A couple of days ago I went into Pegasus Books specifically to buy the new Cometbus, “A Bestiary of Booksellers”. Pegasus hadn’t received their shipment yet—even though Pioneers and PBW already had copies!—but coincidentally there was a larger-than-usual Cometbus display so I got to pick up some of the other issues that I haven’t read. One of the featured volumes was Last Supper, which I didn’t realize was a collection of poetry.
I hardly ever buy poetry because it’s so hit-or-miss, but I’m okay with having purchased Last Supper. It conveyed something of punk New York to me, a person who’s never been punk or visited New York. Lots of romance and nostalgia. The author bemoans that time is slipping through his fingers; all of the places that he used to love are closing down. It’s a book about time and place, how the where is just as ephemeral as the when. And the who.
I bought Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers from Pioneers Press for $4. They are currently out of stock, but you can buy a copy directly from Last Word Press, and it appears that you can read the entire text on Anarcha Library.
At first I didn’t connect the Barbara Ehrenreich who co-authored this pamphlet with the Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed. She explains on the biography page of her website:
“With the birth of my first child in 1970, I underwent a political, as well as a personal, transformation. Bit by bit, I got involved with what we then called the ‘women’s health movement,’ advocating for better health care for women and greater access to health information than we had at that time. This new concern led to the ‘underground bestseller,’ a little pamphlet called Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers, co-authored by my friend Deirdre English.”
Whaddaya know, huh? I assume that Last Word Press reprinted the zine without permission from the original authors, especially since there’s an Amazon listing as well. But I haven’t verified that so don’t quote me on it. Regardless I feel okay-ish because there’s no way that Last Word is making a profit. However, I wouldn’t have bought the pamphlet if I realized that it was a bootleg.
Anyway, parts of my review are directed toward this particular printing:
Need. Bigger. Font. NEED BIGGER FONT. Generally I won’t even read something smaller than 12-point Times New Roman (sorry, Dangerous Damsels), but I made an exception because I was really interested in the content of Witches, Midwives, and Nurses. Plus I already bought it. But the small text still annoyed me.
The pictures would have been much more informative if they had been printed larger and captioned consistently. I don’t know if the images were added by Last Word Press or if they were part of the original zine, but either way my comment stands. An illustration is pointless if I can hardly see it.
As for the main content, Witches, Midwives, and Nurses was well-researched and fascinating, with a delightfully anarchist slant. The zine examines the intersection of patriarchy and medicine, focusing on “two important phases in the male takeover of health care: suppression of witches in medieval Europe and the rise of the male medical profession in the United States” (according to the blurb). Recommended, as long as you have a magnifying glass to aid in your reading. My only complaint about the writing is that I wanted more of it; specific examples from individual lives would have enhanced the academic narrative.
Another zine related to witches and reproductive health: Little Cloud #1, “Borders, Boundaries, and Barriers”, available for $2 at Portland Button Works. Different vibe but same general topic.
The phrase “dog days” makes me think of Florence Welch singing “The Dog Days Are Over”. I hear those words, and immediately the song starts playing in my head. Plus, look at her pretty hair! Not relevant, but I’m a sucker for redheads.
This week I’m assembling the third issue of Balm Digest, “Medium-Sized Dogs”. Dog days are on my mind — literal dog days — but that got me thinking about the figurative ones. I guessed the expression came from watching a hound dog pant on the porch during sweltering August. Location: the American South. Wrong and wrong! According to Etymonline, the idiom’s origins are Greco-Roman. Sirius, the bright Dog Star, ascends just when summer starts getting horrible. Hence, “dog days”.
Traditionally, afternoons in July and August are the most miserable, so hot that you can’t even take a nap. Here we are in January, no need to be cooled down, but I decided to make up a summer cocktail recipe anyway. Lifestyle content is fun, and I’ll be damned if the weather obstructs my whim!
Honey Mint Julep
tablespoon of honey
shot and a half of vodka (because bourbon is gross)
stir thoroughly, aiming for syrup consistency
fill the rest of the glass with chilled mint tea
stir everything again to make sure the honey is dissolved
add ice if you feel like it
(alternately, put the ice in first and drizzle honey over it)
Yay! Get winter-drunk on a cocktail that makes no seasonal sense!
