Good Boy
A new episode with Frances Jetter, thoughts on losing our dog-boy Bendico, a couple of Instax, rollerball art, & more
The Virtual Memories Show News
A 2x/week email about a podcast about books & life
Podcastery
This week, I posted Episode 613 of The Virtual Memories Show, as artist Frances Jetter joins the show to talk about her amazing new book, AMALGAM: An Immigrant, His Labor Union, and His American Family in Brooklyn (Fantagraphics Underground). We talk about how the book both expanded and narrowed in scope during its 12-year process, how her grandfather’s story bleeds out into American, Jewish and labor history, and how she integrated her trademark linocut prints with other media to create an unforgettable graphic narrative. We get into how the editorial illustration field changed over her career and why she moved toward artist’s books and narrative art, why “illustrator” isn’t a dirty word & why having her work out in the world is important, how we don’t always see the resonances of our work when we’re in the middle of it, how working with other materials and forms (like sculpture) rejuvenated her drawing, what she learned about storytelling in the making of AMALGAM, her family’s political background and her awakening, how students have changed over her 40+ years teaching at SVA, and more. Give it a listen, and go read AMALGAM!
Last week, I posted Episode 612, feat. Roland Allen, author of THE NOTEBOOK: A History of Thinking on Paper (Biblioasis), which explores how the proliferation of paper & binding changed culture, business, and maybe the nature of human consciousness. We talk about how keeping a diary got him obsessed-ish with notebooks, how he found a narrative and protagonists as he delved into the history of notebooks, and what it means to see the notebook as a piece of technology or hardware. We get into the theory that sketchbooks allowed artists to move toward realism, how diaries created a new, private persona distinct from the public self, how he discovered a new reading for a line of Hamlet, and how digital options never manage to replace the paper notebook. We also discuss how Moleskine came to dominate the notebook market and how Bruce Chatwin’s The Songlines jumpstarted that craze, how Roland learned to switch off the “this isn’t interesting” filter in his own diaries, how Dutch album amicorum (friendship books) served as a social media precursor, how our notebooks can outlive us (and his posthumous plans for his diaries), and plenty more. Give it a listen, and go read THE NOTEBOOK!
Recent episodes: Eric Drooker • Simon Critchley • Doug Brod • Sven Birkerts • Christopher Brown • Dmitry Samarov • Stephen B. Shepard
Good Boy
We had to say goodbye to Bendico on Monday. He broke a leg on Sunday, and it was diagnosed as osteosarcoma; at 10+ years old, his chances of surviving amputation and chemotherapy were slim, and we made the decision to let him go and end his suffering.
I was on a train to Boston when the break happened, which meant that Amy had to handle it all by herself, taking him to the emergency vet (and getting a ~70 lb. greyhound into her Mini by herself), and then to an orthopedic surgery clinic later on Sunday. If I had been driving, I’d have turned around and blown off my presentation at the conference in Boston, but the train didn’t have a stop for another hour.
They couldn’t make an immediate cancer diagnosis that night, but we both knew what was coming, and knew what we had to do. I left for home on the first train after my session, but we had decided that Amy should go ahead and say goodbye without me, that keeping Benny alive and doped up a few extra hours for my convenience would have been selfish. Besides, he was always a mama’s dog.
The experience has been devastating, and I wasn’t even there for the worst of it, sitting on a train lazing in a hotel room running on a treadmill schmoozing in an exhibit hall pattering at a lectern
I cried in the hotel room and the shower, and then on the train ride home when she sent me a picture of them waiting for the vet, and when I got in my car in the parking garage, alone at last, I truly bawled and wailed.
The drive home from Stamford was like a time warp. I must have been delirious with grief, because songs on the radio seemed to end 30 seconds after they began, and my usual landmarks on the Thruway came up so randomly it seemed as though they were out of order.
I pulled up to the house and saw in front of the garage the can where we toss Benny’s poop-bags, and I started crying all over again.
Benny was our 3rd greyhound, and the second to go from osteosarcoma. It’s a risk with that breed. Our greyhound-owning friends expressed a different kind of sympathy than our other pals, just because they know what it’s like to get this strain of catastrophic news, and to lose a beloved family member like that. Next March would have been the 8th anniversary of when we rescued each other.
I called him the World’s Laziest Greyhound™, but he had his moments of frenzy, especially when you’d get him a new toy, like the bourbon bottle squeaky-toy I brought back from last week’s trip to Kentucky.
Benny loved to have his snout and ears scratched, put up with my car-wash step-over move, hated baths, had to have his NUBZ-treat at noon (broken in two pieces, with one in the living room and one in the bedroom) but was otherwise more indifferent to food than any grey we’ve ever seen, would only pee once per walk for the first year he was with us, would jump up on the sofa & look out the living room window any time Amy left the house (sometimes he’d cry, too), would only ever bark to get us to come down the hall to the bedroom to throw toys at him, loved people more than other dogs, could never figure out stairs (up or down), had hookworm when we got him that took more than a year to get resolved, would patrol the entire perimeter of our yard every night (no matter the weather or my irritation level), hated thunder ever since the house got hit by lightning, always eagerly jumped into the car but always hated driving more than 3 minutes, lost his prey-drive after a few years but not before a grisly encounter with a chipmunk in our front yard, loved to cockroach (inspiring my tattoo last January), virtually never slept in our bedroom, staying one room over until I got up in the morning, then going in & keeping Amy company, and was A Good Boy.
I’m terribly sad, but managed not to cry too much during the impromptu 4-hour drive to Maryland I made last night for an FDA meeting this morning. (I was supposed to take the train, but it was delayed to pick up another trainload of stranded passengers, so it would’ve been an hour-plus late and filled with irate standing people; I called an audible and Just Kept Driving to the hotel.) I’ve started focusing on the love and the joy, and not the pain of his final day or the shock of his loss. I know the love will outweigh everything else, and that someday when another dog enters our lives, we’ll catch ourselves thinking, “Wow, that’s not how Benny did it,” and think about our silly dog-boy, named after the prince’s dog in The Leopard.
I’m just hoping that future dog is able to handle stairs without drama.
Instaxery
I did a live podcast session last Thursday at Labyrinth Books with Ken Krimstein and shot a couple of Instax after (above). These are scans of prints, and the print quality just feels meh compared to the digital originals, so I’ll probably use digitals for the GUEST/HOST book and make these prints a reward for high-tier supporters of the project, when I get to the Kickstarter stage of that project. I also attended the reception for Patrick McDonnell’s gallery opening at the Arts Council of Princeton for The Super Hero’s Journey exhibition, but I didn’t take any Instax pix. We went out for dinner after with a really fantastic bunch of people, and that was even better than documenting it here for the likes of you (haha). I was going to write all about that evening today, but circumstances. Maybe Sunday.
Artistry
I’m keeping up with my daily sketch-journal: rollerball pen on unspecial paper. On Sunday night, I sketched Benny from a picture that Amy texted me from the emergency vet’s office. Closest I ever came to getting his snout & mouth right. You should go to the Flickr album of most of the art I’ve made & find something you like.
Postcardery
Let me know if you want to be on my postcard-a-day list. (Financial supporters of the podcast get a hand-drawn or painted postcard as a thank-you, like that one above.)
Until Next Time
Thanks for reading this far! I’ll be back on Sunday with links, books, & workout-craziness, and on Wednesday with a new episode, and maybe some art, maybe an Instax or two.
I’ve always been a coward / And never know what’s good for me / Oh, here I go, don’t let me go,