“You have been neglecting our blog!” Spike complained.
And he’s right. It has been a time of busyness – a series of retirement parties for Gary, an annual gathering of our AAPA friends, preparing for autumn, buying books and listing them to sell, a trip to Seattle for the Antiquarian Book Fair. Blog thoughts occurred often but they have been…neglected. So have art projects, garden work, and other matters NOT including the cats, no matter what they say!
Gary worked for Eugene’s daily newspaper, the Register-Guard, for 43 years: ten as a pressman, and the last 33 as a computer programmer. With ten years before that as a pressman at the Roseburg News-Review, he has 53 years of employment at only two companies. Not many can say as much. (Of course he had the usual teenage jobs before all that.) He was royally feted by the company, his department, and even by his pals in his weekly hiking group, who turned him into a human compass in a private ritual atop their favorite butte, Baldy.
AAPA is the American Amateur Press Association. It’s a national organization for hobbyist and retired professional letterpress printers. With letterpress becoming popular again among artists and printers, I’d suggest checking out this organization if you are interested in printing. Many of the members are getting “older” and looking for younger folks to take up their presses and supplies.
The Oregon Delegation of the AAPA meets annually, the locations rotating but always featuring a potluck picnic. This year we met at the home of members Bob and Ann Rose, who live on the Santiam River. Ann is the hobby printer – Bob is a professional geologist.
I always covet Ann’s gorgeous Vandercook press – many’s the time I have suggested to Gary that we could have a press (if a smaller one) but it’s not the press that takes up the space, it’s the type cases and equipment. So mostly I contribute pieces of writing at the request of members who actually do print - although one of these days I’ll surprise them all and turn something out on the computer for one of the monthly bundles.
Gary (left) posed with our noble leader; Dean Rea – a longtime newspaperman, editor, and journalism school professor - also retired from the Register-Guard. Both are looking healthy and prosperous (not to mention fit) in their roles as retirees! Although Dean recently started doing stories and photos for a small weekly newspaper in our area since they had no one covering school sports. He maintains that it’s appropriate, since he started his journalistic career at a weekly.
Bob has been busy collecting samples of fossils of flora from our region. It’s hard to describe his enthusiasm – rapture? – when showing a tiny slab that reveals a dock-like plant structure. “Just to pick this up and know that it has been there for 40 million years, and was never before seen by human eyes,” he enthuses. Of course most of his specimens require infinite care to clean and expose, and study to determine their place in the family of plants and the Earth’s geological span.
While circled on the lawn for the annual meeting, one member spotted the web of a trap-door spider that generated a lot of attention. By the time I got to see it the spider had evidently grown tired of responding to fake alerts and it did not make an appearance, but its tunnel-like web was fascinating none-the-less.
We drove home past Green Peter Lake, with Green Peter Mountain rising behind it. Green Peter Lake was form by the.…um….erection of Green Peter Dam. We pondered the meaning of the name, and sure enough, in Oregon Geographic Names author Lewis McArthur states that the name should be interpreted at its most suggestive meaning.
Driving through Sweet Home I had a giggle at sign on a diner that indicates the intrusion of upscale ideas into small towns: “SPECIAL: biscuits with sausage gravy, and a small mocha latte.”
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