If you are paying attention you will notice I skipped September. By 2016 I will stop skipping months because all the subscriptions were now automatically renewed and it got complicated to credit folks when I skipped a month.

I don’t remember why I missed this one though. My allergies in Oakland were bad in the late summer. It also took me a full year to get an Oakland library card and ten years later I can’t picture any of the libraries I went to. Who was I in 2013? I was trying.

(Editors note: these captions are written in July 2024. Summer. Deep birthday times which often leads to a sense of reflection. These may not be posted for a few months but I am writing them in batches in my basement, while the sun shines outside and I am too sick to travel to a swimming hole.  So please forgive the existential musings.)

Ok, where were we? 

The library. What are you reading? Plus a printmaking pun because printed lines are called “rule” , think of ruled paper.  I think I am very funny. Technically, I don’t think the decorative lines I printed are rule. Go figure.

Despite my inability to remember one Oakland library, I have always read. When I was nearly too old for summer day care but too antagonistic to be left alone all day with my sister (screaming fights, knives, fires, etc), I would read grumpily in the shady spots of the playground all day. I had a favorite bookstore in Oakland—Em Wolfman’s, and now in Portland am a fan of Bishop and Wilde. I love a quiet store with spots to read and a focused selection. I was a slow reader for years but finished Amy Berkowitz’s Tender Points in one long gasp of a plane ride. I love books.

Letterpress printed with polymer plates and handset rule on weird coated brown paper probably found in the donation pile at SFCB. I just assume that’s where all my oddball paper came from in that time. Possibly printed on Ben’s Universal One. I hope he still has that press.

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