#Textile Reeling Machine

[machinebd]

Why YG086 Wrap Reel Machine is Best?

Sagartexbd is Offering Cheapest Price for YG086 Wrap Reel Machine in Bangladesh. This YG086 is a machine that is used to accurately determine the length of yarn, for the determination of the linear density or count of textile yarn, and the strength test of wisp yarn. Its frame speed is 30~250 rpm and its frame circumference is 1000 ± 1 mm.  This Wrap Reel Machine Can Measure accurate determination of yarn length, for the determination of yarn density or count of textile yarn and yarn strength test.

Application YG086 Wrap Reel Machine

Wrap Reel Machine skeins of yarn measure to pre-determined length and number of turns for height and quality testing. 1 Meter, 36″ or 54″ circumference collapsible quick (indicate). Wrap reel total with yarn bundle stand and pre-tension gadget, fitted with a pre-determined counter.

The wrap reel can be utilized to evaluate the string thickness of yarns, fiber fibers, etc. It can moreover be utilized to do example planning for yarn quality and is broadly utilized in central research facilities of material endeavors, testing establishing, quality control, and law authorization units and inquire about institutes.

This Machine gives the length of one circle for each circle of yarn wound, subsequently the yarn pressure influences the length of the winding, the more circles the more prominent the distinction in gathered length. The TESTEX wrap reel begins and stops easily without extra pressure stuns, which viably dodges the wonder of hurrying laps. In expansion, it has moo working clamor, precise lap checking, and great unwavering quality with a moo disappointment rate.

Specification

৳ 155,000.00

Model NO:             YG-086 Working Width:    1.5m Voltage:                 220V Grade:                   Automatic Material:              Cotton Fabric Load Capacity:    <500kg Weight:                50kg

[jenifer-so]

U.S VETERANS APPRECIATION'S DAY WITH AMERICAN C.E.O LEADER CHEF TANNER P...

#usveterans #veteransday #armisticeday #remembranceday #worldhistory #history #education #tv #TV #news #newshorts #news24 #newsupdate #newsupdates #newstoday #newsheadelines #newslive #usarmy #usnavy #usmarines #usmarine #usmarinecorps #usairforce #usdefense #ussoldiers #usmilitary #militarynews #usmilitarytv #usa #usanews #usavlogs #unitedstates #america #americanews #american nativeamerican #aamericanbully #americanenglish #americanhistory #washingtondc #washingtonpost #justice #washingtonstate #newyork #newyorkcity #newyorkpost #newyorkvlog #newyorktimes #texans #texansnews #texasnews #texascity #texasliving #workers #worker #texascountry #ceremony #tribute #usarmedforces #memorialday #nationalday #nationalgeographic #nationalnews #international #internationalnews #independenceday #independencedayspecial #socialmedia #socialnews #media #mediaonenews #world #worldnews #worldwide #worldwidenews #holiday #celebration #happyveteransday #annualday #event #public #publicholiday #publictv #publicnews #publicvlog #capital #capitalnews #capitaltv #veteranaffairs #geology #educationalcontent #foodvlog #foodblogger #food #foodie #foodies #foodlover #foodshorts #foodphotography #foodstagram #foodbank #foodbanks #foodbankhaul #foodbankvideos #worldbank #global #globalnews #globalbanks #meal #recipe #recipes #stuffed #porkloin #salad #veggies #vegetables #vegerecipe #meatrecipe #baking #bakery #cooking #cookingchannel #cookingvideo #cookingshorts #foodshorts #bakingshorts #handmade #milk #dessert #dessertrecipe #desserts #dessertlovers #bread #dessertcake #dessertblogger #designshorts #celebritynews #foodinspiration #foodindustry #bonappetite #bonappetit #homeandgarden #homeandkitchen #home #decoration #management #trade #finance #police #firefighting #military #health #welfare #childcare #childrencare #healthcare #design #architecture #culturalheritage #culture #cultural #beauty #tourism #tourismvlog #tourismnews #leisure #sport #sports #gym #archeology #service #maintanence #confectionery #construction #machine #machinery #car #phone #mobile #railway #aviation #drone #material #metal #semiconductor #medical #linguistics #semiconductorindustry #chemical #art #artwork #chemicalengineering #chemicalengineer #environment #textile #fashion #fashionblogger #fashionmagazine #electricity #electronics #electronic #information #community #communication #artificialintelligence #artificialtechnology #printing #print #publishing #publishingindustry #publishingcompany #craft #crafts #pets #pet #petcare #doctor #nursing #job #jobs #meteorology #career #technology #technews #veterinary #industrynews #musicvlog #industrial #industryleader #leader #leaders #leadership #leadgeneration #CEO #ceo #founders #founder #boss #bosses #chairman #chairmen #law #humanrights #constructioncompany #humanity #vlog #blogger #reels #reelsfb #reelsindia #reelsinstagram #reelsvideo #reelsinsta #reelsshorts #reelsvideos #ad #charity #peopleareawesome #peoplemagazine #peopleandblogs #peopleandvlogs #people #shorts #short #shortvideo #shortsvideo #shortsfeed #business #businessvlog #businessnews #farm #farmingnews #farmingvlogs #farm #agriculture #jobsearch #jobtips #savings #science #scienceandtechnology #highlights #highlight #highschool #university #universities #highschoolsports #junior #youth #youthclub #abcnews #nbcnews #foxnews #cnnnews #cbsnews #cbs_broadcasting #bbcnews #asianews #europenews #africanews #australianews #dubainews #arabnews #australia #africa #asia #europe #city #downtown #suburban #suburb #district #districtnews #avenue #topnews #topstar #worldstarshorts #starnews #sponsor #degitalmarketing #digital #digitalart #allnetwork #newstoday #marketing #marketingnews #good #infrastructure #goodfood #goofmorningamerica #goodjob #entertainmentnews #musicindustrynews #newschannel #channel #filmindustrynews #latimes #hollywoodnews #oscarnews #academicnews #careernews #jobnews #localnews #localfood #local #constructioncompany #worldvlog #globalnetworking #globalnetwork #worldnetwork #sportsnews #sportsvlog #work #innovation #future #advancement #modernity

[haikuprajna]

Hello reader,

We ate at the Toronto Island BBQ & Beer Co. on Centre Island after going to see the largest rubber duck in the world!

This was our second trip on Toronto’s ferries, and our second time meeting the big yellow duck; watch out for a Toronto Roadmap update with more photos of our trip!

.

Youtube: https://youtu.be/-HOGFI6btBA

20230916 - Toronto Island BBQ & Beer Co. - APRILandALLEN's Restaurant Roadmap

Read online: https://www.patreon.com/posts/89705557/

Patron exclusive gallery: https://www.patreon.com/posts/89691235

.

APRILandALLEN’s Restaurant Roadmap is an entry in our larger Roadmap photo book and video log series where we document our physical adventures to share what inspires our work, and subscribed Patreon readers have access to an archive with photos and captions which will be collected in future APRILandALLEN’s books. This series is part of our upcoming APRILandALLEN’s Project Roadmap, which you can learn more about on our Patreon. https://www.patreon.com/asquaredproductions

.

We ordered truffle fries with a garlic aioli dip and pulled pork for April and a poutine with brisket for myself which were both full of flavour, the Sandbagger cans featured some textile stimulation with their sand logo and tasted great while going down smooth. Only complaints were how dry the pork was, and that our food came out at room temp.

.

The song is “Enigma” from “Forest Machines”, the latest release from Electric Armchair; find April’s psychedelic albums anywhere you listen to music! Photos were taken by April and me, and the Restaurant Roadmap video was edited myself.

.

Thank you for reading,

Until next time!

Allen W. McLean

...

Need more bite-sized insights to relieve your stress and suffering?

“BATTLE Colosseum” is a metaphysical science fiction story set in my ongoing “FLUKE!” series,

Follow HaikuPrajna and Electric Armchair online and on social media for more Art Works, Book Merch and Clay Quirks at https://APRILandALLEN.square.site/

#meditate #mindful #metaphysical #psychedelic #yoga #attract #food #toronto #vlog .

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CxuxTSOugIi/?igshid=MTc4MmM1YmI2Ng==

[esgdatainrate]

Paper Straw In-Depth Profiling With Key Players and Recent Developments, Forecast Period: 2021-2031

Paper Straw Market Research, 2031

The global paper straw market size was valued at $865.3 million in 2021, and is projected to reach $3 billion by 2031, growing at a CAGR of 13.3% from 2022 to 2031. Paper straw is a thin tube made of waterproof paper that is used to suck liquid into the mouth. During the paper straw manufacturing process, several thin reels of paper are run through a glue bath. These tacky reels are then wound together into a long paper cylinder. Those long cylinder tubes are then cut to size, packaged, and shipped.

Industry trends are shifting toward bio-based products to reduce dependence on conventional plastics for straws. Moreover, most of the manufacturers in industries, such as packaging, textile, and agriculture are shifting toward bio-based products for manufacturing of straws and other utensils due to stringent regulations from the government. Such factors are largely impacting the paper straw market growth.

On the other hand, the growth of the market is negatively impacted by strict government regulations while installation of machines used for manufacturing of paper straws. During the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, construction, manufacturing, hotel, and tourism industries were majorly affected. Manufacturing activities were halted or restricted. This led to decline in manufacturing of various equipment used for manufacturing of paper straw as well as their demand in the market, thereby restraining the growth of the paper straw industry. Conversely, industries are gradually resuming their regular manufacturing and services. This is expected to lead to re-initiation of paper straw companies at their full-scale capacities, that helped the paper straw market share to recover by end of 2021.

The paper straw market is segmented on the basis of material, product, end user, and region. By material, the market is fragmented into virgin paper and recycled paper. By product, the global market is categorized into printed and non-printed. By end user, the market is divided into food service and household. Region-wise, the market analysis is conducted across North America (the U.S., Canada, and Mexico), Europe (UK, France, Germany, Italy, and Rest of Europe), Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, India, South Korea, and Rest of Asia-Pacific), and LAMEA (Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa).

COMPETITION ANALYSIS

The major players profiled in the paper straw market report include, Aleco Industrial Co. Ltd., Biopak , Bygreen, Canada Brown Eco Products Ltd , Charta Global , Focus Technology Co., Ltd. , Footprint , Fuling Global Inc. , Hoffmaster Group, Inc. , Huhtamaki Oyj , Lollicup USA, Inc. , Ningbo Jiangbei Shenyu Industry and Trade Co., Ltd. , Shenzhen Grizzlies Industries Co., LTD , Soton Daily Necessities Co., Ltd. , Tipi Straws, Transcend Packaging Ltd., and YuTong Eco-Technology (SuQian) Co., Ltd. Major companies in the market have adopted product launch and business expansion as their key developmental strategies to offer better products and services to customers in the paper straw market.

Full Report With TOC:-https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/paper-straw-market-A07893

[doctoringrewindingmachine]

Krishna Engineering Works we have been manufacturing, exporting, and supplier of all types of Doctor Re Reeling Machine, Doctoring Rewinding Machine, Inspection Rewinding Manufacturer, Winding Rewinding Machine. We have designed and built for accuracy for doctoring use with air brake with reel diameter, Edge Guide with actuator for the Unwind reel, Air shafts for Doctoring Re Reeling Machine units. It is used to salvage badly rewound coils produced on the Slitting and Rewinding Machine.

[ober-affen-geil]

I found you off that post about preserving fandom history. I'm very interested in history in general, and fandom specifically, and now that Twitter is dying I feel extremely compelled to preserve history. Any...pointers?

Hello! First of all thank you for asking me this, I'm flattered. Second...I took a while to respond because this is a really hard question that I can't...really actually answer?

The short answer is, when it comes to digital preservation, which is what it seems like you're asking me about, I don't know all that much. It's a very new field and tbh the archiving community as a whole doesn't know all that much (though there are people who specialize in it and I invite any who do who may see this to add commentary). You're best bet as far as I know is the folks over at the Internet Archive.

The long answer. Look at it this way: the world wide web as we know it really only started coming into existence in the late 1980s-early 1990s. That is. Just about 30 years ago. The first roughly ten years of The Internet is basically already lost to history because we had NO idea how to deal with preserving what's called "born digital" material. None.

If you want the absolute truth of it, at that point the archive world was still reeling from the invention of the Xerox machine and the sheer amount of paper records it was generating and I'm dead serious. When this newfangled thing called "electronic mail" started to come about the archival solution for preservation was to print it out. Yes, really. There are a lot of places that still do this btw, because there still *isn't really* a widespread solution to preserving emails long term.

