Hope A 1/23/17 Hope A 1/23/17

let there be light!

The end of 2017 was dark for many of us. Deaths of icons of our youth, fear of the upcoming presidency and his policies, internet arguments, hate crimes and holidays made more tense with difficult conversation, avoidance and the anniversary of freinds' and family deaths.

For the beginning of this year, I wanted to remind us that the days are getting longer, that there is more light, that it is part of a cycle. That doesn't mean there isn't a lot of work to do, but I wanted to look forward towards something, to find the thing that gives us hope and inspiration in the dark. If I had made this a tear away card and asked for your response, maybe I would maybe ask what is the thing that inspires you, what is your light? Or maybe I would ask what you have learned in the dark, because this is necessary too--the sadness, the hurt, the quiet time. Hibernation is a time to reflect and renew.

In the end I decided not to ask anything from you this month. I gave us all a few more weeks to catch up, to take the lessons we have learned from our darkest days of winter, and apply them to move into the light. There is so much to so.

***If you want to subscribe to the Keep Writing project, or sign up a friend, 100% of sales of subscriptions will be donated for the first 100 days of the new presidency. Read more here. Subscribe here or pay-what-you-can via paypal: gutwrenchhope@gmail.com

Hope A 1/23/17 Hope A 1/23/17

resistance is love in action

My dad was visiting me in New Orleans during the inauguration and I missed all the marches. I was walking in the swamp trying to identify birds, or drinking coffee, trying not to read the news. I thought of the things that are most important to me and how I can use that to participate.

I offered pay-what-you-can subscriptions for inauguration day, and offered to donate 100% to the New Orleans Abortion Fund . I was hoping to raise maybe a few hundred dollars. We raised $800. I love sending postcards and I am happy to have new subscribers who are excited about participating. It is a small way to give back and it helps me to stay motivated and I think it is part of keeping the momentum of the movement. Whatever you think or however you voted, the next 4 years will be a marathon, not a sprint, and we have to find a way to balance the need to acknowledge what is said and done by the president, and not over or under react. And between tweets and attacks, there is proposed legislation cutting funding for people and groups who need it most.

This is only a small part.

The first 100 days ends June 9th and I will continue to donate all sales from Keep Writing subscriptions. For the rest of January and all of February, I will donate to BreakOUT!, dedicated to ending the criminalization of lgbtq youth in New Orleans. You can subscribe a friend, you can add on to your subscription. You can sign up a family member. This is what I have. Letterpress printed words to share, a dedication to communication and a willingness to share resources. Keep loving, keep fighting.

post script:

I have been proud of printmakers, reclaiming our history of those who spread news for the people. Power and Light Press took it one further and offered these tote bags, originally for the women's march but so many orders were placed they had to set back shipping times--100% of the proceedss are going to planned parenthoodd. The sale of this tote (still available!) has raised more than $50,000. yahoo!

Hope A 10/26/16 Hope A 10/26/16

You can go your own way...

If you have never read Ker-Bloom zine, the 20 year project from artnoose, stop reading here, find yourself at least one issue, through etsy or your local zine shop, savor it, and we will meet up in the next paragraph.

Ker-bloom is a letterpress printed treasure. Every two months, 4 pages of text are offered, a monologue on a theme, a story, a glimpse. When I moved to Seattle in 1998, I would use all the money I made in consigning my zines at Left Bank Books for the latest issues of Ker-Bloom. It isn't just the writing, or the letterpress cover and pages, it is holding the package in your hands. It is precious. And bi-montly.

For the 20th anniversary issue artnoose wrote about starting this project and what it has evolved into. The idea for a project that started small but became their defining work.

I can relate to this. Eight years ago, I left New Orleans to go to college. I left behind a lot of good friends. I wanted to send mail to everyone I missed in New Orleans and my other penpals. But school kept me busy. One day in my first semester, I was biking home from class when I thought, what if I sent everyone the same postcard every month? What if I designed it and printed it. I could keep in touch with all my friends and have a creatively challenging project every month. Now it is the project that frames my month, how I set up my weeks. After recently reuniting with a friend I have known since high school but have not seen in years, we realized are both still doing the same work we've always been doing. He is still writing. I am still sending mail. Our work might take different forms, and but the essence remains the same. .

Now that I have moved back to New Orleans it is i a good time to notice how things have stayed the same, what remains true, how I have found a way within this truth. This is Keep Writing number 91. Sent a bit late. I am still adjusting to my new old life. But there is mail. And a new po box. An aisle away from my old one.

Do you want to receive monthly mail like the card above? subscribe here: www.gutwrenchpress.com/subscribe

Hope A 6/21/16 Hope A 6/21/16

by water

Some days I try not to schedule anything. No classes, no meetings with friends, no work. Maybe an idea. Usually involving the ferry or a bike ride. I am not good with this kind of open-ended day, the choices become overwhelming. Which is the opposite of my intentions. So I TRY not to schedule anything but I usually have an idea. One recent afternoon I took the ferry from Oakland to San Francisco, which is enough for me but then also walked through a weird mall downtown, took a bus to Land's End, hiked until I found a place to sit, and then went to a mall in Japantown on my way home.

Hope A 6/14/16 Hope A 6/14/16

EXQUISITE SUBSET

About a year and half ago, a friend talked me into attending a conference of papermakers. Sometimes I am not confident in my skills and identity and so around papermakers I tend to identify as a printmaker and vice versa. I once declared myself an enthusiast of mail art, because I love postcards but I didn't realize there is a community of people who participate in mail art and though in some ways it has influenced what I do, it is not the most accurate description.

