Today I didn’t do a bunch of things I set out to do, and I ended up doing a lot of things I thought I wouldn’t do.

Well, truth be told, I did end up doing a lot of things I really did need to do (got the IP phones working @ work, did a walkthrough of the new site with one real live actual user. I also had dinner w/Terri@ the Middle East, and then, did some RPP work (got the cards I promised Nora printed [hmmmmmm… what did Nora order from me? Inquiring minds want to know, but I can’t say… yet…]))

Because of all of this action, I fully thought I was going to blow off the Sons and Daughters show at the Middle East (a Monday show– urgh, I’m old!). But I managed to wrap up the Nora printing project early, and through the magic that is California wash, cleanup now takes 15 minutes instead of an hour. So I decided, I had a ticket, why not? The very fact that it was a Monday show sort of suggested that it would be a pretty laid back affair where I could have a beer or two and maybe even sit down if necessary.

So I drove over, and made it to the show at about 11:15, about a song or two in. The celebrity math on Sons and Daughters is (refinements encouraged):

X ² [that’s X, the LA punk band, not the algebraic x] * Camera Obscura) + ( (Johnny Cash + The Clash)/2) + (The Jam * .25) + (Yma Sumac’s whip & eyeliner / Avogadro’s number).

The guitarist had great hair. Terri bought a CD from him.

*once again, credit where it’s due, “The Merry Old Land Of Ez” is yet another Terri coinage, following yesterday’s posts/discussion re: the Wizard of Oz

There are those of you who live in the Boston area that I don’t know in “real” life, so I may not have told you that this Saturday, December 16, 2006, Terri and I will be at the Boston Bazaar Bizarre selling goods as the Rainy Planet Press. It’s from 1pm - 7pm. Come say hi.

Admission is only $1, you can get lots of cool holiday shopping done, and while I don’t know much of the rest of the entertainment line-up, I have seen Hilken Mancini, and she alone is worth at least 10x the price of admission.

My report on the Third Annual Print Arts Fair at the Museum of Printing in North Andover is up on my letterpress blog.

Since the letterpress world largely still communicates through listserv, I decided the world needs a new letterpress blog, so that’s where I’m going to be posting news of my letterpress and other posts of general letterpress interest in the future.

The two items of note: last week, my re-covered rollers came in, making the press more or less fully operational, and this Wednesday, I got a demo of a Versalaser, which I’m hoping will be an option for making custom plates.

Mrs. RealFake and I are busily working on a printing project, which will need to be hand inked if the roller company doesn’t come through for me and mail me back my re-covered rollers in the next two days. Even the typesetting tonight was derailed for want of an at symbol. A sign of the times, I suppose, that at symbols are more essential to everyday life than they were when my beautiful vintage typefaces were cast. However, if it is a cents sign you want? I’m your man.

Anyway, the want of rollers and frustration of the at symbol led me to an experiment I’ve been wanting to try for some time involving type and sculpey. It’s cooling in the kitchen while I kill time writing this.

And now Mrs. RealFake is poking me and telling me it’s time for bed. I agree.

The press lives!

Well, sort of. I had to fake it. I’ve still not been able to either buy new rollers or re-cover my existing (but moldy (ick) and deteriorated) rollers. So I bought a hand brayer and used that to ink the type. I just made a dumb little test thing, but I’m happy with the result. It looks like a Chance card from Monopoly.

Since I still don’t have all the equipment necessary to get the press up and in service, I am keeping myself busy with various surrogates. I spent some time this morning rearranging the space in the basement I’m putting the press for now. Still need some better lighting, but that’s for another day. Went to Paper Source this afternoon for inspiration.

And I’ve just spend some time poking around the web for some letterpress links, which I post below. Apparently, Somerville is home to the Firefly Press, which has no website, but Elsa Dorfman’s site has a page for them, with a video.

I like some of the stuff at Isle of Printing.

