On This Day

Friday was my conception day.  Yes, I happen to know the day I was conceived. I never asked my Mom and Dad for details, but suffice it to say they were celebrating the lunar landing at the Parkhaus Hotel in Darmstadt, Germany on July 20, 1969. 

I love that I know this. It's somehow magical.  Even better that it's tied to something so historic.  The moon! With people on it!  And so this day has become a second birthday to me.  In fact, it might matter to me even more than my birthday, because this is when I technically became a me. And yeah, this post could devolve into a discussion about rights to life and choice, but that isn't my point. (For the record, I do believe that the government—and everyone else— should stay out of making decisions about what goes on inside another person's body.)

What I can't figure out is why my parents were there at the hotel. They lived 40 minutes away.  Were they on a little getaway?  Were they renovating their apartment? I have no idea and I will never know, because they are both gone, and I never thought to ask them while they were here on earth.  How many other stories have disappeared with them?

Did Mom really think Dad was an arrogant jerk when she met him?  Or did she kinda like him? Did she really tell him to go make his own coffee at the office? (She was his secretary in Manhattan in the Mad Men era.) Is that what made him fall in love?  When was she engaged to that other guy, Walter, and did she really throw his engagement ring out the window at him?  Was Dad really out playing tennis when my brother was born?  Was I really named after an Italian movie star?

A few years ago I read an article in The New Yorker about a neuroscientist researching ways to ease the pain of traumatic memories... I'm wondering if someone could also research how to strengthen the memories you want to keep and never let go, the ones that hover half-remembered at the edge of your recollection in a cloudy fuzz. Could we enhance them just a bit?  And then seal them in some kind of brain-glue so they never fade?

Ask. Ask about your family stories and write them down, because one day you won't remember, and it will be too late to find out what you wanted to know. Even after my parents grew into a family of four living in a middle class suburb of Connecticut, there were epic parties (Did dad really cook for thirty-plus people on a single backyard hibachi?) and the incident where my Dad, martini in hand, jumped into Aunt Jo's pool in his seersucker suit, bow tie, and white buck shoes (no doubt while Glenn Miller played on the hi-fi.) My brother and I sat wide-eyed listening to Mom tell the story after she sent the babysitter home that night. That one I do remember. But what about that famous business trip to Tokyo involving some rental car shenanigans, a hotel plate glass window, and some sort of orchid arranging presentation (or was it bonsai?) gone awry that Mom had to step in to fix...?  I can't even imagine how those pieces possibly fit together (or even when they happened) and yet they do exist.

This must be how stories get passed down over time, and not just in families, but entire cultures. We hang onto the fragments of what we know and fill in the gaps with assumptions, grand or humble, that make a story something to remember, shifting its DNA a little bit every time: The fish was THIS big!  Tiny exaggerations become epic. Magical realism transforms an everyday moment into something divinely inspired. It was fate. It was an Italian movie star. The planets did align. 

Kitt Peak Journals

These are snippets of journal entries from my trip to Kitt Peak in April.  I don't know that I've ever posted diary excerpts like this, but I wanted to share some of the photos, and didn't really know what to write to accompany them.  So here goes...

Friday, April 27, 2018
I wish I were a painter.  Because I would love to paint my favorite view of Baboquivari in between those two pine trees behind the Hiltner telescope.  I can't believe I'm sitting behind this dome again.  It feels like no time has passed now that I am back, but these two years seemed so long.  Ohhh I've missed this place so much!

Saturday, April 28, 2018
I've been reading Twyla Tharp's The Creative Habit, and her whole philosophy about creativity is that it doesn't usually come zapping out of the sky like some bolt of lightning. It comes from working at it. From practice. From showing up regularly at your medium. Which requires discipline, which, in theory, will eventually become a habit. What is my problem lately? All I seem to want to do is sew and garden... what happened to photography? Music? Writing?

(Hmmm... I realize that in the three months that have passed since I wrote this, my creative slump has passed. Maybe all that gardening and sewing helped move it along? In her book, Twyla also writes about the process of "scratching"... that pre-making time where you're mulling over ideas, fishing out good ones, trying things out in your brain. You might not realize it's happening, and it feels like you're not doing anything "productive." Family might think you're being lazy. I think this is where I've been.)

Twyla mentions that Beethoven went for a walk every morning and scribbled ideas that came to him in a little notebook, then came back and got to work on his projects. One of the gals in the writing workshop I took talked about something called a "commonplace book", which is basically, yeah, Beethoven's little notebook.  Someplace to write snippets of overheard conversations, ideas for projects, sketches & doodles—whatever—so that they're all there in one place like a little treasure box. I use my journal for all of that, but the gems are always buried under stupid daily drama and outpourings, and I forget they're in there.

Sunday, April 29, 2018
I am outside next to a little piney shrub who is kindly providing me with some dappled shade to lessen the glare of this paper.  Full-on shade is too cold, but sun-on-white at 7000 feet is positively blinding.  2pm... it is blustery-windy today and sooo much colder than yesterday. The wind is coming from every direction! I didn't bring enough warm clothes.  And no socks!

Monday, April 30, 2018
I was thanked in an official astronomical announcement!  Ha!  Last night, There was a star that burst forth a bunch of cosmic stuff and apparently it was quite the big deal. Don and I got to observe it for half an hour just after sunset. I got to type commands into the computer while Don analyzed results on another computer. For this—what a hoot!—I was given an honorable mention in the report. Sometimes I feel like Ferris Bueller.  It sounds like something he might have added to his amazing day: somehow getting thanked for his (minimal) assistance in some scientific paper.