I digress.

At this conference I met other papermaker-printmakers and we started a critique group, a salon if you will. We met, ate food, shared what we were working on. A new member joined as one left, and then another new member to make 4. We decided on the name subset as a reference to the overlap of our abilities and interests (including an interest in Venn diagrams). We applied for residencies and had shows on our own and then decided to get a show together.

We started with the idea of showing our individual work maybe linking them together by theme, like an exquisite corpse. Then we had the idea to try a few collaborative pieces. For one meeting,w e each brought something we had started but couldn't finish, blank paper, abandoned prints, half-finished books. We lay them on the table and then watch chose a few pieces to try to work on. We brought them back to the next meeting, lay them on the table again with additional unfinished pieces and chose again. Over 2 months we met about 5 times to exchange work and in this way created a body of weird paper works that somehow worked together, a bit of a pleasant surprise as we hung the show hours before the opening.

As we began this project, we also played the parlor game exquisite corpse, each starting a drawing, folding it over so only a few lines were visible , then passing it around to the next person to add to it. I made letterpress prints of the finished drawing and spent nights before the show opening hand coloring them with water color paint and a gold pen.

Of course I made a postcard that fit in this theme.

Keep Writing number 87, exquisite corpse. I can't wait to see what is sent back to me.

EXQUISITE works by subset is open at EM Wolfman Books in downtown Oakland through the end of June.

Hope A 6/14/16 Hope A 6/14/16

READ

I don't read as much as I used to. When I was in middle school, over the summer, I would read the entire Little House on The Prairie set over and over. I would read all day, sitting outside at the day camp I attended. But for the past year or so, I haven't found anything that would hold my interest for that long. I read magazines, I read short stories when I travel, I listen to audio books. I've tried taking only baths and reading in the bath, I've tried reading at night. I wasn't upset but there were books I wanted to have read but I didn't have the focus to sit and read.

One day I was giving away a pile of books (not because I have given up on reading, these were books I have already read). I stopped at one of the many free little libraries in residential streets on my way to work. I saw a copy of Dune. I remember when the movie came out, I remember the images for the movie poster. It was never a book I read or had much interest in. But I do like a paperback with a good design and as a bonus there is a map inside of the planet where the book is based. I threw it in my bag and took it home.

Over the next few weeks I read it every chance i got: in the bath, on break at work, in bed with a tiny light on so my sweetie could sleep. I'm not a huge science fiction fan (though the last book I had read was a selection of feminist sci-fi) but something about the book was captivating. When I came to the Litany against Fear, I made a note of the page number and knew what my next postcard would be.

I had no idea that the passage was famous that it might be on coffee mugs and high school yearbooks. But it appealed to me as I think a lot about fear, about things I am afraid of, about how to look at those things, see them, acknowledge them, and act not react to them.

I was telling everyone who would listen about Dune as if I had discovered a new treasure. And I had. Years after everyone else.

PS I was looking for a clip of the movie without an ad and then I found this. Which I like better.

Hope A 5/31/16 Hope A 5/31/16

60 Seconds

For March, I was inspired by a Gabriel Marcia Marquez quote:

For every minute you sleep, you lose sixty seconds of light.

I wrote it down years ago, when I slept less. But now I think of it as more about paying attention, of being awake and aware. Of course, the part of me that doesn't sit still (the internalized capilatlism, as Claire calls it) also likes to stay busy, not waste time. But lately I have been also taking it slow, walking, looking for quiet and just looking around. It is easy to look one but I have been trying mroe often to sit with a spot, notice details and be still. And that is what I asked folks to do this month. See responses at www.keepwritingpostcards.tumblr.com .

oh, when I send these out I mentioned typos. There were two:

I asked people to sit for sexty seconds

and I suggested getting a montlhy subscription. You can get your subscription too. And I will work on proofreading. Most embarrasing it that these were writtne digitally not handset.

Hope A 2/23/16 Hope A 2/23/16

Monday!

Oh New England of my youth, I am almost sorry to tell you that February in California is the best.

I've never hated Mondays. I've rarely had one full time job and never one with a Monday through Friday routine. I used to dread Sundays in high school but those milquetoast afternoons were always worse than Monday mornings. If you know me at all, you may know I rarely take a day off and it is almost never planned. I have a schedule for sure, that I write and re-write in my planner. I even plan a day off.

The past few months have been rough--Andy's schedule is constantly shifting, and I have been feeling the lasting effects of loosing a good friend with secrets. I love rain and hibernating and baths but lately the noise of the city and the noise in my brain have me craving wide open spaces of light. We rode to the park last week where I discovered the sketchiest day time bathroom outside a BART station. I read on the couch last week. Both were good. But not wholly satisfying.

This morning we headed out unplanned to breakfast. The coffee seemed stronger and the sun warmer so I convinced Andy to adventure through the shipyards of the port of Oakland to the most expansive and underused park in Oakland. Views of San Francisco across the bay, of the bridge of the hills to the southwest. It is a weird oasis, quiet and large, mostly used by Canadian geese. Benches face the Bay, there is an observation tower and it isn't a Superfund site as I suspected. I do not know why it is here. I have written about it before but every visit is a reminder that I am not long for the city life, even with donuts and coffee. I'll share my secret place with you again because there is room for us both. And if you ever want company to see the sun set, I'm in.