late summer, ideal studio conditions
Adam and I went on a four-mountain backpacking / off trail / climbing route that was definitely my “acceptance of fall” trip this year — I wrote a trip report about it on my blog. Many glorious views of Mount Rainier. Glacier travel, fourth class climbing, lots of off trail cross country, looooots of talus and scree, bears, marmots and pikas. Also, frogs and tadpoles(?) and mountain goats.
The fall-feeling trip has me thinking its time to make a Winter Happiness Plan. I always make a list of things to do to stay happy in the dark time of year. A list of what would be fun, and I try to get specific: things to cook/bake/ferment, books to read, movies and shows to watch, places to go (like I want to get the ricotta croissant at Honoré, visit an indoor garden or Conservatory, drop in on a few cute design shops). Dinners to host, letters to write, and other cozy activities. I also list of types of trips, like snowshoeing and mushroom hunting and bike rides and so on.
I started this tradition in 2009 with my friend Michael, and every year since I’ve taken great joy in making my plan in the end of fall or beginning of winter. It’s not a to-do list or goals or a list I intend to do all of; rather, it acts as a menu of things to pick from when the days are short.
Here’s how to make your own Winter Happiness Plan.
The visual planning for fall publications (using Short Run on November 2nd as a deadline) has moved from paper into Sketch, and now looks like this:
That design will likely be printed up as an 8-page mini-catalog; I take great delight in making a little printed bit of ephemera to hand out across the table and tuck into packages in the mail. The text/image work will also inform the design of our in-progress /publications page on the ANEMONE website. Doing this part early, I find very helpful in overall planning what to make, too. I’m a visual thinker at this stage.
(Sketch is a vector-based design app that I use instead of Illustrator; see my other favorite tools to use here — I just updated it with all my very specific favorite pens and notebooks also!)
Sitting down with our calendar, plus this continued visual planning also helped Adam and I realize that we’re going to push off almost all the reprints we’d been thinking about for fall until later, and focus just on making new stuff now. ANEMONE is a business in the sense of making and selling useful things, filing taxes and whatnot — but it’s an art project first. And especially the riso publications part, which is so physically and time-demanding, I want to continue to be careful not to direct myself into labor that doesn’t matter. We are still traveling and not in our usual print-studio setup; it’s ok to let some things keep being out of print for now, as much as I’d like to have them out circulating in the world. There is some sense that businesses should always have things in stock, that I think it’s ok for artist-publishers to ignore as a should. (Part of what I’m writing about in the forthcoming Taking Care of Yourself as an Artist Publisher, too.) Time and energy is finite: gotta follow the joy, the energy flows, the sparks of interest.
It’s exciting to be settled down for a few months of creative work coming up next. Reunited with my big 24” monitor computer for the first time in almost a year! My brain is very happy. In this travel era, it’s been very clear that I need longer swaths of days in a row to do creative work. And I need several hours of time I know I won't be interrupted. And I do different kinds of work when I have a big screen: Phone is not good for anything but collecting fragments, laptop is ok, big monitor is best. Of course I also need notebooks and pens. And an uncluttered, dedicated work table that doesn't need to be cleared away for work, where I can make some piles and arrange little altars and have some art supplies. Yesterday and today I spent many hours in Obsidian organizing notes and projects and todo lists; today I want to continue to go through a bunch of notebooks and scraps of ideas and make a clear plan.
I also got my website code setup working again (thanks to Adam helping me sort out new SSH keys for git) and did some updating to the footer for ameliagreenhall.com, so now it looks like this:
I added a Looking For page to complement the Uses page, with a list of things and recs I’m on the look out for. I love building my little website.
The long read for this issue is from The Paris Review. At the Great Florida Bigfoot Conference is worth perusing just for the descriptions of the aesthetics alone:
I saw her the next day at the conference wearing a BIGFOOT SPECIAL FORCES tank top. Against a setting sun, the tank’s Bigfoot walked holding an assault rifle. “He always sees you,” the shirt read, “But you will never see him.”
