The Cat In The Hat

Oh, January. Damnit all to Hell. And I say Damnit all to Hell not because I really mean it, but just because blergh. Beautiful ice storms but Donald Trump’s Twitter, and amazing veggie fondue but blue dye on my hands from Harper’s hair and a cough that has lingered for over a month. Knitting a dozen hats to donate to marchers on Saturday but knitting a dozen hats to donate to marchers on Saturday. (People have wildly different views about the hats. Some think they’re great. Some think they’re just another sign of people needing a crap souvenir for a cause they don’t really believe in or aren’t willing to do real work for. I honestly can see both sides.)

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Do this for me: If you’re wearing a cat hat to the march and you don’t *really* need/want it afterwards, please consider donating it directly to a homeless person who is cool with wearing a pink cat hat. Maybe put a warm sandwich or something IN that hat. As a friend of mine said this morning, “You’re helping those in the cold and those hats will, for awhile, be omnipresent on the streets, a reminder of the connection between abject poverty and government’s need to be bigger than some sleezy dipshit who conned his way into the presidency.”

When I was seventeen, my world was all about my hair and my shoes. My hair because it looked like this, which required a bit of time. My shoes because I liked to watch them when I walked. (When you’re watching your shoes, you don’t have to make eye contact with someone who might be laughing at you.) ((I had some issues during Angela: The Teen Years. Angela: Forty-Something is only a tiny bit better.)) Seventeen-year-old me read TIME magazine for a Contemporary Issues class, but didn’t retain anything past quiz time. I had no idea who was fighting whom. I hadn’t even thought about voting. All of this to say: Last week I had the pleasure of knitting a cat hat for a seventeen-year-old girl who is taking a bus to Washington DC this weekend to march for the rights and safety of women. She picked the hat up on Saturday and was completely pumped and today’s kids are breaking cycles and showing up and some of them will be wearing cat hats and some of them won’t, and what they have ON their heads is so much less important than what they have IN their heads.

Some of you like it when the Beatles sing Come Together. I’ve always preferred Primal Scream and: We can still be friends. I don’t care what you’re wearing on your head, unless it’s a hat that says Make America Great Again, in which case we can STILL be friends, it’s just that I’ll be spending most of our friendship checking out my shoes. ‘ ‘ ‘text/javascript’>

11 thoughts on “The Cat In The Hat”

  1. So many thoughts and feelz as the dreaded day approaches. I’m just trying not to eat them all.

  2. Thank you again for making the daughter the lovely hat! The hat represents the transition from bystander to participant. It has already spurred conversation about my days when I worked at a Women’s shelter or did Master’s research with pregnant women with HIV. As Maya starts college on a pre med track, what started as neatly bundled yarn could lead to a lifetime of compassion and appreciation for the small sacrifices we make for one another!

  3. I’m finding it so difficult to believe that Friday’s outcome will be Reality. #RealityTVPresident ::le sigh::

  4. “what they have ON their heads is so much less important than what they have IN their heads.”

    Testify.

  5. I will be marching at my state capitol on Saturday wearing a pink cat hat and I had not thought about what to do with the hat after the march. Thanks for the wonderful suggestion!

  6. It isn’t a cat hat it’s a pussy Hat. Which marginalized women to their genitalia as spoken by Trump.

    1. I’m completely aware of that, B. It’s the reason the call went out for knitters to make cat hats. (Honestly, I’ve never been a fan of the P word. Heh.)

  7. A number of my friends are making these hats and marching – there is a march here in Atlanta being lead by John Lewis (LOVE HIM) and my mama is going. And good for her!!!!!!

  8. Hi Angela! (The Lumineers are singing it!)
    Yippee for pink pussy cat hats! Would there be anyway you could knit one for one of my Nasty woman friends…she is also a cancer survivor! So it would be extra special…Just name the price…I am just a hop and a skip from you in KS.

    Thank you!! :) Carla

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