Hard to believe a month has gone by since we did the letterpress tour! Bob Metzler of Green Mountain Letterpress set this up for a Saturday, this past May 15. About 20 people, members of the New England Letterpress Guild, came by the shop to visit me and to see what I spend my hours working on here. After talking prints and doing a little printing out in the shop, Lucy and I spent a few moments showing off our skill at moving our four sheep around the pasture.

Antoinette Ledzian of Stonington, CT. posted this photo on flicker and I think she did indeed catch a great shot of Lucy and the sheep.

After Lucy’s show we all had lunch, and in the afternoon we drove over to North Thetford, VT to visit Bob’s shop. His place is real letterpress and it is impressive. I especially like the idea he lives and works in what was once “Grandpa’s Toy Shop”. This man and his home workplace was a major memory and inspiration from my childhood. I can remember the little shop clearly, less so the Santa Claus-looking man who made the place’s wonderful wooden toys. Trucks, bulldozers and steam shovels, a schoolbus, barns and houses, these were the kind of toys you could do real work with out in a sandbox, all painted nice bright reds, yellows, and deep dark green. Is it possible my own worklife, foregoing the advantages of driving off to some other location every day in favor of just tinkering around home amongst wood shavings and colors, was way back inspired by this memory?

Bob took some pictures too, and these show a few of the group chatting away inside my shop. Looking at at myself in them makes me wonder, however, what would I have been worrying about that morning? My memory is that I had prepared a very nice lunch; could it be I wasn’t confident there would be enough for everyone, or was I worrying that some wouldn’t take to the tabouli or the potato salad?

I was somewhat distracted by all the activities to think about both before, during and after the “big event” and I completely forgot to get my camera out to record the moment.  Perhaps the most dramatic moment was running into Steve Wood who owns and operates Poverty Lane Orchards in Lebanon, NH standing side by side at the urinals in the men’s bathroom.  We stepped away and there was a “what are you doing here? what are YOU doing here moment?”.  (Steve and I had gone to school together at Harvard, I had picked apples for him just ahead of my freshman year, and we hadn’t seen each other in maybe 20 years.)  He was there representing NH Wineries, and found himself pretty quickly right in the middle of the action once folks started showing up.

The location for the event was the conference room off the Russell Bldng’s rotunda, the room in which they hold involved big occasions, such as the Watergate hearings! I would say the pressure of the crowd was more intense around the wine table than around myself, but folks did visit my prints and watch me work and take brochures. I enjoyed asking folks of their connection to the event, and noticed lots of people I met were connected with energy issues, such as they were staff on the Senate Energy committee that Sen. Shaheen serves on. One who was quite interested, took my brochure and came back more than once, after my asking shared she is the NH State President of Fairpont Communications. She went on to tell me my town of Lyme would soon be “lit up”. I asked what this meant and she said we would soon be getting DSL in town. Less than a week later I was pleased to hear that she had not lied, and indeed Fairpoint has “turned on” DSL in our town. The next experiment I plan to try is to e-mail her about a utility pole guy wire that for five years has been in temporary mode, tied hastily around a tree, despite repeated calls by me to first Verizon and then Fairpoint about the unfinished installation. She gave me her card and told me to e-mail me. I’ll let you know if anything happens . . . !