Fist 1/2 V J S TT Fist (qbdp # 24)

My daughter Erin is leaving for Ireland for the semester in less than a week, so the family drove out to Caroga Lake in the middle of the day and spent the afternoon and early evening there. While there, I took the time to put together a simple postcard. Using four postcards I have of Munich (where Nancy, Erin, and I spent part of the summer of 1985), I used rubberstamps to creatd a simpld directional visual poem (in two colors: black and green).

The cards each had a different view of Munich and were of different sizes as well. Two of the cards include views of the Deutsches Museum, which Nancy proclaims is the most boring museum in the world. She may be right.

A couple of the postcards also provide a view of the Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady), Munich's cathedral, with its twin onion-domed spires, each with its own clock.


Frauenkirche, Munich, Germany
These are the recipients of "Fist 1/2 V J S TT Fist":

1/4 Ruth and Marvin Sackner (Nr. 129a, with a general view of Munich that included the two spires of the cathedral)

2/4 Bob Grumman (Nr 294, "Blick auf Deutsches Museum")

3/4 Roy Arenella (Nr 71, "Deutsches Museum mit den neuen Studiengebadden")

4/4 qbdp (Nr 134, The Cathedral)

Geof Huth, "Fist 1/2 V J S TT Fist" (29 Aug 2004)
un violon d'ingres

Roy Explains Himself

Roy Arenella sends me a small photocard reproducing a photograph of a "Mailbox in Vermont" with its door rested open and tall weeds growing around it. The picture is from 1 August 2004, so he apparently took this picture while on vacation in Vermont.


Roy Arenella, "Mailbox in Vermont" (1 Aug 2004)
Roy explains his mailing (which I've deconstructed here) in this way:

The last sentence on yesterday's card ("Art does not exist, Ben") should have read "In no way do I mean to imply an hierarchical judgment, but--this is central to my idea--only to help recognize the predisposition of the sender."

Of course. And clear enough. Roy explains how the verbo-visual datum on the front of the card echoes the explanatory text on the reverse. Something I had forgotten to point out yesterday!

The card received today is mailing # 368 p/c ("p/c" for "photo/card"). Roy sent a photo of a mailbox because he is writing about correspondence--the topic we're working on is the ratios of correspondence to art that can exist in mailart. He stresses the concept of mail by including a rubberstamping of a U.S. mail receptacle inside his traditional pseudo-cancellation. Also, he has taken a standard "FAXED" rubberstamp, from which he has removed the a and the e, replacing them with an i and an e, so that he can stamp onto this card the word "FiXed," which is what this card of his has done: clarify his last card.

un violon d'ingres

What is Mail? Who is Art?

A postcard (#361 CXCPC--color xerox card[?] photocard)arriving at my home has Roy Arenella thinking about my discussion of correspondence as art. His thinking leads him to a conclusion of interest to mailartists:

According to the disposition of the sender, the term mail art is accented either on the word "mail" or the word "art".

So some mailart is more of a letter, and some mailart is more an intentional esthetic object. Or mailart is still mail, and mail is still art. Or whenever we mail art, it is correspondence. Or some days, mail; some days, art. Or artists can't avoid mail, and correspondents can't avoid art. Or mailart is a hybrid of a hybrid, sometimes taking the form of a letter, sometimes taking esthetic form.

To extend the discussion, Roy decorates the obverse of the card with a fluxist axiom by Ben Vautier ("art does not exist"), and he adds the word "FINE" in a clear Arenellian hand. (I once spent the night at the Ruth and Marvin Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry, and in my quarters rested a large contraption filled with fluxist pieces by Vautier, most decorated with Vautier's handwriting--so I recognized his hand immediately. Also, it's hard to avoid knowledge of Vautier if you live in my realm.)


