“In departments of education, professors talk about the “fluency” that those who are learning to read need to achieve to become good readers. Unless one can digest the letters on the page fast enough, one cannot comprehend what one is reading. But once one learns how to read, there is a speed beyond which one stops reading in a truly effective way. I am convinced that most speed-reading is impaired reading, just like the sort you do when you have a fever or are tired or engaged in other tasks at the same time you are supposed to be reading. Unless you are very smart, speed-reading forces you to ignore al but one dimension of a literary work, the simplest information. What we lose is the enjoyment that made people turn to literature in the first place….

“I want to ask what reading would look life if we were to reintroduce, forcefully, the matter of time…The mighty imperative is to speed eveything up, but there might be some advantage in slowing things down. People are trying slow eating. Why not slow reading?…

“The role of literature is to mess with time, to establish its own rhythm. A new agenda for literary studies should open up the time of reading, just as it opens up how the writer establishes his or her rhythm. Instead of rushing by works so fast that we don’t even muss up our hair, we should tarry, attend to the sensuousness of reading, allow ourselves to enter the experience of words.”

We English majors (once an English major, always an English major, says Garrison Keillor) were taught to read this way in college. It was called close reading (it is still called that, isn’t it?), and although not equivalent to slow reading, close reading requires that you read slowly, and the end result is much the same: a much richer reading experience. Wine lovers sip each glass slowly to give the wine time to reveal itself, and to give themselves time to savor the full range of its flavors. So with reading. Reading quickly doesn’t lend itself to the pleasures of seeing layers of meaning in a sentence or understanding why the writer chose to use those specific words, or any of the other discoveries and joys of reading good writing. And, then, once you’ve found a book you truly love…well, there’s always rereading.

Back from Art & Soul, an arts retreat in Hampton, Virginia at which I spent four days painting, collaging, making books, and generally having a good time with art and artists. My favorites were full-day workshops in paint and collage, one each with Ann Baldwin and Traci Bautista (see pix of them in action, along with some inside pages from one of Traci’s journals). Ann’s and Traci’s approaches and styles are very different, but each class was a terrific learning experience. Ann, in particular, is an excellent teacher, and for someone like me, who has very little experience with painting and acrylics, her class was a revelation. Although each student emerged with two “completed” pieces at the end of the day, for me, the class was all about technique and advice and an opportunity to use both. I left the workshop eager to practice Ann’s process at home. I suppose that I’ve known it subsconsciously all along, but I love layers and texture. For me, texture in paint is the visual equivalent of touch, and it’s tremendously satisfying to create it.

As to Traci’s work, while her results (and process) are very spontaneous and playful, in fact she has degrees and solid experience in graphic design and typography (and high-tech marketing to boot). We painted some wild papers — including paper towels — to use for backgrounds and to tear up for collage, and I’ll want to use her techniques again too.

The book I made, in a class with Doris Arndt (see top pix), looks to have metal covers, but in fact, it’s book board covered with (silver) metallic duct tape (who knew there was such a thing?), and splashed with alcohol inks. It was the first time I’d used these, and I liked the effects. The stitch itself wasn’t difficult, but needle and thread have to go through each piece of copper tubing on the spine twice — one on the way up and once on the way down — and that was a little thorny. I’d like to make a second book with this type of spine, substituting some other material for the copper tubing.

In a setting such as this one, the instructors make all the difference, and I was fortunate to have three whose lessons I’ll take to heart and experiment with. Three out of four’s not bad. I’m less focused on the social aspect of these events, which I appreciate is very important to many of the participants (and puts me in the minority), which makes doing advance homework about the instructors all the more important.

Throughout the days, I kept focusing on Ann’s comment that she always does her worst work in workshops and just forged ahead. And I tried — with limited success, but at least I was consciously aware of this when I was doing it — to avoid the “comparison thing.” It wasn’t easy. There was some wonderful work being done, not just in my classes, but everywhere, and it was hard to go straight to my classroom when there was so much enticement on the way there.

So now I’ve gotten the “newbie” thing out of the way, and I expect I’ll go back, if not to this specific event, then to the ones on the west coast, or to the several other retreats that have cropped up in the past five years or so. These programs are, at their core, craft-oriented, and I’m convinced that the main reason for their rise is — isn’t it always these days? — baby boomers. BBs are finding themselves with more time to play: either they’re retired or their kids have gone off (to college or altogether) or both. The amount of money being spent on art supplies, in comparison to, say, 10 years ago, must be astronomical, if the cases being wheeled around the convention center were any indication. And the Internet has made it possible for aspiring crafters and artists in even the most remote locations to get their fix, not to mention that it’s opened up a whole world for those former full-time workers and former full-time moms who want to sell to them from the comfort of their homes.

Got back from Virginia– a 7 1/2-hour not unplesant drive — just in time to head off to the first of my three sessions on the Secret Belgian Binding at BookWorks. News at 11.

Rosenbaum cites a “glaring omission” in the report: that a major reason that smart and ambitious young people don’t look to arts administration as a career is that they can make much more money elsewhere. As someone with experience as both a young and not-so-young arts administrator, she’s right on the money (pun intended). There is a fascinating but dangerous assumption in the nonprofit community (and those who fund it) that money for programming is legitimate and money for administration, including salaries, is less so. And often, Board members and staff are apologetic when speaking about compensation. Why?

