printing, publishing - it's in the blood!

Hi Ed,
Yep, typography & printing - it's in the blood! ... my Brit granddad, George Faiers,  was a printer (Newmarket, Suffolk).

When I was 10 or 11 my parents gave me a printing set for Christmas. Best gift ever! There were piles of type, & metal liner trays
to place them in. My first project was a newspaper, the Neighborhood News (Yank spelling) - which I spent hours laying out, hand printing
& then handing out door to door to amused and befuddled neighbours on Key Biscayne, Florida. Wonder if there's an issue
somewhere, perhaps in my mother's locker on Hilton Head Island?

Then we moved to a suburb on the far outskirts of Atlanta, Georgia, where I published THE NORTHCREST NEWS using a gestetner.
Published it for at least a couple of years - even had advertisers & about 150 subscribers. I asked my younger brother, Jeremy, to write an
editorial (he wouldn't have reached 10 yet), & he scribbled something about how our isolated suburb was supposed to have a community
swimming pool.

I put this piece as the feature on the next issue, & got an incredible response (I was 13). The Tucker Bank had bought an ad (!), & I approached
them & got permission to hold a public meeting in their downstairs meeting room. I called some local contractors & organized a public
meeting - & the fucking pool got built! 

All this done by a 13-year-old kid! and his baby bro ...  maybe the highlight of my writing/journalistic career  :  )

Yes, there's something about mucking about with ink, metal type, layout, the smell of beautifully poisonous chemical machines cranking out
our written words of wisdom  :  )

I've cut my own palms open & used the blood when I couldn't find ochre to smear on cave wall publications & artwork ... (but that was in another lifetime, long, long ago).

printer's devils, yes, it's in our blood :  )

peace & poetry power!
Chris ... and Chase ... wrfffffffffffffffffffffffff!

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On 2012-11-27, at 12:15 PM, Ed Baker wrote:

had i but discovered Daniel Berkeley Updike in the 50's when I was studying printing I used to LOVE
mixing inks and smearing the mixture on that wheel..
   black plus a little red plus a little blue ..   was the only class in junior high school that I repeated 4 times
and got a A each time....  then  in high school I apprenticed   as a printer to Irving Lean  should have stayed with Mr. Lean and printing
rather than that temporary hook-up with Doralynn (Dorrie) Jacobs ;

here is a comment that I just made on that Steve Fama blog-essay re: that 4-volume Larry Eigner production:


I've just discovered the writings of the VERY FAMOUS
typographer/printer/publisher
  Daniel Berkeley Updike

via William Peterson's

The Well-Made BOOK   Essays and Lectures by Daniel Berkeley Updike

and  just by page 19 of the 360 + pages

one can IMMEDIATELY see

where this four-volume production of Larry Eigner's
work  went wrong !




http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2158389.The_Well_Made_Book
albris has this $55 book  (NEW) for $8.00 !


http://www.alibris.com/search/books/isbn/9780971568747

I wonder what will become of me
when in my old age
a robot or Nanny-Cam keeps track of my every move

&
above all else
will this machine be able to wipe my ass ?

cheers, Ed

pee est:

here is Steve Fama's article:

http://stevenfama.blogspot.com/2010/03/collected-poems-of-larry-eigner.html

full moon
above all else
who will wipe my ass ?

                                
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speaking of ochre   check out name of press that in 1974 published my The City:
   http://edbaker.maikosoft.com/the_city.pdf

the first printing set i got was type made out of an hard rubber... red  and a metal hand-cranked little press..

here is   sort uve the kind of press I worked:

http://us.123rf.com/400wm/400/400/morenosoppelsa/morenosoppelsa1109/morenosoppelsa110900569/10518665-old-printing-press.jpg

http://excelsiorpress.org/forsale/p_press4.gif

now?
to finish off my Thanksgiving squirrel .... tastes just like chicken        Ed

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Ed Baker has left a new comment on your post "printing, publishing - it's in the blood!":

here is the EXACT press that i had:

http://www.collectorsquest.com/blog/2008/07/24/toy-printing-press/



Posted by Ed Baker to Riffs & Ripples from ZenRiver Gardens at 27 November 2012 13:42
 
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Ed Baker's email thoughts on 'culture clubs' & publishing
Dec. 10/12

Many men think that studying printing all by themselves
is a dull and lonely business and may be better accomplished
in groups or associations, apparently feeling (as Mrs Wharton
once said of members of women's clubs) like "one of the la-
dies who pursue Culture in bands as though it were dangerous
to meet alone."  Hence we have companies of Book Builders,
Book Clinics, and what not, which are supposed to impart
knowledge with a minimum of suffering to the patient.  I am
not so sure that much is accomplished by such gatherings, for
"good work means tête-à-tête  with what you are doing and is
incompatible with the spirit of picnics."

this is from an address that he gave in 1937 in Providence
at the opening of a collection that a library there took-in of his
"stuff"

"Mrs. Wharton" is Edith Wharton   his friend and who a lot of her
book he (Merrymount Press) printed and designed...

a coincidence   the editor of this collection, William S. Peterson
just retired after about 35 years teaching  from the U of Maryland....
down the street

from where I graduated in 1967.  maybe I should look him up...
maybe he can help design a title page for ARS POETIC HER,
select an appropriate font, say, American Garamond, and a paper
to  peint on ?

http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/bitstream/american-garamond/

Ed

p.s.

not much of a "stretch" to say same as above about our  Now Poetry and The Teaching of't
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