Vietnam A book of Changes
June 10, 2009
This image is a good example of how photographers have great eyes for an image that can tell a story. It has a pop art feel to it because of the repeated imagery, like Andy Warhol’s portrait of Chairman Mao. The other similarity is the iconography of the subject mater. Since it is a bust, it has that Roman classicism feel to it. It’s interesting that I find capitalism in the way the art is presented. Warhol’s pop method elevated our taste for consumerism and fame. He put it on the same level of art. It is a new art form. I find the language of western image making in the way I see the work. I like how each sucessive image is reveal and how the yellowing news paper wrapped around the bust second bust which is older then the newer newspaper wrapings of the first bust, seem to convey the passage of time and also to herald in the news of the day, the change of regime and the impact that it will have on the land. I do remember the requirement to have a picture of Ho Chi Ming on the wall of every house hold. This idea was borrowed from Chairman Mao. In the essay, Mitch mention how much change he saw on the subsequent trips Vietnam. These pictures were made over a long period of time during the 1990s. It is my favorite image of the whole book.
Amerasian Childfind
June 10, 2009
Amerasion Child Find Network is a nonprofit based in Oregon. There’s a great story in the Asian Reporter about a family reunion. The then child, Thu Pham was separated from the father, an American Military Police Officer. Nearly fourty years later, the family is reunited in Michgan. Tu heard about the website and contacted Clint Haines, the CEO of Amerasian Child Find. Mr. Haines then posted the message with photographs of the father on an Army’s 504th Military Police Battalion’s website/forum.
Andy Mangold
May 1, 2009
Andy makes his leather books from recycle Goodwill leather coats.
I want to know how he does this!
J. Mark Bertrand
April 16, 2009
Leuchtturm1917 Note Book (in briefcase)
Originally uploaded by J. Mark Bertrand.
I’ve been an admire of Mark’s photostream on flickr for a while now. Not only does he have an eye for leather, but the presentation of his collection is sumptuous, the photographs are a delight to view. So I’ve invited Mark Bertrand, the author of ‘Rethinking World View’ for a talk about leathers, books, bags, and the Bible.
Thank you Mark for coming by.
D: So how did you start the idea for Bible design?
M: I’m a writer and bibliophile with a special interest in typography, and also an avid reader of the Bible. So it was inevitable that all these interests would come together at some point. Here’s how it happened: I posted a small group of essays about Bible design and binding to my site jmarkbertrand.com. Over the course of several years, they drew more traffic than anything else I’d written — and along with the attention came a flood of e-mail correspondence, people asking an unimaginable variety of questions, most of which I couldn’t answer. Knowing there were readers out there who shared my interest, I decided in 2007 to move those essays to a blog of their own, thinking I might add one or two from time to time. I expected some interest, but nothing like what ended up happening. Turns out there are a lot more people fascinated by Bible design and binding than I ever realized, and quite a few of them visit the site regularly, contributing to the “community” feel. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’ve certainly learned a lot!
Have you thought about writing on the subject of other leather goods? How did you discover the Tusting bag? Who makes better leathers, the Brits or the Yanks?
M: I try to keep the focus on Bible Design Blog fairly narrow, although I’ve written a little about notebooks. Some day I might start a new blog devoted to leather goods in general — it’s a thought I keep coming back to. The subject fascinates me, needless to say.
In grad school, I bought my first Tusting bag, though I had no idea that’s what it was, since they made it for Levenger. Nice leather and a good twill lining. That replaced a soft, grainy messenger style bag I’d been using, which I still love in spite of its impractically narrow shoulder strap and nubby, unlined interior, which had a habit of shedding on my books.
The Tusting bag I photographed recently is a new acquisition, not as nice as the old one, but a slim and practical design. I happened to by in Cheyenne, Wyoming, the home of Sierra Trading Post, so I stopped by their warehouse, where the clerk kindly had all the bags I requested brought out for inspection. It was a lot of fun, but I’m afraid that bag only sees infrequent use — along with all the others — now that I’ve got the Glaser Designs Transaction Bag.