That nova, in a tidy little graph!

Wednesday, May 2, 2018
This morning I woke up at 5:30 and instead of going back to sleep I just got up.  I am so glad I did!  Clouds were streaking past the building, rolling and swooping right outside the big windows in the lounge. I went for a walk with my camera (sadly, none of my photos captured the magic) and came back to write.  It felt good!  That walk, that creative time, even if I didn't have anything to "show" for it.  My friend Elizabeth says that's how she starts her days when she's at an artist residency:  Get up, go for a photography-walk, come back & get to work. Beethoven was onto something.  

Thursday, May 3, 208
I woke up a few times during the night last night.  The moon was bright and the dome was open, scooping up far-away starlight.  I'd hear it rumble now and then as it turned to find a new window for the telescope. I like being snuggled in my blankets, about to fall asleep, knowing that a mountain full of telescopes are awake, watching the sky, doing what they do. It reminds me of being a little kid, going to bed while my parents' dinner party was still in full-swing downstairs.

My dorm room digs.

3:45pm.  The Ledge.
It is so quiet and perfect.  A wind is picking up, winding its way through the boulders and trees, but other than that, hardly a sound.  A bug.  Echoey bird calls— warblers maybe?  A car driving up the mountain.  I realized that part of why I love the ledge so much is that it feels like I'm in a diorama. All those field trips to the American Museum of Natural History in New York when I was in grade school.  The dioramas looked so real, I thought if I stared long enough I'd catch a fox winking at me.

(later, just before sunset) The mountainsides look lush in the low light.  Velvety brown flocked with dusty green trees.  I would like to make a dress that looks like this. With a silver ribbon road and sparkly beads for the gray rocks that dot the bottom of the cliffs. 

What is it about this place that I love so much?  It's the quiet immenseness, for sure.  But it's also that it's the land time forgot— these old buildings with now-retro furniture. But mostly it's that all through the wee hours these telescopes carry on, peering into the depths of space and then sleeping all day long.  Like some mythical creature—creatures—doing miraculous work in the dark of night and then quietly folding themselves up, tucking themselves away, out of sight, when dawn breaks.  It's like having someone say, shhh, come this way... and they lead you through the woods to a field where you squint into the shadows and... wait!... there comes a unicorn.  How many times in your life do you get to see that? Every time I come up here.

Thank you, Eric, Tony, Don, and the powers that be at the MDM.

My Bookbinding Workshop at CCAD

I recently finished up my week of teaching bookbinding at Columbus College of Art and Design’s Summer Educators’ Studio. I LOVED IT!! I was nervous getting ready for it, as this was my first time teaching adults (art teachers, no less — gulp!) I kept wondering if I had enough stuff to show and talk about… would I fill up the time or stand around twiddling my thumbs for the last half hour?  I think that being a little nervous was a good thing — it forced me to be prepared — but it turns out I didn’t need to be worried; it all ended up just fine.  More than fine, actually.

On the first night, I gave my Flying Adventures reading and Creative Persistence presentation, and was a guest at the welcome dinner, where I made a point to sit with people I didn't know and start conversations (more difficult for me than you’d think).  When I left, I stepped into a magical night— empty streets, unfinished road construction,  buildings glowing in pink twilight.  It felt like standing in a painting.  Summer in the city.  A hot day's end.  

The week was so rewarding. Students said I was their favorite class (yay for books!). I love summer workshops.  Campuses are quiet, the thrum of the academic year over...we had the entire 4th floor studios to ourselves!  My syllabus went out the window and the class unfolded on its own, which was perfect.

We started out with simple structures made out of copy paper (inexpensive and already all cut to the exact same size!) I brought some of my decorative papers from home in addition to what the school provided, and so even the "practice" books wound up looking like keepers.

One of the binding styles I taught came from a book printed in 1985 by Ohio's own Logan Elm Press, Mid-Ohio Elegies.  Poetry by Gordon Grigsby with collotypes by my cousin, Kurt Retter.

I have always wanted to figure out how this book was bound as it appeared so unique, and so I finally deconstructed my one of my two copies to reverse-engineer it. While I thought it was made of two signatures, it turns out it was only one, just folded differently (apparently it's called a double-section saddle-stitch binding). The covers were boards wrapped with heavy paper both horizontally and vertically, creating pockets to slip both the anchor pages and the dustjacket into. Logan Elm Press is, sadly, gone now, although its equipment and spirit remain somewhere... could I please put in a request to the powers that be at OSU to revive it?

I loved that everyone hit the ground running with projects they wanted to work on. 

© Josh Anderson

On the last day, all the students in the entire program gave presentations about what they'd been up to during the week. Here's Richard showing everyone his Archetypes book, bound in that Logan Elm style.

Archetypes ©Richard Featheringill

John made a bunch of different books.  One of my favorites was this tiny little square accordion that he outfitted with a clever tab closure that slips right into the fold of the cover.

© John Zilewicz

Here's Kathryn, showing everyone how to fold the first book we made...

Another fun tab closure, à la Kathryn.

© Kathryn Frericks

I feel completely changed by my experience.  Maybe it’s because I proved to myself that I can teach this stuff.  Maybe it’s because it got my feet in the studio every day, surrounded by papers and tools and other people working on projects. Maybe it’s that I got a faculty badge—legitimacy!— or some combination of all of these things.  I don’t know. But my mindset has shifted.  I loved this class, I miss it, and I can’t wait to do it again if they’ll have me back.  Thanks, CCAD, for an amazing week with great people.