We know some things. We know that .tifs and .pdf-as are the best file formats for longer term preservation. We know that you have to update your formats every few years or so or the files will no longer be able to be read. We know about "bit rot" and some about how to prevent that. But otherwise...digital preservation is the wild frontier of archiving. It's really fucking hard and everything is new and changing constantly.

Basically, the best pointer I can give you is to talk about the things you want remembered. Put your eggs in more than one basket, screenshotting a tweet and putting it on tumblr in a way preserves that tweet and certain information about twitter as well (what is the format for tweets, what's the layout of the site, what's the user interface look like, etc). Start a blog or a web page to "collect" things ("know your meme" is, technically, an online archive!), even create a physical scrapbook or diary about fandom experiences you want to preserve.

That is, for better or worse, the best advice I can give you. Again, my specialty is really more in physical items (my experience is with paper documents and photographs as well as some objects and textiles) so there may be others with the ability to give more informed advice. But yeah. Keep asking questions like this!

[thepointoftheneedle]

The Sports Coat

Look I'm obsessed with "that" jacket. Here's a ficlet about it.

When his bellowing of her name became physically painful she put down her book with a deep sigh and trudged upstairs. Her mom was spending some quality time with their son tonight and she’d been looking forward to lying motionless on the couch for at least four hours. Jug was standing in his boxer shorts, staring helplessly into his closet. It was a good look on him, she didn’t hate it, it almost made climbing the stairs worthwhile, despite the fact that it was the end of a very long week and she was as exhausted as any young mom had ever been.

“Where’s my sports coat?” Betty looked at him blankly. “You know the plaid one. Grey kinda.”

“Ugh, yeah, that terrible old thing. I was taking some of the little guy’s baby things that he’s outgrown to goodwill last week so I had a quick sweep of our closets while I was about it. I don’t imagine anyone’s going to buy something as ugly as that but they recycle textiles so…”

She trailed off because the colour had drained from his face as she was speaking.

“What? What’s wrong?”

“You took it to goodwill? Like, it’s totally gone? Gone-gone. You aren’t joking about?”

Betty began to feel a little nervous. The hideous jacket had been at the back of the closet since before they were married. She’d never seen him wear it, not even once. When she’d been surveying the hangers, rushing as always, it had seemed obvious that its space was more useful than its presence and she had stuffed it into the trash bag with the other donations. It hadn’t occurred to her that he’d even miss it.

“I’m sorry Jug. I didn’t realise it was important. You never wore it. I mean, thank God for that because it was so ugly, actually heinous. And you do have a lot of jackets. Almost too many.”

Jughead sat on the bed and put his head in his hands. For a moment she wondered if he was about to sob. She knelt on the floor in front of him and put her hands on his knees, looking up into his face. His brow was furrowed, eyes closed as if in pain. She was actually a little scared now. “Jug, Juggie. I’m so sorry. What did I do?”

“It was Stephen King’s,” he whispered. He wore it on Dick Cavett right after The Shining was released. The cameraman said he liked it and King just gave it to him. And the camera guy sold it to me for three hundred bucks. I lived off instant ramen for three weeks to pay for it. Well, ramen and scotch. It was when I was pretty low.”

Betty didn’t know what to say. Normally she was solution orientated but there was no rectifying this one. The jacket was almost certainly being shredded for insulation right at that moment. Secretly she wondered if that wasn’t maybe for the best, kinder to put the thing out of its misery. Ha, Misery!

She stroked his shoulder in what she hoped was a consoling manner. She could see why it was important to him but he had a first edition of The Shining and it had been an absolutely godawful coat. She was sorry… but not that sorry. Still, she stroked his hair back and kissed his ear, moving down to nibble gently at his ear lobe, he always liked that. His eyes flickered up to hers and she murmured against his neck, “Let me make it up to you.”

She woke late on Saturday morning, the quiet of the house a strange and slightly unsettling novelty. The great gift of an unbroken night of sleep was a treasure she hadn’t fully appreciated until she’d become a mom. She luxuriated for a moment, stretching across both sides of the bed, but then she began to miss both her boys. She had planned to get some chores done before going to pick up the little man but she felt like there was a fishing hook in her heart and it was being reeled in, pulling her towards Elm Street and his soft hair and sticky hands.

She guessed Jughead was writing so she padded downstairs only find the house empty and silent. There was a note on the coffee machine. “Love you sleeping beauty. Had an errand to run. I’ll pick up the boy on the way back. I miss him.” He’d scrawled a sad face followed by the crown he used as his signature.

Betty poured herself a coffee and sat down at the kitchen table to wait. She hoped the errand involved donuts.

Twenty minutes later she heard the truck pull up outside and went to the window to watch them come home. Her son was pretty evenly covered in powdered sugar, streaks of jelly in his hair and a doughy mess in one pudgy hand. The errand had been donut related. Her husband looked even more thrilled than his boy. He was wearing the monstrous coat.

“Betts! Look, I got it back! The guy said they were keeping it for Halloween. I guess he must have known about King somehow. I gave him a hundred bucks for it. How lucky is that? I’m going to wear the hell out of this thing. Aren’t you pleased?”

Betty managed a smile. “That’s great Jug. So great.”

[metalexpanderroller]

Manufacturer of Exporter Metal Expander Roller Standard Quality at Best Price – CON-PAP-TEX

We are a “CON-PAP-TEX” manufacturer and exporter of metal Expander Roll Metal Expander Roller Manufacturer is most suitable in high-speed pulp & paper & Textile Applications it is also known as Wrinkle Removers, Bow Rollers & Banana Rollers. Metal expander roll has a hard Chrome surface which is suitable for high-speed and high-tension applications for paper industries, particularly for slitter re-winder, Calendars, Poop Reels, and M.G cylinders. On high-speed machines, it does not wear & tear so it is commonly used in place of Rubber Bow Roll. Metal Bow Roll with individual Rotating Segments. Carbon Steel Designed Bow Rollers. For more information:

Website: conpaptex.co.uk

Email id: kewinquiry@gmail.com

Mobile No: +91-7940085305

[arvindrubberindia]

Everything That You Should Know About The Metal Bow Roller

Metal Expander Roller is generally appropriate in rapid Pulp and Paper and Textile Applications It otherwise called Wrinkle Removers, Bow Roll and Banana Roller. Bow Roll Manufacturer India for rock-solid and fast preparing machines.

Metal Bow Roller have a hard chrome surface that is appropriate for fast and high-pressure applications like paper ventures, or mostly in the M.G chambers, slitter re-winders, , Poop Reels, Calendars. On fast machines, it doesn't wear and tears so it is usually utilized instead of Rubber Bow Roll.

All metal expander roller having premium quality, additionally accessible hard chrome surface roller which is reasonable for rapid applications. Every type of Rubber Rolls are comes in various size for various industry. Especially Metal Expander Rollers having an extremely wide scope of dimensions and it is reasonable for a similarly wide scope of uses and web materials so that its first choice of manufacturer.

Different Sorts of Metallic Bow Roller:

Single Piece Rotating Type.

Singular Segment Rotating Type

Metal Bow Roll With Individual Rotating Segments

Metal Expander move with hard chrome surface

Carbon Steel Designed Bow Rolls

Metal bow move with bow point changing worm-worm wheel gear

Source: https://arvindrubber.wordpress.com/2020/11/26/everything-that-you-should-know-about-the-metal-bow-roller/

[rtulgroup]

Ultrasonics is useful in a various wide range of industries with unlimited applications. Ultrasonic equipment can include:

Ø  Ultrasonic Welding

Ø  Ultrasonic Cleaning

Ø  Ultrasonic Sieving

Ø  Ultrasonic Cut & Seal

Ø  Ultrasonic Testing

  Ultrasonic Welding:

As a joining process for industrial thermoplastics, the ultrasonic method is very well proven in practice in various industries. Particularly in the production of mass- produced parts, the process offers definite advantage over previous methods such as for instance high strength, clean weld seams, fast processing times, extremely low rejection rates and low energy consumption.

In addition to its main application which is welding of moulded thermoplastic parts, this technique can be used successfully for riveting, forming, stacking as well as embedding of metal parts into thermoplastic materials.

A standard ultrasonic welding unit comprises the following main components:

Electronic Ultrasonic Generator, Converter, Booster, Sonotrode, Pneumatic Press and Control Unit.

The Ultaronic Generator is the heart of every ultrasonic welding system, its function being to supply the converter with an alternating current of a given ultrasonic frequency. This is then converted by the transducer into mechanical/ ultrasonic vibrations which are finally transmitted via, the booster and sonotrode to the part being welded.

Ultrasonic Cleaning:

Ultrasonic cleaning is a process that uses ultrasound (usually from 20–40 kHz) to agitate a fluid. The ultrasound can be used with just water, but use of a solvent appropriate for the object to be cleaned and the type of soiling present enhances the effect.

Ultrasonic cleaners are used to clean many different types of objects, including jewelry, scientific samples, lenses and other optical parts, watches, dental and surgical instruments, tools, coins, fountain pens, golf clubs, fishing reels, window blinds, firearm components, car fuel injectors, musical instruments, gramophone records, industrial machine parts and electronic equipment. They are used in many jewelry workshops, watchmakers' establishments, electronic repair workshops and scientific labs.

  Ultrasonic Sieving:

 In addition to the conventional method, ultrasonic supported sieving technology evenly transmits as oscillating motion, in the micron range, onto the screen surface reducing the friction between the sieve mesh and bulk material. This Enhances the throughput and quality of your present vibratory screener, sieve or sifter.

Ultrasonic powder sieving system can be applied to your existing sieve, screener, or sifter to eliminate blockage or screening of wire mesh while sieving powder products such as powdered metals, ceramics, powder coatings, pharmaceuticals, or food additives.

Depending upon the particle structure this reduction can result in a significant increase in throughput volume. Screen blinding and clogging are also reduced due to the cleaning effect the oscillating motion has on the sieve mesh. A consistent efficient production process is guaranteed while simultaneously reducing the related maintenance costs to a minimum.

 Ultrasonic Textile (Cut & Seal):

 Ultrasonic energy has found extensive use in cutting of textiles, woven sacks/plastic etc and their downstream processing. Many of these uses are based on the ability to use ultrasonic energy to induce heat and pressure by vibratory action. The use of ultrasonic Cut n Seal technology makes manufacturing of non-wovens and wovens, economical and process-safe and our customers from the medical, packaging, fabrics and engineering industry value it tremendously.

The principal advantage of the ultrasonic seal and cut method is that the edge of the textile material, while being cut simultaneously, is sealed by the dissipation of ultrasonic energy, thereby preventing the presence of a frayed edge or the unraveling of threads, no discoloration of fabric and very strong, uniform, smooth, clean and long lasting edges without over thickness with low energy consumption.

 Ultrasonic Testing:

 Ultrasonic technique uses transmission of high frequency sound waves into a material to detect flawsor to find out changes in different material properties. 1-15MHz frequency is generally used for specialized application and frequencies upto 100-150 MHz are also necessary. Mostly piezoelectric transducer is used in such application. Ultrasonic waves are created by using excitation of piezoelectric  transducer with high voltage and narrow pulse. Ultrasonic flaw detector which is mostly used instrument for non destructive techniques of various kinds of materials.The pulse generator is the most critical part in all ultrasonic systems. There are different kinds of techniques used for exciting ultrasonic transducer.Ultrasonic testing is a very versatile inspection method and inspections can be accomplished in a number of different ways. Pulse echo is the most commonly used ultrasonic testing

technique , in this technique sound is introduced into a test object and echoes (reflection) are returned to a receiver from internal flaws or from the object’s geometrical surfaces.The Ultrasonic based Non Destructive Testing (NDT) is a widely used and well established technique for inspecting, testing, or evaluating of materials, components or assemblies with features of non-invasiveness, low-cost and real time capability.

  RTUL Brief Bio: RTUL is a leader in design, development, manufacture and marketing of a wide range of ultrasonic machines for welding, cleaning, sieving, non-destructive testing, sonochemistry and specialized applications. The company has established itself as a high-tech firm, specializing in production, research and developments in the area of ultrasonic.

[unsettlingshortstories]

Reeling for the Empire

Karen Russell (2013)

    Several of us claim to have been the daughters of samurai, but of course there is no way for anyone to verify that now. It’s a relief, in its way, the new anonymity. We come here tall and thin, noblewomen from Yamaguchi, graceful as calligraphy; short and poor, Hida girls with bloody feet, crow-voiced and vulgar; entrusted to the Model Mill by our teary mothers; rented out by our destitute uncles — but within a day or two the drink the Recruitment Agent gave us begins to take effect. And the more our kaiko-bodies begin to resemble one another, the more frantically each factory girl works to reinvent her past. One of the consequences of our captivity here in Nowhere Mill, and of the darkness that pools on the factory floor, and of the polar fur that covers our faces, blanking us all into sisters, is that anybody can be anyone she likes in the past. Some of our lies are quite bold: Yuna says that her great-uncle has a scrap of sailcloth from the Black Ships. Dai claims that she knelt alongside her samurai father at the Battle of Shiroyama. Nishi fibs that she once stowed away in the imperial caboose from Shimbashi Station to Yokohama, and saw Emperor Meiji eating pink cake. Back in Gifu I had tangly hair like a donkey’s tail, a mouth like a small red bean, but I tell the others that I was very beautiful.

