Speech and Writing: "The Way Our Words Transform in Flight" (qbdp # 97)

Crowne Plaza, Room 318, Rochester, New York

Once again, I created this card in the morning, just before leaving the hotel--probably because I didn't design this calliglyph until after midnight. Again, I didn't add a personal message to the cards. Instead, I added a one-word message to each card--and these words when written together form a single sentence:

Yes, I must write now to you quickly.

The recipients of "The Way Our Words Transform in Flight" (qbdp # 97) were

1/8 Ruth and Marvin Sackner

2/8 Bob Grumman

3/8 Roy Arenella

4/8 Ruud Janssen

5/8 Luc Fierens

6/8 Mick Boyle

7/8 Angela Genusa

8/8 qbdp

un violon d’ingres

A Number of Words: "12534 s ss" (qbdp # 96)

Hyatt Regency Wind Watch, Room 510, Hauppauge, New York

I drove out to the wilds of Long Island yesterday, arriving at this hotel late at night. I had so much to work on last night that I didn't try to create an issue of qbdp until this morning, when I quickly took a fidgetglyph I'd wrawn a few days ago and sketched it onto nine cards.


[Unfortunately, I forgot to number this issue; fortunately, I didn't misnumber it.]

The recipients of "12534 s ss" (qbdp # 96) were

1/9 Ruth and Marvin Sackner

2/9 Bob Grumman

3/9 Roy Arenella

4/9 Ruud Janssen

5/9 Jassy Lupa

6/9 frips

7/9 Angela Genusa

8/9 Jukka-Pekka Kervinen

9/9 qbdp

un violon d’ingres

Slipped into Place: "2 Cuts" (qbdp # 95)

Still Point, Caroga Lake, New York

Yesterday, when I was still quite ill, Nancy and Tim and I and my in-laws and Nancy's sister and her family went to the Fonda Fair in nearby Fonda, New York (which is the ancestral home of Henry and Jane and Peter Fonda). The fair was as it always is, so it was modestly interesting, and I used up many tissues as I blew my nose. One of the exhibits, however, included a selection of cards printed on "an 1865 Gordon foot powered printing press using antique letterpress cuts" (or etchings). I collected a few of these, and had enough copies of two of them to put together a small mailart mailing. After writing three-line poems and their titles on two of these cards, I slipped them into small envelopes for delivery to eight people.


The recipients of "2 Cuts" (qbdp # 95) were

1/9 Ruth and Marvin Sackner

2/9 Bob Grumman

3/9 Roy Arenella

4/9 Ruud Janssen

5/9 John M. Bennett

6/9 frips

7/9 Jassy Lupa

8/9 Dan Waber

9/9 qbdp

un violon d’ingres

Homage to My Ancestral Home: "The City of New Orleans, August 29, 2005" (qbdp # 94)

Still Point, Caroga Lake, New York

Five days ago, Hurricane Katrina, possibly the biggest storm to hit the United States during recorded history, slammed into the territory along the Gulf Coast, hitting New Orleans almost directly. Only nine days before that, my family and I were in New Orleans ourselves so I could attend the annual meeting of the Society of American Archivists. While in the city, we suffered through the heat and humidity, but we always enjoyed New Orleans, especially the food. I'm sure over one thousand delicious crayfish made up our meals over the course of the three days we were in the city.

The city, however, is a bit more personal to us. New Orleans is the birthplace of my paternal grandfather, George Huth (a man I seem almost to be named after). New Orleans was also the city where our Huths first entered the country, from the Alsatian countryside of France. Three generations of my family called New Orleans home, and even in my lifetime my family would visit New Orleans to visit family. New Orleans is something of a home to me, a magical place I was always honored to be connected to.

All of this made the shock of the storm, the horror of the destruction, a little more personal to us, even though we stayed in the French Quarter, a part of the city that experienced little damage, especially when compared to the rest of the city. So tonight, I used my broad pens to create something that would memorialize Hurricane Katrina's destruction of my city, and what I came up with was a mandala-like typoglyph.

The heavy ink caused the paper I used to buckle a little. And this buckling createe a radiating series of shadows, shallow channels of darkness. These spokes leading out from the center of this piece help to point out that the damage to New Orleans was only part of the damage caused by this storm, which also destroyed other sections of New Orleans and parts of Mississippi and Alabama. (Actually, A.A. Berry, one of the recipients of this mailing lives in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, a city we drove through on our way to and from New Orleans a couple of weeks ago, and a city that bore some of the brunt of Katrina.)


This visual poem is actually a single word, which readers might just be able to read if they start at the circumference of the circle and read to its center point. But I've twisted the letters just as the storm twisted the buildings, people, and nature in its path.

[Uncharacteristically, I did not mail out this piece right after creating it. I had originally intended to fold the piece and slip it into booklet envelopes I had brought to Caroga Lake. After creating the poem, however, I decided to buy some large white envelopes, so I wouldn't have to fold the poem and mar its appearance. For this reason, this issue of qbdp went out about a week late.]

The recipients of "The City of New Orleans, August 29, 2005" (qbdp # 94) were

1/8 Ruth and Marvin Sackner

2/8 Bob Grumman

3/8 Roy Arenella

4/8 Ruud Janssen

5/8 Mick Boyle

6/8 A.A. Berry

7/8 RF Côté

8/8 qbdp

un violon d’ingres

Almost Nothing: "secret" (qbdp # 93)

Still Point, Caroga Lake, New York

Back at Caroga Lake, I once again reused a set of postal cards inviting people to a union meeting. The only "art" on this card is the scratched-out word "secret."


The recipients of "secret" (qbdp # 93) were

1/5 Ruth and Marvin Sackner

2/5 Bob Grumman

3/5 Roy Arenella

4/5 Ruud Janssen

5/5 qbdp

un violon d’ingres