Roy Arenella and Ben Vautier,
"FINE art does not exist" (20 Mar 2001)
Many of Vautier's pieces actually revolve around aphoristic evaluations of art. But he turns a spotlight on other areas of knowledge as well, as with the following found on his website:


Ben Vautier, "rien n'existe pas" (1991)
Here he tells us "nothing doesn't exist," a sentence that takes a bit of mind-twisting to force it show us all its meanings.

un violon d'ingres

Two Letters from Roy Arenella Received Yesterday

Roy Arenella sees correspondence as art. Roy Arenella makes art out of correspondence. A couple of examples from yesterday. (I have fallen a bit behind on my entries, adding illustrations to the last few entries onlytoday.)

A (# 356XL+E)

A few years ago, jwcurry, the great Canadian micropublisher and visual poet released a huge hand-stamped issue of his microzine, Industrial Sabotage, each sheet of which was a used envelope that curry carefully unfolded into a new printing surface.

This letter of Roy's reminds me of that publication, for Roy has written it on pieces of found paper. He wrote this letter where he had a spare moment (on the subway, in a waiting room) on whatever paper was handy (a used envelope, a page torn out of a magazine). Each page is a new being, and he corrals all four of these together in a single envelope.

Below, Roy explains the image I could not identify, the image that is so clear to me now!


Roy Arenella, Correspondence, 19 Aug 2004, page 3
B (# 356(A)XL+E

Roy follows up his last letter almost immediately with this addendum: A small sheet discussing Hamish Fulton (an artist whose art is walking) and my dbqp entry on hiking into the woords. Fulton claims that walking is the center of his art, but what he does is document his walks in expressive ways. Below is a scan of part of one documentation of one walk.


Hamish Fulton, from "A Seventeen Day Walk in the Rocky Mountains of Alberta" (Autumn 1984)
This piece is a revelation to me, pure lyrical concrete poetry. And it resembles, to some degree, my own works: my "forkèd lake" (a series of pwoermds published by Anchorite Press) and an earlier textual poem of mine that concludes as a gridded series of four-letter words.

un violon d'ingres

Sylvan Mailart (qbdp # 22 & 23) and the Cards of Ficus

Camping by Pharaoh Mountain

While still at Caroga Lake this morning, I decorated eight cards with a colorful emmy fidgetglyph. Using a total of 17 ems, I wrew a map of the campsite Nancy, Erin, Tim, and I inhabited this weekend. I called this glyph “Camping by Pharaoh Mountain” (qbdp # 23) and made copies for these recipients:

1/8 Ruth and Marvin Sackner

2/8 Bob Grumman

3/8 Roy Arenella

4/8 endwar

5/8 kiyotei

6/8 Ficus strangulensis

7/8 Kandyce Sprung (Postmistress, Caroga Lake, NY)

8/8 qbdp

Geof Huth, "Camping by Pharaoh Mountain" (22 Aug 2004)
Ficus

Once at home, I was greeted by another package of mailart by retiree Ficus strangulensis. Discussing my “A slit beside,” he admits having trouble interpreting poetry before noting that he has “equally less conscious reason in what [he does] but equally undecipherable.” Then he tosses into the envelope a few cards carrying his inscrutable verbo-visual creations.


Ficus strangulensis, untitled (16 Aug 2004)
Finishing “Loonless Pond”

I could not finish my birchbark creation, “Loonless Pond,” in the woods the other day, so once I returned home today I found four moss green envelopes, addressed them in green, and attached stamps carrying images of Isamu Noguchi’s sculptures (a few of which I pass frequently in my underground travels at work in Albany, New York). Inside the envelope, I placed the three strips of birchbark within a fold of Mylar film, and I placed two strips of stiff pH-neutral paper on either side of that bundle.

un violon d’ingres

Erasing Birch with a Knife: "Loonless Pond" (qbdp # 22)

"Loonless Lake," near Pharaoh Lake, Town of Schroon, New York

I'm in the woods with my family, but this is a night away from home so I am supposed to create mailart.

