St Brigid Press

Brown and tan collie-shepherd mix dog.

Have a peace-full day, friends.

Wow. Is that from a poem of his?

Left side of image shows a small tractor engine with black rubber hose. Right side of image shows an orange notebook and blue mechanical pencil.

I missed being in the print shop today, but at least managed to write three poems and replace the tractor’s busted radiator hose.

#gratitude #rurallife #nelsoncounty #poetry #poetryisnotaluxury #poemsandtractors #johndeere #shadetreemechanic

A view of distant mountains and a wide open sky of clouds and blue, all surrounded by deep green trees.

“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”

— Henry David Thoreau, *Walden* (1854)

#thoreau #walden #castlesintheair #foundations #blueridgemountains #julymorning

Where are you located?

I can well imagine! My spouse and I used to visit a friend who lived in Grand Junction. Astonishingly dry for us easterners.

One of the unsung heroes of the print shop is the dehumidifier. Our summers are always humid, & increasingly hot. And humidity is no friend to the cast-iron presses & lead-alloy metal type that fills the space.

#blueridgemountains #virginia #printshop #shoptalk #letterpress #castiron #metaltype

A wooden letterpress type case full of metal letters. A black and white dog is sleeping nearby on the floor.

Late afternoon at the type case… Shop Dog Linji-the-Aussie is exhausted from herding little metal letters all day…

#aussie #letterpress #metaltype #shopdog #printshop

Happy birthday, Henry David Thoreau! Born on this day in 1817. “I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contented one can be with nothing definite only a sense of existence....My wealth is not possession but enjoyment.” Henry David Thoreau, from his journal on December 6, 1856

Happy birthday, Henry!
“I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contented one can be with nothing definite only a sense of existence....My wealth is not possession but enjoyment.”

HDT, December 6, 1856

#thoreau #contentment #otd #americanhistory

What to with bold, old metal type with the disconcerting name of “Empire”? Well, one solution is to beat swords into ploughshares. So I printed up some 72pt Peace with Morris Fuller Benton’s 1930s design.

#peace #ploughshares #typedesign #metaltype #printinghistory

Purple cone flowers blooming in a green sea of field grasses.

“To know the spirit of a place is to realize that you are a part of a part and that the whole is made of parts, each of which is whole. You start with the part you are whole in.”

— Gary Snyder, “The Place,The Region,&The Commons” in *The Practice of the Wild* (Counterpoint, 1990)
#garysnyder #place

“Find your place on the planet, dig in, and take responsibility from there.”

— Gary Snyder, from a footnote in “Four Changes” (1970)

#garysnyder #homeplace #blueridgemountains

Very glad to connect with you and know about your grandfather! Whereabouts did he work?

“Practically speaking, a life that is vowed to simplicity, appropriate boldness, good humor, gratitude, unstinting work and play, and lots of walking brings us close to the actually existing world and its wholeness.” — Gary Snyder, “The Etiquette of Freedom” in *The Practice of the Wild* (Counterpoint, 1990)

Reading Gary Snyder this evening —

How Toni Morrison Changed Publishing At night, she worked on her novels. By day, as an editor at Random House, she championed a new generation of writers.

Toni Morrison is one of the greatest writers to ever live. What many don’t know, is that she was also the first Black woman to become a senior editor at Random House. I wrote about a new book that discusses how she edited by day, wrote by night, and ushered in a new generation of Black writers.

“Big wheel[s] keep on turnin’”…
The 1914 Chandler-&-Price printing press coming back to life this morning. After a back injury a couple of years ago, I retired the foot-treadle & now let the motor do the work of keeping this 1500+ pound beast rolling.

#letterpress #printing #printshoplife

The shiny metal undersides of all the individual letters and spacing material in a forme of text locked with wooden furniture in a printing chase.

The shiny metal undersides of all the individual letters and spacing material in a forme of text locked with wooden furniture in a printing chase.

The top of a metal type forme, showing the letters to be printed and the spacing material surrounding.

The top of a metal type forme, showing the letters to be printed and the spacing material surrounding.

Have you ever seen the underside of a metal type forme? The bottom of all the letters and spacing material has its own fascinating structure and pattern. (Just make sure it’s locked up tight before taking a look ;-)

#letterpress #metaltype

Slowly & carefully distributing the type back into its case, breaking up the clods of words & spacing material & fingering language’s newly-friable ground again. These little silver seeds will sprout something new, in time.

#letterpress #language #metaltype #distributing #decomposition #bookmaking

Beautiful, @brenoxis.bsky.social 🙏

#nokings #woodtype #democracy #freepress

I should have guessed. 😊

Black and white photograph of a silvery creek amid dense foliage.

~

creek talked
all night long —

so smooth,
even the moon drowned
in that silver tongue

~

(From *Soundings: haiku & carvings* by Emily
Hancock, St Brigid Press, 2014)

#poetry #creeks #blueridgemountains

Fantastic. What book/author?

My pink hand holding a sprig of soft young white oak leaves in afternoon sunlight.

~

what is new
is tender —

gently

take the white oak’s hands
in yours

~

(From *Falling Into Place*, poems by Emily Hancock, St Brigid Press, 2024)

#oak #Quercus #leaves #tenderness #spring #poetry

This is not a drill.

Jamestown Is Sinking In the Tidewater region of Virginia, history is slipping beneath the waves. In the Anthropocene, a complicated past is vanishing.

Jamestown is sinking. I got to spend some time with the photographer Greta Pratt's new project, thanks to @placesjournal.bsky.social and the often misremembered line from Heraclitus: “We step into and we do not step into the same rivers. We are and we are not.”

placesjournal.org/article/jame...

So looking forward to this book and to your review. 🌟

Sewing tiny books in the print shop bindery (with shop-dog Linji at my side).

#sewing #sewingbooks #handsewing #printshop #printshoplife

The large pink blossoms of a Japanese magnolia tree.

“My life as essentially belongs to the present as that of a willow tree in the spring.”
— Henry David Thoreau

A willow tree or, in this case, a Japanese magnolia. The present moment is vast but fleeting; let’s not miss it.

#thoreau #spring #magnolia #japanesemagnolia #presentmoment #now

Appreciate it!