The First Amendment and Hand Cranked Printing Presses

On this Independence Day, a little history lesson. "The Press" did not mean "journalists" when our nation was founded. It did not mean television, radio, or the internet. It did not mean respectable owners of newspapers or members of the White House Press Corps or people with Journalism Degrees or writers who make their living as full time reporters or only respectable bloggers or official licensed anything.

It meant "The Printing Press" of the type seen above, which is what Benjamin Franklin, Printer, used to print newspapers, broadsides, editorials, and -  to make a living - various advertising and other works for hire.  It meant anyone who owned a press or who could pay for something to be printed.

Franklin had a LOT to say about "freedom of the Press" and the right to freely publish things that offended some people.  

Most of the concepts we still apply to "Freedom of the Press" came from Franklin's own experience. His older brother James was a Printer, and was jailed for a month for printing some political outrage and then refusing to divulge the name of his source. Franklin, his apprentice, was 16 at the time and the court tried to force him to share the name as well. He stubbornly refused. He later wrote:

"During my brother's confinement, which I resented a good deal, notwithstanding our private differences, I had the management of the paper; and I made bold to give our rulers some rubs in it, which my brother took very kindly, while others began to consider me in an unfavorable light, as a young genius that had a turn for libelling and satire. My brother's discharge was accompany'd with an order of the House (a very odd one), that 'James Franklin should no longer print the paper called the New England Courant.'" 

James got around that ban by releasing Ben from his apprenticeship (basically "graduating" him), and putting Ben's name on the masthead.

Then, as now, stubborn and recalcitrant "printers" are essential to prevent the never-ending attempts to censor Everyman. "Hate Speech" laws and "Blasphemy" laws are two sides of the same anti-Constitutional coin.  Freedom of the Press means both the right to print things the Printer himself disagrees with, and the right to print things that offend some people or even "all" people.

Just like in Franklin's day, sometimes the *authors* will need to be anonymous. But the Printers need liberty to make their platforms - whether Google or Facebook or Amazon or Wordpress or the New York Times  - available to all viewpoints without any government interference whatsoever.

In 1731, Franklin printed an advertisement from a ship captain who said he would not accept priests from the Church of England as his passengers.  Since America was still a colony of Great Britain, the Church of England was the OFFICIAL government-supported religion, and King George was the head of it. Other denominations were persecuted and "upstanding community leaders" were indignant over the advertisement.

Below is the full text of Franklin's response to the mob of pre-Twitter outrage:


An Apology for Printers by Benjamin Franklin

"Being frequently censured and condemned by different persons for printing things which they say ought not to be printed, I have sometimes thought it might be necessary to make a standing apology for myself, and publish it once a year, to be read upon all occasions of that nature. Much business has hitherto hindered the execution of this design; but having very lately given extraordinary offence by printing an advertisement with a certain N.B. at the end of it, I find an apology more particularly requisite at this juncture, though it happens when I have not yet leisure to write such a thing in the proper form, and can only in a loose manner throw those considerations together which should have been the substance of it. 

I request all who are angry with me on the account of printing things they don't like, calmly to consider these following particulars: 

1 . That the opinions of men are almost as various as their faces; an observation general enough to become a common proverb, "So many men so many minds"; 

2. That the business of printing has chiefly to do with men's opinions; most things that are printed tending to promote some, or oppose others; 

3. That hence arises the peculiar unhappiness of that business, which other callings are no way liable to; they who follow printing being scarce able to do anything in their way of getting a living, which shall not probably give offence to some, and perhaps to many; whereas the smith, the shoemaker, the carpenter, or the man of any other trade,  may work indifferently for people of all persuasions, without offending any of them; and the merchant may buy and sell with Jews, Turks, heretics and infidels of all sorts, and get money by every one of them, without giving offence to the most orthodox, of any sort; or suffering the least censure or ill-will on the account from any man whatever; 

4. That it is as unreasonable in any one man or set of men to expect to be pleased with everything that is printed, as to think that nobody ought to be pleased but themselves; 

5. Printers are educated in the belief, that when men differ in opinion, both sides ought equally to have the advantage of being heard by the public; and that when truth and error have fair play, the former is always an overmatch for the latter. Hence they cheerfully serve all contending writers that pay them well, without regarding on which side they are of the question in dispute; 

6. Being thus continually employed in serving both parties, printers naturally acquire a vast unconcernedness as to the right or wrong opinions contained in what they print; regarding it only as the matter of their daily labor. They print things full of spleen and animosity, with the utmost calmness and indifference, and without the least ill-will to the persons reflected on, who nevertheless unjustly think the printer as much their enemy as the author, and join both together in their resentment; 

7. That it is unreasonable to imagine printers approve of everything they print, and to censure them on any particular thing accordingly; since in the way of their business they print such great variety of things opposite and contradictory. It is likewise as unreasonable what some assert, "That printers ought not to print anything but what they approve;" since if all of that business should make such a resolution, and abide by it, an end would thereby be put to free writing, and the world would afterwards have nothing to read but what happened to be the opinions of printers; 

8. That if all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed; 

9. That if they sometimes print vicious or silly things not worth reading, it may not be because they approve such things themselves, but because the people are so viciously and corruptly educated that good things are not encouraged. I have known a very numerous impression of Robin Hood's songs go off in this province at 2 s. per book, in less than a twelvemonth; when a small quantity of David's Psalms (an excellent version) has lain upon my hands above twice the time; 

10. That notwithstanding what might be urged in behalf of a man's being allowed to do in the way of his business whatever he is paid for, yet printers do continually discourage the printing of great numbers of bad things, and stifle them in the birth. I myself have constantly refused to print anything that might countenance vice, or promote immorality; though by complying in such cases with the corrupt taste of the majority I might have got much money. 

I have also always refused to print such things as might do real injury to any person, how much soever I have been solicited, and tempted with offers of great pay; and how much soever I have by refusing got the ill-will of those who would have employed me. I have hitherto fallen under the resentment of large bodies of men, for refusing absolutely to print any of their party or personal reflections. In this manner I have made myself many enemies, and the constant fatigue of denying is almost insupportable. 

But the public being unacquainted with all this, whenever the poor printer happens either through ignorance or much persuasion, to do anything that is generally thought worthy of blame, he meets with no more friendship or favor on the above account, than if there were no merit in it at all. Thus, as Waller says. "Poets lose half the praise they would have got Were it but known what they discreetly blot;" yet are censured for every bad line found in their works with the utmost severity. 

