Woman Always Always Pay

Working on a new large-sized zine the size of a standard sheet of paper. This photograph shows how it looks before it is scanned or copied on a printer. The final product will be in black and white like my other zines. I will now have four zines this large: this one, Calvin is a Girl, Oh Beast, and Self Be. They are all very female subject-wise. The three non-collage ones use photographs throughout.

Woman Always Always Pay, my new zine, is both collage and also handwritten notes. I first did abstract collage and came back at a later time and added collage words on several occasions. The subject matter was inserted after the collage was complete and a title page chosen out of all of the existing pages. Thus, I did not know what the title of the zine would be until it surfaced from what was complete.

I like to work in this abstract manner after having taken art classes in the eighties back in college. When working with poetry I pick the most unusual poem to be the title and then look for supporting poems from what I have written.

In the case of this zine, I wrote the words in the final third stage, trying to match my thoughts to what was already on the page. I talk about how collage helps bring to light subject matter that matters to you.

Because of the short amount of space in which to write I could not expand on each subject. I was able to talk about the workforce, the work state, women who do not like other women, the new crop of dads not afraid to be seen in public with their babies, women at the top, creepy men, “pizza” money, plastic islands of concern by Beth Terry, what women are hired for by Reshma Saujani, volunteer work as being important, hating perfection, the silver lining of being a man when waiting in line (they get better treatment), fear of drinking water, frotteurism and toucherism, stopping time, woman pay scale, people are not smarter necessarily, what collage does as I said, and women need to help each other as mentors.

gender and Staples

Ugh. Subject matter matters. Gender issues are in the news. It is the twenty-first century and people are learning about equality. I am along for the ride. Gender has been an issue for me my whole life and that is the primary reason I consider myself a feminist.

Gender bias occurs when men get service in a timely respectful yes sir manner and women do not. Women wait. Women leave. Women do not get equal service. This very recently happened to me at Staples. I was left waiting for thirty minutes while their copier was updating. A customer tried to help when he really should not have. He looked behind the machine and switched it off and on. The machine stopped updating but went through some mild acrobatics and then went to sleep.

The woman behind the counter told me the computer was out of service so I waited for the next available computer which was the one my daughter was using. Meantime a woman customer came and waited awhile, got overwhelmed by the situation and left.

Then along comes a man who was determined to wait no matter what. He did things on his phone while standing there. He waited what seemed like five minutes when along comes the manager asking if we needed help while carefully taking hold of the man’s documents.

To be fair he asked me what I was doing. I told him I was waiting for thirty minutes to print zines. He looked inside my bag and directed the man to where they print out copies for you after I explained I was next. I was honestly afraid he was going to print that man’s copies for him on the machine I was waiting for. The manager seems insulted and taken back. Yes it is first come first served.

This reminded me of being back in the trenches doing laundry at the laundromat. It has been years but I still have mental battle scars of trying to get to the few dryers after the wash was done. The laundromat had more washers to dryers and it posed a live or die death wish with each visit. Hurry or wait forever. Now the laundromat is a restaurant and the new laundromat is a minuscule blip you could easily miss if you did not know it was back there behind another building. I have yet to be there but I am lazily considering doing a zine of funny laundromat names. I am confident there is a website already so maybe I would be wasting my time.

I told the manager I felt he had come to help the man and not me (since he had left me waiting for half an hour). The manager denied this but got very nervous and started rearranging my things on the counter for me so bingo I was right. He made me shake his hand and said if I ever needed ANYTHING just ask. I think he was worried about his manager job. I would have lost my place if I had gotten him to come help and Hell I did not even know he or his office existed! He even said he had seen me before which was creepy.

He did reach inside the front door to the copier and switch it on. It worked immediately. I missed a relaxing lunch and I was late to work because of road construction but I did get copies done thanks to BOTH those men. I sound bitter.

I will be back. Staples could solve their wait time issue (it happens at this particular unnamed location ALL the time) by having three stand alone copiers instead of just two like the other Staple I also will be watching how they treat me and others. As customers we should get EQUAL SERVICE.

