Some of our DIY collaborations for the wedding included the following:

Save-The-Date flat cards and envelopes designed by Billy and me on Adobe Fireworks/Illustrator and printed on Gocco. The return address was printed on the envelope flap and the barn illustration on the card was repeated on the upper left corner of the envelope. Cardstock and envelopes supply from Paper Source. Fellow crafty-lawyer-bride Jess at Fig and Plum recounts the pros and cons, do’s and don’ts of committing to Gocco craft for one’s wedding here at her blog.

Out-of-Town bags for our travelling guests. However, since all but a few were out-of-towners, we made extras for the locals as well! The bags had a wedding logo co-opted from the Made-In- China novelty item, Fortune Teller Miracle Fish. In place of “Fortune Teller” and “Miracle Fish”, Billy re-designed it with our names and wedding date on Illustrator. The logos were done using inkjet iron-in transfer paper. In each bag, we included a few helpful items (tissue, sunscreen, water), local goodies (cookies from Cowboy Cookie N’ Grub of San Luis Obispo) and a zine called “Debbie & Billy’s Guide To The Coast”.

Fan-style wedding programs. This had been a conundrum for me years ago when a friend asked me how to make these for her wedding. I had a grommet punch that I kept for fabric uses that would fix an eyelet or grommet in place, but I didn’t know how to create the mechanics of movable paper that was bound by a metal eyelet. Flash forward a few years, a landslide of scrapbooking enthusiasm, stores and tools are now readily accessible. I was looking into the products at Eyelet Outlet, and learned that the trick to making paper held by an eyelet move is to also use an eyelet washer. The scrapbooking world also revealed more efficient ways to affix eyelets beyond eyelet setters and hammers, like the Crop-A-Dile I used to bind the leaves to form the fan. The scrapbooking world has a thing for aquatic reptiles, it seems, because another tool I used to create the fan programs was a corner rounder made by the company Paper Gator.

Our wedding was held at an apple farm. To go with the country orchard theme, instead of numbered table cards, the guests’ names were printed on reproductions of vintage fruit crate labels and each table was assigned a fruit crate label instead of a number. While often no longer copyrighted, it seems (from my brief internet research) that fruit crate labels are highly collectible and borrowing (ahem) the images are hard to come by. Luckily, we found a Dover publication that contained a whole book of full-color crate labels and–biggest score of all–came with a CD of the crate labels as TIFF files! We resized them to uniformly fit on a square card and, at the reception, they were waiting on a clothesline and small clothespins for the guests.

We wanted to share in our word-loving and game-playing and decorated the wedding cake with Scrabble tiles that spelled out “Debbie Loves Billy”. Turns out there are only two B’s in each game set, so we had to borrow from two sets!

Finally, guest favors included a CD in a chipboard sleeve printed on Gocco and packages of red Swedish Fish, both containing the Fortune Teller Miracle Fish novelty.

We’re not sure just what’s next, whether another zine, silkscreen t-shirts or more Gocco prints, but we’re excited that it will be something we do together.

The program is free. Please bring lawn chairs or blankets for festival seating at the Immigration Station. Refreshments are available at the Angel Island Café.  More details and ferry service to and from Angel Island is here.

I’ll be reading, as well as Genny Lim and (YEAH!) poets from Kearny Street Workshop’s P-Cubed, The Postcard Poetry Project: A Literary and Visual Exchange between Kearny Street Workshop and the Asian American Writers’ Workshop will also read original works.

The KSW poets include Thy Tran, who writes literary nonfiction about food, the rituals of the kitchen, and how eating and cooking both connect and separate communities around the world; Cathlin Goulding, a fourth generation Japanese American, whose essays and short stories recently appeared in I Saw My Ex at a Party (Kearny Street Press); Lisa Leong, a graduate of UCLA in art history and Asian American studies and writer for Asia Pacific Arts; Khoi Nguyen, the editor and founder of Gender on Our Minds; and Truc Nguyen, a 1.5 generation Vietnamese American queer activist and social justice organizer.

Several Bay Area leaders and scholars will read Angel Island poems, including Assemblymember Paul Fong (D- Cupertino), Supervisor David Chiu, Supervisor Carmen Chu, Supervisor Eric Mar, Marin Community Foundation President Dr. Tom Peters, California State Parks Marin District Superintendent Danita Rodriguez, scholar Maria Sakovich and others.

Cheers to Muses: A Reading Sponsored by the Asian American Women Artists Association

In conjunction with the de Young’s Artist in Residence: A Place of Your Own, members of AAWAA will read poetry and prose, including work from the anthology, Cheers to Muses, Contemporary Works by Asian American Women. This diverse collection comprises a compelling part of today’s literary voices.