I come now to the particular case of the N. B. above-mentioned, about which there has been more clamor against me, than ever before on any other account. 

In the hurry of other business an advertisement was brought to me to be printed. It signified that such a ship lying at such a wharf would sail for Barbados in such a time, and that freighters and passengers might agree with the captain at such a place. So far is what's common; but at the bottom this odd thing was added, "N. B. No Sea-hens nor Black Gowns will be admitted on any terms." I printed it, and received my money; and the advertisement was stuck up round the town as usual. I had not so much curiosity at that time as to enquire the meaning of it, nor did I in the least imagine it would give so much offence. 

Several good men are very angry with me on this occasion. They are pleased to say I have too much sense to do such things ignorantly, that if they were printers they would not have done such a thing on any consideration, that it could proceed from nothing but my abundant malice against religion and the clergy. They therefore declare they will not take any more of my papers, nor have any further dealings with me, but will hinder me of all the custom they can. All this is very hard! 

I believe it had been better if I had refused to print the said advertisement. However, it's done, and cannot be revoked. I have only the following few particulars to offer, some of them in my behalf, by way of mitigation, and some not much to the purpose; but I desire none of them may be read when the reader is not in a very good humor: 

1. That I really did it without the least malice, and imagined the N. B was placed there only to make the advertisement stared at, and more generally read; 

2. That I never saw the word Sea-hens before in my life; nor have I yet asked the meaning of it. And though I had certainly known that Black Gowns in that place signified the clergy of the Church of England, yet I have that confidence in the generous good temper of such of them as I know, as to be well satisfied such a trifling mention of their habit gives them no disturbance; 

3. That most of the clergy in this and the neighboring provinces, are my customers, and some of them my very good friends; and I must be very malicious, indeed, or very stupid, to print this thing for a small profit, if I had thought it would have given them just cause of offence ; 

4. That if I had much malice against the clergy, and withal much sense, it's strange I never write or talk against the clergy myself. Some have observed that it's a fruitful topic, and the easiest to be witty upon of all others; yet I appeal to the public that I am never guilty this way, and to all my acquaintances as to my conversation; 

5. That if a man of sense had malice enough to desire to injure the 
clergy, this is the most foolish thing he could possibly contrive for that purpose; 

6. That I got five shillings by it; 

7. That none who are angry with me would have given me so much to 
let it alone; 

8. That if all the people of different opinions in this province would engage to give me as much for not printing things they don't like, as I can get by printing them, I should probably live a very easy life; and if all printers were everywhere so dealt by, there would be very little printed; 

9. That I am obliged to all who take my paper, and am willing to think they do it out of mere friendship. I only desire they would think the same when I deal with them. I thank those who leave off, that they have taken it so long. But I beg they would not endeavor to dissuade others, for that will look like malice; 

10. That it's impossible any man should know what he would do if he were a printer; 

11. That notwithstanding the rashness and inexperience of youth, which is most likely to be prevailed upon to do things that ought not to be done, yet I have avoided printing such things as usually give offence either to church or state, more than any printer that has followed the business in this province before; 

12. And lastly, that I have printed above a thousand advertisements which made not the least mention of Sea-hens or Black Gowns; and this being the first offence, I have the more reason to expect forgiveness. 

I take leave to conclude with an old fable, which some of my readers have heard before, and some have not: 

"A certain well-meaning man and his son were traveling towards a market town with an ass which they had to sell. The road was bad, and the old man therefore rode, but the son went afoot. The first passerby they met asked the father if he was not ashamed to ride by himself, and suffer the poor lad to wade along through the mire; this induced him to take up his son behind him. 

"He had not traveled far, when he met others, who said, they are two unmerciful lubbers to get both on the back of that poor ass in such a deep road. Upon this the old man got off, and let his son ride alone. The next they met called the lad a graceless, rascally young jackanapes, to ride in that manner through the dirt, while his aged father trudged along on foot; and they said the old man was a fool for suffering it. 

"He then bid his son come down, and walk with him, and they traveled on leading the ass by the halter, till they met another company, who called them a couple of senseless blockheads, for going both on foot in such a dirty way, when they had an empty ass with them, which they might ride upon. The old man could bear it no longer. 'My son,' said he, 'it grieves me much that we cannot please all these people. Let me throw the ass over the next bridge, and be no further troubled with him.'" 

Had the old man been seen acting this last resolution, he would probably have been called a fool for troubling himself about the different opinions of all that were pleased to find fault with him. Therefore, though I have a temper almost as complying as his, I intend not to imitate him in this last particular. I consider the variety of humors among men, and despair of pleasing everybody; yet I shall not therefore leave off printing. 

I shall continue my business. I shall not burn my press and melt my letters. "

                                                             ~B. Franklin, 1731, Pennsylvania Gazette

Demonstrating Linoleum Block Cutting And Printing

I was honored to be among those demonstrating how to make art at the "Stars of Texas" annual art show in Brownwood Texas. This is the third year I have been invited to do this and it is something I always enjoy. This year, I demonstrated Linoleum Block cutting and printmaking.

The Other Dame Julian: The Mother of Fly Fishing was a 15th Century English Nun

I first read about Dame Juliana Berners a few weeks ago, and I am still enthralled with this quaint little fact from "A Brief History of Fly Fishing":

"The first English book on fly fishing was written by Dame Juliana Berners in 1496: Treatise of Fishing with an Angle, which contained a wealth of practical angling advice and details on equipment. As the Abbess of the Sopwell Priory, Berners cast flies and wrote between prayers. She described the rod as having two parts: a ‘staffe’ or butt, and a ‘croppe’ or top. The butt was made of hazel or rowan, cut between Michaelmas and Candlemas (that is, in the winter), and was six feet long or more."

She also contributed a middle-ages how-to book on hunting, in "The Book of Saint Albans".  For a letterpress printer, it gets better, because the second edition of her Treatise was published by none other than Wynken De Worde, and has never been out of print in 450 years! Here is a link to the full "Treatise on Fishing With An Angle".

Those crazy Medieval nuns! I have always been fond of the eminently quotable  Dame Juliana of Norwich, whose record of her Visions of Divine Love in 1373 remains a breathtaking work of faith in Jesus Christ that inspires to this day. By happenstance, or perhaps the Grace of God, it is also the earliest surviving book written by a woman in English.  I have read her in several translations, and once even started a translation of my own, working from the original Old English.

And now to read about another ordinary soul who surprises and upends our assumptions and the "expert" guesses about the lives of Religious in those so-called dark ages following the Black Death. Something tells me their lives were quite livelier - and perhaps much more like ours - than we have been taught.

