I think that’s German for “on the can,” which was the name of a zine\u00c2\u00a0 (maga”zine”) my friend participated in, back in the early 90’s. It was a group of women who wrote letters to each other, sharing information on a monthly basis. One woman would collect all the letters, xerox them into a “zine” and send it out to all the participating women. It was called\u00c2\u00a0 Auf em clou<\/i> because these women found that the only free quiet time they had to read was “on the can.”<\/p>\n
At the time I was a young mother, living in the desert with a wild performance artist for a boyfriend. I was lonely for female companionship … I cursed my weak grip on the German language which prevented me from participating in Auf em clou<\/i>. I was so envious of those women.<\/p>\n
So, I did the next best thing; I started my own zine called WomanTalk<\/i> in 1993. (Am I using that semi-colon properly?) The first issue only had three contributors (me, my sister and Tiffany) and I wrote a lengthy comparison of different kinds of menstrual protection (boys: cover your eyes here). I compared cloth pads to The Keeper (menstrual cup) and … I can’t remember anymore… (was that it?)<\/p>\n
But! but! it grew and grew – and became more and more fun. I started including short stories and poetry written by women I knew and all the women wrote under a pseudonym. This went on every month (or so) for seven years, even earning enough in “subscription ” money to support itself (I only printed about 50 copies a month). I finally folded the zine in 2000 when I started my master’s program at Art Center. I thought that through the journey through my master’s degree that I would figure out where I wanted to go with womantalk. I still own the name womantalk.org. And I like doing this blog thing. And I want to set up the womantalk archives. But then what?<\/p>\n
First, I need a business card; pale green lettering on\u00c2\u00a0 thick vellum card stock.<\/p>\n
Then I need to get a site up and running OR just figure out how to get womantalk.org to forward itself automatically to this blog for the meantime.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I think that’s German for “on the can,” which was the name of a zine\u00c2\u00a0 (maga”zine”) my friend participated in, back in the early 90’s. It was a group of women who wrote letters to each other, sharing information on … Continue reading