09:51 – Every Saturday I do the laundry, and every time I’m annoyed as I read the labels on our clothing. Not the vendors’ names. They’re mostly L. L. Bean, Lands’ End, Carhartt, Hanes, Champion, and so on, what used to be good brands. No, it’s the countries of origin that annoy me.

When Barbara and I married in 1983, nearly all our clothing and bedding was made in the US. There were a few items from Canada or England, with an occasional item from Denmark, Sweden, Australia, or some other first-world country. Now, other than a few old pieces of clothing, nearly all of it is from third-world countries. Yesterday, I noticed labels from Mexico, Honduras, Malaysia, Peru, China, India, Turkey, and Jordan. My Hanes underpants were made in Vietnam! Not all that long ago, those underpants would have been made in a plant in Winston-Salem.

Sourcing this stuff from third-world countries is bad enough. The textile industry used to employ tens of thousands of workers in North Carolina, almost none of whom still have jobs in textiles. Same goes for the furniture industry, which has also nearly been wiped out by so-called free trade. But the other bad thing is that product quality is a pale shadow of what it once was. Materials are thinner, stitching is shoddy, and quality control is next to non-existent. I have a new package of Hanes underpants. Twenty years ago, these wouldn’t have been good enough to qualify as factory seconds to be sold in the outlet store. Now, they’re considered firsts.

Just out of curiosity, I visited the LL Bean website and searched for items made in the US. There were only a handful on offer, mostly small accessories. The thousands of other SKUs they carry are all imported. Not a single one of LL Bean’s jeans is made in the US. So I checked the Lands’ End website. Again, the overwhelming majority of their stuff is imported. Lands’ End does at least carry a few lines of jeans that are US made. Their imported jeans sell for around $50, with the US-made ones around $75. Apparently, US-made carries a 50% premium, at least at Lands’ End.

So I visited the All American Clothing website, and found that they sell their US-made jeans for about the same price that Lands’ End and LL Bean sell their imported stuff. I know where my next pair of jeans is coming from.

08:55 – Colin let us sleep in this morning. When we woke up, Barbara asked me what time it was. “Eight o’clock,” I told her.

My mind can be a very strange place to live. For some reason, a fully fleshed-out scenario flashed through my mind, a meeting where a bunch of marketing droids were sitting around discussing what to name their coffee.

MD1: “How about Eight O’Clock?”
MD2: “Nah, that’s too late. Most people have their first cup by 7:00.”
MD3: “I always have mine around 6:45.”
MD2: “That’s way too long a name. We need something shorter.”
MD4: “I usually don’t have mine until I get to work at 10:00.”
MD5: “How about Early Morning Blend?”
MD4: “I think Dunhill trademarked that for tobacco.”
MD6: “I usually have tea in the morning.”
MD1/2/3/4/5: “We don’t sell tea, you moron.”

07:51 – Barbara and I were watching Dawson’s Creek last night. We’re in season four, and all the high school kids are doing college applications. The big issue seems to be writing essays. Barbara commented that when she applied to colleges there wasn’t an essay requirement. I didn’t have to write one, either. I understand why an essay requirement scares these kids, though. Most kids nowadays, even college-bound ones, have trouble writing a proper sentence, let alone a paragraph, let alone an entire essay.

I told Barbara that I remembered when Jasmine, who’s now a rising college senior, was facing the dreaded essay requirement. We were sitting on her front porch talking one day. She was telling me once again how much she dreaded having to write an essay. I finally said, “Look, Jas. I’m a professional writer. I’ve been making my living at it for 15 years now. If it’ll help, you name the topic and I’d be happy to write the essay for you.”

I could tell she was tempted, but she declined with thanks, saying it wouldn’t be fair or right for her to submit something I’d written as her own work. I pointed out that this wasn’t a game, and that many of the kids she was in competition with would be taking advantage of whatever their families and friends could do to help them be admitted to the college of their choice, everything from expensive SAT tutoring to paying for professionally-written essays to taking advantage of their Old Boy and Old Girl networks. But Jas wouldn’t budge, and of course she was offered admission to the schools she wanted to attend.