Vintage leather goods have always interested me, especially the differences in skins and construction methods compared to today. As an example, I’ve posted some photos of vintage wallets compared to contemporary ones. It’s remarkable how thin the old ones were. Most of today’s breast pocket wallets create a lump under the jacket — they’re big and heavy — but the old ones are skinny and light. Of course the leather tends to be more interesting, too, and the type of skin is usually stamped on. In a blind test, I don’t think many people would choose the new “luxury” $100 wallet to the $10 old stock equivalent. Which is not to say I don’t like today’s leather goods, just that I think there’s much inspiration to be had from the past.
As far as rivalries between Brits and Yanks go, I’d better not comment. If a Smythson or Swaine Adeney Brigg delivery van broke down in my neighborhood, it’s a sure thing some looting would result. At the same time, there are craftsmen like Myron Glaser in the States making things of unparalleled beauty.
tags: Bible Design, interview, leather goods, Tusting bag, Milton Glazer bag, J. Mark Bertrand, Bible
Typotheque Diary
April 9, 2009
I stumbled upon the Typotheque Diary last year and some how lost track of it. Something reminded me of it and I am not sure what it was but I went searching for the limited edition only to find it out of print. Reserve a copy for 2010 today before it’s gone:
Virtual Book Tour
March 27, 2009
Last weekend, I happen to find Shaindel Beers on line in Yahoo messenger. Before this, we some how linked on Goodreads. She has one of the coolest names I know. I find that Ms. Beers is from Bend Pendelton, Oregon. Perhaps this was the reason I befriended her on Goodreads, because she is in my neighborhood, the same state. Later, I find that Ms. Beers also teaches poetry at Blue Mountain College. She also does audio interviews on the net for blogradio and serves as the poetry editor of Contrary Magazine. Now she is a published author. We chatted a bit and I find out that Shaindel is on a Virtual Book Tour for her new book, ‘A Brief History of Time’, a much lauded first collection of poems. I think Shaindel has several interesting ideas up her sleeves.
I’m hoping Shaindel will stop by soon.
Hi Shainel,
Thank you for stopping by on your busy schedule of virtual book tour.
So how does it feel to be a Goodreads Author?
Hi Duc,
I’m from Pendleton, not Bend 
I’m very happy to be a Goodreads author. I’ve been a member of Goodreads for a few years now and always enjoyed seeing what my friends were reading and reading their reviews of various books. I even give my students extra credit for writing Goodreads reviews, so it’s exciting to log on and see “Goodreads Author” next to my name.
How do you feel about being labeled as a Gen X poet?
Some people feel negative about being labeled as this type of poet or that type of poet, but it’s bound to happen. As for being a Generation X poet, it’s fine. It’s the generation I was born into, and I think people my age have important things to say. Each generation seems to want to label the one after it negatively. When I was in high school, people said Gen X’ers were lazy, lacked ambition, had no goals, but I think we’ve done an okay job with the world. I think each generation just has a habit of thinking the one after them is going to ruin everything. It seems to be human nature.
tags: Shainel Beers, Poet, Poetry, Brief History of Time, Oregon, Pendelton
Action Folio Junior
March 25, 2009
Recently, I listed my pre-owned but hardly used Action Folio (Junior size) on EBay. At first I did not expect any interest. I was wrong. Apparently, this discontinued item generated much discussion. I had been wanting to possibly look into upgrading it to the junior zip Action Folio. But I did not examine this new Action Folio carefully. It is a bit too clutter. By the time the card is inserted into the pocket, there’s not much to look at on the index card, the writing was hidden. The plastic version was even more cluttered and overlapped. So there was a bit of fierce competition to get the old version which was very clean, compare to the new. But it was still not perfect because I wanted the pockets it to be on both side of the folio, not on just one side and perhaps a little bit larger to fit a Junior size Circa Notebook.
tags: Levenger, Circa, Action Folio
Byte size Fiction
March 9, 2009
To follow up with the last post about index card writing, I wanted to think about this idea for shorter forms. http://twitter.com/Story140Less
For those that don’t have the mind or patience for Nanowrimo, there are other ways to express. www.quillpill.com
Some of the stories are publish as it goes along. One can chose to keep it private. But what is the fun in that? Here one gets an instant gratification of having publish a story and getting comments from the readers immediately. In Nanowrimo, a lot of authors hide their stuff either because they think it’s not good or they are afraid some people might steal their ideas.