    “Where are you from?” they ask me.

    “The castle in Gifu, perhaps you know it from the famous woodblocks? My great-grandfather was a warrior.”

    “Oh! But Kitsune, we thought you said your father was the one who printed the woodblocks? The famous ukiyo-e artist, Utagawa Kuniyoshi …”

    “Yes. He was, yesterday.”

    I’ll put it bluntly: we are all becoming reelers. Some kind of hybrid creature, part kaiko, silkworm caterpillar, and part human female. Some of the older workers’ faces are already quite covered with a coarse white fur, but my face and thighs stayed smooth for twenty days. In fact I’ve only just begun to grow the white hair on my belly. During my first nights and days in the silk-reeling factory I was always shaking. I have never been a hysterical person, and so at first I misread these tremors as mere mood; I was in the clutches of a giddy sort of terror, I thought. Then the roiling feeling became solid. It was the thread: a color purling invisibly in my belly. Silk. Yards and yards of thin color would soon be extracted from me by the Machine.

--

    Today, the Agent drops off two new recruits, sisters from the Yamagata Prefecture, a blue village called Sakegawa, which none of us have visited. They are the daughters of a salmon fisherman and their names are Tooka and Etsuyo. They are twelve and nineteen. Tooka has a waist-length braid and baby fat; Etsuyo looks like a forest doe, with her long neck and watchful brown eyes. We step into the light and Etsuyo swallows her scream. Tooka starts wailing—“Who are you? What’s happened to you? What is this place?”

    Dai crosses the room to them, and despite their terror the Sakegawa sisters are too sleepy and too shocked to recoil from her embrace. They appear to have drunk the tea very recently, because they’re quaking on their feet. Etsuyo’s eyes cross as if she is about to faint. Dai unrolls two tatami mats in a dark corner, helps them to stretch out. “Sleep a little,” she whispers. “Dream.”

    “Is this the silk-reeling factory?” slurs Tooka, half-conscious on her bedroll.

    “Oh, yes,” Dai says. Her furry face hovers like a moon above them.

    Tooka nods, satisfied, as if willing to dismiss all of her terror to continue believing in the Agent’s promises, and shuts her eyes.

    Sometimes when the new recruits confide the hopes that brought them to our factory, I have to suppress a bitter laugh. Long before the kaiko change turned us into mirror images of one another, we were sisters already, spinning identical dreams in beds thousands of miles apart, fantasizing about gold silks and an “imperial vocation.” We envisioned our future dowries, our families’ miraculous freedom from debt. We thrilled to the same tales of women working in the grand textile mills, where steel machines from Europe gleamed in the light of the Meiji sunrise. Our world had changed so rapidly in the wake of the Black Ships that the poets could barely keep pace with the scenes outside their own windows. Industry, trade, unstoppable growth: years before the Agent came to find us, our dreams anticipated his promises.

    Since my arrival here, my own fantasies have grown as dark as the room. In them I snip a new girl’s thread midair, or yank all the silk out of her at once, so that she falls lifelessly forward like a Bunraku puppet. I haven’t been able to cry since my first night here — but often I feel a water pushing at my skull. “Can the thread migrate to your brain?” I’ve asked Dai nervously. Silk starts as a liquid. Right now I can feel it traveling below my navel, my thread. Foaming icily along the lining of my stomach. Under the blankets I watch it rise in a hard lump. There are twenty workers sleeping on twelve tatami, two rows of us, our heads ten centimeters apart, our earlobes curled like snails on adjacent leaves, and though we are always hungry, every one of us has a round belly. Most nights I can barely sleep, moaning for dawn and the Machine.

--

    Every aspect of our new lives, from working to sleeping, eating and shitting, bathing when we can get wastewater from the Machine, is conducted in one brick room. The far wall has a single oval window, set high in its center. Too high for us to see much besides scraps of cloud and a woodpecker that is like a celebrity to us, provoking gasps and applause every time he appears. Kaiko-joko, we call ourselves. Silkworm-workers. Unlike regular joko, we have no foreman or men. We are all alone in the box of this room. Dai says that she’s the dormitory supervisor, but that’s Dai’s game.

    We were all brought here by the same man, the factory Recruitment Agent. A representative, endorsed by Emperor Meiji himself, from the new Ministry for the Promotion of Industry.

    We were all told slightly different versions of the same story.

    Our fathers or guardians signed contracts that varied only slightly in their terms, most promising a five-yen advance for one year of our lives.

    The Recruitment Agent travels the countryside to recruit female workers willing to travel far from their home prefectures to a new European-style silk-reeling mill. Presumably, he is out recruiting now. He makes his pitch not to the woman herself but to her father or guardian, or in some few cases, where single women cannot be procured, her husband. I am here on behalf of the nation, he begins. In the spirit of Shokusan-Kōgyō. Increase production, encourage industry. We are recruiting only the most skillful and loyal mill workers, he continues. Not just peasant girls — like your offspring, he might say with his silver tongue to men in the Gifu and Mie prefectures — but the well-bred daughters of noblemen. Samurai and aristocrats. City-born governors have begged me to train their daughters on the Western technologies. Last week, the Medical General of the Imperial Army sent his nineteen-year-old twins, by train! Sometimes there is resistance from the father or guardian, especially among the hicks, those stony-faced men from distant centuries who still make bean paste, wade into rice paddies, brew sake using thousand-year-old methods; but the Agent waves all qualms away — Ah, you’ve heard about x-Mill or y-Factory? No, the French yatoi engineers don’t drink girls’ blood, haha, that is what they call red wine. Yes, there was a fire at Aichi Factory, a little trouble with tuberculosis in Suwa. But our factory is quite different — it is a national secret. Yes, a place that makes even the French filature in the backwoods of Gunma, with its brick walls and steam engines, look antiquated! This phantom factory he presents to her father or guardian with great cheerfulness and urgency, for he says we have awoken to dawn, the Enlightened Era of the Meiji, and we must all play our role now. Japan’s silk is her world export. The Blight in Europe, the pébrine virus, has killed every silkworm, forever halted the Westerners’ cocoon production. The demand is as vast as the ocean. This is the moment to seize. Silk-reeling is a sacred vocation — she will be reeling for the empire.

    The fathers and guardians nearly always sign the contract. Publicly, the joko’s family will share a cup of hot tea with the Agent. They celebrate her new career and the five-yen advance against her legally mortgaged future. Privately, an hour or so later, the Agent will share a special toast with the girl herself. The Agent improvises his tearooms: an attic in a forest inn or a locked changing room in a bathhouse or, in the case of Iku, an abandoned cowshed.

--

    After sunset, the old blind woman arrives. “The zookeeper,” we call her. She hauls our food to the grated door, unbars the lower panel. We pass her that day’s skeins of reeled silk, and she pushes two sacks of mulberry leaves through the panel with a long stick. The woman never speaks to us, no matter what questions we shout at her. She simply waits, patiently, for our skeins, and so long as they are acceptable in quality and weight, she slides in our leaves. Tonight she has also slid in a tray of steaming human food for the new recruits. Tooka and Etsuyo get cups of rice and miso soup with floating carrots. Hunks of real ginger are unraveling in the broth, like hair. We all sit on the opposite side of the room and watch them chew with a dewy nostalgia that disgusts me even as I find myself ogling their long white fingers on their chopsticks, the balls of rice. The salt and fat smells of their food make my eyes ache. When we eat the mulberry leaves, we lower our new faces to the floor.

    They drink down the soup in silence. “Are we dreaming?” I hear one whisper.

    “The tea drugged us!” the younger sister, Tooka, cries at last. Her gaze darts here and there, as if she’s hoping to be contradicted. They traveled nine days by riverboat and oxcart, Etsuyo tells us, wearing blindfolds the entire time. So we could be that far north of Yamagata, or west. Or east, the younger sister says. We collect facts from every new kaiko-joko and use them to draw thread maps of Japan on the factory floor. But not even Tsuki the Apt can guess our whereabouts.

    Nowhere Mill, we call this place.

    Dai crosses the room and speaks soothingly to the sisters; then she leads them right to me. Oh, happy day. I glare at her through an unchewed mouthful of leaves.

    “Kitsune is quite a veteran now,” says smiling Dai, leading the fishy sisters to me, “she will show you around—”

    I hate this part. But you have to tell the new ones what’s in store for them. Minds have been spoiled by the surprise.

    “Will the manager of this factory be coming soon?” Etsuyo asks, in a grave voice. “I think there has been a mistake.”

    “We don’t belong here!” Tooka breathes.

    There’s nowhere else for you now, I say, staring at the floor. That tea he poured into you back in Sakegawa? The Agent’s drink is remaking your insides. Your intestines, your secret organs. Soon your stomachs will bloat. You will manufacture silk in your gut with the same helpless skill that you digest food, exhale. The kaiko-change, he calls it. A revolutionary process. Not even Chiyo, who knows sericulture, has ever heard of a tea that turns girls into silkworms. We think the tea may have been created abroad, by French chemists or British engineers. Yatoi-tea. Unless it’s the Agent’s own technology.

    I try to smile at them now.

    In the cup it was so lovely to look at, wasn’t it? An orange hue, like something out of the princess’s floating world woodblocks.

    Etsuyo is shaking. “But we can’t undo it? Surely there’s a cure. A way to reverse it, before it’s … too late.”

    Before we look like you, she means.

    “The only cure is a temporary one, and it comes from the Machine. When your thread begins, you’ll understand …”

    It takes thirteen to fourteen hours for the Machine to empty a kaiko-joko of her thread. The relief of being rid of it is indescribable.

    These seashore girls know next to nothing about silkworm cultivation. In the mountains of Chichibu, Chiyo tells them, everyone in her village was involved. Seventy families worked together in a web: planting and watering the mulberry trees, raising the kaiko eggs to pupa, feeding the silkworm caterpillars. The art of silk production was very, very inefficient, I tell the sisters. Slow and costly. Until us.

    I try to weed the pride from my voice, but it’s difficult. In spite of everything, I can’t help but admire the quantity of silk that we kaiko-joko can produce in a single day. The Agent boasts that he has made us the most productive machines in the empire, surpassing even those steel zithers and cast-iron belchers at Tomioka Model Mill.

    Eliminated: mechanical famine. Supply problems caused by the cocoons’ tiny size and irregular quality.

    Eliminated: waste silk.

    Eliminated: the cultivation of the kaiko. The harvesting of their eggs. The laborious collection and separation of the silk cocoons. We silkworm-girls combine all these processes in the single factory of our bodies. Ceaselessly, even while we dream, we are generating thread. Every droplet of our energy, every moment of our time flows into the silk.

    I guide the sisters to the first of the three workbenches. “Here are the basins,” I say, “steam heated, quite modern, eh, where we boil the water.”

    I plunge my left hand under the boiling water for as long as I can bear it. Soon the skin of my fingertips softens and bursts, and fine waggling fibers rise from them. Green thread lifts right out of my veins. With my right hand I pluck up the thread from my left fingertips and wrist.

    “See? Easy.”

    A single strand is too fine to reel. So you have to draw several out, wind six or eight around your finger, rub them together, to get the right denier; when they are thick enough, you feed them to the Machine.

    Dai is drawing red thread onto her reeler, watching me approvingly.

    “Are we monsters now?” Tooka wants to know.

    I give Dai a helpless look; that’s a question I won’t answer.

    Dai considers.

    In the end she tells the new reelers about the juhyou, the “snow monsters,” snow-and-ice-covered trees in Zao Onsen, her home. “The snow monsters”—Dai smiles, brushing her white whiskers—“are very beautiful. Their disguises make them beautiful. But they are still trees, you see, under all that frost.”

--

    While the sisters drink in this news, I steer them to the Machine.

    The Machine looks like a great steel-and-wood beast with a dozen rotating eyes and steaming mouths — it’s twenty meters long and takes up nearly half the room. The central reeler is a huge and ever-spinning O, capped with rows of flashing metal teeth. Pulleys swing our damp thread left to right across it, refining it into finished silk. Tooka shivers and says it looks as if the Machine is smiling at us. Kaiko-joko sit at the workbenches that face the giant wheel, pulling glowing threads from their own fingers, stretching threads across their reeling frames like zither strings. A stinging music.

