To Be of Use

Welcome to our new blog. We will use it to share tidbits of news about the store and other items of interest to staff, customers, and artists.

Here's a poem I loved by Marge Piercy. Marge is a Wellfleet poet and author who you can find out more about at her website http://www.margepiercy.com/index.htm . This poem, "To Be Of Use," makes me think not only of my favorite employees who are there again and again, uncomplaining, when jobs that are not fun need to be done, (thanks, Erhan!) but also of those workers around the world who create so many of the items we sell here in the store.

It helps me remember how many hands have "touched" each product both literally and figuratively before it is finally received as a gift-- from the raw materials to the actual manufacturing to the marketing, to the wholesalers, shippers, and sales reps, and finally to our store employees carefully unpacking, pricing, and maintaining inventory in good condition while it waits for to find a buyer... such a chain of hands working to bring you even the tiniest item.

Thanks for reading-- Ian

To Be Of Use - by Marge Piercy

The people I love the best
Jump into work head first
Without dallying in the shadows
And swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
The black sleek heads of seals
Bouncing like half-submerged balls.
I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
Who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
Who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
Who do what has to be done, again and again.
I want to be with people who submerge
In the task, who go into the fields to harvest
And work in a row and pass the bags along,
Who are not parlor generals and field deserters
But move in a common rhythm
When the food must come in or the fire be put out.
The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
Has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
But you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
And a person for work that is real.
-Marge Piercy