The Big Bead Acquisition

I was in Santa Cruz over the weekend for a work retreat, and saved a little time for what I imagined would be my big bead acquisition.  It was Santa Cruz, after all, grooviest of coastal towns.  I'd conjured up images of a dusty little shop a block or two from the ocean, owned and operated by a grizzled hippie-surfer, full of beads and pipes and vintage Grateful Dead posters.  The beads would be mostly secondhand, the spoils of trade-ins or estate sales or what have you, and they would be kept all together in a giant wooden trough.  I would run my fingers through them, feel the weight of the individual stones and glass nuggets, and would divine my 52 beads with my eyes closed.  My bill would come to about ten dollars, and I would trade Dead show stories with the owner for a while before walking back to my hotel, beads tucked in a little paper bag in my purse, thumping against my hip to the beat of the revolution.  

My acquisition took a detour, however, when I learned that, while my imagined shop certainly may have existed in Santa Cruz at one point, it doesn't appear to anymore.  Google got my hopes up with names like Monkey Girl Beads and The Bead Trade, but further research and drive-bys indicated they'd all closed down.  The one store that might have fit the bill was closed on Sundays.  I drove back from Santa Cruz empty-handed, battered by the rain, and beset by all manner of weather-related obstacles, including a downed power line on Highway 17 that stopped traffic for 2.5 hours.

And today I went shopping on the Internet.  I found an operation based out of Palo Alto, which felt like the next best thing to a real-live experience because it's only 180 miles away and a small business.  My proverbial trough of other people's beads imbued with other people's stories was not to be found, but there were a lot of nice colors and shapes.  The site is definitely intended for crafty people, a tribe to which I do not belong.  There is a lot of jargon about thread gauge and different techniques, like "mala" and "laddering" and other things I'd never heard of before.  It was frankly a little distracting, and for a moment I almost forgot my purpose, thinking I should really check out some of the site's free tutorials before embarking on a project as daunting as a one-year, 52-bead necklace (or bracelet?  I still don't know.) 

So, I spent $50, feeling a little sheepish and bourgeois.  The good news is I have enough beads for the standard four-year presidential term.  So, if Mr. Trump goes the distance, and I stay strong, I can make not just one, but four bracelets (or necklaces).  Alternately, if any of my local friends want to take part, but don't have cash for beads, I will give you some of mine.  Just let me know. 

Finally, I want to share an action tip my coworker gave me yesterday.  Subscribe to Daily Action Alerts by texting "daily" or "action" to 228466, and enter your zip code when prompted.  The service will text you each day with instructions for a simple phone call you can make to take action during the Trump administration.  Evidently, the service tailors the issues and suggested phone calls to your locality, and even patches your call through for you.  I just signed up yesterday, and haven't received my first text yet, but will post updates once I've had a chance to check the service out.