Letterpressing Riot

The lay of the case. Since capital letters were used less frequently in typesetting, they were kept in the case above the 'low letters,' hence the terms "upper and lower case letters" came to be.

It's no surprise that a typesetting trade art "lost" by the 1930s got a welcome reprise in the late 90s, particularly here in fair Portlandia.  I'd been aching to take an introductory class for a couple of years in hot pursuit of the wishful thinking I could spend some kind of long hours amid old machines and heavy letter type

Building form on a job stick, or as the printers say, "I like it backwards and upside down."

waiting to be locked up in poetic form and printed. In a fit of good timing and found luck over a year ago, I salivated over buying an old print shop out of Christmas Valley before even trying my hand at the Press. I seem to think the fastest means to making time for a new hobby is to let it invade my pocketbook and beg for its audience!Then time passes and classes come and go and finally one day there's a class on the Right day at the Right time with the Right partner in printing crime.

coppers and brasses, quads and kerning

  The language alone in letterpress print world is seductive enough to interest me:

Locked the form, planed the type, tightened the quoins.

coppers and brass, furniture and ringlets, chase, kern and quoin. There's even a Hell Box - the place for type no longer fit for the case! It's remarkably methodical yet puzzle-like all at the same time.

...this good idea came all the way from Florida...

There's a lot of decision-making on type size and style up front; start with a good idea,
flirt with precision to set the chase,  build and screw and ink it all up for the finishing. It's a lot of prep work for swift and smooth print production. It's worth the trouble and the tremble....and the long wait to get into the shop.

Registered, inked and printing!

We made it.

Thank you Chandler and Price.

first published May 2012

The Tight Squeeze of Wonder and Diversity

I've stolen a Sunday morning to sort through a 6-inch pile of mail. At the bottom was the winter's quarterly newsletter from my college. I tend to skim or read them on a delayed response, much like any of my third class post. The newsletter featured last year's commencement address, and it's message was to arrange for wonder and diversity in one's life. Bingo.

I did not attend my university or department graduations. I interpreted the advantage of a 5-year scholarship to maximize my credit hours and stayed in school through the summers (I loved those summer terms) and finished non-traditionally one year right before the Christmas holiday. And then I left the country. At the time, graduating among people in the larger University context seemed gratuitous. I've never really thought twice about that until this morning, wondering what my graduating class' commencement speech intoned, further wondering if I gleaned that innate message of Wonder and Diversity on my own, which to the best of a single mom's ability has been my MO. It makes me feel like I must be doing okay.

There was a second, less simple didactic message in the speech too: "What will support your building of a personal intellectual framework for regarding the world and those who share it with you?" Now that is a question that remains prescient in adult life, and challenges me regularly on my behalf and for my children. I'm not sure I've succeeded in building my own framework, and I tend to overlook that in pursuit of helping of the kids. Yet that children part, the nurturing of building a framework, that is tough stuff. Every summer camp, beach vacation, overnight, midweek getaway drive, after-school activity and even lazy afternoon informs this framework. This year like none prior I feel that I am facing a summer of last hurrahs. For the first time I am looking at the role of summer camps in my older-aged kids' lives as a real investment in those frameworks. It's not that I haven't been enamored of what wonder and diversity summer programs have had to offer in the past - I even spent five years offering enriching art and craft camps for kids out of my home to pay the bills - it's that I haven't easily accommodated their financial impact on my purse-strings. Navigating this stuff is overwhelming, expensive, and when contextually labeled as 'intellectual framework,' downright daunting.

So this year, having decided the expense of some quality camps in their areas of interest is non-negotiable, the question becomes what defines wonder and diversity. My firstborn goes to high school in the fall, a place where I know she will be surrounded by girls who have been afforded many more of these bought-and-paid advantages. At the age of ten she went off to her first extended overnight camp after earning half the fee herself. So it's my own doing that I taught her to work for the things she wants the most. This year, I know the thing she probably desires most is to start her new school year talking about a repeat trip out of the country with her best friend.....but at the expense of every other scaffolded summer option? At the expense of a family trip? Mama knows wonder and diversity. Mama doesn't know how to get a hug out of this one......

Contrast and Compartmentalization

The airline ad tells me to embrace my spontaneity; the holiday chocolate foil says to open my eyes to all the love around me, and another one says to exercise my heart today. I have never regretted acting on impulse, and I wistfully recall several youthful months in Europe guiding myself with a mantra of "No Regrets," yet I have regretted ignoring impulse. But the older I get the more I am sure these messages are for people with more means, less time lapse on the margins of error and planning.
In the past week or so I have made valentines, sung songs to plants, stayed in bed half a day, made friends with a sea witch, danced with strangers, drank rum with someone who brings out the best in me, walked at twilight, harassed a friend or two by text and wrote a letter back to a former student who wrote to tell me he had so much fun he's 7 now. And these things, all, were part and parcel to fun or the pursuit of it. But not a bit of it happened on impulse. It all required some planning or sacrifice or intention, and it all was pleasant but not earth-shattering.
By contrast, in the past week I have, of course, worked. I helped kids pulverize paper scraps to make paper, taught them to seal an envelope with a kiss, traipsed to a post office for stamps, took tea with seniors and spotted a peregrine falcon on a winter perch. I left a trail of hearts, wrote notes for lunchboxes, ordered books for school, paid bills, donated clothes and got recruited to help with a school auction. Work. Less sacrifice and planning, more requirement, yet oddly more fun. More obviously productive and emotionally gratifying. So this contrast, this fuzzy compartmentalization of work and life balance, it confuses me. I exercise my heart every day at work, but I have only more work to look forward to. My work life offers no resource for grand respite or repose.
I suppose I have exchanged the rewards of flexibility and honest pleasure from my work for more standard benefits of a big paycheck. I have chosen a kind of respite and repose without grandiosity. I wonder, can I rent a metaphorical room to the luxury of impulse often enough to keep up the dance?