To solve this dilemma, I collected birchbark during our walks in these woods. Back in my tent, I sized them and placed these bits of bark in piles, then I wrote three simple hay(na)ku on each piece. Each poem was somehow about our day here, but none was particularly good (if good at all).

In the end, I wrote on twelve sheets of birch, creating four sets of three sheets.

These are the recipients of "loonless lake":

1/4 Ruth and Marvin Sackner

2/4 Bob Grumman

3/4 Roy Arenella

4/4 qbdp

The owls are hooting darkly around me.


Geof Huth, "Loonless Pond" (20 Aug 2004)
[Posted 21 Aug 2004 from Caroga Lake, New York]

un violon d'ingres

In the Manner of Bloomer: rhjly (qbdp # 21)

Still Point, Garlock Road, Caroga Lake, NY

Even now, the night before my family and I head out of this small town on a lake and drive a couple of hours before beginning a hike into the woods, I still feel compelled to put out a litte qbdp card. The focus of this one is the only fidgetglyph I completed today. It is small and a bit spidery, but it seems well disposed for its particular card.

The card I chose was a very thin and cheaply made card we used to distribute from my place of business (the New York State Archives). But on the face of it is a scratched and washed-out photograph of Amelia Jenks Bloomer, after whom "bloomers" were named. (I hope this card is sturdy enough to make it through the mail to all of its intended recipients.)

On the back of the card (the message side), I've wrawn the five-letter glyph on a slant in five different colors. On the front of the card, I've written the last letter of the word, the stylized letter y. Out of context, on the side of that pedestal, it appears at first to be a foreign character, inscrutable.

To me, rhjly, with its letters generally alternating ascenders and descenders, now means "in the manner of Bloomer." Long may her bloomers wave!

These are the recipients of "rhjly":

1/7 Ruth and Marvin Sackner

2/7 Bob Grumman

3/7 Roy Arenella

4/7 Ficus strangulensis

5/7 kiyotei

6/7 endwar

7/7 qbdp

Geof Huth, "rhjly" (19 Aug 2004)
un violon d'ingres

What Roy Arenella Was Doing on August Sixteenth

Two days ago, on Monday, August 16th, Roy Arenella decided to send me two pieces of mail.

The first was a photograph of this blog on June 27th. As Roy asks, on the writing side of this card,

In the relationship between snailmail & blog, is this card ANOTHER GENERATION or ANOTHER DIMENSION?

Of course, it must be both. This card is number 348 C P/C (the 348th numbered mailing of the year, this one being a “copy of a photocard”). That much I understand, but there is something stamped within Roy’s traditional pseudo-cancellation mark that I just can’t make out: a something and an eight?


Roy Arenella, "Foto" on the Screen (28 Jun 2004)
The second mailing is a series of Chinese-boxed envelopes ending in a card, and it also refers back to an entry on this blog. [[[[[[It begins with an envelope upon which my address is typed upside-down, and upon the face of that card Roy has rubberstamped a square inside of which he’s added a squat minim and a fat tittle, which together make an i.


Roy Arenella, "i" (16 Aug 2004)
[The next envelope is stamped “CAREFUL,” the E of which is escaping from the word. [The third envelope, rubberstamped in a different rubbertypeface, bears the word “GENTLE,” with the first E trying to slip up and out of the way. [The fourth envelope is rubberstamped in smaller letters, and the word “TENDER” is almost losing its fourth E. [The fifth envelope is a plastic sleeve. [Inside this sleeve is a blue card upon which are placed a baby’s bandaid and a tiny circular bandaid, arranged to form an i. [All of this reminds us of endwar’s “decapitation of the i.”]]]]]]


Roy Arenella, “wounded i" (22 Apr 2002)
{{{On the back of this blue card, Roy writes,

I couldn’t resist—after seeing the “de-capitated i” on this morning’s blog—sending you my own “wounded i.” Sorry you had to work so hard to get to him but naturally I had to protect as best I could this vulnerable fellow!

