threads

My wife gets a magazine called Threads. It is “for people who love to sew.” The most recent issue sits on the kitchen table. If you are like me, you find yourself reading whatever is in front of you when you sit alone at the table, eating. It goes back to a childhood spent reading and re-reading the cereal boxes. I have no interest in Threads, but there is nothing else on the table to read, and I can’t goof around on my Pre because my hands are full.

And so between bites I flip through Threads, looking for something to catch my eye. Every magazine has something … “Ask Marilyn,” or an article about anthropological finds, or a months-old newspaper fragment with a Super Bowl update.

There is nothing in Threads that catches my eye.

To be more specific: there is nothing in Threads that I understand. It seems to be a very functional magazine. No interviews with famous seamstresses, just tips and how-tos and patterns. It might as well be written in Vulcan.

I come to realize that Threads is most certainly an excellent magazine. I don’t understand it, but it’s not for me in the first place. It assumes prior knowledge. It doesn’t try to get new converts to the world of sewing. It does seem to include features for veterans and newbies … it’s not just for the elites of the sewing world. But Threads makes no attempt to reach out to people who don’t care in the first place.

If Threads were president, it wouldn’t worry about finding common cause with Republicans.