I just got back from my road trip. It was supposed be an epic journey and for the most part, the trip held up its end of the deal. Last night I came home from driving through hundreds of miles of America, telling Alex to look at the mountains. I said that over and over again: “Alex, look at the mountains!”
Then I asked him to change the music and hand me a potato chip, another potato chip, another potato chip please. Alex was great. We listened to HP Lovecraft stories from LibriVox and it was great. (Example: The Shadow over Innsmouth.)
So anyway, last night I tore into an order from Pioneers Press that arrived while I was away. I had a lovely stack of mail to open and the Pioneers package was what I couldn’t keep my hands off of. After watching Big Love with my mom, I climbed into bed and raced through Becoming the Media: A Critical History of Clamor Magazine (informative) and Daring to Struggle, Failing to Win: The Red Army Faction’s 1977 Campaign of Desperation (brutal).
Can you believe that I haven’t gotten to the point of this post yet? Just now, drinking tea, I read Friends, Get Wayward. The author, Adam Gnade, might be famous. It’s kind of unclear to me, the way it always is with these indie-publishing kids. Adam Gnade reminds me of Daniel Vaccerelli but with a totally different shtick. It’s the dedication to an aesthetic, I guess.
Selfies are the pictorial soul of my generation, lol.
Friends, Get Wayward was very stream-of-consciousness. The best parts were vignettes of encounters with strangers, whether direct collisions or conversations that the author overheard and recorded. He mentioned typing on his phone at the airport, and gosh, it was endearing because I do the same thing all the time. On this road trip, I lugged my paper journal with me, but mostly I have iNotes to retrieve from my email and sort.
I gotta complain about one thing: I’m sick of sad-guy writers going on about other classic sad-guy writers. The Beats, especially Kerouac, Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, thankfully not Hemingway. I would never deny that these men were geniuses, but UGH, is this how y’all feel when I adulate Sylvia Plath?
I’m not doing a good job of explaining that I liked this zine. I’ll leave you with the quotable quote that stuck in my heart:
Note: I shouldn’t be blogging because technically I’m on vacation, which is to say that I’m parked in Portland, OR, the fourth stop on a meandering road-trip through the Pacific Northwest. I pointedly left my laptop at home because I wanted to unplug for a month, but whatever. The house where I’m staying has a free-use computer. Plus, I haven’t been writing in my notebook much.
Today I can’t stop pondering my “career”, present and future. Well, mostly future. Such spells of self-reflection usually occur after I’ve glutted on essays from The Awl and its ilk (e.g. “The Plath Resolution”). Last night I found several issues of The Sun in the bathroom and squirreled them off to bed with me. Pompous-but-poignant lit mags are my jam!
The Sun always makes me melancholy, but it was nice to get some reading done. I’ve been attempting to dive into Tarot Revelations, by Joseph Campbell and some other guy, but honestly, who am I kidding? Since I said “honestly”, I must admit that I was kidding myself a week ago when I stacked this book on my “to read” pile, but actually reading it has dispelled my hopeful urge to “study”. Give me fun books or give me the mobile game that I’ve quickly become addicted to, Best Fiends. I can’t be relied on to slog through anything! Drudgery is for chumps.
Um, I was talking about careers, right? I just read Emily Gould’s essay from MFA vs NYC, retitled “How much my novel cost me”. It could be considered a primer in privilege. I have my own heaping privilege, so I didn’t look at Gould’s situation that way. My basic reaction was, “Thank goodness I live with my parents because otherwise I could never afford to stay in the Bay Area.”
The sensible choice would be to move somewhere cool-but-not-that-cool, a midsize city in one of the states that I always forget about, like Kentucky. I live in California’s equivalent of the unnamed city, but because I’m close to the internationally lauded metropolis of San Francisco, prices are still high. Plus, I’m only moderately employable.
The Bay Area is not a practical place for me to build my life, not when the only prospect that I can relish is self-publishing with my dad’s laser printer. The closer I get to my self-imposed “find a real job” deadline, the less appealing it seems. What I want to do is keep making and distributing zines. The tough part is acquiring currency.
Especially since I want to acquire currency without disregarding females! But actually, one of my Tumblr friends signed up to sponsor me on Patreon, which was the sweetest thing. This post will end on that cheery note!
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