}}}

un violon d’ingres

Arenellanisms to Ficrust Ark

A wonderful potpourri of art-by-mail today.

Valhalla of Cowpats

Ficus strangulensis sends me one of his regular mailart envelopes, this one decorated with a picture of a target with “Holes due to 240-gr Sierra JHC’s). Inside the envelope are a few mailart cards, including one of a butterfly (“kitchen floor casualty 01”) and “GOOD MORNING!” Of course, Fike includes a note atop a bit of the printout of his mailart documentation. He created this mailing for me the same day he created one for the great Waukau, Wisconsin, artist, Malok.


Ficus strangulensis, "GOOD MORNING" (1 Aug 2004)
Would You Accept Mailart from This Man?

The Sport of Tea

From Roy Arenella, mailing number 339 XP/C (xeroxed postcard). Roy is thinking of home and healing now, so the face of the card is a kitchen scene centered around a teacup with a delicate face. Strangely, the reflection of the card appears to show fingers wrapped around the cup, but that cannot be. (A small teacup is stamped on the reverse of the card as well.)


Roy Arenella, "Bowls, etc" (2000, 2002)

A Letter of Letters

Roy begins, I have your first long letter (with decorated pages) propped up under my monitor screen & as I read along I will answer/respond to what I read.

Wait. That’s what I’m doing!

Roy wrote me, from 8 Aug 2004 to 14 Aug 2004, a long letter in response to a couple of letters of mine. The back of most pages is a sheet from Roy’s Newsfax project, and most of these are wonderfully charming concrete poems, all from the early 1970s. It is wonderful to see these pieces, which I’ve only heard rumors of in the past.

Roy has filled the envelope with numerous other small pieces of visual writing, including some outtakes from “Letters from Poughkeepsie.” Real treasures, these.


Roy Arenella, "Letters from New Paltz" (29 Jun 2003)
(Now part of "Letters from Poughkeepsie")
un violon d’ingres

the Letter A (qbdp # 20)

My pattern now, during our overnight trips to the family camp in the Adirondacks, is to construct my mailart mailing after the overnight stay, meaning during the day on Sunday. Then I leave the mail for my father-in-law to take to the post office, so he can ensure that each receives a Caroga Lake cancellation.

So today I created a different mailing. I took a handful of my Goff Group envelopes (surplus that someone gave me when I used to live in Horseheads, New York), and I modified them into Geoff Huth Group cards (ignoring, for the moment, the extra eff in Geoff). Then I wrew a multi-part fidgetglyph about correspondence onto the back of sheets of letterhead. I used three sheets of paper from each of four different organizations, but each piece of paper is different in color or paper type from all of the rest.


Geof Huth, "the Letter A" (28 Apr 2004)
Since this was a mailing about correspondence, I wrote a letter to each recipient on the front of the letterhead. This self-imposed requirement actually persuaded me to write letters to a few people who have been waiting for letters from me.

I decorated each of the envelopes (except for the one going to Belgium) with the recent R. Buckminster Fuller stamp showing Bucky with a geodesic skull (or dome, if you prefer). I enclosed in most of the envelopes copies of my pwoermd sequence “forkèd lake” put out by Anchorite Press as a give-away for my reading in Boston this month.

These are the recipients of “the Letter A”:

These three received copies written upon letterhead for Turtle Rock Summit, Irvine, California:

1/12 Ruth and Marvin Sackner

2/12 Bob Grumman

3/12 Roy Arenella

These three received copies written upon letterhead for Slightly Tortured Music, Van Nuys, California:

4/12 endwar

5/12 Luc Fierens

6/12 Reed Altemus

These three received copies written upon letterhead for Basque Ball, Houston, Texas:

7/12 Arnold Skemer

8/12 Guy r. Beining

9/12 Carlos M. Luis

These three received copies written upon letterhead for Ansewn, Bangor, Maine:

10/12 Joseph Keppler

11/12 John Byrum

12/12 qbdp

un violon d’ingres

When Mailart Sneaks in through the Mailslot

Still Point, Garlock Road, Caroga Lake, New York

Each of these three pieces of mailart didn't strike me as mailart at first glance, so I wonder why that is.

