After Hours

That's the name of the zine I'm taking to the writer's conference this weekend. I'm putting it together right now. Well, I'm taking a break from putting it together right now. I'm using things I've already written so I'm just doing layout. I hate doing layout. Doesn't agree with me. I'm printing it on some paper I bought way back when I had my letterpress. Been cleaning up my office and it just has to go. It's extra nice. Too nice. The kind of nice that creeps me out. It puts too much emphasis on an insignificant detail. The letterpress days were not that great all around and this paper has followed me around ever since, reminding me of it. In those days, I'd go to the office, do battle with type fonts, composing sticks, brass and coppers (for spacing between words)and after an hour or so, decide I needed a drink. As often as not, I'd get blinding drunk and call it a day..or night. I finally sold the damn thing, three presses in all, two huge cases of fonts, tools. My marriage ended (a good thing) and then my life took another turn for the worse and then a long, slow turn for the better. I'm still in that turn and hope to be for the rest of my days.

There's an old letterpress at the Brewery Arts Center where the Ash Canyon poets meet on Friday nights. The center said it still works we could use the it, if we want to. Bill Cowee and I got pretty excited about the idea. He'd like to do broadsides and I have ink or grease paint or some kind of gunk in my veins so it sounded good to me too. BUT, when I looked at all the tiny, tiny fonts...the press was used by a newspaper...and all the paraphernalia, it all came back to me. Fussy and tedious as doing layout in Word is, the difference between printing with a letterpress and a computer is the difference between sticking needles in your eyes and stepping barefoot on thumbtacks.

Yes, I know. Why Word? It's a really bad program to publish with. Well, after all this time, I still haven't gotten around to making the switch to something like PageMaker...so Word it is. One more time.

Also, I made oatmeal raisen cookies for my son today and mailed them off to Fort Bliss. I hope they bring a little sweetness to his day.