Rare hang out out in the kura barn (while wife’s band rehearses inside so a bit too much commotion for me) So instead, I’m putting away books and *trying to* tidy up stacks of scrapbook materials, ephemera, maps, passports, other treats / so much goodness! But first need space on the…
What follows are artifacts, mildly documented, in situ, with brief annotations.
I made some Scrapbooks, they are really quite magnificent.
This is my workbench with stack of Scrapbooks (don’t look too close).
These multipurpose, archival historical record capturing and creating “devices” will make their way out into the world to find forever homes – one here in Japan, maybe one for our family and the rest to friends in BC who I think will love and stuff.
Details include:
Notable that I used my “foot pedal operated overhead laser scanner” to capture steps along the way as well as put a “vintage” iPhone on a tripod facing the bench so maybe one of these days there will be a video documenting the process. It won’t necessarily be “good” but it might simply exist.
The scrapbooks however, as mentioned above, are magnificent by any possible measure (says me ;)).
Opening a big santa sack of recent items by post including aerogrammes/ aerograms, passports, international driver’s licenses, documents, hotel letterhead, records (namechecking recent interview on Rice Field Records), postcards, etc from Nepal, Monaco, East German DDR, probably i dunno… Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, United Nations, others i don’t quite understand.
Also mail from Ukraine which allows mention of intrepid postal workers delivering despite war and displacement, + blabbity blah about guest coming to visit, feeling discombobulated after #MECFS “crash mode” – that’s it except the parts i forgot. Argh prob a ramble about the “passport forgery project” {recalling i riffed about taking “intimate documents” and adding life to them}
{this should and will be a separate bonus post but in the meanwhile…}
Continue reading Sort-ganizing Ephemera by Post (with Royal Dudes & the Muffs)Ambient views and vibes of making a series of 4 very different postcards ~ fiddling with stamps (postal and inky), various pens, scissors, glue and other crafts odds and ends in kura barn in provincial Japan
Stamps and items from: Gibraltar, Malaysia, Diego Garcia, Nepal, Palau, Tuvalu, Japan, Tahiti, Antigua, Sri Lanka, India, BOIT, Newfoundland, CCCP, Canada, UK, & featuring Fredrick Varley, Ichiro Olson, Baden-Powell, Capilano suspension bridge, rabbits and many other notable details and destinations.
No chit-chat or narration, just hanging out.while listening to Bill Janovitz’s great album Walt Whitman Mall (used w/o clearence) on vinyl with admiration.
Remixing expired passports from Romania and Albania into “dossiers of mystery and tactical intrigue” complete with endorsements, visas, assignments, sightings, safe houses, maps, aliases, poetry, ephemera, snippets, stamps – both ink and postal – musings, memos, codes, secrets.
Completely usual behavior – carry on with your diligent efforts.
Checkpoints include: Sri Lanka, Nepal, Diego Garcia, Vatican, Athens, Kyoto… etc + green beavers and diligent dogs
Continue reading Forging Passports, so to speak (“life during wartime”)In front of a wood stove, Dave stashes cards from the “string of honour” into archival book while recounting tales of the wonderful folks who sent greeting cards and letters to Tsuchida Cottage.
Along with banter about:
* having several scrapbooks on-the-go at all times
* special collections and on-going correspondence
* topsy turvy start to the year
* “lap projects” like mending and scrapbooking
* thoughts about last year (lots of paperwork!)
* theme for this year (letting go)
and usual digressions, meanderings and anecdotes (i.e. hanging stereo speakers and maybe something about solar panels). Oh, there is a Dymo LabelMaker in action.
Very grateful for your friendship and lovely correspondence.
PS if I’ve missed sharing your card I probably shared under separate cover / somewhere else, or will do another time (thinking of you Astrid in Germany who’s art is already hanging up).
Whittling away on my poetry / musings book project “circumnavigation, of sorts” / working title being more appropriate to the process than I could’ve imagined…
Digging into so many diaries, journals, notebooks, scrapbooks and what have you to find messages to a future self from various incarnations of someone who might be me.
Gotta say, the scribbles are sometimes quite emotional, sometimes surprising, often times amusing, other times well,… hard to say except noting ‘I was always trying & always making’
A conversation about DIY constructing scrapjournals with board game backs, calendar paper fronts, mixed blocks inside, with a side sewing technique. Including: what materials to gather and adding a few treats to start so you “don’t get precious”.
Plus using a Tin Tin calendar as a substrate for a travel scrapbook with a ephemera (coaster, tickets stubs, boarding passes, maps, etc) from Thailand, Malaysia, Nepal, Greece, Rome , Istanbul (with space for Suez).
Plus a few comments about the Vatican’s reconciliation *campaign* with Indigenous people of current-day Canada. Lighting incense and sage in hopes of sincerity and action.
All from the “Giggling Piglet studio” in a historic storehouse barn in provincial Japan with *Special hellos* to Kim in Austin, Jason in Gifu, Dan in Mass, Vincent in Victoria, Aki in the islands, the students of a school near Yokota, and others along the way.
More Importantcy:
* Indian Residential School Survivor’s Society (donate)
* DownieWenjack foundation (donate)
* First Nations reconciliation & shame of residential school (poem)
Just adding beat related ephemera to binders, poems to scrapbooks, cards and letters too, sometimes to one scrapbook, sometimes to another, depending on the form and function, music plays in the background – a compilation for Jack Kerouac – all in a historic kura storehouse barn in provincial Japan.
No commentary, no chit chat, just ya know,… hanging out playing with scissors, glue, tape and whatnot.
Thanks Matt T. and Dan B.
Ambient hang out and putting artifacts and items from the Kerouac “On the Road” exhibit in 2021 at Kobe, Japan – along with a dossier of items from Lowell, Massachusetts – into a plain white binder with sheet covers, while listening to a collection of hep songs assembled for Jack Kerouac’s hundredth birthday by Bear Family records while in “Giggling Piglet Studios” in a historic kura storehouse barn in provincial Japan. No commentary, chitchat – just hanging out.
Thanks Matt T and Dan B.