Searching 2018 Nebraska Alumni Show

There is no photo to post for this entry. I thought I could find one online but apparently the art show I mailed 20 zines in a series to DOES NOT EXIST. This photo is of someone else’s show off of Pexels. I am an alumni of the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. They asked me to be in a show. I asked if I could submit zines and they said yes but they could not find me listed as an alumni because I was using my maiden name (same as I did when enrolled there). I mailed my entries off hoping they would be exhibited “cotton gloves not necessary.” Unfortunately the gallery is not advertising the alumni show on their Eisentrager-Howard Gallery website so I do not know what is really going on. I will update this if I get those zines back. Zines are considered “low art” according to my sources. It seems the gallery is very careful not to call any of the work in their past alumni show ART.

Bonnie Avenue

This is my first perzine (personal zine) and it is about growing up in the sixties in the Midwest. I was introduced to the Vietnam War in Kindergarten where we would spend small amounts of money to buy war stamps. I wish I had those now or the dog tags I got in sixth grade of one soldier who was either MIA (missing in action) or POW (prisoner of war). The zine was an attempt to sell at a perzine fest in Boston that my daughter tabled in. Someone from MIT came by and bought zines (two of each). Apparently they are starting a zine library. This is the age of zines and zine libraries! They had their hands full of zines and may perhaps need some of mine!

I got in trouble with MIT or actually I should say I got MIT in trouble because when my daughter was going to Stanford they sent out an email to me that included my email address as well as my husband’s email address. I assumed correctly he had received an email with my private email address on it. I was livid. I complained to Stanford. I wanted to keep my email address private.

Stanford had no idea the email addresses were being compromised. They had contracted with MIT for the email program which matched up both spouses’ email addresses on the same email. It was wrong but they did not see it that way. Supposedly men wrote the program. They thought married couples should already have some sort of transparency with each other and that included their email addresses.

Once the woman contact from Stanford realized what was happening she too was livid! Woman need privacy. Sometimes especially from their husbands.

Litchfield County Zine Fest

The zine fest went well. I was in charge of the food and my regular job helped me because I work around food. Olivia and I choose vegan food. Everything was fine except I thought the site’s freezer was a fridge! It looked exactly like one but had lettering at the top saying FREEZER that in my rush to get things inside I did not notice! I did not like the shelves in the real fridge. Also, I forgot to bring sugar for the coffee. So sorry about that!

The event was hot. We thought the air conditioner was working, but it was only three or four ceiling fans. The real air conditioner button was under lock and key in the furnace room downstairs! We would have called the maintenance person earlier if we knew it was not on since the fans were working and looked deceptively on. The next day was cloudy and cold so we were not sure why it was around 89 degrees inside! Magically no one passed out! We are newbies to organizing zine fests and we could have used a few more volunteers to get things rolling. As it was two zinesters from N.J. helped set up extremely heavy tables and we have to thank them for their enthusiasm and muscle. Boy were they pumped!

I made friends with a pirate who lives on a house boat in Vancouver, B.C. My aunt and uncle lived there and I have visited. Vancouver is the home for many cop shows so crime there is perhaps blown out of proportion. I passed out some of my zines towards the end of the fest since I did not have my own table. It is fun trying to match up what people could like. It also taught me I need to finish some of my other zines since I needed them.

Just joined Twitter. This update is also to say hello to people!

Tattoo Artist Are

This teeny tiny minizine started out as an exercise for a intro class of my daughter’s otherwise known as a zine workshop. I came in late from work and they were just getting started on the second part of the workshop which involves making zines.

Ah, fresh blood! The two women there LOVED the concept of zine-making (there is not a librarian on Earth who does not like book-making) and they finished early while I struggled to complete something before the library closed. But I could not finish it and took some magazines (fresh words) home with.

Now you have to understand that the original is in color and that much of the detail is lost (in this case the few tattoos I could find). Tattoos are so common-place today everyone has seen one or a compilation of them on one person). The detail filled in when photocopied with rich black ink and automatically high contrast.

Darn! Oh well, a zine is a zine. It is crude and the other crude without being crud. I love it. Perhaps you will too. The only tattoos I have are small ones the size of small dots marking the location of my breast radiation treatments. Who knew?

Oh Beast

I have gained weight going from a size twelve to a size sixteen. Now I am my mother! That said I do not plan to be this size forever (possibly) so while I am here why not do a zine? Cum Star Wars I am now the evil Emperor Palpatine (on my bad days or deep down, you choose). Contains one picture homage to Cindy Sherman. No cat pics. Here is a photo of the stamping ritual.