    No tebiki cranks to turn, I show them. Steam power has freed both our hands.

    “ ‘Freed,’ I suppose, isn’t quite the right word, is it?” says Iku drily. Lotus-colored thread is flooding out of her left palm and reeling around her dowel. With her right hand she adjusts the outflow.

    Here is the final miracle, I say: our silk comes out of us in colors. There is no longer any need to dye it. There is no other silk like it on the world market, boasts the Agent. If you look at it from the right angle, a pollen seems to rise up and swirl into your eyes. Words can’t exaggerate the joy of this effect.

    Nobody has ever guessed her own color correctly — Hoshi predicted hers would be peach and it was blue; Nishi thought pink, got hazel. I would have bet my entire five-yen advance that mine would be light gray, like my cat’s fur. But then I woke and pushed the swollen webbing of my thumb and a sprig of green came out. On my day zero, in the middle of my terror, I was surprised into a laugh: here was a translucent green I swore I’d never seen before anywhere in nature, and yet I knew it as my own on sight.

    “It’s as if the surface is charged with our aura,” says Hoshi, counting syllables on her knuckles for her next haiku.

    About this I don’t tease her. I’m no poet, but I’d swear to the silks’ strange glow. The sisters seem to agree with me; one looks like she’s about to faint.

    “Courage, sisters!” sings Hoshi. Hoshi is our haiku laureate. She came from a school for young noblewomen and pretends to have read every book in the world. We all agree that she is generally insufferable.

    “Our silks are sold in Paris and America — they are worn by Emperor Meiji himself. The Agent tells me we are the treasures of the realm.” Hoshi’s white whiskers extend nearly to her ears now. Hoshi’s optimism is indefatigable.

    “That girl was hairy when she got here,” I whisper to the sisters, “if you want to know the truth.”

--

    The old blind woman comes again, takes our silks, pushes the leaves in with a stick, and we fall upon them. If you think we kaiko-joko leave even one trampled stem behind, you underestimate the deep, death-thwarting taste of the mulberry. Vital green, as if sunlight is zipping up your spinal column.

    In other factories, we’ve heard, there are foremen and managers and whistles to announce and regulate the breaks. Here the clocks and whistles are in our bodies. The thread itself is our boss. There is a fifteen-minute period between the mulberry orgy—“call it the evening meal, please, don’t be disgusting,” Dai pleads, her saliva still gleaming on the floor — and the regeneration of the thread. During this period, we sit in a circle in the center of the room, an equal distance from our bedding and the Machine. Stubbornly we reel backward: Takayama town. Oyaka village. Toku. Kiyo. Nara. Fudai. Sho. Radishes and pickles. Laurel and camphor smells of Shikoku. Father. Mother. Mount Fuji. The Inland Sea.

--

    All Japan is undergoing a transformation — we kaiko-joko are not alone in that respect. I watched my grandfather become a sharecropper on his own property. A dependent. He was a young man when the Black Ships came to Edo. He grew foxtail millet and red buckwheat. Half his crop he paid in rent; then two-thirds; finally, after two bad harvests, he owed his entire yield. That year, our capital moved in a ceremonial, and real, procession from Kyoto to Edo, now Tokyo, the world shedding names under the carriage wheels, and the teenage emperor in his palanquin traveling over the mountains like an imperial worm.

    In the first decade of the Mejii government, my grandfather was forced into bankruptcy by the land tax. In 1873, he joined the farmer’s revolt in Chūbu. Along with hundreds of others of the newly bankrupted and dispossessed from Chūbu, Gifa, Aichi, he set fire to the creditor’s offices where his debts were recorded. After the rebellion failed, he hanged himself in our barn. The gesture was meaningless. The debt still existed, of course.

    My father inherited the debts of his father.

    There was no dowry for me.

    In my twenty-third year, my mother died, and my father turned white, lay flat. Death seeded in him and began to grow tall, like grain, and my brothers carried Father to the Inoba shrine for the mountain cure.

    It was at precisely this moment that the Recruitment Agent arrived at our door.

    The Agent visited after a thundershower. He had a parasol from London. I had never seen such a handsome person in my life, man or woman. He had blue eyelids, a birth defect, he said, but it had worked out to his extraordinary advantage. He let me sniff at his vial of French cologne. It was as if a rumor had materialized inside the dark interior of our farmhouse. He wore Western dress. He also had — and I found this incredibly appealing — mid-ear sideburns and a mustache.

    “My father is sick,” I told him. I was alone in the house. “He is in the other room, sleeping.”

    “Well, let’s not disturb him.” The Agent smiled and stood to go.

    “I can read,” I said. For years I’d worked as a servant in the summer retreat of a Kobe family. “I can write my name.”

    Show me the contract, I begged him.

    And he did. I couldn’t run away from the factory and I couldn’t die, either, explained the Recruitment Agent — and perhaps I looked at him a little dreamily, because I remember that he repeated this injunction in a hard voice, tightening up the grammar: “If you die, your father will pay.” He was peering deeply into my face; it was April, and I could see the rain in his mustache. I met his gaze and giggled, embarrassing myself.

    “Look at you, blinking like a firefly! Only it’s very serious—”

    He lunged forward and grabbed playfully at my waist, causing my entire face to darken in what I hoped was a womanly blush. The Agent, perhaps fearful that I was choking on a radish, thumped my back.

    “There, there, Kitsune! You will come with me to the model factory? You will reel for the realm, for your emperor? For me, too,” he added softly, with a smile.

    I nodded, very serious myself now. He let his fingers brush softly against my knuckles as he drew out the contract.

    “Let me bring it to Father,” I told the Agent. “Stand back. Stay here. His disease is contagious.”

    The Agent laughed. He said he wasn’t used to being bossed by a joko. But he waited. Who knows if he believed me?

    My father would never have signed the document. He would not have agreed to let me go. He blamed the new government for my grandfather’s death. He was suspicious of foreigners. He would have demanded to know, certainly, where the factory was located. But I could work whereas he could not. I saw my father coming home, cured, and finding the five-yen advance. I had never used an ink pen before. In my life as a daughter and a sister, I had never felt so powerful. No woman in Gifu had ever brokered such a deal on her own. KITSUNE TAJIMA, I wrote in the slot for the future worker’s name, my heart pounding in my ears. When I returned it, I apologized for my father’s unsteady hand.

    On our way to the kaiko-tea ceremony, I was so excited that I could barely make my questions about the factory intelligible. He took me to a summer guesthouse in the woods behind the Miya River, which he told me was owned by a Takayama merchant family and, at the moment, empty.

    Something is wrong, I knew then. This knowledge sounded with such clarity that it seemed almost independent of my body, like a bird calling once over the trees. But I proceeded, following the Agent toward a dim staircase. The first room I glimpsed was elegantly furnished, and I felt my spirits lift again, along with my caution. I counted fourteen steps to the first landing, where he opened the door onto a room that reflected none of the downstairs refinement. There was a table with two stools, a bed; otherwise the room was bare. I was surprised to see a large brown blot on the mattress. One porcelain teapot. One cup. The Agent lifted the tea with an unreadable expression, frowning into the pot; as he poured, I thought I heard a little splash; then he cursed, excused himself, said he needed a fresh ingredient. I heard him continuing up the staircase. I peered into the cup and saw that there was something alive inside it — writhing, dying — a fat white kaiko. I shuddered but I didn’t fish it out. What sort of tea ceremony was this? Maybe, I thought, the Agent is testing me, to see if I am squeamish, weak. Something bad was coming — the stench of a bad and thickening future was everywhere in that room. The bad thing was right under my nose, crinkling its little legs at me.

    I pinched my nostrils shut, just as if I were standing in the mud a heartbeat from jumping into the Miya River. Without so much as consulting the Agent, I squinched my eyes shut and gulped.

    The other workers cannot believe I did this willingly. Apparently, one sip of the kaiko-tea is so venomous that most bodies go into convulsions. Only through the Agent’s intervention were they able to get the tea down. It took his hands around their throats.

    I arranged my hands in my lap and sat on the cot. Already I was feeling a little dizzy. I remember smiling with a sweet vacancy at the door when he returned.

    “You — drank it.”

    I nodded proudly.

    Then I saw pure amazement pass over his face — I passed the test, I thought happily. Only it wasn’t that, quite. He began to laugh.

    “No joko,” he sputtered, “not one of you, ever—” He was rolling his eyes at the room’s corners, as if he regretted that the hilarity of this moment was wasted on me. “No girl has ever gulped a pot of it!”

    Already the narcolepsy was buzzing through me, like a hive of bees stinging me to sleep. I lay guiltily on the mat — why couldn’t I sit up? Now the Agent would think I was worthless for work. I opened my mouth to explain that I was feeling ill but only a smacking sound came out. I held my eyes open for as long as I could stand it.

    Even then, I was still dreaming of my prestigious new career as a factory reeler. Under the Meiji government, the hereditary classes had been abolished, and I even let myself imagine that the Agent might marry me, pay off my family’s debts. As I watched, the Agent’s genteel expression underwent a complete transformation; suddenly it was as blank as a stump. The last thing I saw, before shutting my eyes, was his face.

--

    I slept for two days and woke on a dirty tatami in this factory with Dai applauding me; the green thread had erupted through my palms in my sleep — the metamorphosis unusually accelerated. I was lucky, as Chiyo says. Unlike Tooka and Etsuyo and so many of the others I had no limbo period, no cramps from my guts unwinding, changing; no time at all to meditate on what I was becoming — a secret, a furred and fleshy silk factory.

    What would Chiyo think of me, if she knew how much I envy her initiation story? That what befell her — her struggle, her screams — I long for? That I would exchange my memory for Chiyo’s in a heartbeat? Surely this must be the final, inarguable proof that I am, indeed, a monster.

    Many workers here have a proof of their innocence, some physical trace, on the body: scar tissue, a brave spot. A sign of struggle that is ineradicable. Some girls will push their white fuzz aside to show you: Dai’s pocked hands, Mitsuki’s rope burns around her neck. Gin has wiggly lines around her mouth, like lightning, where she was scalded by the tea that she spat out.

    And me?

    There was a moment, at the bottom of the stairwell, and a door that I could easily have opened back into the woods of Gifu. I alone, it seems, out of twenty-two workers, signed my own contract.

    “Why did you drink it, Kitsune?”

    I shrug.

    “I was thirsty,” I say.

--

    Roosters begin to crow outside the walls of Nowhere Mill at five a.m. They make a sound like gargled light, very beautiful, which I picture as Dai’s red and Gin’s orange and Yoshi’s pink thread singing on the world’s largest reeler. Dawn. I’ve been lying awake in the dark for hours.

    “Kitsune, you never sleep. I hear the way you breathe,” Dai says.

    “I sleep a little.”

    “What stops you?” Dai rubs her belly sadly. “Too much thread?”

    “Up here.” I knock on my head. “I can’t stop reliving it: the Agent walking through our fields under his parasol, in the rain …”

    “You should sleep,” says Dai, peering into my eyeball. “Yellowish. You don’t look well.”

    Midmorning, there is a malfunction. Some hitch in the Machine causes my reeler to spin backward, pulling the thread from my fingers so quickly that I am jerked onto my knees; then I’m dragged along the floor toward the Machine’s central wheel like an enormous, flopping fish. The room fills with my howls. With surprising calm, I become aware that my right arm is on the point of being wrenched from its socket. I lift my chin and begin, with a naturalness that belongs entirely to my terror, to swivel my head around and bite blindly at the air; at last I snap the threads with my kaiko-jaws and fall sideways. Under my wrist, more thread kinks and scrags. There is a terrible stinging in my hands and my head. I let my eyes close: for some reason I see the space beneath my mother’s cedar chest, where the moonlight lay in green splashes on our floor. I used to hide there as a child and sleep so soundly that no one in our one-room house could ever find me. No such luck today: hands latch onto my shoulders. Voices are calling my name—“Kitsune! Are you awake? Are you okay?”

    “I’m just clumsy,” I laugh nervously. But then I look down at my hand. Short threads extrude from the bruised skin of my knuckles. They are the wrong color. Not my green. Ash.

    Suddenly I feel short of breath again.

    It gets worse when I look up. The silk that I reeled this morning is bright green. But the more recent thread drying on the bottom of my reeler is black. Black as the sea, as the forest at night, says Hoshi euphemistically. She is too courteous to make the more sinister comparisons.

    I swallow a cry. Am I sick? It occurs to me that five or six of these black threads dragged my entire weight. It had felt as though my bones would snap in two before my thread did.

    “Oh no!” gasp Tooka and Etsuyo. Not exactly sensitive, these sisters from Sakegawa. “Oh, poor Kitsune! Is that going to happen to us, too?”