Copyfluxpostart

Reed Altemus is a talented copy artist, even in such times as these when copy art is less common that it was during the 1980s and early 1990s. So when I received a small flat, sans note, from him yesterday (Friday, August 13th), I was pleased. It included a book of poems he and John M. Bennett collaborated on in 2001 (Yr Cream Dip) and a few sheets of folded paper. But what were those sheets?

One is a green sheet of paper with a photocopy of an advertisment for "the first multi-purpose photocopy duplicator!" Strangely, Reed has scored the sheet as if it's a sheet of artist's stamps. Well, that was my hint to see this as mailart, but it took me another day. Even the titled photograph of Reed Altemus & Luc Fierens on a "Fluxpedition along the Rhine" wasn't a good enough hint. But the overprinted multi-colored, perforated sheet, signed and released in an edition of 15, well, that finally made me understand.

Reed Altemus, Perforated Copyart?

The I's Have It

I must say, I never think of my friend endwar as a mailartist. But what else can I make of a guy who sends me a postcard of what appears to be a found visual poem? especially when he adds a little visual poem on the letter i on the reverse. This poem, "decapitation of the i" is certainly inspired by his friend paloin biloid's interest in the letter i but also (it seems) by my series of visual poems, the disembodiment of the alphabet, which I've been slowly publishing on my dbqp weblog without comment. I might claim that endwar's poem is not what the concretist from mid-century would call the "perfect copy," but it shows a good understanding of the infraverbal power of the simple tittle. And he knows that isolated letters I always have unavoidable secondary meaning.


endwar, "decapitation of the i" (2004)

Don't Shake a Gift Drawing by the Mouth

Roy Arenella has sent me a greeting card featuring a Shaker gift drawing from 1857 and a poster advertising an exhibit of such drawings that took place in New York Citty in 2001. So there is a theme here, but why is this mailart? Well, for goodness' sakes, I said to myself after finally understanding, Roy is pointing out how the Shakers' gift of a verbo-visual drawing was the same as the gift of mailart. The reproductions of these drawings are his gift to me and his mailart of that moment. And so he explains:

The first & main attraction was the drawings themselves, physically, their pure force, their idiosyncratic (sometimes wild & whacky) approach to combining pictures (drawings) & words. But also i liked the idea of the drawing as a gift, from another realm to the drawer & a gift from the drawer to her (most were women) community. This was a good example of how I see the art process

As a gift
Both ways--
To & from
Its maker.

Detail of a Shaker Gift Drawing

eyeyesee

There is this man, Roy Arenella, who sends me mail. It arrives in the form of a postcard or an envelope—inauspiciously enough—yet each of these pieces of mail is an integrated piece of art.

Today’s piece (numbered 335 XP/C and dated 9 Aug 2004) is a little surprise, something that causes wonder and leads to contemplation. I begin the card on the message side (a brief note from Roy ending, as always, with his signature as smiling face: he writes “Roy,” and the y of it becomes the nose of a two-eyed smiling face). He includes a 20-cent National Archives stamp on this side, recognizing my profession.

On the other side (which I call the obverse), Roy provides a rich-colored photocopy of a photograph. The photograph is simple: a left hand holding a pair of scissors up in the air, open as if it is cutting into the shadow covering the upper end of the photo.


Roy Arenella, "Asked How the World Speaks" (Jan 2003)
But above and below the hand, we see evidence of the sprockets in this frame of 35mm film, so suddenly we are thrown into confusion. We know a photograph is not real, but this photograph is self-reflexive; it tells us emphatically that it is a photograph. Near the right edge of the photograph is a slightly jagged swoop that indicates the edge of the film, where it was cut. Beyond that, there is blackness, nothingness, the eternal enigma. Is the pair of scissors in the photo, the same pair that cut this swoop through this frame of film?