I thought this idea for a diary was excellent: http://quillpill.com/author/zeitgeber/books/Timekeepers+Diary
Virtual Index Cards
March 7, 2009
So I’ve been very productive away from the net. I organized my writing on Super Note Cards (SNC). (google it) It is great for a quick outline. I chopped longer Nanowrimo work into bite size virtual index cards. I’d read that many writers use index cards to write. Navokov is one of them. He wrote this way because it was easy to take on the road when he was on his butterfly expeditions. It is a different process. There are two variety of virtual index cards that I know of. One is call Scrivener, made for Mac. The other is SNC, for Mac and PC. Since SNC fits both, I’ll test drive it.
SNC encourages people to try writing in paragraphs on virtual index cards. It is like the film editing process. It helps me to see large holes in my narrative. But also the story is good with large holes as that is how the mind works in the first rough draft. The editing may have diluted the first impulse during the Nanowrimo writing sessions. Not everything has to be spelled out in the first draft. It helps a great deal to fill in the gaps or take away stuff that doesn’t belong there, that is the editing process. It is hard to write large bits on index cards because of the temptation to shuffle things around, to do quick outlines, to edit as one goes. That is why writing on a typewriter, word processor or long hand is best for the first draft. I’ve always compared the Nanowrimo session as one long take and the second draft as the work done like the film editing’s cutting room. I found program’s speed slow at first maybe because it is a trial version or my computer. After I entered the activation code, it seems faster. Though, I find the cards with large amount of text slower to work through then the shorter cards. The scrolling and high lighting and the mouse cursor movements seem slower and a bit less responsive compare to my regular word processor programs.
It does have the spell check and formatting text is much faster and different. One can change the entire document’s text base on preference. The index card can have one font and the print out another. It is not a normal word processor. I could always export it into rich text format and edit it in Words or other word processors. I downloaded the trail version without the instructions. Go to the website for their instruction it’s very helpful and I would have thought that it would come with the trial download because it would help the potential customer to see the usefulness of it.
So far, I’ve learn on my own as well as with the help of the instructions. I’ll tell you how I use it. There may be other ways. I usually look at my Nanowrimo as a daily entry and will keep track of it at the heading of each writing session. Using SNC, I dedicated each index card to a day. As I have a collection of thirty cards, it is daunting to sort through. I find the category, and factors help a great deal. Factors such as person, place, and things can be assigned to the general deck of cards. Each Factor is then assigned a keyword. The programs looks for keywords and compile a list. I can choose to pin down each card with that particular search. It’s fun to see the relationships between the cards. Unfortunately, the factors disappears when, I copy the deck into another SNC file. It would be nice if the assigned factors go with the cards to the new file. It takes a bit of planning to work around this problem.
+ compatible with Mac and PC.
+ opens files as tab. I thought this was very useful to navigate from file to file.
- A full screen would be nice.
- Assigned Factors does not copy over into new file.
Scrivener:
I tried this out during a weekend and I must say that I like it alot. Couple of features that I thought was useful. One is the Document Split. I wish I had this on my Super Note Card. It allows me to split longer documents into shorter sections. With SNC, I had to copy and past which can be tedious.
The other is the Scrivender Edit which combines all of the card into a seemless document and the tinted background highlights one card from the other.
Importing text files into Scrivener was also very useful.
tags: SuperNoteCard, Mindola, Scrivener
Hilary Hahn
February 12, 2009
She started a blog ten years ago. It started out as a project to write postcard to middle school children. Hilary has kept blogging for ten years, she has been writing postcard like post about the city she traveled to and the behind the scene of the music halls. Her Violin Case just started a twitter. There are Facebook Page, Myspace, and , Youtube video where she conducts interviews. I wonder how she has anytime to do all this and win a Grammy too. Surely, it’s unexpected for such a traditional classical musica media. Hilary has clearly changed this image and I think others will follow suite. Ann Akiko Meyer’s website promises a blog for her fans to follow. I think that future classical child prodigy will all have their own blog.