Isn't it interesting how different history looks when you let the facts speak for themselves, unpainted with fictional anachronisms or modernised disclaimers.

Where Unchosen Postage Stamp Designs Go To Play

This is the coolest page I have seen today: Sheaff : ephemera : Stamp Design.   These are postage stamp designs that never made it through the final approval process. Like hiring, sometimes there are just too many good ones and only one job, or in this case, one stamp. So these got left behind. But they are wonderful to see.

 I am a Rockwell Kent freak - the 37c woodcut angel is one of my faves. The various 42c Edgar Rice Burroughs/Tazan are ALL, I think, better than the one they ended up with - it was truly a homely stamp. The technique used to generate Cochise's portrait is fascinating. And dig them cool cats playing Latin Jazz, down toward the last of the list. 

Save this page to end the daily browsing with & sleep on a lighter note. :-)

Letterpress Poster Printing ... And A Little Wood Type Puzzle Solved

 I've been doing more printing lately. This is the first poster I've ever printed. I am pretty happy with it! It was a give-away for my demonstration at our Farmer's Market - we had a bit of a celebration on the first day of the new Cottage Food Law, and I figured, why not promote the really big event of the season: The Harvest Fair!  The demonstration was fun and I met a couple of printers - boy they must be right that once printer's ink gets into your veins it never goes away,  because nobody gets excited to see my type the way former printers do. It is worthwhile to hold a little exhibit just for the chance to make some erstwhile printers really really really happy! :-)


After I started looking at my little Line-o-Scribe proof press to figure out how to use it for a portable demonstrating press, I remembered a couple of cases of very small wood type that I bought when I was first outfitting my shop and haven't used before. They are small fonts and, lucky for me or I never would have gotten them, were not as desireable at the time for people looking for that large newspaper and poster faces they could print with their Vandercooks. Turns out these are perfect for flyer-sized posters on my press.

 

 Now, here is the wood-type puzzle I mentioned in the title:

A little oddity of note: see that "4" in the lower right (stage right) corner? When I first set it, it was backward! And another small face also had backward - aka not mirror image - fours! I kept turning it upside down to try to fix it, about drove me batty. Then after a couple of days, I looked at the pieces of type again.


Can you solve the puzzle? 


Answer is below,








under the photo...

 

'

'


'

When I looked at the type after clearing my mind, I was able to see that they didn't need to be flipped 180 degrees, but turned a quarter turn.

In both fonts, the number crossbars for the number fours are exactly the same length. Thus, when standing on their crossbars, they look like they are non-mirror-image cutouts.  It was just a fluke that they were all turned
wrong in their case, looking for all the world like they belonged that way!

Letterpress Printing Projects: A Tiny Almanac

 AAPA Member Dave Tribby tackles a fine project each year: a bound volume that he titles "Ink Cahoots", made up of diverse submissions by any club member who wants to take part. All he asks is that it be properly weighted - he will even handle the trimming.

He's been doing this since 1973 - this is the 40th year for it!  I've been planning to send something for the 6 years that I have been a member, but never did until this year.

As my submission for Ink Cahoots, I set an Almanac for 2014, with a calendar, and a list of meteor showers and other celestial events. It is something I have wanted to try for a while. After all, Almanacs were a staple for printers all through history. When Gutenberg invented moveable type, he printed an almanac first, in 1457. The Holy Bible was Gutenberg's first lasting publication, but he had to make a living whilst working on setting and printing the Bible. Thus he set an example for printers everywhere from then on - one quick, non-political way to make a profit was to publish an almanac!

 It was surprising how challenging it was to set. I have tiny calendar blocks for the months, so that section was easy enough. But I used 12 point type for the remainder, and the typeface I chose didn't have enough numbers to handle all those dates of full moons and such. This meant I had to borrow from similar sized "neighbors" (ie other typefaces).  I should have just used my Kennerly 10 point (Kennerly is also a Goudy face), because there is lots of it. But I didn't think that far ahead.  Lesson learned.

So now I have a goofy batch of numerals in my otherwise lovely and pristine Goudy "Californian" from M&H Typefoundry. Someday I am sure I will get around to moving the Kennerly threes and Caslon ones back into their proper places. 

I am happy with the way the finished page turned out. I'm glad not to have to set an entire almanac by hand but this kind of dense work is good for my typesetting skills. Most of the time I just set cards or labels or mottos - minimal ephemera with larger type. Using these small point sizes is like learning touch typing - it forces me to remember the lay of the case instead of noticing each letter.

This is especially helpful when I go to "distribute" the type after the work is done. To "distribute" is to take the forme apart and put the type all away, each letter in its proper little cubby again. That is one of those jobs, like cleaning the kitchen, that is best done immediately.

Because type in a forme, just like dirty dishes, will outwait you every time.



.

Linocuts and Letterpress: Printing Seed Packets and Cottage Food Labels

I've been having fun this year in the print shop, turning out seed packets for saving seeds in.  The Pecan Corner Press is a hobby, and this kind of ephemera is what I usually produce. I use handset type and some fun old cuts.  I've been taking these to the local Farmer's Market since the grasshoppers and deer have eaten all my gardening efforts this year.  The empty ones are great for saving seed and tucking into a get well card or garden club seed exchanges. Some people even said they were going to use them in their little miniature display cabinets.

My Swiss Chard went to seed this year (it is a biennial, and can be harvested as long as it lives - it is never tough or bitter), so I made the linoleum cut and filled these to see how the seed would sell. This is the old variety, Fordhook, and they can be planted in Texas all the way though the fall.

I didn't take a press but I have taken a locked-up chase and it has drawn a lot of interest.  I have a ways to go before I sell enough to pay for my market fees, but this is a good way to support our little market and help it grow.

 
 When September rolls around, I'll be able to offer more items - we all will. Texas passed a Cottage Food Law a couple of years ago that made it possible to open one's home to sell baked goods and jams. It is a common-sense approach that recognizes that if we know the person doing the cooking, we can decide for ourselves whether we want to eat what they have cooked.  The newest version, which takes effect Sept 1st 2013, is pretty exciting, because it expands common sense to foods that are pretty much going to be safe to eat and allows us to take our products to Farmers' Markets and locally sponsored Fairs, as well as sell from home.

 Here's another place where we - Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Tea Party, Occupy... pretty much everybody but the Socialists and Communists - can come together, I think. We all want personal sovereignty over our food!!!!