The caption to the photo is “Asked How the World Speaks it Answered in Pictures.” Our answers arrive through our eyes.

un violon d’ingres

The Silent Mailart Heart of My Name

Momcard

In the mail today, a photocard from Roy Arenella (mailing # 329, dated 6 Aug 2004). It is a simple card: a photograph of his mother near Halloween of last year and a small note about his return from vacation. Roy’s mailings are more like regular correspondence than those of other mailartists. He always writes me a note. His photocards are designed as conveyances for small notes. I enjoy the literal correspondence in his correspondence art; I always love receiving mail.

Maybe I missed this transformation in an earlier mailing, but now my first name appears without a zero for the oh; instead two parentheses and a raised dot make up the third letter of my first name. I love this evolution of the form of the name, which is now something like “Ge(^.)f.”


Shaker Mailart

Roy Arenella’s mailing # 331 from 7 Aug 2004 includes another note and a copy of a small color leaflet “4 Mail Art Markers,” which include four fairly diverse quotations, none of which directly mentions mailart. One of my favorites is this one from Wallace Berman:

Send me things in the mail. Wherever you go, I don’t care where you go, just send me something in the mail from where you are.

Inside the envelope is a small photocopy of a Ray Johnson bunnyhead wrapped around a quotation from Johnson himself: “I’ve spent my life compressing compressing compressing objects & information into small envelopes.”


Roy Arenella, "4 Mail Art Markers" (2001)

Actually, this mailing includes an earlier note from 6 Aug 2004, which is illustrated with a wonderful Shaker gift drawing. Roy says of these drawings, “The stuff is great! & for my eye, more often relevant to the practive of visual writing than a lot of ‘avant garde’ work.”


Shaker Gift Drawing
The copy I have from Roy of these Shaker drawings captivates me, yet I cannot quite make out what it is doing. The drawing posits a rule: that it will consist of a set of mirror-like balancings of its various parts. The rule holds for much of the drawing, but breaks down here and there. Letters decorate the field of the drawing, yet their significance is beyond me. I find it interesting, however, that Z balances with S, reminding us of Barthes’ S/Z. Muted colors abound. The letters appear in the common form of text on old broadsheets: They have dramatic thickenings of their shafts following by remarkably thin serifs and connecting lines.

I yearn for a collection of these drawings, for a book of them.

un violon d’ingres

A slit beside (qbdp # 19)

Still Point, Garlock Road, Caroga Lake, New York

Once again, I didn't create my mailart postcard the night I was away from home (as is my tradition), but in the morning of the next day (while I was still away from home). The day was dreary, so I spent much more time than I might usually take to put together a huge edition for this qbdp (twelve!). I believe this has turned out the best of all my cards so far.

One of these cards is going off to a small mailart show in Massachusetts, my first submission to a mailart show in many years. The meaning of this fidgetglyph seems so malleable to me that it can mean almost anything. So my note to the library suggests that it refers to the process of going to a library, wending through the stacks in search of books, and wandering through individual books. But I told Roy Arenella that it reminded me of my trip through the foothills of the Adirondacks to my in-laws' camp (that is, "cabin"). I told the Sackners, it was about how a number of thoughts and considerations finally lead to insight. Of course, all of these might be true, but the fidgetglyph is primarily about itself.

