Prayer

Last week, my San Jose State students started printing on our new Vandercook (we're calling her Hermes). The same day of the first student to use the press, I also had students from the Mills College Book Arts Program visit my studio to learn about papermaking.

Also on that same day: the United States dropped its largest non-nuclear bomb on Afghanistan.

I tried to say something like this that day, but it came out garbled: papermaking and printmaking have a long legacy of being part of resistance movements. It was not lost to me that on the same day a bomb was dropped, I introduced these processes to a new generation. I can only hope that by continued teaching of this craft, this legacy, and the fight therein, will continue.

This isn't just a blog post; it's a prayer.