 So, in anticipation of HB 970 (still awaiting the final rules to define exactly what items we can sell), I have been carving linoleum blocks to use on labels for my homemade jams, jellies, relishes, sauerkraut, syrups and baked goods. The linocuts, combined with Art Deco era typefaces, give the labels a fun old fashioned look. These are the first proofs of a few of them, printed on dry-gummed paper. I will tweek the colors and ink coverage a bit for the final labels.

Our Radical, Letterpress Printed, Christmas Card

"The Pecan Corner Press" is operational at last. The first big project is our Christmas card. When I asked Paul what he wanted, he said "I will never send a non-religious card again" and asked for something different than the usual Christmas tree or Santa Claus. What better than John 3:16?

This card goes to all we send cards to (some years we manage to send cards, other years we have good intentions!), without regard to faith or lack thereof. Christmas is not about a generic baby, or some vague non-religious "peace", but about the Son of Man that baby Jesus became.  We owe people the Truth, and the Truth is that:

"God so loves the world that He gave His only begotten Son Jesus, that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish, but will have eternal life."

 The paper is Strathmore Deckle Edge card, in Ivory, and the type is Goudy's Franciscan from Dale Guild via NA Graphics. The ink is copper metallic and black, both oil-based.

 As I learn to print again after a long haitus, I have:
* set type backwards (this means setting it left-right reading in my type stick causing it to print in reverse, instead of correctly setting it upside down and right to left)
* pied formes (this means spilling the tiny pieces of type and having to sort them back out)
* smashed type with the press grippers (this means letting the grippers that hold the paper get too close to the type, causing them to mash into it and ruin it)
* printed 5 out of 10 with some kind of error - mostly register errors where print is crooked compared to other elements (due mainly to that deckle edge!), but also a few scorches in melting the thermographic powder.

But I also learned some good things and am happy with the way they came out. I used dampened paper, and also used thermographic power to raise the print on the front. Between the damping and the heating, I had finally to steam the cards and put them all under the book press to straighten out again. I managed to get about 70 good cards out of 140 blanks that I started with.

Each card required 4 passes through the press, two sprinkles with thermo powder, one pass into the toaster oven, brushing to remove excess thermo powder, and a final steaming and pressing.

I also printed 200 on smaller, panel cards, without thermography, for the American Amateur Press Association December bundle. Because of their smooth surface (no dampening needed), straight edges (no register issues), and leaving off the thermography, I only ruined 4 of those cards. Good to remember for reducing waste in future projects! :-)

Oh! I am happy to be printing again! :-)

(By the way, if you like the idea of a letterpress printed Christmas card, check out G. Johanson's blog - linked from my sidebar. This pro-life printer has a lovely card based on a 15th Century woodcut of the three kings, and some cool Dala Horse designs.)

Barbarian Days: A Family Doctor's Home in the 1920s & 1930s (the Home of Author Robert E Howard)

A couple of weeks ago, we went to Cross Plains, Texas, and toured the Robert E Howard home as part of their "Barbarian Days Festival".  Howard's father was Dr. Isaac M. Howard. This simple frame house served as the family home, and, also, sometimes, doubled as Dr Howard's office where patients were seen. The home was continually in use as a place to live for various families from the time Dr Howard sold it until Cross Plains' Operation Pride recovered it for preservation in 1989.

 Since that time, they have worked to furnish it with period furnishings and house those artifacts they can obtain (such as the camel inkwell that stood on Howard's desk - a gift from Cecil Lotief, local Cross Plains  dry goods merchant - and first Texas legislator who had been born in Lebanon. He was first elected in 1932). Other furnishings are close copies of items either known to have been there, or true to the period.  Below is a photo of Bob Howard in front of this house, circa 1925.

My main interest was that I enjoy touring simple historical homes: the kind of house in which ordinary citizens lived a hundred years ago. In this case, the home of an ordinary small-town family physician. During that epoch in American history, there were similarities among all Americans of frugality, economy of space and furnishings, and natural closeness of proximity to household members and neighbors, that is readily apparent when we walk through such a home and consider how life would be lived in it.

 By today's standards, the author's cell-like bedroom/study (below) is tiny, cramped, and simple. But by the standards of the day (continuing even up into the 1970s in most of the country), it was probably much like the rooms of Howard's own unmarried peers. The room offered simple comfort, privacy, a bright and airy place in which to write and attend to the voluminous correspondence an author would keep up in that era when postcards and letters would be mailed daily for the same purposes email and messaging would serve today. 

The bare bulb was a common feature of most homes until new homes built in the prosperous 1950s and 60s popularized inexpensive, built-in light fixtures. My grandmother's house had several while I was growing up.  Our current house still had bare bulbs in the mid-1940s during WWII, when Rita's family first moved here, and it was the first time they had electricity. This house at that time had 4 rooms - and her family rented one of them out to a soldier and his wife, who kept all their household goods in that one small bedroom, brought pots out to cook and went back into their room to eat their meals! This gives an idea of how economically indoor space was used during these earlier eras.

 Porches were converted into bedrooms more often than not - and existing windows and doors were just left intact. During pre-electric times, such windows and doors still had use for ventilation and light, just like the transoms found above interior doors in so many old homes. If not needed to carry daylight and breezes, these unused windows and doors were often covered permanently with a heavy curtain or drape to block light and drafts, and furniture would be placed in front of it as though it were a solid wall.

My mother's house, of similar or slightly earlier vintage as this one, has two such converted porches: one very similar to this one resulted in her kitchen having a window-to-nowhere (well, technically, a window-into-the-next-room). Her kitchen also has another window that faces into the remaining screened "sleeping porch" that could have been, if needed, similarly converted. The other converted porch left a door-to-nowhere behind the sofa in her living room (but alas, there is no "door into summer"!).

Not only were bedrooms added to accommodate growing families, but also young adults tended to live at home until they married, and were given their own space by adding a room or converting a porch. Our house has a converted porch that we now use as the laundry room. but which once turned a crowded 4-room house into a three-bedroom home  and housed a family's sons, who had previously slept in the living room.

From the back, it is each to see the flat roof of the addition - also very common for what is known as "lean-to" add-ons. Our house has a similar flat roof over the portion added in the 1970s.
 

 I was particularly interested to see the plate block for Dr. Howard's original bookplate (or Ex Libris as some call them). It is a linoleum cut and bears the doctor's own signature. A corresponding print from it is framed with it, but I couldn't tell whether the plate was designed to make prints onto gummed paper for application, or to print directly onto a book's fore-leaf.