These are the recipients of "A slit beside":

1/12 Ruth and Marvin Sackner

2/12 Bob Grumman

3/12 Roy Arenella

4/12 kiyotei

5/12 Matthew Shindell

6/12 Dees and Yuriko Stribling

7/12 Scott McDonald

8/12 j0llyr0ger

9/12 Mark Lamoureux

10/12 "Your Library" Mail Art, Phillips Free Public Library, Literary Arts at Mill Pond, 275 Baldwinsville Road, Phillipston, MA 01331-9733 (small to medium postcards; deadline: August 31, 2004)

11/12 Ficus strangulensis

12/12 qbdp

Geof Huth, "A slit beside" (8 Aug 2004)
un violon d'ingres

Maps of Home

When I arrived home yesterday, I was greeted by two small pieces of mailart. Mail makes my day.

Petroglyphic Maps

kiyotei continues his asemic best, but this time he wraws in gold upon the brown backing of a box of popcorn. With three or four different writing systems and a few drawings, kiyotei suggest petroglyphs or maybe drawing upon the skins of animals.

This reminds me that I need to both kiyotei and Roy Arenella to submit some of their asemic works to Tim Gaze's Asemic magazine.


kiyotei, a petroglyphic text (Aug 2004)

A Ways from, Away as, Home

Roy is away from home and sends me a copy of a postcard from a restaurant in Vergennes, Vermont. Upon the reverse of the card (Arenellanism # 325CC--"CC"?), he has created an almost ambigraphic fidgetglyph, one that centers us (as food often does), the simple word "HOME." My surname on the address of the card is an amazing construction of seven vertical lines and two raised dots: |^.|||||^.|


Roy Arenella, "HOME" (2 Aug 2004)
un violon d'ingres

A Wavering, Swaying Tic Tac Toe (qbdp # 18)

Radisson Hotel Boston, Room 2018, Boston, Massachusetts

Too tired last night after my reading to continue further into the night, I put off creating my night-away's mailart card until this morning. While my family slept in the room, I created a tiny and simple postcard in a very small series of four. I was too tired and shaky for anything more this morning, and I was surprised to find an idea for even a fidgetglyph this modest in aspect. This was a poem appropriate for my day, and my hand shook as I wrew the poem on the back of a flimsy postcard of the Buffalo [New York] Naval Servicemen's Park.

These are the recipients of "a s W Y a":

1/4 Ruth and Marvin Sackner

2/4 Bob Grumman

3/4 Roy Arenella

4/4 qbdp

Geof Huth, "a s W Y a" (6 Aug 2004)
un violon d'ingres

Apathetic Transformation

j0llyr0ger, whose name is a two-masted tourist ship from my years on Barbados, sends me a wonderful pwoermd as part of a simple but effective collage--along with a few words on the creation of pwoermds. So important were his words, that I discussed them elsewhere.

j0llyr0ger, "APATHEOSIS"
un violon d'ingres

gnail | finjer | thumn (qbdp # 17)

Still Point, Garlock Road, Caroga Lake, New York

My son, daughter and I arrived at this camp in the Adirondacks very early this morning, not too long after midnight. So we slept here last night but didn't spend a minute of last night here. This is the reason I put together this little card this afternoon, instead of yestereve.

For this mailing, I'm using a postal card that already carries two cents of postage, but I decided not to go to the trouble of adding just 21 cents of postage to each card. Many years ago, the Mid-Hudson Valley Joint Board (an umbrella group for a number of textile workers unions) mimeographed a form letter on the back of these inviting their members to a meeting. However, I filled in the date of the meeting as "no more," since I don't expect them to be holding meetings at 103 Broadway, Newburgh, New York, anymore.

Onto the reverse of this card, I wrew a fidgetglyph that looks reasonable in its original version, but I didn't quite get it right (or write) for any of these cards. However, by wrawing this glyph twice we can now imagine that two hands are holding the card as we read it.

These are the recipients of "gnail | finjer | thumn":

1/7 Ruth and Marvin Sackner

2/7 Bob Grumman

3/7 Roy Arenella

4/7 kiyotei

5/7 Ficus strangulensis

6/7 Matthew Shindell

7/7 qbdp

Geof Huth, "gnail | finjer | thumn"
un violon d'ingres