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Singing in the Pain

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Among the activities most unsafe to do in groups during this pandemic-spread-by-respiratory-contact is sing. That is a total bummer–not least because it gives an easy boogeyman to believers who want to frame the “hoax” virus or the “overblown” response to it as an excuse for attacking religion in the USA. (Checking in with friends in Asian, British and Canadian Christian communities, this conspiracy theory has uneven traction in other places.)

People raising their hands in worship

I love worship singing. Some great moments of renewed strength have come from group worship leading to either that quiet, peaceful blanket of love so many of us know descending in sweetness, or that wild happy vibe that brings a different kind of sweetness with silly fun. Both have been delights throughout my life.

My husband came to Christianity in his fifties. Before and after, he found singing a source of strength in social justice situations, and a relief from the drains of a demanding and sometimes pedantic day job in Academia.

So it’s easy to move the pandemic into feeling personal: we can’t SING together because it expels too much used air too forcefully to be safe? ICK! DOUBLE ICK!

Charismatic evangelicals in particular seem to be swallowing an astroturfed, baited hook with the line: YOUR GOVERNMENT FORBIDS! This is act two of the drama; act one starts with “the virus makes it unsafe,” but that doesn’t make people feel nearly so persecuted, and therefore important. Kinda weird, but there it is: do you want to be someone’s wind-up toy, while yelling you won’t be someone else’s wind-up toy? Be prayerful, not gullible.

No, we can’t sing together face to face, but that’s not the same thing as we can’t sing. We can in our “infection units” (with household and selected friends) and we can online; some Christian communities are doing that. (A word to the wise: mute the mics of all but the leaders, because Zoom has terrible delays that will do the same thing as a large group trying to carol a neighborhood at Christmas; the back 50 will be .5 seconds behind the front 50, and if you think that doesn’t matter, wait and see what happens to Away in a Manger when it starts off pitched for a choir of soprano mice anyway. We’ve all been there.)

Jack and I have done two different types of group singing since the pandemic started; we set chairs in a circle 15 feet wide on our back deck, and told people to face the empty spaces between chairs, and hold back a little on belting out choruses. No one got sick. Not everyone has a big back yard, either. We also participate from time to time in various online folkie events, usually doing featured singers rather than group sing: one camera, one singer, one song, in a meeting of 10-70 people. It works, so long as you mute the mics for choruses.

Christians: please sing. Please sing together in your families and record it for others to see. Please don’t go out on the streets of, oh, say, Seattle, and sing in a big non-masked group and then watch the rates spike two weeks later so all the non-Christians can find one more reason to call us stupid and mean. *waves* Yo, Sean Feucht!

The government is not the enemy in this global health threat; don’t pray against the guy in front of the curtain. We’d all be grateful if you would pray against the virus and then not consider spreading it “an act of faith.” That’s more “duped” than “bold.” Just sayin’.

If you are doing best practice sing-a-longs, we would love to see the links to them. Thanks!

A Stitch in Time – –

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Jack gets there in time for a change – –

Thanks to our good friend Randy’s sister Linda, we were given an old Singer treadle sewing machine a while back. A beautiful piece of furniture but of little practical use, it sat in our garage until Wendy worked her charms. I set about getting this foot-powered treadle machine going again a couple of weeks ago. Friends asked if we were prepping; no. It really is just such a pretty piece of furniture, and Wendy was very persuasive….

The cover plate for the bobbin mechanism was missing, so I went online to see what was available—dubious that anything would be. Surprise surprise. In the same way that some people are enthusiastic for old guns, or hand-powered tools, there is a small but tight circle of people who love old non-electric sewing machines. Our model was quickly identified from photos, and turned out to be made in 1911. The plate was easily available, along with advice on nursing the old machine back to health.

By now I had remembered that Singer had an enormous factory just outside Glasgow in Scotland that closed in the 1980s. Some more research gave me the history of Isaac Singer, its founder; he deliberately employed mostly women in his factories as he wanted to disprove the notion that they couldn’t handle the machining tasks involved!

I must admit that although I’ve always been intrigued by old technology and remember my mother having a treadle sewing machine, I was not expecting to have any success. The belt had broken and when I tried to get it moving with the hand wheel, it was so stiff it would hardly move. But the moving parts once again proved easily accessible online, and generous amounts of WD40 got things loosened up and moving freely again.

What’s fascinating is the mixture of skills involved that were required to make these beauties sing—er, sew: the cast iron treadle and wheel, another casting for the main top part, intricate metal machining of the needle and bobbin housings, and the clever wooden case holding it all together, complete with an internal peg to hold the machine in place during use.

Recently, Wendy’s mom gave her a modern electric machine to play with; apart from having a motor instead of a treadle, it proved remarkably similar to the old Singer. Once you have a good design, the only thing that changes is the power source. So I could easily see how the thread path worked and how the bobbin thread engaged with the upper one.

I also researched replacement belts which were surprisingly easy to obtain, too. That got us off the hook on one of the old machine enthusiast sites, which suggested using a pair of nylons. Wendy didn’t feel like sacrificing her winter tights.

Fitting the new belt was very finicky, as they come oversized, get cut to the correct length on the machine, and then the two ends have to be joined with a staple. I had to re-cut ours three times before I got it right, and apparently they stretch with use and have to be re-cut again. Wendy said it looked as though I were trying to fit a leash on a hyperactive cat.

Another missing part was the metal spike on top that holds the thread reel, which had broken off at some time. But I found that a round pencil was the correct diameter so cut a length and epoxied it in place. The pencil was orange, not a color Wendy cares for, so I think it will be weeks before she discovers it missing from her box of recreational coloring materials.

The only thing I haven’t done yet is actually try to sew anything, and that will undoubtedly be interesting. We are, of course, trying to avoid trips to the emergency room during the pandemic….

Finally – I was cleaning out our Dodge Journey today and there was the original bobbin cover plate lying on the floor, months after we transported the old girl from her old home to this one. I guess now we have a spare.