Glad Day Press printed up the weekly school newspaper. The gal I knew was the coordinator of the newspaper collective. She asked if her kids come down to observe how the process worked. The kids sucked up knowledge like a sponge. Before long, they were leaning about the lithographic process worked. They asked a gazillion questions. They were fascinated at how a printing plate with no raised type was first coated with an acid-water solution to repel ink, then ink was rolled on, which then stuck only to those areas which were not coated in water. They learned how artwork was turned into photo negatives and how those negatives were assembled together under a sheet of yellow paper, then a sharp corner of a razor blade was used (very carefully) to cut thru the yellow paper, but not the film negative, so the strong UV light of the platemaker could harden the parts of the plate which would later accept ink.
The kids kept back, week after week, learning more and more. They were quite seductive. Before long, they were doing all the work while me and my partner, Dale, just kept an eye on them around all the dangerous sharp, moving, or poisonous stuff they needed to use to make their newspaper.
One kid asked Dale how much ink was used to print a single sheet of their newspaper. We had no accurate lab balances at Glad Day in those early years. He told the kids they would have to figure that one out for themselves. So they brought in a balance from school. Dale put ink on a piece of waxed paper. The ink was weighed. He then put the ink into the freshly cleaned press. The newspaper was run off. Then Dale scraped the ink fountain clean & put it back on the same was paper. The before and after weights were compared. The press run was 500 copies, 3 sheets, both sides printed. The kids then did the math. Nobody assigned them this project. They just wanted to know and it was worth it to them to figure it out.
One girl burst out laughing while she stripped her first page of the newspaper. I asked her what was so funny. She said "I can't wait to see the look on my mother's face later when I tell her that I learned how to be a stripper today!"
One of the kids did a weekly comic strip in the paper. It was a very surreal strip about his family life from the viewpoint of his pet raccoon. At some point I met his parents and got to visit with the family at home. It was there I discovered that the kid really did have a pet raccoon. Immensely overweight. At first I did not realize it was a living critter and almost sat on it because I thought it was a footstool. raccoon came and went like a dog. It scratched on the door when it wanted in or out. It begged at the table, liked its ears scritched, and always seem to be observing the humans in its family. At that point I realized the comic strip was not so much surreal but just a documentary.
no subject
The kids kept back, week after week, learning more and more. They were quite seductive. Before long, they were doing all the work while me and my partner, Dale, just kept an eye on them around all the dangerous sharp, moving, or poisonous stuff they needed to use to make their newspaper.
One kid asked Dale how much ink was used to print a single sheet of their newspaper. We had no accurate lab balances at Glad Day in those early years. He told the kids they would have to figure that one out for themselves. So they brought in a balance from school. Dale put ink on a piece of waxed paper. The ink was weighed. He then put the ink into the freshly cleaned press. The newspaper was run off. Then Dale scraped the ink fountain clean & put it back on the same was paper. The before and after weights were compared. The press run was 500 copies, 3 sheets, both sides printed. The kids then did the math. Nobody assigned them this project. They just wanted to know and it was worth it to them to figure it out.
One girl burst out laughing while she stripped her first page of the newspaper. I asked her what was so funny. She said "I can't wait to see the look on my mother's face later when I tell her that I learned how to be a stripper today!"
One of the kids did a weekly comic strip in the paper. It was a very surreal strip about his family life from the viewpoint of his pet raccoon. At some point I met his parents and got to visit with the family at home. It was there I discovered that the kid really did have a pet raccoon. Immensely overweight. At first I did not realize it was a living critter and almost sat on it because I thought it was a footstool. raccoon came and went like a dog. It scratched on the door when it wanted in or out. It begged at the table, liked its ears scritched, and always seem to be observing the humans in its family. At that point I realized the comic strip was not so much surreal but just a documentary.