Sunday, January 25, 1 – 4 pm, including a book signing

Koret Auditorium, de Young, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive,
Golden Gate Park, San Francisco

Admission into the Koret Auditorium is free

Related Exhibitions: Asian/American/Modern Art: Shifting Currents, 1900–1970

Writers

Grace Ilagan Angel
Olivia Boler
Clara Hsu
Michelle Meeseon Koehn
Anh-Hoa Thi Nguyen
Grace Tzeng
Maw Shein Win
Nellie Wong
Debbie Yee

Bios

Grace Ilagan Angel is a painter, poet, mother of two girls, successful event planner and a breast cancer survivor. She is currently working on her latest collection of poetry entitled,  “Dreams from the Orchard.”

Olivia Boler is the author of a novel, Year of the Smoke Girl. She has written for a variety of publications including the America 24/7 photojournalism book series, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Marin Magazine.

Clara Hsu’s ensemble Lunation combines poetry with musical instruments. She is the keeper of the Poetry Hotel and organizes free social activities for the San Francisco poet community.

Anh-Hoa Thi Nguyen holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College and her work has been published in journals and anthologies. She has performed at numerous venues in the Bay Area including Kearny Street
Workshop’s APAture 8 & 9, San Francisco’s Litcrawl and Writers with Drinks.

Grace Tzeng was previously a preschool teacher, but now is re-pursuing a writing career.  She has written for In the Classroom (educational topics) for AsianWeek and the former Millbrae/San Bruno Sun and San Mateo Weekly.

Maw Shein Win’s work has appeared in 2River, No Tell Motel, Big Bridge, Babel Fruit, Moria, and other journals. She was an Artist in Residence at Headlands Center for the Arts and has an upcoming residency at Can Serrat.

Nellie Wong is the author of three books of poetry. She’s in the film, “Mitsuye & Nellie Asian American Poets,” and has poems engraved on public sites.

Debbie Yee is a trusts and estates attorney and poet.  A Kundiman fellow, Debbie’s poems have appeared in 32 Poems, Barn Owl Review and MiPOesias, among others.

P3: The Postcard Poetry Project with Debbie Yee and Bushra Rehman

A Literary and Visual Exchange between Kearny Street Workshop and the Asian American Writers’ Workshop (NYC)

Mondays, Feb 2 – Mar 23, 7-9pm

One night in San Francisco, outside of Kearny Street Workshop, two artists mourned the loss of letter writing as an art form. The discussion moved to postcards, the most naked of epistles, on whose limited surface words are shared with the understanding that they will be read not only by the intended, but perhaps by every hand the postcard passes through. For this reason, the artwork is often coded, an image that only the intended can decipher.

Inspired by Kundiman*, these two artists decided to create P-Cubed, The Postcard Poetry Project: A Literary and Visual Exchange between Kearny Street Workshop and the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, two of the oldest Asian American arts organizations in the country. In P-Cubed, writers and artists in San Francisco and New York City will have the chance to create original works of postcard art and poetry and then exchange them with pen pals on the opposite coast. Students will explore various literary, art and print techniques with the goal of producing eight or more postcard poems during the course. The workshop will culminate in a public reading on both coasts and a publication consisting of the poet-artists’ portfolio of work.

This program is supported by Poets & Writers, Inc. through a grant it has received from The James Irvine Foundation.

* Kundiman is an organization devoted to Asian American poetry.

Debbie Yee is a trusts and estates attorney, poet, avid supporter of the nonprofit literary and arts community, arts enthusiast and crafts explorer. In 2007 she was a selected Kundiman fellow and member of the 4th annual Intergenerational Writers Lab. Debbie’s poems appear or are forthcoming in anthologies and literary reviews, including Bateau, 32 Poems, MiPOesias, Barn Owl Review and Cheers to Muses: Contemporary Works by Asian American Women. She is working on a manuscript for a first book. She is a graduate of U.C. Berkeley and U.C. Berkeley School of Law, Boalt Hall. A native of Sacramento, California, she now calls San Francisco home. Debbie will teach the class in San Francisco.

Bushra Rehman’s mother says Bushra was born in an ambulance flying through the streets of Brooklyn. Her father is not so sure, but it would explain a few things. Bushra is a vagabond poet who traveled for years with nothing more than a greyhound ticket and a book bag full of poems. Now, she performs her work regularly around the country and was recently invited to represent NYC at the House of World Cultures Festival in Berlin. She’s co-editor of Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism, an anthology that is taught in women’s studies and ethnic studies classes around the country. Her work has appeared in numerous journals, and she’s been featured in The New York Times, India Currents, NY Newsday, on BBC Radio 4, KPFA, and the Brain Lehrer Show. She was recently a resident at the Headlands Center for the Arts where she finally finished the novel she’s been working on for the last seven years. Bushra will lead the class in New York.

Registration fee is $225. To register by check, please send check or money order to: Kearny Street Workshop, 180 Capp Street #5, San Francisco, CA 94110. Please include your full name and contact info. Or go to Kearny Street Workshop to register online.