    “Anything you want to tell us?” Dai prods. “About how you are feeling?”

    “I feel about as well as you all look today,” I growl.

    “I’m not worried,” says Dai in a too-friendly way, clapping my shoulder. “Kitsune just needs sleep.”

    But everybody is staring at the spot midway up the reel where the green silk shades into black.

--

    My next mornings are spent splashing through the hot water basin, looking for fresh fibers. I pull out yards of the greenish-black thread. Soiled silk. Hideous. Useless for kimonos. I sit and reel for my sixteen hours, until the Machine gets the last bit out of me with a shudder.

    My thread is green three days out of seven. After that, I’m lucky to get two green outflows in a row. This transformation happens to me alone. None of the other workers report a change in their colors. It must be my own illness then, not kaiko-evolution. If we had a foreman here, he would quarantine me. He might destroy me, the way silkworms infected with the blight are burned up in Katamura.

    And in Gifu? Perhaps my father has died at the base of Mount Inaba. Or has he made a full recovery, journeyed home with my brothers, and cried out with joyful astonishment to find my five-yen advance? Let it be that, I pray. My afterlife will be whatever he chooses to do with that money.

--

    Today marks the forty-second day since we last saw the Agent. In the past he has reliably surprised us with visits, once or twice per month. Factory inspections, he calls them, scribbling notes about the progress of our transformations, the changes in our weight and shape, the quality of our silk production. He’s never stayed away so long before. The thought of the Agent, either coming or not coming, makes me want to retch. Water sloshes in my head. I lie on the mat with my eyes shut tight and watch the orange tea splash into my cup …

    “I hear you in there, Kitsune. I know what you’re doing. You didn’t sleep.”

    Dai’s voice. I keep my eyes shut.

    “Kitsune, stop thinking about it. You are making yourself sick.”

    “Dai, I can’t.”

    Today my stomach is so full of thread that I’m not sure I’ll be able to stand. I’m afraid that it will all be black. Some of us are now forced to crawl on our hands and knees to the Machine, toppled by our ungainly bellies. I can smell the basins heating. A thick, greasy steam fills the room. I peek up at Dai’s face, then let my eyes flutter shut again.

    “Smell that?” I say, more nastily than I intend to. “In here we’re dead already. At least on the stairwell I can breathe forest air.”

    “Unwinding one cocoon for an eternity,” she snarls. “As if you had only a single memory. Reeling in the wrong direction.”

    Dai looks ready to slap me. She’s angrier than I’ve ever seen her. Dai is the Big Mother but she’s also a samurai’s daughter, and sometimes that combination gives rise to a ferocious kind of caring. She’s tender with the little ones, but if an older joko plummets into a mood or ill health, she’ll scream at us until our ears split. Furious, I suppose, at her inability to defend us from ourselves.

    “The others also suffered in their pasts,” she says. “But we sleep, we get up, we go to work, some crawl forward if there is no other way …”

    “I’m not like the others,” I insist, hating the baleful note in my voice but desperate to make Dai understand this. Is Dai blind to the contrast? Can she not see that the innocent recruits — the ones who were signed over to the Agent by their fathers and their brothers — produce pure colors, in radiant hues? Whereas my thread looks rotten, greeny-black.

    “Sleep can’t wipe me clean like them. I chose this fate. I can’t blame a greedy uncle, a gullible father. I drank the tea of my own free will.”

    “Your free will,” says Dai, so slowly that I’m sure she’s about to mock me; then her eyes widen with something like joy. “Ah! So: use that to stop drinking it at night, in your memory. Use your will to stop thinking about the Agent.”

    Dai is smiling down at me like she’s won the argument.

    “Oh, yes, very simple!” I laugh angrily. “I’ll just stop. Why didn’t I think of that? Say, here’s one for you, Dai,” I snap. “Stop reeling for the Agent at your workbench. Stop making the thread in your gut. Try that, I’m sure you’ll feel better.”

    Then we are shouting at each other, our first true fight; Dai doesn’t understand that this memory reassembles itself in me mechanically, just as the thread swells in our new bodies. It’s nothing I control. I see the Agent arrive; my hand trembling; the ink lacing my name across the contract. My regret: I know I’ll never get to the bottom of it. I’ll never escape either place, Nowhere Mill or Gifu. Every night, the cup refills in my mind.

    “Go reel for the empire, Dai. Make more silk for him to sell. Go throw the little girls another party! Make believe we’re not slaves here.”

    Dai storms off, and I feel a mean little pleasure.

    For two days we don’t speak, until I worry that we never will again. But on the second night, Dai finds me. She leans in and whispers that she has accepted my challenge. At first I am so happy to hear her voice that I only laugh, take her hand. “What challenge? What are you talking about?”

    “I thought about what you said,” she tells me. She talks about her samurai father’s last stand, the Satsuma Rebellion. In the countryside, she says, there are peasant armies who protest “the blood tax,” refuse to sow new crops. I nod with my eyes shut, watching my grandfather’s hat floating through our fields in Gifu.

    “And you’re right, Kitsune — we have to stop reeling. If we don’t, he’ll get every year of our futures. He’ll get our last breaths. The silk belongs to us, we make it. We can use that to bargain with the Agent.”

    The following morning, Dai announces that she won’t move from her mat.

    “I’m on strike,” she says. “No more reeling.”

    By the second day, her belly has grown so bloated with thread that we are begging her to work. The mulberry leaves arrive, and she refuses to eat them.

    “No more room for that.” She smiles.

    Dai’s face is so swollen that she can’t open one eye. She lies with her arms crossed over her chest, her belly heaving.

    By the fourth day, I can barely look at her.

    “You’ll die,” I whisper.

    She nods resolutely.

    “I’m escaping. He might still stop me. But I’ll do my best.”

    We send a note for the Agent with the blind woman. “Please tell him to come.”

    “Join me,” Dai begs us, and our eyes dull and lower, we sway. For five days, Dai doesn’t reel. She never eats. Some of us, I’m sure, don’t mind the extra fistful of leaves. (A tiny voice I can’t gag begins to babble in the background: If x-many others strike, Kitsune, there will be x-much more food for you …)

    Guiltily, I set her portion aside, pushing the leaves into a little triangle. There, I think. The flag of Dai’s resistance. Something flashes on one — a real silkworm. Inching along in its wet and stupid oblivion. My stomach flips to see all the little holes its hunger has punched into the green leaf.

    During our break, I bring Dai my blanket. I try to squeeze some of the water from the leaf-velvet onto her tongue, which she refuses. She doesn’t make a sound, but I hiss — her belly is grotesquely distended and stippled with lumps, like a sow’s pregnant with a litter of ten piglets. Her excess thread is packed in knots. Strangling Dai from within. Perhaps the Agent can call on a Western veterinarian, I find myself thinking. Whatever is happening to her seems beyond the ken of Emperor Meiji’s own doctors.

    “Start reeling again!” I gasp. “Dai, please.”

    “It looks worse than it is. It’s easy enough to stop. You’ll see for yourself, I hope.”

    Her skin has an unhealthy translucence. Her eyes are standing out in her shrunken face, as if every breath costs her. Soon I will be able to see the very thoughts in her skull, the way red thread fans into veiny view under her skin. Dai gives me her bravest smile. “Get some rest, Kitsune. Stop poisoning yourself on the stairwell of Gifu. If I can stop reeling, surely you can, too.”

--

    When she dies, all the silk is still stubbornly housed in her belly, “stolen from the factory,” as the Agent alleges. “This girl died a thief.”

    Three days after her death, he finally shows up. He strides over to Dai and touches her belly with a stick. When a few of us grab for his legs, he makes a face and kicks us off.

    “Perhaps we can still salvage some of it,” he grumbles, rolling her into his sack.

--

    A great sadness settles over our whole group and doesn’t lift. What the Agent carried off with Dai was everything we had left: Chiyo’s clouds and mountains, my farmhouse in Gifu, Etsuyo’s fiancé. It’s clear to us now that we can never leave this room — we can never be away from the Machine for more than five days. Unless we live here, where the Machine can extract the thread from our bodies at speeds no human hand could match, the silk will build and build and kill us in the end. Dai’s experiment has taught us that.

    You never hear a peep in here about the New Year anymore.

--

    I’m eating, I’m reeling, but I, too, appear to be dying. Thread almost totally black. The denier too uneven for any market. In my mind I talk to Dai about it, and she is very reassuring: “It’s going to be fine, Kitsune. Only, please, you have to stop—”

    Stop thinking about it. This was Dai’s final entreaty to me.

    I close my eyes. I watch my hand signing my father’s name again. I am at the bottom of a stairwell in Gifu. The first time I made this ascent I felt weightless, but now the wood groans under my feet. Just as a single cocoon contains a thousand yards of silk, I can unreel a thousand miles from my memory of this one misstep.

    Still, I’m not convinced that you were right, Dai — that it’s such a bad thing, a useless enterprise, to reel and reel out my memory at night. Some part of me, the human part of me, is kept alive by this, I think. Like water flushing a wound, to prevent it from closing. I am a lucky one, like Chiyo says. I made a terrible mistake. In Gifu, in my raggedy clothes, I had an unreckonable power. I didn’t know that at the time. But when I return to the stairwell now, I can feel them webbing around me: my choices, their infinite variety, spiraling out of my hands, my invisible thread. Regret is a pilgrimage back to the place where I was free to choose. It’s become my sanctuary here in Nowhere Mill. A threshold where I still exist.

    One morning, two weeks after Dai’s strike, I start talking to Chiyo about her family’s cottage business in Chichibu. Chiyo complains about the smells in her dry attic, where they destroy the silkworm larvae in vinegary solutions. Why do they do that? I want to know. I’ve never heard this part before. Oh, to stop them from undergoing the transformation, Chiyo says. First, the silkworms stop eating. Then they spin their cocoons. Once inside, they molt several times. They grow wings and teeth. If the caterpillars are allowed to evolve, they change into moths. Then these moths bite through the silk and fly off, ruining it for the market.

    Teeth and wings, wings and teeth, I keep hearing all day under the whine of the cables.

    That night, I try an experiment. I let myself think the black thoughts all evening. Great wheels inside me turn backward at fantastic, groaning velocities. What I focus on is my shadow in the stairwell, falling slantwise behind me, like silk. I see the ink spilling onto the contract, my name bloating monstrously.

    And when dawn comes, and I slug my way over to the workbench and plunge my hands into the boiling vat, I see that the experiment was a success. My new threads are stronger and blacker than ever; silk of some nameless variety we have never belly-spun before. I crank them out of my wrist and onto the dowel. There’s not a fleck of green left, not a single frayed strand. “Moonless,” says Hoshi, shrinking from them. Opaque. Midnight at Nowhere Mill pales in comparison. Looking down into the basin, I feel a wild excitement. I made it that color. So I’m no mere carrier, no diseased kaiko—I can channel these dyes from my mind into the tough new fiber. I can change my thread’s denier, control its production. Seized by a second inspiration, I begin to unreel at speeds I would have just yesterday thought laughably impossible. Not even Yuna can produce as much thread in an hour. I ignore the whispers that pool around me on the workbench:

    “Kitsune’s fishing too deep — look at her finger slits!”

    “They look like gills.” Etsuyo shudders.

    “Someone should stop her. She’s fishing right down to the bone.”

    “What is she making?”

    “What are you making?”

    “What are you going to do with all that, Kitsune?” Tooka asks nervously.

    “Oh, who knows? I’ll just see what it comes to.”

    But I do know. Without my giving a thought to what step comes next, my hands begin to fly.

    The weaving comes so naturally to me that I am barely aware I am doing it, humming as if in a dream. But this weaving is instinctual. What takes effort, what requires a special kind of concentration, is generating the right density of the thread. To do so, I have to keep forging my father’s name in my mind, climbing those stairs, watching my mistake unfurl. I have to drink the toxic tea and feel it burn my throat, lie flat on the cot while my organs are remade by the Agent for the factory, thinking only, Yes, I chose this. When these memories send the fierce regret spiraling through me, I focus on my heartbeat, my throbbing palms. Fibers stiffen inside my fingers. Grow strong, I direct the thread. Go black. Lengthen. Stick. And then, when I return to the vats, what I’ve produced is exactly the necessary denier and darkness. I sit at the workbench, at my ordinary station. And I am so happy to discover that I can do all this myself: the silk-generation, the separation, the dyeing, the reeling. Out of the same intuition, I discover that I know how to alter the Machine. “Help me, Tsuki,” I say, because I want her to watch what I am doing. I begin to explain, but she is already disassembling my reeler. “I know, Kitsune,” she says, “I see what you have in mind.” Words seem to be unnecessary now between me and Tsuki — we beam thoughts soundlessly across the room. Perhaps speech will be the next superfluity in Nowhere Mill. Another step we kaiko-girls can skip.

