The mathematical ideas that I have mastered over the years spread out and infiltrate whatever I do and experience -- when the newspaper carrier throws my bagged Washington Post newspaper on the the porch in front of my second floor door, I wonder -- is the paper's curved path an arc of a circle, or a parabola? Or ???
Today, as I was sorting old newspapers and magazines into piles for saving or recycling or trashing, my items-to-sort included lots of copies of The New Yorker -- and the issue from May 16, 2022 had a page marked; I opened it to find the poem "FEATHERWEIGHT" by Chase Twichell. This poem reminded me how much my sewing activity connects to mathematics. I offer below the poem's opening stanzas -- followed by a link to the complete poem online (both print and audio versions).
FEATHERWEIGHT by Chase Twichell
At fourteen, I taught myself to sew
on a Singer Featherweight,
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