Corporate society assumes that good products and programs are the result of smart people who envision, plan, execute and manage them effectively. It recognizes that if its best people are not compensated appropriately they will leave or become disaffected (and thus less effective) or both. Why should these assumptions be different in a nonprofit environment? Sadly, there’s likely something else at work: we value the contributions of nonprofit managers less than those of for-profit workers. Perhaps we think that arts administrators should be motivated by their love for the arts. Of course, many are and should be, but can Board leaders of arts organizations — individuals who often have been asked to serve in part for their business skills — truly believe that this is enough?

I’ve often been puzzled why it is that smart, market-savvy business executives and community leaders who go on nonprofit Boards set aside so many of the tried-and-true principles that serve them so well in the for-profit world. Board members should fight for budgets that pay the arts organization’s best managers fairly, and expect the expertise and accountability that they demand of their own companies’ employees. And arts staff should stop apologizing for the (miniscule) increases they factor into their budgets for administration each year.

Unfortunately, I think that Rosenbaum is right. I don’t think today’s young people will be as accepting of the inevitability of being underpaid to work in nonprofit arts organizations. They simply won’t take these jobs; or they’ll say ‘yes,’ with stars in their eyes, and exit early. The loss will be ours.

My daily journal — the one I regularly carry with me — should be able to withstand washes of wet media, so I’m going to try using a text block made from watercolor paper also, but lighter weight than what I’ll use for the experiment book: 90 lb – 100 lb for the daily journal, 140 lb for the other. For those journals into which I’ll tape or paste items — say, my “flip book” for images that resonate or inspire me — I plan to use standard notebooks. In this case, it’s the wire binding that’s most important, since I want to be able to flip easily through the pages.

I’m also more aware now of how the pen feels against the paper; I expect that I’ve always been conscious of this but, nevertheless, I kept buying the same kinds of pens: those extra-fine-point ones, such as the Sakura Pigma Micron pens, that graphic artists seem to favor. I suppose I didn’t make the connection between the diameter of the tip of the pen and my writing experience. Then I started noticing that my most confident writing (I mean this purely from a graphic perspective; nothing to do with content) comes from pen points of at least medium thickness. I also like a bit of resistance from the paper as I write. The fine-point pens I’ve been writing with (and used on Velata) simply haven’t done the trick.

So I’m experimenting with pens with thicker points. I recently bought a Sakura Gelly Roll Gelato retractable pen with a 0.8 mm (medium) point that I’m enjoying. I’ll also be trying paper with a bit more texture for text blocks. I’ll be working on a new daily journal tomorrow, using 90 lb watercolor paper. I’ll let you know how the combination feels to me.

We stopped in at the Burnsville Town Center across the street from the gallery to see a quilt that my friend had heard about. It’s amazing. The work of quilt artist Barbara Webster, it portrays key places, people and sights in the history of Yancey County, and surrounds them with representations of the four seasons. She used both old photographs and took over a thousand new ones. it’s a masterpiece of design, and spans the entire lobby wall (the size is 24′ x 7′). It’s well worth making a trip just to see it.

After lunch (which was a delayed birthday treat for me), we traveled on to Penland School of Crafts, so that my friend could visit with a book artist friend she hadn’t seen for nearly 20 years, Jana Pullman, who’s been teaching a two-month class in leather bindings. I planned to visit Annie Fain Liden, who’s currently a teaching assistant in Beth Ross Johnson’s weaving class. Annie Fain is one of my bookmaking teachers as well as a friend, and it was a joy to catch up with her.

It was a long day, and a good one. I’m soooo looking forward to the book arts workshop I’ll be taking at Penland this summer with book artist Laura Wait. I’ve been Googling Laura to learn more about her work and have found many examples of her books, which has made me even more enthusiastic about learning from her.

Before we got Twiggy, I’d never been much of a ‘dog person’ — or a ‘pet person’ for that matter — but now I’m no different from the dog lovers whom I used to make fun of for speaking to their dogs in baby talk. Sigh. One of the first books I made, a very simple accordion, was , in fact, a book about Twiggy. So much for being a serious book artist, I thought at the time. Sigh again. You’ll be glad to know I’ve made more books since then.

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken away from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

This immensely profound statement reminded me, yet again, that (thankfully) under very different circumstances, I can choose how I present myself to others every day, every moment. When someone asks “How are you?”, I can choose to relate my latest annoyance or complaint about the state of the world, my health, the latest service foul-up(aren’t our lives full of these?), or I can elect to say “I’m well,” and feel fortunate that, whatever else may be going on, this statement is fundamentally true most of the time.

This is by no means an ode to denying negative feelings or being a Pollyanna in the face of major distress or sadness. We should have outlets for these, of course, and those who care about us should understand. And certainly there’s a time and place for airing minor annoyances — so much of this is about context, isn’t it? But the proportion of what I’ve come to call “mosquito bites” to major stress is, for most of us, infinitesimally small. We’re blessed that this is the case, so why not act like it?

I’m better about this than I used to be, but I have a long way to go, which is why I welcomed seeing Frankl’s quote again. It’s a good reminder to put things in perspective.