    Together we adjust the feeder gears, so that the black thread travels in a loop; after getting wrung out and doubled on the Machine’s great wheel, it shuttles back to my hands. I add fresh fibers, drape the long skein over my knees. It is going to be as tall as a man, six feet at least.

    Many girls continue feeding the Machine as if nothing unusual is happening. Others, like Tsuki, are watching to see what my fingers are doing. For the past several months, every time I’ve reminisced about the Agent coming to Gifu, bile has risen in my throat. It seems to be composed of every bitterness: grief and rage, the acid regrets. But then, in the middle of my weaving, obeying a queer impulse, I spit some onto my hand. This bile glues my fingers to my fur. Another of nature’s wonders. So even the nausea of regret can be converted to use. I grin to Dai in my head. With this dill-colored glue, I am at last able to rub a sealant over my new thread and complete my work.

    It takes me ten hours to spin the black cocoon.

    The first girls who see it take one look and run back to the tatami.

    The second girls are cautiously admiring.

    Hoshi waddles over with her bellyful of blue silk and screams.

    I am halfway up the southern wall of Nowhere Mill before I realize what I am doing; then I’m parallel to the woodpecker’s window. The gluey thread collected on my palms sticks me to the glass. For the first time I can see outside: from this angle, nothing but clouds and sky, a blue eternity. We will have wings soon, I think, and ten feet below me I hear Tsuki laugh out loud. Using my thread and the homemade glue, I attach the cocoon to a wooden beam; soon, I am floating in circles over the Machine, suspended by my own line. “Come down!” Hoshi yells, but she’s the only one. I secure the cocoon and then I let myself fall, all my weight supported by one thread. Now the cocoon sways over the Machine, a furled black flag, creaking slightly. I think of my grandfather hanging by the thick rope from our barn door.

    More black thread spasms down my arms.

    “Kitsune, please. You’ll make the Agent angry! You shouldn’t waste your silk that way — pretty soon they’ll stop bringing you the leaves! Don’t forget the trade, it’s silk for leaves, Kitsune. What happens when he stops feeding us?”

    But in the end I convince all of the workers to join me. Instinct obviates the need for a lesson — swiftly the others discover that they, too, can change their thread from within, drawing strength from the colors and seasons of their memories. Before we can begin to weave our cocoons, however, we first agree to work night and day to reel the ordinary silk, doubling our production, stockpiling the surplus skeins. Then we seize control of the machinery of Nowhere Mill. We spend the next six days dismantling and reassembling the Machine, using its gears and reels to speed the production of our own shimmering cocoons. Each dusk, we continue to deliver the regular number of skeins to the zookeeper, to avoid arousing the Agent’s suspicions. When we are ready for the next stage of our revolution, only then will we invite him to tour our factory floor.

    Silkworm moths develop long ivory wings, says Chiyo, bronzed with ancient designs. Do they have antennae, mouths? I ask her. Can they see? Who knows what the world will look like to us if our strike succeeds? I believe we will emerge from it entirely new creatures. In truth there is no model for what will happen to us next. We’ll have to wait and learn what we’ve become when we get out.

--

    The old blind woman really is blind, we decide. She squints directly at the wrecked and rerouted Machine and waits with her arms extended for one of us to deposit the skeins. Instead, Hoshi pushes a letter through the grate.

    “We don’t have any silk today.”

    “Bring this to the Agent.”

    “Go. Tell. Him.”

    As usual, the old woman says nothing. The mulberry sacks sit on the wagon. After a moment she claps to show us that her hands are empty, kicks the wagon away. Signals: no silk, no food. Her face is slack. On our side of the grate, I hear girls smacking their jaws, swallowing saliva. Fresh forest smells rise off the sacks. But we won’t beg, will we? We won’t turn back. Dai lived without food for five days. Our faces press against the grate. Several of our longest whiskers tickle the zookeeper’s withered cheeks; at last, a dark cloud passes over her face. She barks with surprise, swats the air. Her wrinkles tighten into a grimace of fear. She backs away from our voices, her fist closed around our invitation to the Agent.

    “NO SILK,” repeats Tsaiko slowly.

--

    The Agent comes the very next night.

    “Hello?”

    He raps at our grated door with a stick, but he remains in the threshold. For a moment I am sure that he won’t come in.

    “They’re gone, they’re gone,” I wail, rocking.

    “What!”

    The grate slides open and he steps onto the factory floor, into our shadows.

    “Yes, they’ve all escaped, every one of them, all your kaiko-joko—”

    Now my sisters drop down on their threads. They fall from the ceiling on whistling lines of silk, swinging into the light, and I feel as though I am dreaming — it is a dreamlike repetition of our initiation, when the Agent dropped the infecting kaiko into the orange tea. Watching his eyes widen and his mouth stretch into a scream, I too am shocked. We have no mirrors here in Nowhere Mill, and I’ve spent the past few months convinced that we were still identifiable as girls, women — no beauty queens, certainly, shaggy and white and misshapen, but at least half human; it’s only now, watching the Agent’s reaction, that I realize what we’ve become in his absence. I see us as he must: white faces, with sunken noses that look partially erased. Eyes insect-huge. Spines and elbows incubating lace for wings. My muscles tense, and then I am airborne, launching myself onto the Agent’s back — for a second I get a thrilling sense of what true flight will feel like, once we complete our transformation. I alight on his shoulders and hook my legs around him. The Agent grunts beneath my weight, staggers forward.

    “These wings of ours are invisible to you,” I say directly into the Agent’s ear. I clasp my hands around his neck, lean into the whisper. “And in fact you will never see them, since they exist only in our future, where you are dead and we are living, flying.”

    I then turn the Agent’s head so that he can admire our silk. For the past week every worker has used the altered Machine to spin her own cocoon — they hang from the far wall, coral and emerald and blue, ordered by hue, like a rainbow. While the rest of Japan changes outside the walls of Nowhere Mill, we’ll hang side by side, hidden against the bricks. Paralyzed inside our silk, but spinning faster and faster. Passing into our next phase. Then, we’ll escape. (Inside his cocoon, the Agent will turn blue and suffocate.)

    “And look,” I say, counting down the wall: twenty-one workers, and twenty-two cocoons. When he sees the black sac, I feel his neck stiffen. “We have spun one for you.” I smile down at him. The Agent is stumbling around beneath me, babbling something that I admit I make no great effort to understand. The glue sticks my knees to his shoulders. Several of us busy ourselves with getting the gag in place, and this is accomplished before the Agent can scream once. Gin and Nishi bring down the cast-iron grate behind him.

    The slender Agent is heavier than he looks. It takes four of us to stuff him into the socklike cocoon. I smile at the Agent and instruct the others to leave his eyes for last, thinking that he will be very impressed to see our skill at reeling up close. Behind me, even as this attack is under way, the other kaiko-joko are climbing into their cocoons. Already there are girls half swallowed by them, winding silk threads over their knees, sealing the outermost layer with glue.

    Now our methods regress a bit, get a little old-fashioned. I reel the last of the black cocoon by hand. Several kaiko-joko have to hold the Agent steady so that I can orbit him with the thread. I spin around his chin and his cheekbones, his lips. To get over his mustache requires several revolutions. Bits of my white fur drift down and disappear into his nostrils. His eyes are huge and black and void of any recognition. I whisper my name to him, to see if I can jostle my old self loose from his memory: Kitsune Tajima, of Gifu Prefecture.

    Nothing.

    So then I continue reeling upward, naming the workers of Nowhere Mill all the while: “Nishi. Yoshi. Yuna. Uki. Etsuyo. Gin. Hoshi. Raku. Chiyoko. Mitsuko. Tsaiko. Tooka. Dai.

    “Kitsune,” I repeat, closing the circle. The last thing I see before shutting his eyes is the reflection of my shining new face.

[blackkudos]

Frankie Knuckles

Francis Warren Nicholls, Jr. (January 18, 1955 – March 31, 2014), better known as Frankie Knuckles, was an American DJ, record producer and remixer. He played an important role in developing and popularizing house music in Chicago during the 1980s, when the genre was in its infancy. In 1997, Knuckles won the Grammy Award for Remixer of the Year, Non-Classical. Due to his importance in the development of the genre, Knuckles was often called "The Godfather of House Music".

Musical career

1970s–1980s

Born in The Bronx, Knuckles and his friend Larry Levan began frequenting discos as teenagers during the 1970s. While studying textile design at the FIT, Knuckles and Levan began working as DJs, playing soul, disco, and R&B at two of the most important early discos, The Continental Baths and The Gallery. In the late 1970s, Knuckles moved from New York City to Chicago, where his old friend, Robert Williams, was opening what became the nightclub called Warehouse. When the club opened in Chicago in 1977, he was invited to play on a regular basis, which enabled him to hone his skills and style. This style was a mixture of disco classics, unusual indie-label soul, the occasional rock track, European synth-disco and all manner of rarities, which would all eventually codify as "House Music". The style of music now known as house was named after a shortened version of the Warehouse.

Knuckles was so popular that the Warehouse, initially a members-only club for largely black gay men, began attracting straighter, whiter crowds, leading its owner, Robert Williams, to eschew membership. Knuckles continued DJing at the Warehouse until November 1982, when he started his own club in Chicago, The Power Plant.

Around 1983, Knuckles bought his first drum machine to enhance his mixes from Derrick May, a young DJ who regularly made the trip from Detroit to see Knuckles at the Warehouse and Ron Hardy at the Music Box, both in Chicago. The combination of bare, insistent drum machine pulses and an overlay of cult disco classics defined the sound of early Chicago house music, a sound which many local producers began to mimic in the studios by 1985.

When the Power Plant closed in 1987, Knuckles moved to the UK for four months and DJ-ed at DELIRIUM!, a Thursday night party at Heaven (nightclub) in London. Chicago house artists were in high demand and having major success in the UK with this new genre of music. Knuckles also had a stint in New York, where he continued to immerse himself in producing, remixing, and recording. 1988 saw the release of Pet Shop Boys' third album, Introspective, which featured Knuckles as a co-producer of the song "I Want a Dog."

Work with Jamie Principle

In 1982, Knuckles was introduced to then-unknown Jamie Principle by mutual friend Jose "Louie" Gomez, who had recorded the original vocal-dub of "Your Love" to reel-to-reel tape. Louie Gomez met up with Frankie at the local record pool (I.R.S.) and gave him a tape copy of the track. Knuckles played Gomez's unreleased dub mix for an entire year in his sets during which it became a crowd favorite. Knuckles later went into the studio to re-record the track with Principle, and in 1987 helped put Your Love and Baby Wants to Ride out on vinyl after these tunes had been regulars on his reel-to-reel player at the Warehouse for a year.

As house music was developing in Chicago, producer Chip E. took Knuckles under his tutelage and produced Knuckles' first recording, "You Can't Hide from Yourself". Then came more production work, including Jamie Principle's "Baby Wants to Ride", and later "Tears" with Robert Owens (of Fingers Inc.) and (Knuckles' protégé and future Def Mix associate) Satoshi Tomiie.

1990s–2010s

Knuckles made numerous popular Def Classic Mixes with John Poppo as sound engineer, and Knuckles partnered with David Morales on Def Mix Productions. His debut album Beyond the Mix (1991), released on Virgin Records, contained what would be considered his seminal work, "The Whistle Song", which was the first of four number ones on the US dance chart. The Def Classic mix of Lisa Stansfield's "Change", released in the same year, also featured the whistle-like motif. Another track from the album, "Rain Falls", featured vocals from Lisa Michaelis. Eight thousand copies of the album had sold by 2004. Other key remixes from this time include his rework of the Electribe 101 anthem "Talking with Myself" and Alison Limerick's "Where Love Lives".

When Junior Vasquez took a sabbatical from The Sound Factory in Manhattan, Knuckles took over and launched a successful run as resident DJ. He continued to work as a remixer through the 1990s and into the next decade, reworking tracks from Michael Jackson, Luther Vandross, Diana Ross, Eternal and Toni Braxton. He released several new singles, including "Keep on Movin'" and a re-issue of an earlier hit "Bac N Da Day" with Definity Records. In 1995, he released his second album titled Welcome to the Real World. By 2004, 13,000 copies had sold.

Openly gay, Knuckles was inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame in 1996.

In 2004, Knuckles released a 13-track album of original material – his first in over a decade – titled A New Reality. In October 2004, "Your Love" appeared in the videogame Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, playing on house music radio station, SF-UR.

Death

In the mid-2000s, Knuckles developed Type II diabetes. He developed osteomyelitis after breaking his foot snowboarding, and had it amputated after declining to take time off for treatment. On March 31, 2014, he died in Chicago at the age of 59 due to the complications from his diabetes.

