I’ve had a table several times at the weekend-long Seattle Antiquarian Book Fair. Two days of smiling and talking is really tiring, but the second year I attended I was lucky enough to have a table next to Chris Stern, a letterpress printer from Washington. When the fair was slow, we talked about printing and poetry and paper and maintaining our presses. I immediately forgot how much my feet hurt and how sore my smiling muscles had become.
Sadly, Chris died of cancer last year. Maralyn Crosetto, Day Moon Press, and Mare Blocker have designed and printed a poetry broadside as a fund-raiser to help with the medical bills. Mare’s poem has the wonderful title “You Told Me Once You Only Print in Natural Light.”
That’s Chris’ broadside “Good Mornin’ Joe” on the left. You can see more broadsides here and a gallery of all the work he and Jules Faye did together on their website.
I’m an inveterate list-maker — all the books I’ve read since 1981, all the bike rides I’ve ever taken, the steps to the ballet combinations from my weekly class — not to mention the dreaded and never ending to-do list.