It's a *#@&^-ing gypsy caravan, for goodness sakes!

Just what is it like to be traveling in a gypsy caravan? I thought I would go through a typical day with you.

First, we make tea and have our breakfast in the caravan. We pack up the back steps, roll off the leveling blocks and pack them away, then I help Peter back up the trailer (I have a set of complicated hand signals so nobody has to hear me yelling over the truck noise).

Then we drive (usually between 1 hour and 4 hours, or $100 in gas/time) to get to an appointment with a friendly librarian or two.

Geoff Smith at Ohio State University (soon to be President of FABS)

Artists and librarians with us in  UI Champaign/Urbana, IL

displaying our books

Sometimes the librarian arranges a place to park the truck and caravan, sometimes not.

Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington, IL

We often have an "Open Caravan" so interested students can peek inside and perhaps get inspired to live creatively. At the Herron School of Art and Design we held an open caravan from 11-12 and had over 100 visitors.

Herron School of Art and Design, IUPUI, Indianapolis, IN

Ohio State University, Columbus, OH

I am sitting in the "no parking" zone, waiting to meet the parking police, but they never come. I notice that the students all seem to turn away when I look up from my knitting and catch them peeking at the caravan. Why are they afraid or shy? Do they think they are going to offend me by staring?? I am sitting on a gypsy caravan, for goodness sakes! Finally, a sociology professor stopped by to talk (whose last week’s guest was a “sex fetishiser” or something or other). I love it when people are engaged with life!

After visits we stay with our hosts or drive a bit further down the road. My first choice is to drive so we can stay in nature, at a state or national park campground. That is where I can find beauty, quiet and a level parking spot.

camping in Buck Creek State Park, OH

If we stop at a campground we get to hike for an hour or so in the fresh air, and see the colorful fall forest. Then it is dark and we eat dinner and head for bed in the caravan. People always ask if are warm. We have a propane heater, and it keeps the caravan perfectly warm in the mornings and evenings when it is chilly.

Buck Creek State Park in Springfield, Ohio.

Peter loves it when we spend the night in a friend’s driveway. Then there may be a chance to play music or have local book artists over for a potluck. The librarians and art teachers at University of Illinois, Champaign/Urbana have such a great working environment that they get together for fun after work! 

Musical librarians at Bea's house

Parking at Bea Nettle's house with glorious fall colors

We have to squeeze in doing “office work” on the computer at some point every day. Arranging the next days’ visits take lots of time on the phone or in emails and it is hard work finding internet on the road now that everyone has password protection.

Peter works on a blog post at Pam and Willy’s house in Salt Lake.

It is nice to know we have friends and family traveling with us via cyberspace!

The Book Arts are Big in Iowa

We found a giant calligraphy pen at a rest stop on highway 80 near Iowa City. Clearly the book arts are big around here.

In Iowa City we delivered Peter’s collection of books and ephemera related to the subject of hand papermaking to the University Library.

The University of Iowa has just added a graduate degree in the book arts, and we hope our collection, which includes many unique books on the subject of papermaking, will provide valuable research material for Iowa's Book Arts students interested in the history of the modern revival of hand papermaking.

A sample from the collection. A page from the book, Rapid: A Private Paper Mill, by Roger Daniels (Melbourne Australia: 1963). 5-1/8” x 7-3/4 Pages: 51. Number 5 of 15 copies. Daniels wrote the text, made the paper, printed and bound the book.

Dandelion Wine from Nebraska

The closest campground to Lincoln, Nebraska, was the Pawnee Lake State Recreation Area. As we pulled in, we recognized that it was the same campground we had stayed in last time we visited the University of Nebraska in Lincoln in spring of 2011. The trees were turning bronze, gold and crimson, popping sounds of duck hunters’ guns echoed from across the lake that was clearly low (little rain this summer…), and there were no dandelions anywhere. Dandelions? When we camped there a year and a half ago the campground had been covered with dandelions, and like the resourceful gypsy wandering book artists we are, we picked the dandelions and as we traveled we made wine. Here is a picture from the last trip of the wine fermenting in the back of the truck. We didn’t have an air lock with us so used the old rubber glove trick.

Well I packed one of the bottles of 2011 dandelion wine to share with our moonshiner ukulele friend Dave in Brasstown, NC. But this was the perfect occasion, so we pulled it out of the gypsy wagon’s wine cellar (a Coleman ice chest under the bed) and opened it. 

We toasted the full moon, the open road, and good friends, like uke friend Dave, who would share his unreceived wine with us.

The country is big and the gypsy wagon is small.

We have a pretty tight schedule and hoped to have time see the beautiful rounded rock formations in Vedauwoo, Wyoming, so we got up early and were driving down the road as the sun rose, a bad plan since we were driving due east. We crossed the Green River and, just like we imagined gypsies would do, pulled off near the river for breakfast under a beautiful butte.

Back on the road things were perfect. We were cruzin’ at 70 (the strong eastward wind made the back of the wagon like a sail) listening to the local country station (with ads for making sausage from your trophy buck - that’s not something you hear on radio back home) when smoke starts spewing out of the hood and red lights start flashing on the dash. We pull over fast, but it was in the middle of nowhere. AAA and Towtruck man to the rescue. Towtruck man is missing his 2.25 ball so cannot pull the wagon (Don’t leave home without it?) and we have to leave the wagon by the side of the highway. (Don’t worry Paloma, we will be back soon…we hope…maybe.)

Luckily, no, perhaps a miracle, it is only a broken fuel line and they can fix the car in an hour. We will make it to Vedauwoo. Posted from the Dodge agency in Rawlins, WY.

PS, We made it to Vedauwoo. Also, we saw an interesting camper in a rest stop. Check it out.

Wandering through Utah

Today we went to Ogden and spoke to Susan Makov’s printmaking and book arts classes. When I was describing the qualities “great” artists’ book would have (what I call in my lectures the “Mona Lisa of the Book”) I found myself comparing a book without words to a print made using medium without pigment. The printmaker could be making some kind of great statement, but in my opinion, mostly they would just be wasting a lot of great potential. So it is with words in a book, they add color. Too bad I didn’t find it spelled out in lead type when I pied a case or something. I could have started a religion….

PS. Last night we went to Salt Lake City’s bohemian roadhouse, The Garage, where we ate dinner and listened to a local band called Wayward Molly.