life turned around. Discussions about image could sometimes get into the whys...why something degenerated and so sales slipped from steady and so cuts to worker hours and so...a professional "we" got to work on local and national.
We'd had a lot of loss, generationally and in on-the-move like shepards to business, and there was hard alone time for travelers and it took music and art and media to keep reminding local and particular--hey, we're all still part of America.
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