Another week and still working out my issues with saving files on the computer. One of the biggest issues is that I wanted to save the Publisher files that were used to design all my limited edition artist books. Since I have not opened most of them in years, Publisher could not open them with the font I used at the time.
You know how it is…Times New Roman is nice but over the years there were so many free fonts that fit the content of the book so much better. Turns out not very many of those artist book fonts followed over to a newer computer. Several hours yesterday were spent going to every document I had that showed it had been composed in Publisher and then checking to see if it was telling me that it would have to find a substitute for such and such font. Then I would go online, find that original font that I used and reloading it onto the computer.
Now I will probably not ever make any more of those books…BUT…just in case, I need to save each one of them as a pdf file so I can open it and use it as it is. PDFs can not be altered in any way, but if the artist book pages are found in Publisher before October, then I can save each file that made up that artist book as a pdf to use exactly as I have before.
Not only am I finding many artist books saved in Publisher, but several workshop handouts as well. All need to have a duplicate saved as a pdf. Busy times ahead. Now I am thinking that I will likely pay an annual fee to use an Adobe program that will run much like my trusted (until now) Publisher program.
I went to poetry this week and find it interesting how many in the group want more information than the poet is giving in their poem. We are not sharing memoirs, short stories, etc. in a poetry critique meeting…we are sharing thoughts in poem form. I found this quote from Carl Sandburg that I will share with them next month.
“Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during a moment.”
And here is a poem I wrote the week before that I shared with the group.
I Am Thinking About Words Today S. Webster
What if, on the day we are born,
we’re given a bag full of words.
And those would be all we had to last a lifetime.
How long would they last?
As children we are discouraged from using our words.
“Be quiet! Pipe down! Shut up!”
“Don’t speak unless spoken to.”
“If you can’t say anything nice, ….”
Some of us could go quiet in mid-sentence.
While others will take their seldom-opened bags
to the grave, leaving survivors
to use up their own in the silence.
I started hoarding mine early.
With my silence saying as much
as the sideways glances
when I failed to respond.
But on occasion my words will fall out.
And all I can do is mumble them into place,
while wishing I had simply put them on a page instead.
And left them there.
So that is all I have today. Except for this. I found this book on my shelf made up by reversing the folds on cards made using prints of my woodcuts and then fitting them as single folios stitched into a Coptic book. The cover was textured and painted using pigments from the Japanese Garden that inspired the prints. Small windows were cut on each folio to act as a framing of the printed image. No text comes into the book until the last page. With this little 4″ x 5″ book you should be able to see why laying it out in Publisher was necessary to get two cards to each sheet of cardstock loaded into the printer. Also the font was likely not standard issue but chosen off the internet because it fit the content of the book.
Anyway, that’s all I have for today.
Til later…..