 The docents at the museum, all members of Cross Plains' Project Pride, were wonderful, and I appreciated their friendly guidance through the tour. Here is one of these nice ladies with the Cross Plains Centennial Quilt, displayed in Mr and Mrs Howard's bedroom of the home, to which she had contributed a square. Each block was made by local women to celebrate the town's history, and its recovery from the devastating wild fires that burned 130 homes and killed two people in 2005.

 We wrapped up the day with the Barbarian Festival in a lovely, oak-shaded park, complete with live music, free watermelon (courtesy of AMA-Techtel), Conan the Barbarian artwork, and fabulous food. There was even a car show. This is an annual event and it was a lot of fun. I hope we will be able to go again from time to time!

Much more about Howard, his writing, his family, and life can be found at various places, including REH: Two-Gun Raconteur, REHupa (the Robert E Howard United Press Association), and the Robert E Howard Foundation.

7/4/12 Update: Thanks to OpiningOnline.com for the link! :-)

50 Years Ago Today: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

There's a great subplot in this movie about Freedom of the Press, not to mention the Rule of Law, the taming of the West, working at whatever job there is, self defense, literacy, love, sacrifice, and civilization in general. And surely it is on the Top Ten list for letterpress printers everywhere. There's a lot more value to printing than deep impression on the wedding invitations!

All that and John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart too! What more can one ask from a movie?

"Information is Holy": Musings on the Printing Press, the Internet, and the Church of Kopimism

 In his letterpress printed pamphlet "Saint Gutenberg, Pray For Us",   AAPA member Michael Coughlin (Superior Letterpress) makes a case for the value of printed books over digital in the preservation of original knowledge. He writes "With our frequently shortsighted perspective, we seem to imagine what we are experiencing is unprecedented in history. While the technology is new, it's far from true that human history hasn't before experienced dramatic, sudden, and far-reaching transformations."

"Saint Gutenberg, Pray For Us" helped me sort several threads that have been getting tangled together in my thoughts for a while: in particular, the likelihood that uncensored data and accumulated knowledge can or will be preserved if they exist only in digital or continuously-editable form.  What follows are my answers.

~~~~~~

"Go now, write it on a tablet for them, inscribe it on a scroll, that for the days to come it may be an everlasting witness."  Isaiah 30:8

In Buddhism, the passion for making large numbers of copies of prayers and charms led to the early use of blocks for printing. The prayer wheel and prayer flags stem from the idea of making copies or spreading the word by keeping the prayers in motion, to create a virtual "Copy" with each turn of the wheel, with each flap in the wind.

In this world of wonders, who is to say the actual information is not tossed onto the breeze with each turn?

But the knowledge expressed in the prayer is not made accessable to human beings in these repetitions. Somewhere along the way, the form, the act, of copying and motion took precidence over the essential result: the sharing of information itself. Thus, while Buddhism teaches that enlightenment can be achieved, that rational thought and personal acquisition of knowledge are religious activities, ultimately the Buddha did not see information as holy in its own right.

But the Kopimist does.

~~~~~


 "After the king burned the scroll containing the words that Baruch had written at Jeremiah’s dictation, the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah:  “Take another scroll and write on it all the words that were on the first scroll, which Jehoiakim king of Judah burned up."  Jeremiah 36:27-28

In Sweden, the Missionary Church of Kopimism has been recognized as a legitimate religion. The Kopimi believe that "kopyacting" - file sharing - is a sacred action that deserves the protection granted other religions. The new Church grew out of the tension between draconian copyright demands by governments at the beck and call of powerful media companies, and the freedom internet technologies hold for people eager to preserve, share, and disseminate information.

According to Business Week:

[Kopimists'] "central commandment, “Copy and seed,” is a call to download files and make them available for sharing. Life itself, the newly declared believers observed, depends on the replication of cells and the endless duplication of DNA."

"“In the beginning, it was a joke,” says Gustav Nipe, the church’s chairman. “But maybe we’ve stepped on something greater than we thought.” "

"The church’s chief missionary is Isak Gerson, a 20-year-old student of philosophy. ...In addition to being the country’s top Kopimist, Gerson is a committed Lutheran who attends mass about twice a month. “Information is holy,” he says. One important distinction between religious values and other values is that you can’t explain them rationally.”

"Information is holy. "

~~~~~


"Then the LORD said to Moses, “Write this on a scroll as something to be remembered and make sure that Joshua hears it..."  Exodus 17:14 (written down circa 1450 BC)

After the Roman Empire descended into chaos and barbarism in the 5th Century AD, the nations of the world confronted centuries of apocolyptic conditions of social upheaval, plague, famine, extreme weather, and war. Societies broke down, pavement crumbled, trade dissipated. Technologies and learning were lost - or would have been, had it not been for the culture of education within the Christian monasteries scattered throughout the Empire.

For a thousand years, until the invention of moveable type in the 14th Century, the scriptorum of Europe served to fill the libraries of the Christian world with books - in every place the Roman roads had gone, and farther still. From Italy to Ireland, from Switzerland to Denmark, from France to Greenland. Christian brothers made it their sacred duty to faithfully copy the accumulated knowledge of the known universe and the classical world: not only religious tomes and the Holy Bible, but works of mathmatics and science, of medicine and history.

And they not only copied, but translated and collected and sought new sources. All of the world's accumulated knowledge base was painstakingly and lovingly reproduced and disseminated, conveyed into the vernacular of the local monastics, shared to create local libraries that all could use.


The Abbey library of Saint Gall in Switzerland, founded circa 800 AD, is one of the oldest in the world, and remains in operation as a library today.

From this preservation, translation, commentary and actual copying of works, learning was reestablished and began gathering the momentum that has propelled the world throughout all the centuries since, because the Christian,Western world believed "Information is holy."

~~~~

"When he takes the throne of his kingdom, he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law..." Deuteronomy 17:18

When Charlemagne took the throne of France in 751 AD, he actively pursued the preservation of Rome's literature. Almost without exception, Roman authors are available to us today only from copies produced under the Carolingian government. They would be lost forever otherwise.

In the interest of educating the public, Charlemagne established free local schools to teach full literacy and mathmatics, proclaiming in the "Capitulary of 787", sometimes known as the "Charter of Modern Thought",
that the Christian work of the Church must include "the study of letters, each to teach and learn them according to his ability and the Divine Assistance."

He continued: "Let every monastery and every abbey have its school, in which boys may be taught the Psalms, the system of musical notation, singing, arithmetic and grammar.", followed 10 years later by an even stronger edict: "that the priests establish schools in every town and village....and let them exact no price from the children for their teaching nor receive anything from them save what their parents may offer voluntarily..."

