Ergonomically uncomfortable yet?

So, yesterday and the day before....? I apologise. I have my head on straight now. But man, the thing that would consequently turn those days around for me, would be someone making me laugh. Like really laugh, and if that was you, thanks, I needed it.

The affection I hold for this class is sneaking up on me and catching me by surprise. The attention to detail needed is what is getting to me, but not in an anal retentive "design" fashion--more along the lines of you have to pay attention to details to be creative. I'm getting the hang of the software also, which is a huge help, as it now becomes secondary to the actual creative process.

Today...I found out an unexpected glorious thing about campus. I mean, it was one of those places I always knew was there, but never felt inclined to go see. But now....now things are different, and I thoroughly enjoyed the cool dungeon of the James Peel book collection. Most noteably, the William Morris books. SUPER most notably, the Alice in Wonderland book that he printed (he being the printer AND woodcut carver in question). I was completely agog with the woodcuts he made for the illustrations of the story. It was one of these things where you forget that it was "Alice in Wonderland" that you are reading, and pay $4000 to own a copy of it, for the exquisiteness of the printing, the binding, the typesetting, the fucking ILLUSTRIOUS illustrations...it was truly a thing of beauty, and I learned more about why I like the books I like. I suspect however, that this may be the harkening of a burgeoning addiction to book collecting. Also...when they were describing the printmaking process, I started hypothesizing on ways to do it on my own with different mediums, having always been too intimidated to try using wood blocks. The ideal thing would be a heavy sort of plastic that was soft, but dense enough that it wouldn't print sloppily, and could allow for extremely detailed cuts to be made.

AND...for some reason, I was looking at a typeset today (a collection of numbers or letters to be collated on a printing press, etc), and I had this weird feeling of deja vu that growing up we'd had a set, and I'd never realized it obviously, until it was too late. I will have to ask my mother.

Lastly....I feel like I'm still a little ways away from forming a chap book, but I saw an interesting binding/book fashion today that would be totally awesome to use for a chapbook. I'm not going to let it out of the bag until I try it though. It would also (I think) be a great art project for school. Even just the making and binding of a book would be, but it would be important to make sure they weren't just making a book, but that some of the emphasis would lie on the content of the book also, in whatever I might come up with. Ideally, I could see it accompanying a novel study even, but I'm at a loss at the moment as to what book that might be.

But who knows what we'll even be allowed to teach by the time I start teaching. Anything thought provoking seems to be out of style. . . The sad part is, that I'm only half joking. Kids need to be taught pragmatism yes, but they certainly don't benefit from being stifled to death by it either. I think this could be why I am always sort of seeing extremes now in how kids behave in schools...give a kid the ability to be an abstract thinker, but teach them responsibility--responsibility in that every action they do, will have a consequence (good or bad), and that they ultimately are the ones that have to be able to address that. As a teacher, you are a facilitator, not a dictator! Rant rant rant!