Feeling inspired as late with all of these amazing non psych projects falling into my lap. Wrote to two childhood friends of mine who i’ve always wanted to work on something with about the latest. Hoping they’ll respond with some enthusiasm.

Been thinking a lot about manual versus automated book binding. Like the cobbler equivalent of shoes, hand binders are a dying breed. When titling books, there is always something a little crooked, always a font which looks antiquated, the covers always bend in odd ways dependent on the drying process, no two are ever the same even with the same stencil sheets. Had a dissertation bound by hand by a binder I stumbled upon and was blown away with the craftsmanship. His space, in the basement of a giant church on Chicago ave. Stepping in, all you see are old books, half made, wood blocks for holding them, hanging threads, materials of all kinds. You see a candle lit in a little metal box with metal imprinting sticks, font stencils, glues, stains, gold, metallic and black paint (which gets melted into the books to be bound). His wife, with a needle stitching into a Bible she’s restoring from 1880. Piles of bibles hand bound, old Chaucer books, old research dissertations covered in baroque designs. The day I get there he tells me he’s still working on it. Said he was stenciling different lines of the text in order to get it right on the spine. So he grabs a seat for me. He’s holding what looks like a chopstick and is dipping it into gold then melts the tip with a candle burning. He then is pushing and twisting the metal stick into my dissertation filling in the letters S then T then A then N then L with 22carrot gold…It’s crooked and looks like a book that would be on a Harrry Potter shelf. We talk about old books to be restored, fonts that make him swoon, the smell of newly bound books and the different textures he uses for covers and stitching thread. There are few things better than sitting with someone surrounded by his craft, surrounded by the very thing that gives him meaning.

Cedar Rapids. Wedding this weekend was beautiful and there’s something to be said about being in a room filled with all of the people who you adore in your life. The awkward speeches, the long hugs, the nods from those dearest to you, the dancing in formal dresses of people seven to seventy jumping up and down to House of Pain. The pastor telling stories of the young boy as a child. Though find it difficult to think of any reason why I would ever go back to that town. Looks like someone pulled its heart out and left it to die. Though, at the center of town we passed by a giant trampoline on a front yard with three kids flipping around on it. If only they realized they were the solution to every problem in that town.