By 1200, Europe had universities and seats of learning in all major cities and many minor ones. The still extant University of Padua in Italy, where the great priest-scientist Albertus Magnus studied, was one of the first true "universities" in the world.  Colleges and Libraries proliferated on the continent, and the thirst for learning that generated this activity has never slowed in the West.

All because the Christian Emperor Charlemagne believed that "Information is holy."

~~~~~


"...it will be like a sealed scroll. If you take it to someone who knows how to read and ask him to read it to you, he will say he can't because it is sealed. If you give it to someone who can't read and ask him to read it to you, he will answer that he doesn't know how." Isaiah 29:11-12

Imagine a world in which the Holy Bible itself had never been copied or translated into our own language, because a rights owner refused to license it. Without it, the ever-brightening lamp of learning that fueled the West's unending knowledge revolution would never have happened.

In contrast, that is precisely what did happen to the Koran, and all doors to the future were closed deliberately by its guardians, the very men who taught and led Islam.


 "The House of Wisdom", an Islamic library founded in Baghdad in 762 continued until the Mongols burned it in 1258, but in reality it began to decline aound 850, due to the increasing fundamentalism and insularity of the leaders of the young Islamic culture, nervous about any knowledge that did not originate within the Arab lands.

So great was the distrust of learning even at an early stage that Caliph Uthman ibn Affan burned all copies and fragments of the Koran except for the version known as the "Hafsah codex". He destroyed all religious writings that did not issue from his prescribed version. Even variations in the text due to regional dialects were prohibited.


Upon Gutenberg's invention of moveable type and the printing press in 1436, printing spread like wildfire throughout the West, and was even carried into the New World on the earliest voyages. Spain, newly freed from the yoke of Moslem rule in 1492, sent the first printing press to Mexico in the company of missionaries in 1539, and published extensively in various indigenous Native American languages.

But not in Islamic lands. There, Moslem scholars prevailed against progress, and in 1483 Sultan Bayezid II forbade, on penalty of death, any printing in Arab script in the Ottoman Empire.

The West struggled to reach out, and Pope Julius II commissioned printed texts in Arabic script from 1503 through 1512 for Christians in those areas. Even the oldest printed Koran was printed in 1537, not in Baghdad, but in Venice. But the leaders and clerics were rigid in enforcement, and stamped out attempts by the populace at modernization.

Thus, Arabic printing was expressly illegal and a capital offense until 1727 - even then, only non-religious works were allowed, and these were carefully watched. These belated attempts to establish presses were unsuccessful, and were closed by 1780.  In the intervening centuries, Jews and Christians within these territories produced a smattering of works for their own use in Hebrew, Armenian, Greek and Latin, but for all intents and purposes, according to Wikipedia, there was no genuine printing industry in the Moslem world until late in the 19th century.

Similarly, despite continual attempts by Christian Missionaries to install printing presses in the far East beginning as early as 1590, here too the agents of stagnation prevailed, terrified of the change fostered by making information freely available, and printing technology was not adopted in China, India, or Korea until late in the 19th century.

As recently as last year,  the ancient Institut d’Egypte , founded by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1798 in Cairo, which had survived for 200 years during the West's intense patronage of Egypt's archeological history, was burned by rioting Egyptians in the media-dubbed "Arab Spring".

Progress cannot come to cultures that do not believe "Information is holy."

~~~~~


"But you, Daniel, roll up and seal the words of the scroll until the time of the end. Many will go here and there to increase knowledge.” Daniel 12:4

The advent of the electronic age and the upheaval of the Technological Revolution have once again turned things topsy turvy when it comes to information dispersal. In "The Gutenberg Galaxy",  Marshall McLuhan had these things to say, a decade before the internet was invented, about our current situation:

"Instead of tending toward a vast Alexandrian library, the world has instead become a computer, an electronic brain, exactly as an infantile piece of science fiction. And as our senses have gone outside us, Big brother goes inside. So, unless aware of this dynamic, we shall at once move into a phase of panic terrors, exactly befitting a small world of tribal drums, total interdependence, and superimposed co-existance.....

[T]error is the normal state of any oral society, for in it everything affects everything all the time. ....

[In] our striving to recover for the Western World a unity of sensibility and of thought and feeling we have no more been prepared to accept the tribal consequences of such unity than we were ready for the fragmentation of the human psyche by print culture."

Thus, rather than sit back and give rational thought to a decision, organizations, companies, and even governments react to "virtual" riots as though they were real - as though a million automated anti-tweets in 48 hours has any basis in reality, or reflects the actual customer base itself.

This is why we see absurdities like the Susan G Komen Foundation's capitulation to funding Planned Parenthood, the founder issuing an appeasement to the abortionist in order to quiet down the server traffic.  Or companies like Carbonite and Sleep Number hysterically responding to Twitter-bullying by rejecting their long-proven, lucrative advertising with Rush Limbaugh, only to watch their sales and stock fall the next day as their legitimate customers and investors countered with concrete action to support the radio personality's right to free speech.

The forces for the status quo used the  internet to amplify hysterical voices, generating a sense of terror far beyond their actual numbers, and by this means bullied their way into control over private companies' previously freewill spending decisions. CEOs hired to front companies in easy times discover they lack courage and wisdom when faced with new informational dangers. Those like Chick-fil-A's Dan Cathy and Hobby Lobby's Steve Green,  whose decisions are based on uncompromised principle rather than  trendy focus groups, find themselves and their businesses supported and admired when they stand up to the liberal bullies.

Our science has been compromised. Scientists with political ambitions have abandoned the scientific method, refusing to make public the details of their work, instead trying to convince policy makers and the public  - and legitimate scientists - to "take their word for it", claiming that some ill-defined ideological "consensus" should trump legitimate analysis, data and methodology.

Most visible in so-called "climate science", other fields are under attack as well. All scientific disciplines that have  been politicized: statistics, biology, anthropology, genetics, sociology, psychiatry, dietetics, law, education, medicine, history, linguistics, even obstetrics - are suffering as the principles of their fields are being trampled by unhealthy pseudoscientific attempts to skew results toward desired political ends.