I admired the passion of the bigfoot-fan artists:
At the happy hour, I sat down next to Thomas and Todd, who’d driven down from Mississippi. In his free time, Todd designs Bigfoot-themed coasters. He doesn’t have an Etsy shop and wasn’t a vendor for the conference. “I just make ‘em for myself and for friends,” he told me. “Take one.” He handed me a coaster which read “Florida Skunk Ape: The Original Florida Man.” The coaster, disintegrating beneath the ring where his beer had been, was red, green, yellow, and black—the same colors you might find on a head shop ashtray.
And I really enjoyed reading (electrical engineering nerd 🤓) this analysis of how much does it REALLY cost to keep charging an electric bike — the conclusion is basically that it’s so little you can think of it as free, but in a longer form:
To charge a 500Wh battery (0.5 kWh), you would multiply the battery capacity by the cost per kWh: 0.5 kWh × $0.16 per kWh = $0.08 So, it costs around 8 cents to fully charge a 500Wh e-bike battery, on average. Assuming a range of roughly 30 miles would result in a cost per mile of 0.2 cents per mile, or one penny per every five miles of riding. If you live a couple of miles from work, your daily commute would cost a single penny.
If you ride 10 miles to work and back on the same bike, five times a week, then your monthly electricity cost would be closer to sixty cents. Basically, most people are going to struggle to spend more than a dollar on electricity per month to charge their bike, unless they’re riding long distances every day. In other words, electricity costs associated with charging an e-bike are so close to zero that most people could probably consider them “free”, for all intents and purposes.
It also compares ebikes to an electricity cost of around $0.04/mile for electric cars. Our vehicle has gotten 42 miles per gallon of gas on average in the 8 years we've had it. (Most of the driving Adam and I do is for trips to climb mountains, not in the city, where we mostly walk, bike and transit.) At $4.50/gallon in WA this year, that's about $0.11/mile for gas before insurance, maintenance, etc. Logistics don’t quite line up for an ebike at the moment but it’s on my list; if I were to get one today I’d probably go for the Aventon Soltera 2.
Here’s another picture of the melting glacier we drove our gas car to visit last week:
These also caught my attention lately, reading wise:
We're in danger (from NASA re: climate, ahhhhhhh)
WHAT IF WE GET IT RIGHT? (also re: climate)
and Getting What We Deserve (also re: climate… I’m looking forward to reading the cli-fi novel BETS when it comes out)
CHALANT! and thoughts on masking, Buster Benson’s annual review on his 47th birthday
The Revolution Will Be Well Fed is coming up from our friends Raspberry Bow Press; you can order it from their very cute bookstore Book Shucker.
Elizabeth Case on doing art and science together
Listening + Looking
Rachel Bitecofer, Ph.D. talking about takeaways from her book Hit ‘Em Where It Hurts (which I just got from the library and am excited to start reading, politics, baby!)
Long distance riso bestie Rachel Hays has some print specials right now if you want to get a set of your artwork risograph printed.
Also, if you’re looking for things to do for the election, Common Power is organizing lots of events to register voters, canvas, and meet online and locally with other volunteers. Maybe it’s all the art book fair tabling, but sitting at a table doing voter registration seems like just my jam.
That’s it for now,
—Amelia
P.S. — I just realized I’ve written 50 newsletters! If I don’t know you, feel free to hit reply and introduce yourself. I always love hearing what people are working on, send me links to websites, publications, blog posts or newsletters you’ve made. And if you have a friend who might like this newsletter, send it their way?
P.P.S. — Speaking of business things — do any of you small business people have a Solo 401k provider you recommend? (Or one you really don’t recommend?) Vanguard just sold that part of their business to Ascensus, which, yikes, so we’re on the hunt for something new for ANEMONE, like Schwab or Fidelity, maybe?