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gementYesterday I went on a field trip for school! Okay, for a club that I signed up to VP because it has almost no responsibilities. But that means that the President and Vice President of the iSchool's Bookarts Interest Group (Notorious B.I.G. for short) drove up past Sedro Wooley to visit an AMAZING pair of local printers.
They have a converted barn full of printing presses. All different makes and models, probably a dozen of the giant free-standing kind and more little hand presses up on shelves and tucked in corners. Bureaus and bureaus of drawers of type. The enormity of storing movable type had never occurred to me before.
Then the room where they pour their own movable type on demand, which is an amazingly cool process: First they use a complicated keyboard to type out the sequence of letters they want onto a paper tape like a player piano reel. Then they feed the tape into another machine that moves a little mold matrix around and shoots hot metal into it! Then you get new-minted movable type, already typeset in the order you want. That means you can edit and fiddle with it. When you're done, you can sort it into drawers or dump it back into the machine to melt it down for MORE new-minted movable type.
Then the shed (another large garage-sized building) full of more movable type and small presses collected by a former housemate of theirs. Then the attic of the barn, which is a light and airy bookbinding studio where their design and final stitching and pressing stuff happens.
In-between the type-making room and the shed, we stopped for a picnic lunch supplemented by the first crop of cherries from their Bing tree, which we picked and then immediately put on the picnic table.
I was sitting with my legs stretched out on the bench/railing of a shady porch with dry hot weather and a nice breeze, looking over sun-baked yellow grass pastures. At just the right angle up from my eyes, a skyline of hills or low mountains cut a nearly flat line across the just-right-colored blue sky, and every time I would look up at it I felt Home. But with more fresh organic cherries and amazing skilled book geeks.
I took a long car ride out into cow country and brown fields. I saw the sky and hills, and lay lazy in the heat. I got to feed carrots to their neighbors' horses. I start a job next Wednesday, and I've had a rest but it never quite felt like Vacation. This helped with that a lot.
Sitting update: Yesterday's morning sit (25 min) was performed to the mental tune of "Do de duck". That was okay. I just let it play. Over. And over. And over. I also sat 20 min last night with Jason. My foot fell asleep and I spent two thirds of the time worried that I hadn't set the timer. I haven't sat yet today and I'm expecting L soon, so we'll see if it happens today.
They have a converted barn full of printing presses. All different makes and models, probably a dozen of the giant free-standing kind and more little hand presses up on shelves and tucked in corners. Bureaus and bureaus of drawers of type. The enormity of storing movable type had never occurred to me before.
Then the room where they pour their own movable type on demand, which is an amazingly cool process: First they use a complicated keyboard to type out the sequence of letters they want onto a paper tape like a player piano reel. Then they feed the tape into another machine that moves a little mold matrix around and shoots hot metal into it! Then you get new-minted movable type, already typeset in the order you want. That means you can edit and fiddle with it. When you're done, you can sort it into drawers or dump it back into the machine to melt it down for MORE new-minted movable type.
Then the shed (another large garage-sized building) full of more movable type and small presses collected by a former housemate of theirs. Then the attic of the barn, which is a light and airy bookbinding studio where their design and final stitching and pressing stuff happens.
In-between the type-making room and the shed, we stopped for a picnic lunch supplemented by the first crop of cherries from their Bing tree, which we picked and then immediately put on the picnic table.
I was sitting with my legs stretched out on the bench/railing of a shady porch with dry hot weather and a nice breeze, looking over sun-baked yellow grass pastures. At just the right angle up from my eyes, a skyline of hills or low mountains cut a nearly flat line across the just-right-colored blue sky, and every time I would look up at it I felt Home. But with more fresh organic cherries and amazing skilled book geeks.
I took a long car ride out into cow country and brown fields. I saw the sky and hills, and lay lazy in the heat. I got to feed carrots to their neighbors' horses. I start a job next Wednesday, and I've had a rest but it never quite felt like Vacation. This helped with that a lot.
Sitting update: Yesterday's morning sit (25 min) was performed to the mental tune of "Do de duck". That was okay. I just let it play. Over. And over. And over. I also sat 20 min last night with Jason. My foot fell asleep and I spent two thirds of the time worried that I hadn't set the timer. I haven't sat yet today and I'm expecting L soon, so we'll see if it happens today.
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no subject
Date: 2006-07-02 08:18 pm (UTC)(and a slight tinge of bitterness, 'cause the MLIS kids are so much cooler...)
That's an incredible day.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-03 01:39 am (UTC)