Only the free flow of genuine information - a belief that "information is holy" - can keep true, unadulterated science moving forward in ethical, human-friendly directions.

~~~~


"Write down for the coming generation what the Lord has done, so that people not yet born will praise him." Psalm 102:18

Imagine a world in which the writings of Descartes, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, C.S, Lewis, JRR Tolkien, or the Apostle Paul couldn't be shared, because a rights owner refused to license them for publication.

The Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998 promotes the control of information through a concept called "intellectual property". SOPA/PIPA is the latest in these efforts to manhandle the internet and restict information flow on behalf of political darlings and moneyed schemers. Other modern copyright, trademark and patent laws enable corporations to gather and control information to an almost unlimited degree, conceivably extending monopolies for centuries.

A 2001 court case, Worldwide Church of God v. Philadelphia Church of God, centered on this. A minister wrote a book that some followers (the WCoG) later came to believe to be unscriptural. The minister died, the WCoG pulled it from publication, destroying all extra copies. Other followers (the PCoG) believe the book is actual scripture, and the foundation for their faith. They issued a new edition, claiming "fair use", and the copyright battle was joined. The court actually found for the WCoG, who refuse to publish the work, despite the acknowledged intent of the author for the work to be disseminated, and despite the express need of the PCoG for copies in order to practice their religion.

The decision stands, but it was not unanimous. In his dissenting opinion, Circuit Judge Brunetti sided with the original verdict of the lower court, and had this to say:

"The prohibition of PCG's noncommercial, religious use "would merely inhibit access to ideas without any countervailing benefit." Accordingly, the fourth statutory factor also supports a finding of fair use.


"In this lawsuit, WCG appears less interested in protecting its rights to exploit [the book Mystery of the Ages] than in suppressing Armstrong's ideas which now run counter to church doctrine. Although the Supreme Court has recognized that "freedom of thought and expression 'includes both the right to speak freely and the right to refrain from speaking at all,'" it does not "suggest that this right not to speak would sanction an abuse of the copyright owner's monopoly as an instrument to suppress facts."


"In light of this principle and the statutory factors discussed above, I conclude that the district court ... properly found that PCG's distribution of MOA constitutes fair use. "

Judge Brunetti's opinion did not affect the outcome, which prevented the  believers from legally copying and sharing what they believe to be a holy text. But his dissent shows a foundation within United States law and precedent to deny legal protection to the suppression of facts, and to accept the belief that "information is holy".

~~~~~~



"To the angel of the church in Philadelphia write: This is the message from the one who is holy and true. He has the key that belonged to David, and when he opens a door, no one can close it, and when he closes it, no one can  open it." Revelation 3:7

You can't unring a bell, and devious organizations like Wikileaks and Anonymous flex their muscle against the bell rope at companies and agencies that fail - or refuse - to lock up the information they don't want made public.The debate about control of information moved from powerful high echelons onto the public world stage as WikiLeaks grew from a site on which disgruntled employees published embarrassing emails from their Silicon Valley bosses to a media outlet whose inputs originate with disgruntled corporate spies working within governments.

And yet.

While some elements of culture run to and fro in terror of each new potential cataclysm, there remain pockets of literate, lawful society who "keep calm, and carry on". Millions of people take individual responsibility for preserving those things important to the future in the format each believes to be is essential.

The Open Directory Project was a vast volunteer effort to organize the internet and open up the information on millions of individual webpages to easy use by anyone. Free and "open sourced", it became Google's original database.

Project Gutenberg was founded by Michael S. Hart, the inventor of ebooks (in 1971!), as a massive volunteer project to digitize and give to the world all the literature and accumulated knowledge therein. Hart wrote: "Learning is its own reward. Nothing I can say is better than that."

Wikipedia, from which I gathered a number of the historical facts cited above, for all its flaws and left-leaning slant, remains a sincere reflection of Western culture's understanding  that "information is holy."

Every day in the world of letterpress printers and private presses, individuals like Mike Coughlin print excerpts, new editions, or entire historical documents into chapbooks and broadsides,  generating small editions of hard copies to cast out as bread upon the water.


Even as the traditional, expert-mediated publishing industry battles against extinction, more writers are writing more books than ever before, as Print-on-Demand technology makes it possible for ordinary souls to publish
the book they always wanted to write.

Thanks to these new technologies, the number of books published in the United States in 2010 topped off in record numbers, especially in the "non-traditional" sector, which, including "print on demand" and self-published books, almost tripled from 1,033,065 titles in 2009 to 2,776,260 in 2010. And buyers are buying these books: nearly 25% of all sales of eBook fiction are now from self-published authors.

This does not represent new demand - the demand was always there - this represents new access, thanks to the internet, which has given any author a nearly cost-free access to markets outside their local area.

Print-on-demand brings all of this within the reach of any individual. And  “within the reach of any individual” is the secret of Western liberty, as well as of modern,Western-driven, civilization.

The ability to "have our own" access to information is a principle element of the Pursuit of Happiness that none willingly give up.

Despite attempts to convince us otherwise, the Western world still stubbornly believes that information is holy, and the Missionary Church of Kopimism is one expression of that deep conviction.

"Copy, and seed."


*Updated 11/17/2012

Today, It's: Mail Art.

 Well, my candidate has taken his name off the ballot for President. I guess the good news is that at least Texans won't have to worry about who is going to govern our state. Governor Perry, Governor Palin , and Todd Palin have endorsed Newt Gingrich. I will pray they are right, and turn my attention to daily, ordinary life for a while. 

I wander the web like I used to wander bookstores. Each week, some new thing will catch my attention, and I learn about it. Last time, it was Home Bee Keeping. More on that another time, because:

Today, it's Mail Art.

In this month's AAPA bundle (what people did before blogs), the Six Mile Press offering was about Carnegie Libraries. It inspired me, so for February's bundle, I'm making postcards out of a photo I took of the Carnegie Library in my hometown. I had prints made at Walmart.com, will use acetone to erase the corporate printing on the backs, rubber stamps to print "Post Card" on the backs, and stickers to label the front. (I'll add a photo to the blog when the project is done.)

Back to Mail Art. I wanted ideas for "arting up" my project, so went looking. Here are some places I found clever inspiration:

Everyday should be a Red Letter Day…

2012 Graceful Envelope Contest (and archives of past winners)

The Missive Maven

Austin Kleon's Blog, and esp. "How To Steal Like An Artist"

Postcrossing: The Postcard Crossing Project

S-FIMail

Good Mail Day

How fun is this? I may be looking at a new hobby-ette! Or, at least, until something else attracts my attention...

Not Only the Icelanders: Translating Praise Music from 1500 Years Ago, and the Future of Printed Books

It's often told that in the most literate society in the world, Iceland, readers can still understand books written in Icelandic 800 years ago. It is impressive and admirable that their ancient texts, the Sagas and Eddas, remain accessible to allow the average person opportunity to read and decipher for themselves.