I submitted poems last month to The Normal School, a new literary magazine from CSU Fresno. The fledgling publication intrigued me a few months back when I first received word of its submissions call. Though I couldn’t have a look at a back issue (with the inaugural issue coming out Fall 2008), I figured the chances that this Normal bunch would come out with a nicely done pub were pretty good, especially since the website’s color scheme is a near-match to that of my living room (hmmm…tasteful!), and I thought I should try to submit something. Of course, I then promptly let that to-do slip away as so many others have. The last-call call came around last month by email, to which I submitted, and then just as promptly received an auto-reply stating that, due to the overwhelming number of electronic submissions, only postal submissions would be accepted and email submissions would remain unread. Oh.

But by then, I was inexplicably driven by Central Valley poetic ambitions, here explicated: I’ve lately felt nostalgic about seemingly disregarded or forlorn areas of California; true and imagined “vaca” “villes”; culture outside of major cities; my own origins in Sacramento; planned family visits to Modesto and experiencing nothing to do there; the biases I have about these places (and Fresno) as geographical punctuations for Wal-Mart instead of art and literature; and also reading about Lee Herrick’s recent, heartening launch of another issue of In The Grove (also out of Fresno), which contains work by fellow Intergenerational Writers Lab poet, Oscar Bermeo, as well as Facebook friends with shared OCHO #16 pages, Craig Perez and Sasha Pimentel Chacón.

So, despite postal submissions being kind of a hassle and probably wasteful as to time, money and tree product, I printed out my former email submission and submitted via the post, with a SASE. Well, that envelope was returned today with a thinness that betrayed its sealed contents. The envelope contained a pleasant rejection (as shown here and here). And a sticker. First two reactions: 1. Oh well, a rejection. 2. Oh! A sticker!

It is way, way cooler than an “I Voted [American flag]” sticker one gets at their polling place on designated Tuesdays. Even those I don’t get anymore now that I vote by absentee ballot.

The point being, that, despite receiving a rejection slip so many poets and writers know all too well, my 5th-grade, sticker-album, Care-Bears self was totally won over by the fact that the editors sent me a sticker:

Top Ten Things
You Can Do For Literature

10. Read the current issue of ZYZZYVA cover to cover.
9. Give a free issue to a friend (just send ZYZZYVA the address).
8. Give a gift subscription to a friend.
7. Link to http://www.zyzzyva.org on your blog or website.
6. Check in to the ZYZZYVA blog every day.
5. Mention ZYZZYVA in your blog.
4. Renew your subscription without being asked more than once.
3. Nominate the editor for a MacArthur “genius” grant.
2. Make a token grant of your own.
1. Make a tax-deductible gift commensurate with your capacity to contribute.

Small Press Distribution invites you and your friends to our Spring Open House & Book Sale:

Saturday, April 12th, 2008
12 Noon – 4PM
20-50% off all books!
Readings at 2PM

About our readers: Joanne Kyger is a Bay Area master poet and author of two recent books, ABOUT NOW: COLLECTED POEMS and NOT VERACRUZ; Marjorie Welish is a poet, painter, teacher and art critic, whose most recent book ISLE OF THE SIGNATORIES is just out from Coffee House; Taylor Brady is an education activist and the author of several books, most recently OCCUPATIONAL TREATMENT; and Rob Halpern is a teacher and the author of RUMORED PLACE. Brady and Halpern are also the co-authors of Snow Sensitive Skin, from which they will read at the event.

FREE & OPEN TO ALL!

SPD Warehouse
1341 7th St. (@ Gilman)
Berkeley, CA
510-524-1668

The latest two-month-tested household product, Biscuit-approved:

Feline Pine Scoop is made of pine sawdust with guargum (according to the company, Nature’s Earth) that clumps like clay litter, but with a lot less bulk and is “100% renewable and biodegradable.” (It’s still effectively not biodegradable, at least for me, since I still throw it in a plastic bag in the regular trash.) This stuff works as well as clay litter in my opinion, producing featherweight orbs of sawdust instead of clay rocks. I’ve tried paper-based*, and wheat-based environmentally-friendly litters in the past, but like the pine product the best. The paper kind doesn’t give the odor control of pine and the wheat kind doesn’t clump so well and leaves a lot of tracking. The company website has a special offer now (through March 31, 2008) for a free bag/box. Try it out and send in the rebate for the value of the purchase price. A 4 lb. box (keep in mind that sawdust is quite a bit lighter than clay) is $4.99 at Target.

*Pet peeve (no pun intended): The recycled paper litter is itself packaged in plastic–great, hi, you don’t make sense anymore. Feline Pine Scoop comes in a cardboard box–Great! Hi, bed of pine!

I was frenzied, but found calm.

Tagged:  Oscar, Barb, H. Johnson, Mary, ljc

“Lifting” by Cynthia Tom.