Legacy

In April 2015, a year after his death, Defected Records released a retrospective compilation, House Masters Frankie Knuckles; Knuckles had selected the track list before his death. Also, the same month, as a tribute to Knuckles, a version of his song "Baby Wants to Ride" was released by Underworld and Heller and Farley to mark the year anniversary of his death. It went straight to number one on the UK's first ever Official Vinyl Singles Chart. All proceeds went to the Frankie Knuckles Trust/Elton John AIDS Foundation. A year after his death, on April 4, 2015, In Memoriam Essential Mix on BBC Radio 1 was played, containing two, previously unreleased Knuckles mixes.Knuckles was featured in the documentary films Maestro (2003), written and directed by Josell Ramos, The UnUsual Suspects: Once Upon a Time in House Music (2005), directed by Chip E. and Continental (2013) about the Continental Baths.

Awards and honors

In 1997, Knuckles won the Grammy Award for Remixer of the Year, Non-Classical. In 2004, the city of Chicago – which "became notorious in the dance community around the world for passing the so-called 'anti-rave ordinance' in 2000 that made property owners, promoters and deejays subject to $10,000 fines for being involved in an unlicensed dance party" – named a stretch of street in Chicago after Knuckles, where the old Warehouse once stood, on Jefferson Street between Jackson Boulevard and Madison Street. That stretch of street, called Frankie Knuckles Way, "was renamed when the city declared 25 August 2004 as Frankie Knuckles Day. The Illinois state senator who helped make it happen was Barack Obama. In 2005, Knuckles was inducted into the Dance Music Hall of Fame for his achievements.

DJ Magazine

Top 100 DJs

In popular culture

In October 2004, "Your Love" appeared in the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, playing on the house music radio station SF-UR.

Knuckles was referenced in the songs "Back to the Grill" by MC Serch ("I saw you eating pig knuckles with Frankie Knuckles / In a club called "Chuckles" wearing nameplate belt buckles") and "Knuckles" by The Hold Steady ("I've been trying to get people to call me Freddy Knuckles").

Discography

Beyond the Mix (1991)

Welcome to the Real World (1995)

[linenclub]

What is Linen Fabric: Properties, Benefits & Journey

Linen is a textile made from the flaxseed plant. It is much like cotton, but the only difference is that cotton grows around the cottonseed, while linen is obtained from the stem of flax.

Let’s have a look at some properties that tell us exactly what is linen fabric!

Linen has great tensile strength.

It has excellent resistance to heat.

It is bright than cotton and a bit silky.

It has an inbuilt ability to protect against sunlight.

It is safe from moth-grubs and beetles.

Original fabric colors range from light yellow to grey.

These amazing properties of linen make it a go-to choice for people during the summer season. Here are some the benefits of wearing linen in hot weather:

It’s home-wash friendly - handwash as well as machine wash (in short cycles).

It can be easily air-dried.

Keeps your body cool and helps in regulating body temperature.

Since it’s very permeable, it can be used in humid climates as well.

Let us now understand how linen fabric is made.

Harvesting: After the flax plant grows and the stems become yellow, the plant is harvested using either hands or machines.

Fiber separation: The harvested stalks of flaxseed are processed to separate seeds and leaves. Decomposed stalks are also broken to remove outer fibers and use the inner fibers.

Combing: Inner fibers are combed into thin threads and made ready for spinning.

Spinning: Combed fibers are connected to spreaders and rovings to be spun.

Reeling: The yarn created from spinning is then reeled on a bobbin.

Ready for manufacturing: The yarn from the bobbin is then used to dye and make textile products like apparel, bedsheets, etc.

[sagarg889]

Motorized Decoiler Machine Market Depth Analysis, Growth Strategies & Comprehensive Forecast 2022 to 2032

The worldwide motorized decoiler machine market is anticipated to be worth US$ 4.6 million by 2032. The motorized decoiler machine market is expected to grow at a 3.8% CAGR from 2022 to 2032. According to FMI research, the global Motorized decoiler machine market will be worth US$ 3.2 million in 2022.

Because of expanded global production, the global manufacturing industry has been a key employer of motorized decoiler machines. As a result, the global motorized decoiler machine market is in great demand.

In addition to reducing the amount of human effort in unrolling and straightening heavy metal reels, these motorized decoiler machines also provide a higher feed rate for the various machines in use. Moreover, with the increasing use of automation in industries, decoiler machines have found their way into manufacturing as well.

Request a Sample Copy of this Report @ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-4822

Key Takeaways

Over the past few years, a healthy increase can be seen in production industry which has led to the increased manufacturing demands for motorized decoiler machines worldwide.

It is not feasible to unroll and straighten heavy metal reels manually, so motorized decoilers are used as an alternative way to ease human effort. In addition, they are useful for feeding various machines in process at high rates. Growing automation in industries has made it possible to install decoilers in manufacturing facilities, propelling sales of motorized decoiler machines.

Decoiler machines come in different sizes with different configurations based on the material type, size and gauge, which is widely used in paper pulp, textile and metal production industries.

With the introduction of automation in decoiling machines, their reliability has improved, driving the growth of the motorized decoiler machine market. Motorized recoilers can handle heavy reel loads and provide high production rates.

North America and Europe are projected to remain dominant in decoiler machine installations with CAGRs of 17.0% and 15.0%, respectively. Metal consumption has increased significantly over the last two decades due to the global industrial production boom.

Competitive Landscape

Swi Engineering, The Formtek Group, Worcester Presses Ltd., Dongguan City Haiwei Intelligent Equipment Incorporated Company, Fabbrica Impianti Macchine Industriali S.p.A, Reef Engineering And Manufacturing Co. (Pty) Limited, Vaspo Vamberk, Ltd., Metalforming Inc., Wuxi Zhenqun Machinery Manufacture Co., Ltd., Acier Equipment, Bluesky Machine Co., Ltd., Jiaozuo Mengxin Special Steel Co., Ltd., Dongguan City Haiwei Intelligent Equipment Incorporated Company, Shanghai Baosheng Machinery Equipment Co. Ltd. are some of the key companies profiled in the full version of the report.

Some of the leading companies operating in the global motorized decoiler machine market are focusing on producing a wide range of high-capacity and precision levelers, sheet metal processing machines, deburring machines, and coil lines for manufacturers worldwide, propelling the growth of the motorized decoiler machine market.

More Insights into the Motorized Decoiler Machine Market

In the latest report, FMI offers an unbiased analysis of market insights on motorized Decoiler machines covering sales outlook, demand forecast & up-to-date key trends. The market is segmented on the basis of Operating Load (less than 5 Ton (< 5 Ton), 5 ton to 10 Ton (5 Ton – 10 Ton), above 10 Ton (> 10 tons)), a number of heads (Single head, Dual Head, Multi-Head), drive (Electric, Hydraulic), material stock (Strip Decoilers, Sheet Decoilers, Wire/ Pipe Decoilers), end-use industry (Machine and equipment manufacture, Automotive, HVAC and duct manufacturing, Stamping, Sheet steel processing industry), region (North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia-Pacific, Japan, Middle East and Africa).

According to the FMI projections, North America and Europe are anticipated as the dominant countries accounting for the highest growth during the forecast period from 2022 to 2032 with accelerating growth rates of 17.0% & 15.0% respectively.

Due to the large manufacturing and metal processing sectors present in the Asia Pacific, the market for motorized decoiler machines is expected to dominate the overall market. China, India, and South Korea are estimated to be the largest markets for motorized decoiler machines.

Reducing the amount of human effort in unrolling and straightening heavy metal reels, the motorized decoiler machines emerged as a great replacement and provides a higher feed rate for the various machines in use. Moreover, with the increasing use of automation in industries, decoiler machines have found their way into manufacturing.

Get Full Access on this Report @ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/motorized-decoiler-machine-market

Key Segments Profiled in the Motorized Decoiler Machine Market

By Operating Load:

less than 5 Ton (< 5 Ton)

5 ton to 10 Ton (5 Ton – 10 Ton)

above 10 Ton (> 10 tons)

By Number of Heads:

Single head

Dual Head

Multi Head

By Drive:

Electric

Hydraulic

By Material Stock:

Strip Decoilers

Sheet Decoilers

Wire/ Pipe Decoilers

By End Use Industry:

Machine and equipment manufacture

Automotive

HVAC and duct manufacturing

Stamping

Sheet steel processing industry

Others

By Region:

North America

Latin America

Western Europe

Eastern Europe

Asia-Pacific

Japan

Middle East and Africa

[aldiraweavetech]

How Are Cop Winding and Pirn Winding Machines Different?

Winding machines are commonly utilized to wrap various materials such as threads, yarns, wires, ribbons, tapes, ropes, twines, strings, or cords onto a spool, bobbin, or reel. These machines find their application in textile manufacturing processes, particularly in weaving, where the yarn is wound onto a bobbin and subsequently used in a shuttle. Are you also looking for a textile machinery manufacturer in India? If yes then get in touch with Weavetech as they have a number of options to offer related to textile machinery including cop winding and pirn winding machines. Winding machines consist of a center roll that is used to wind up the material. Typically, metal bars that are shaped according to the intended purpose traverse through the center of the roll. For instance, a square bar is capable of generating higher torque, whereas a circular bar facilitates a smoother process with greater speed. To determine the level of material present in the center roll, edge sensors are installed on adjustable slides that can accommodate various widths.

What is a Cop Winding Machine?

A cop winding machine is a piece of textile machinery that is used to wind yarn onto bobbins or cops for subsequent use in the textile manufacturing process. This machine is an essential component in the production of yarns and textiles, as it ensures the uniform winding of yarn onto bobbins, which is crucial for achieving consistent quality in the final product. One such example of a best textile machinery manufacturer in India is Weavetech. They specialize in the production of spinning machinery, including cop winding machines, and have been providing high-quality textile machinery to customers worldwide. Weavetech cop winding machines are known for their efficiency, accuracy, and durability, making them a popular choice among textile manufacturers worldwide. Furthermore, cop winding machines are a crucial component in the textile manufacturing process, and India is home to some of the best textile machinery manufacturers in the world, such as Weavetech.

What is Pirn Winding Machine?

A pirn winding machine is a type of textile machinery used to wind yarn onto pirns, which are small, narrow bobbins used in the production of fabrics such as denim, canvas, and twill. Pirn winding machines are essential in the textile industry as they ensure the uniform winding of yarn onto pirns, which is crucial for achieving consistent quality in the final product. India has emerged as one of the best textile machinery manufacturers in the world, with many companies specializing in the production of pirn winding machines. One such example is Weavetech, a leading textile machinery manufacturer in India that has been providing high-quality textile machinery for over decades. Weavetech pirn winding machines are known for their efficiency, accuracy, and durability, making them a popular choice among textile manufacturers worldwide.

Difference between these two:

The main difference between cop winding and pirn winding machines is the type of bobbin they wind yarn onto. Cop winding machines wind yarn onto bobbins called cops, which are larger and wider than pirns. Cops are used in the production of fabrics such as silk and cotton, while pirns are used in the production of heavier fabrics such as denim and canvas.

Another difference is in the way the yarn is wound onto the bobbin. In cop winding machines, the yarn is wound in a cross-wound pattern, which means that the yarn is wound in a criss cross manner to create a stable, compact package of yarn. In pirn winding machines, the yarn is wound in a parallel pattern, which means that the yarn is wound in a straight, parallel manner to create a dense package of yarn. Additionally, cop winding machines tend to be larger and more automated than pirn winding machines, as they are used for larger-scale production of finer yarns. Pirn winding machines are often smaller and more manually operated, as they are used for the production of heavier fabrics.

If you are looking for a reliable and high-quality textile machinery manufacturer in India, Weavetech is an excellent choice. With over decades of experience in the industry, Weavetech has established itself as a leading manufacturer of textile machinery in India, providing innovative and efficient solutions for the textile industry. Do get in touch with them!

Original source: https://www.weavetech.com/blog-detail/34/how-are-cop-winding-and-pirn-winding-machines/

[withinthescripts]

Season 3, Reel 2: August 13, 1953

[tape recorder turns on]

Amy, call Dr. Jefferson and get me an appointment on Thursday or Friday early morning.

Vivi and I found an injured cat and we’d like to get it fixed. Fixed meaning “spayed”, but I suppose also meaning “repaired”. See if Dr. Jefferson can repair and spay our new cat.

Also, pick up a square fabric about 30 x 30 centimeters, something orange, preferably patterned, an argyle or stencil print, as well as some dark thread, maroon or violet. Once you did that, fold the square into a bandana and embroider the name “Constance” onto the back part of the bandana. We named the cat Constance. Also Amy, can you print that name in script? In cursive where each letter elegantly sweeps onto the next. Don’t fret if you can’t do that, just do it in print, I guess. Thanks.