But perhaps literate speakers of English have the same ability, mostly yet untried.

Accidentally, today, in surfing around the web, I came across a reference to the oldest identified Anglo-Saxon poet, Caedmon.  Caedmon worked in a Monastery, tending to the animals. He could not read, and sang so badly that when everyone got together for the 8th century's version of karioke, he left the room. One night, he had a dream, in which an angel asked him to sing - and he sang a new song. Upon waking, he remembered the verses and spent the rest of his life turning scripture into Praise music.

I went looking for more info, including a different translation and came upon one that also gave the original text.

Well. You know how it is. Once a stream of thought gets going, there we go.

I noticed that the opening word "Nu" sounds like "Now", then that "hefaen___" sounds exactly like "Heaven" and one thing led to another. What I found is that by trying different pronunciations of the original words, I was able to decypher much of the Old English version.

Here's a poetic Modern English translation:

          Now let me praise the keeper of Heaven's kingdom,
          the might of the Creator, and his thought,
          the work of the Father of glory, how each of wonders
          the Eternal Lord established in the beginning.
          He first created for the sons of men
          Heaven as a roof, the holy Creator,
          then Middle-earth the keeper of mankind,
          the Eternal Lord, afterwards made,
          the earth for men, the Almighty Lord.

Here's an original language version from the year 737 Anno Domini:


              1 Nu scylun hergan hefaenricaes uard
              2 metudæs maecti end his modgidanc
              3 uerc uuldurfadur sue he uundra gihuaes
              4 eci dryctin or astelidæ
              5 he aerist scop aelda barnum
              6 heben til hrofe haleg scepen.
              7 tha middungeard moncynnæs uard
              8 eci dryctin æfter tiadæ
              9 firum foldu frea allmectig

Here's my rough, literal version:

1 Now shall hear Heaven-rich's [Heaven owner's] ward
2 Mete-er's (measurer's) might and his making-think
3 Work of the elderfather so his wonder goes
4 ever directing the onset
5 He first shaped the elder sons
6 Heaven to roofbeam holy shaper
7 then middle-earth mankind's ward
8 ever directing after today (until today)
9 the firm fields Free-Lord Almighty

Here's another good modern translation that I found.

My pronunciation may not be anything like the original, but because the language remains the same, despite spelling and dialectical changes over time, the words still mean pretty much what they did 1,500 years ago. There "original language version" is also transcribed into our modern alphabet - if one were to try to read the text as written, we'd need to also discuss the character "thorn" and a few other such, just as we have to know that the long S of colonial times is not an "F" but rather a modified character used according to certain grammar rules of the day. This follows a discovery some time ago, that I could sort-of read Greek by simply transliterating the letters in biblical texts and looking for roots to English words.

I'm not going to be winning any awards or going into business translating ancient texts, but the thing is: this is one of the wonders of the internet. To uncover new possibilities in ourselves by being exposed to history we never even knew existed, to science we never even questioned, to the stories of ordinary people who helped set the course for the future.

Like the monks copying the Bible and their countries' literature to get books into every monastery in the world, like Gutenberg's printing press churning out copies of the Bible and world literature for every book buyer in Europe, the net puts everything written before into the hands of ordinary people.

And we don't have to depend on "authorized experts" to translate for us or explain it to us.

I'm reading a book that came out a few years ago, on the history of printing, called "Paradigms Lost: The Life and Death of the Printed Word" (Tip: go through your favorite blogger's Amazon search link to buy it). It's a fascinating delve into many of the ways the printing press, and even typography, changed our societies and our world. It is in some ways an unfinished book, for, as the author himself, a retired editor who bills himself  "an independent historian" and cites reams of sources,  says "..[we] are just in the first years of an era that exists so far mostly in magazine articles, techology manufacturers' boastful extrapolations, books like this one, and confused observations..."  The book was copyrighted 2005, at the beginning of the "print apocalypse" as the failure of traditional publishing to meet customer needs was beginning to become clear. 

Despite the introduction of the Kindle in 2007 (not so much new technology as a more wide-spread distribution method),  the number of books printed in the US in 2010 grew 5% with traditional publishers. But the really exciting part is that the "non-traditional" sector, including "print on demand" and self-published books almost tripled from 1,033,065 titles in 2009 to 2,776,260 in 2010.

This does not represent new demand - the demand was always there - this represents new access, thanks to the internet, which has given any author a nearly cost-free access to markets outside their local area.

The internet lets us all share what we know, and learn more on whatever topic we wish. We can direct our own course of study, without cost. We can become self-educated people.We can think for ourselves. And we can tell others.

And like those who first benefited from the printing press, we want our own copies. Just in case the link goes dark. Or the net goes down. But mainly because free people everywhere like to have their own.

What Did People Do Before Blogs? The American Amateur Press Association (AAPA) is 75 Years Old This Month!

This is
A Printing Office

Crossroads of Civilization
Refuge of All the Arts
Against the Ravages of Time
Armoury of Fearless Truth
Against Whispering Rumour
Incessant Trumpet of Trade
From this Place words May Fly Abroad
Not to Perish on Waves of Sound
Not to Vary with the Writer's Hand
But Fixed in Time, Having been Verified in Proof

Friend You Stand on Sacred Ground

This is a Printing Office

Beatrice Wade -1932
Printed in the Heritage Center Print Shop
Lancaster Pennsylvania

"Printed by AAPA members Mike Donnelly, Ken Kulakowsky, and
Rich Rtladge on an O.S. 8x12 C&P treadle driven platen press."

                                                     
                                                                     ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Interested? Check out the American Amateur Press Association,* now celebrating its 75th year of hobby journalism & printing arts. Don't let the word "Amateur" fool you - some of the finest professionals in their industries have published in these bundles  (and in eJournals)for simple pleasure since the AAPA was started by a bunch of teenagers in 1936. The AAPA welcomes writers, printers, publishers, editors, artists, illustrators, cartoonists & poets of all ages, from home schooled students to newspapermen to professional printers to true amateurs.

The great forerunners of blogs, amateur press associations have played a part in the lives and career choices and hobby pasttimes of thousands of ordinary Americans during the 20th century. In the AAPA, monthly bundles mailed to each member, annual Laureate Awards, and an annual convention bring everybody together.  Clean, friendly, and just for simple fun.

(*Please note, effective this month, dues have risen to $25 per year, to accomodate a move from bulk rate to 1st Class mailing. To receive a trial bundle, contact the secretary.)

UPDATE:  Linked by And So It Goes In Shreveport. Thanks! :-)