I’m interested in the photopolymer process as a way to design stuff digitally and get cuts made. It seems better than metal for a variety of reasons (namely, durability, non-toxicity (well, take your pick between weird photo-chemicals and lead…), and storage (they’re way thinner than metal blocks)). Having limited space, storage is actually my primary concern. Boxcar Press seems to have the best explanation of photopolymer engraving I’ve found on the web. Seems pricey to get them to do it, though. I’m sure there’s a cheaper supplier, but as I’m learning, it seems like a lot of the printing world is either web-invisible, or outright web-hostile.

Among the documentation that I have with my press is The Printer’s Guide, published by The (defunct since 1990) Kelsey Company of Meriden, Connecticut. You may have guessed by now that I very much aspire to be the guy in the bowtie with the pipe.

It’s from a different world: “…good results can easily be obtained by following these directions. If you have any difficulty, write to us explaining the trouble fully and clearly” (page 4).

Terri and I went to Letterpress Things in Chicopee, Mass. today. Very glad we did. The owner/operator John Barrett was a gracious host and easily spent over an hour teaching us about the basics of printing and the basic things we need. As I suspected, I have almost all I need to get started, and he gave me some good leads on where to find the things he doesn’t stock, or, like rollers, that are harder to find.

His space is a floor of an old paper factory, and he has dozens of old presses, and all sorts of various equipment that he’s purchased from closing print shops. But the big attraction is definitely John’s storehouse of information and his interest in helping newbies like myself.

Unfortunately, the snow started a little earlier than expected, and we had to head back home before we managed to get to Lenox, Mass., to go to the yarn shop Terri wanted to go to. Well, there will be other trips to Western Mass. in the near future, I’m guessing.

The ride back was another pretty snowy drive; not as bad as our snowy trip back from Portsmouth last week. But it was also quite pretty.

When I was in high school, my great-grandfather volunteered at the food bank at family’s church. Later, he became even more involved at a larger operation, the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, but that’s another story for another time. One day in the summer of— I’m guessing it must have been 1990— he asked if I wanted to come along to work at the church food bank on distribution day. I didn’t have anything better to do, so I went along. There were probably 6-10 other volunteers, most of them older or retired— people who, like my great-grandfather were retired or were free in the middle of the day but needed something to keep them busy. At the end of the day, one of the other volunteers, an older man, asked if I’d be interested in a printing press. He apparently hadn’t used it in years, was thinking of getting rid of it, and wanted it to go to a good home. I guess I looked like I’d give it a good home.

Well, it was more than just a printing press— he gave me all his type (11 cases worth), ink, rollers, spacers, paper, catalogs, a full manual, and a cleverly built cabinet which the press was mounted on and which had space for the type cases. My friend Greg and I made all kinds of fun stuff with it while in high school: absurd little tracts, bookmarks that said “this is not a bookmark”, tickets for the theater club’s production of The Importance of Being Earnest (which we were also both in), and little cards that we used to communicate with other people the day we decided to not talk for the entire day (I had cards that said “yes”, “no”, and “ask greg”, and he had cards that said “yes”, “no”, and “ask ezra”).

It definitely got a good deal of use and love in the couple of years that I used it in high school. But setting type is pretty time consuming, so it’s not really something that lends itself to college life. Not to mention the fact that it’s extremely heavy and not portable, so it was never worth lugging to either college or a rental apartment. But now, the time seems right. When I floated the idea of bringing it up to Boston, my parents seemed pretty happy to get it out of their basement (it has been good of them to take care of it for all these years).

Packing it up today, it was definitely quite a trip down memory lane. The Importance of Being Earnest tickets (January, 1992) must have been the last thing I printed on it, because the type was still set in the chase. I’m happy all the major parts fit in the Civic, and that the Civic still moved while it was all in there (have I mentioned how heavy it is? It’s a chunk of iron, with 11 trays of lead. It only has a 5×8″ printing area, but it’s twice as heavy as it looks).

Terri and I are already hatching plans of fun new projects. Digital publishing of various kinds is liberating in a lot of ways, and setting type can be extremely tedious. But there’s nothing quite like the texture and feel of actual letterpress printing on good quality paper.

Oh, and Greg, you’re welcome to come and visit the press any time you like.