Letter from the office of Michael Witten on the 13th of August, 1953 to Ursula Lindholm, Director of Communications, Department of Global Trade, European office. Dear Director Lindholm. Thank you for your reply to my question about personnel restructuring. Your concerns about my “poking around” are valid, but rest assured that this is not an inquisition or a judgment, simply curiosity. Amy, don’t write “poking around”, say uh, say “inquiries”. Always mean what you say, but rarely say what you mean.

It is a brave new and unincorporated world out there, and we’re all doing our best to set about a new, less destructive course while implementing an entirely novel set of rules. If you and your office are finding success in reorganization, I certainly wanna know about it. We are not business, Director Lindholm, we are government. We are a truism, a monolith, many roots of the same tree. This is not competition, but collaboration. That being said, I apologize if I pressed too hard into your business and the goings on of your new Regional Director of Trade, Karen Roberts. Karen and I know each other peripherally through Global Secretary of Trade, Vishwathi Ramadoss, my direct supervisor.

Karen, I believe, testified against Secretary Ramadoss during preliminary hearings about domestic espionage in Vancouver last year, even though there were no fucking documents to suggest any of the allegations were true, Ursula, and even if they were, the things Secretary Ramadoss could have revealed about Karen, if there were any domestic spying on businesses, would have destroyed her career. Secretary Ramadoss was using computational machines to record basic data on commerce. It’s just numbers to help with global trade, which is Vishwathi Ramadoss’ fucking job over the whole fucking planet. So yeah, I’m a bit goddamned concerned about Karen Roberts.

Amy, obviously delete all of that, just cut it after the part where I said that I knew Karen. But seriously, Vishwathi was organizing data into charts about a birthplace, age, gender and known health records. The Pacific Northwest pissed themselves that Vishwathi was keeping notes on parents’ names. Oh, what if the citizens find out and try to reconnect with their parents? We don’t allow parents anymore – spare me, she only wrote down the parents’ names in cases where people were direct descendants of the last generation, so they’d already know. It was everything over nothing!

By the way, were you not able to find any of the files from our work in Vancouver? Where was I?

If my tone was aggressive, then I apologize. Ursula, it was not my intent, I would never wanna make a colleague feel less than on equal ground. As I understand it, Karen Roberts relocated the entire Western European Labor Department into the Communications Office. Congratulations on the increased resources! I hope you got a raise.

I wish there were a way to suggest this a joke. Ursula doesn’t seem to have any sense of humor. Her letter was what, two sentences? I’m surprised she didn’t carve it directly into a block of ice.

Amy, can you just draw a smilie face after my last comment? I’m not kidding.

But most of my questions went unanswered. Perhaps you’re pressed for time and if so, please let me know my best approach to Karen Roberts herself. She hasn’t returned my calls or letters. First, what is to become of regulatory protections for workers? The North and Baltic Seas are filled with fishing ships, there are mines and textile factories all over the continent. Who is protecting workers from abuse if the entire region has no labor department? You can’t build a society without a well treated work force.

Second, Karen Roberts owned the largest construction firm along the Gulf of Mexico. Upon taking a government job, did she sell her interests in KR Development, Inc.? Calls to her Houston office suggest to me she has not. This is a violation of the new society ethics bylaws for bureaucrats. If she still owns any part of KR while administering all of Europe’s trade, then this is in direct conflict with our new society’s core values for governmental leadership. This is not a threat, but a fact. Also, it is a threat.

Don’t write that part. Uh, no, write it but then draw another smilie face. That was definitely a joke, no threats in letters Amy, you know that.

I especially encourage you to look into the matter of weapons development along the old Mexican border. Karen’s factories were former arms manufacturing sites. Of course, KR Development now makes its business dismantling war machines for use in new, non-military construction. They have their slogan “swords to ploughshares”, of course. But in my working with Karen on previous North American reconstruction projects, there were persistent rumours that southern militias were being armed by weapons still being manufactured by KR. I have no physical evidence of this and I would never share it publicly, but the European people will not be happy if some journalist finds this proof. My North American people will certainly not be happy, which will make me even more unhappy, and Global Secretary of Trade Vishwathi Ramadoss will be the least happy of us all.

Of course, my staff member Amy Castillo was not able to dig up anything about current weapons production, and if she cannot find anything then I’m sure no one can. You didn’t, right Amy?

So perhaps we have no worries at all. I merely encourage you to do your own research into your new head of trade. Please keep me informed on this matter.

Finally, I was told someone from your office has shut down the production of a play called “Last Night We Were the Wind” at the Olympia in Dublin. I don’t mean to suggest that you are practicing censorship, but the account I heard had to do with the playwright Neve Connolly’s open critique of the new society, that your office found the play, quote, “grotesquely retrospect”. I understand that art can be disruptive and provocative, and we are all trying to build public and global confidence in our new society, but this is why a department of labor or culture exists, to work with artist to find the right message. Amy, underline “right”.

It should be a friendly discourse between government and author, not an indifferent one, as is the way with the “last” generation, nor as in this alleged case, an authoritarian one. Plus we’re only one year removed from the Removal of Nations Act, which forced England to finally cede imperial claims over Ireland, so I’m not sure a London office shutting down a play in Dublin goes over too well. There may be no more borders, but there are a fucking lot of feelings. A-amy, streamline that. Perhaps there were other problems related to labor or finances I’m unaware of, but please do enlighten me on the reasons for silencing a young artist.

Thank you for your time and input. Despite my uh pointed questions, please know that I’m only interested in learning more about what has been effective for your region. Life is nothing if not for learning.

Sincerely, Michael Witten, Director of et cetera et cetera.

[tape recorder turns off] [ads] [tape recorder turns on]

Amy, on second thought, if you can’t embroider a nice cursive script, please just find a tailor or something to teach you. I dunno, figure it out. I’m positive you can figure it out. I think you said you were learning pottery or woodworking? I should remember these things. It was something crafty, so you’ll pick this up in no time.

I hope you realize how much I appreciate your work, Amy. I’m aware that I can be abrupt, and I probably don’t acknowledge your efforts enough, but believe me, they are appreciated. When I worked as Head of the Midwest Region before I took this job, I knew the location of every file, every book, every paperclip in my office. I had to, I had a secretary oh god, Kevin Prince. He was dreadful. I had to edit every letter he transcribed, double check his document organization. I even listened in on some of the phone calls I told him to make. I liked how confident I was in every detail of what I did, but I got home at nine or ten PM most nights. Vivian was not happy eating alone. I felt like I was stacking teacups, each a different size every day, one on top of the other, each one taking more time than the last. Carefully looking at direction, curve, weight, keeping the center vertical… I knew it wouldn’t take long for it all to collapse. But then by miracle, I was selected to take over this office, and here you were.

And you’re everything Kevin was not. Organized and detailed, on time. My first boss at the Textile Distribution Center in Sioux City gave me only one rule: “if you receive an order, ship it.” It’s a deceptively difficult rule. I know almost no one including myself who can follow this 100 per cent of the time. If you receive an order, ship it.

I know we don’t work in shipping and fulfilment here, Amy, but everything I ask of you, you do immediately and effectively. I don’t know where anything is or how you have it all filed, but I’m home by six every night. And when I ask you to dig up old records on some project or meeting, I’ve got a tidy stack on my desk at the end of the day. Except Vancouver. I’m assuming those were lost or we just never had them?

I used to think leadership was managing every aspect of an underling’s work, but I realize leadership is quietly accepting that people will do everything correctly and allowing them to figure out when they’re wrong. Or you’re just really remarkable. Either way, Vivian appreciates you more than you know. We should have you over for dinner some night. We’ve worked together for how many years now? Why hasn’t this happened? Let’s make this happen.

Letter from of the office of Michael Witten on the 18th of August 1953 to Bernice Jones, Minister for Culture, North American region.

Dear Bernice, it was fantastic having you and Miguel for dinner this weekend. I always enjoy your company and Vivi and I truly loved the wine you brought. We never had a marble wine before. So crisp and smooth, but with a sweet nose, like someone eating a passion fruit next to you while you touch cold marble swatches. And please thank Miguel for the wonderful gift of music. I’m listening to the record right now*, Vivi has turned me on to jazz. I don’t know if I enjoy it, but I uh appreciate it. It’s like music but with a puzzle in it. Apparently there are some jazz clubs right here in Chicago.

* there’s no music in the background

You mentioned your youth arts initiatives in Oaxaca and I was intrigued. While the Department of Global Trade does not directly oversee artistic funding, we certainly oversee global trade, whatever you think that last word means. Perhaps there’s room for a collaboration here between our offices. As you know, Vivi is an avid collector of modern art. You noted with a touch of awe the original Claudia Atieno in our den, and I’ve never seen Vivi light up quite like that. [chuckles] With all the accountants and lawyers who come through our doors, you can imagine how rare it is to find a dinner guest who can recognize the care and attention Vivi puts into her collection.

After your visit, Vivi and I discussed how we can do more to help young artists. Or forget young, artists in general. Why single out only the inexperienced? What of those in between training and fame who need our help most? Of course we donate and make purchases where we can, but money only goes so far.

You may need to burn this letter after I tell you this, but our department is swimming in money. I can’t put resources toward a North American gallery or opera or (-) [0:16:30], but I could certainly put money toward a global artistic exchange. Can you imagine teaching the Cahto language in (Canberra), or singing Mariachi in Marrakesh, or performing Neve Connolly in London? I think the people of London would adore such a dynamic new writer.

Connolly is controversial, yes, what with her depictions of traditional family roles and the challenge this presents the new generations of people raised to reject the tribalism of family. But she’s a brilliant young playwright. You know her work, she was brought to speak at Tulane last year through a grant from your office.

The Palladium in London is dark right now. The West End is starving for theatre. We could produce a Neve Connolly play there with a North American production team and Dublin actors. I’m not sure if you’ve read her play “The Topaz Window”, but it’s truly a masterpiece. It centers around an extraordinary painting of mysterious origin that begins to drive a wedge between a previously close family. I won’t spoil it, but the denouement is truly shocking.

Anyway, if someone were to stage that, I’m sure we could commission a well regarded artist to provide the painting in question, maybe even Claudia Atieno herself. I know an art collector named Archie McPherson who would get us in touch with her.

This is truly cultural and global trade, I’m positive our European offices will be pleased. No, make that “delighted”, Amy.

I’ll have my secretary Amy send you a full proposal and budget within a week. I look forward to discussing this with you soon, give my love to Miguel, all the best, Mikey.

[tape recorder turns on]

Amy, write a letter to Vishwathi. 20th August, 1953.

Dear Secretary Ramadoss, I’m pleased to hear you agree with me about the European trade offices. I, too, was alarmed to hear that Karen Roberts had disbanded her labor department, but not surprised. As you saw in my memorandum, she has a long history of disrespect towards workers, going back to her time in Houston. My contact, Ursula Lindholm in the Communications offices in Europe, is reluctant to share many details with me, so I’m hoping to make new connections with the European Trade Department employees. A former colleague of mine from my old job in St. Louis, Leena Mäkinen is living in Helsinki. She would be interested in a move to the Oslo offices. Would you be willing to write a recommendation for her? I think Leena could provide some information that Ursula is certainly unwilling to share. Not a spy, really but a um… You know, scratch that, let’s not be dramatic.

I know you do not know her, and I do not want to seem flippant about professional ethics, but as you once told me, act first, argue semantics later. The staff and I hope you can visit Chicago again soon. Fall is beautiful here, we’ll take you to the lake. Also the Field Museum finally reopened last month. They only recovered a quarter of their collection from the Great Reckoning, but many museums were far lass fortunate.

Amy, remove the paragraphs mentioning Leena Mäkinen from this letter. I think it’s better not to involve the secretary in this. Let’s go with this.

Perhaps you can use your influence to find out whether Karen has sold off her interest in KR development, and what they plan on doing to manage labor, now that they’ve gutted the department. Thank you again for your attention in this manner. Sincerely, Michael Witten, North America.

[tape recorder turns off]

Jeffrey Cranor: Within the Wires is a production of Night Vale Presents. It is written by Jeffrey Cranor and Janina Matthewson, with original music by Mary Epworth. Find more of Mary’s music at maryepworth.com. The voice of Michael Witten is Lee LeBreton. You can support our show and get exclusive episodes and other cool things at patreon.com/withinthewires.

OK, our time is done. It’s you time now. Time to head to happy hour after a long day of work at the [yoga tournament], to enjoy a pint of [tamarin sauce] with your friend [Jean Valjean].