A publisher’s reflections: Life in a post-panic world

I’m in my fourth decade in the publishing business. From the first week I set foot in the door of this occupation, I’ve been hearing alarms about the death of fill-in-the-blank. With all due respect, I’m over it.

Newspapers, magazines, books, the written word – they are not dying. They’re sharing the audience with more options. The way I see it, hanging on to the discussion about what’s going away is a distraction from the hard work of moving forward. I’d rather be in conversations about the fun stuff going on and how to be part of it.

I went to Oxford, Miss., last week to attend a conference hosted by The University of Mississippi’s Meek School of Journalism and New Media. Billed as a gathering of industry folks “looking for solutions to today’s publishing problems,” it’s called the ACT Experience — Amplify, Clarify, Testify. It’s a little like a publishing PechaKucha except each presenter gets 30 minutes instead of 6 minutes, 40 seconds.

I hadn’t been to an organized gathering of publishing people in a while. Following trends via news feeds and e-newsletters is hardly a substitute, and I was looking forward to an actual 3-D discussion. I couldn’t wait to hear from a former publisher of The New Yorker, the multimedia director at Vanity Fair, the co-founder of Blindfold magazine, and the creative minds behind one of the biggest women’s magazine in the Netherlands, among other folks doing very cool things in the magazine world. I was, however, wary of the theme: “Never Underestimate the Power of Print in a Digital Age.” Would we be recycling the death-of-print conversation again?

Thankfully, no. What happened instead was invigorating and encouraging. While some of the issues and admonitions were familiar, there was a different undercurrent. As I listened to one speaker after another, the ideas shifted fluidly from print to digital to QR codes to mobile to watermarking to . . . whatever. There was a lot of talk about storytelling, content, passion, quality. It wasn’t platform-agnostic so much as platform-pluralistic.

BoSacks holds forth.

By the end I was thinking that, after all these years, maybe we are ready to get on with things. And as I’ve thought about it since, I think maybe a corner has been turned, one where we folks in the business of producing paid content can quit obsessing over what we are losing grip of and invest our energy in getting a grip.

I scribbled pages of notes while I sat in the auditorium. Here’s a small sample:

“Loss of dominance is not equivalent to death, it just feels that way.” — Bob Sacks a.k.a. BoSacks, the inimitable media blogger.

“The human story by terrific writers wins any battle in any market.” – Michael Capuzzo, who with his wife Teresa publishes Mountain Home magazine.

“Mediocre content is fading fast in print.” — Bob Sacks again, warning us that there’s no room for so-so print content anymore. His advice: “Stop whining about the death of print, which isn’t happening, and get back to the business of producing content people want.” The future is all about fewer, better, more expensive print products.

And here’s my favorite quote of all from the Act 3 Experience:

“Make something worth printing.”

This comes from a third-generation printer. His name is David Fry, chief technology officer at Fry Communications, and he was one of several printing-industry representatives who were talking about ways their business is adapting in today’s marketplace.

If it’s good enough, if it’s something your customer wants, it’s worth the tactile, permanent experience of print. It’s worth paying for and holding on to. “Make something worth printing.” It kind of all boils down to that, doesn’t it?

Q and A: Stephan Pastis tosses a few pearls

This Q&A will appear in Sunday’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, or see it online at jsonline.com.

Pig, friend of Rat, product of Stephan Pastis’s brain.

Lawyer-turned-cartoonist-turned-tweener-novelist Stephan Pastis visits Milwaukee Monday to promote his 20th collection of “Pearls Before Swine” comic strips. “Pearls Freaks the #*%# Out!” (Andrews McMeel Publishing, $16.99) collects two years’ worth of strips, and reminds us that Pastis’s dysfunctional menagerie has lost none of its twisted charm.

It’s been 10 years since Milwaukee Journal Sentinel readers were first introduced to Rat, Pig and the rest of the gang. Rat’s still the cynical, know-it-all rodent who plays yin to Pig’s exasperatingly clueless yang. The world they share with professorial Goat, long-suffering Zebra, volatile Guard Duck and other sidekicks remains goofy, irreverent, and off-kilter enough to keep you guessing.

Pastis, meanwhile, has seen his strip picked up by more than 600 newspapers worldwide, has launched a “Pearls” iPad app, and shows real star quality in his promotional videos. Just in case that comic-strip thing doesn’t work out (and perhaps desperate not to resort to his original law career), he has two more books due in the next six months: “Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made,” an illustrated novel aimed at kids 8 to 12, and “Friends Should Know When They’re Not Wanted: A Sociopath’s Guide to Friendship.“

In “Freaks,” Pastis annotates many strips with pithy comments and insightful asides (sample: “‘Sigh’ is a great way to end a strip for which you otherwise have no ending”). We asked him for a few more in advance of his appearance at Boswell Book Company.

Q. As one of our foremost promoters of pigs in popular culture, how do you feel about “Angry Birds?”
A. Rat loves any game that abuses pigs. Though as the creator of both, I try to remain neutral. On a much more insightful note, I, Stephan Pastis, have gotten all three stars on every single level of Angry Birds, including the latest update. It is the proudest accomplishment of my life.

Q. Your new book reveals your secret desire to do the Lambeau Leap after book signings. Should we be ready to catch you in Boswell’s fiction section tomorrow?

A. I fear that any fans of Rat would get more joy in seeing me fall than actually catching me. And I applaud them for that.

Q. Comic-strip celebrities often make appearances in your strip. Have they ever made odd demands? All-yellow M&Ms in the break room, things like that?

A. Dennis the Menace had demands involving women that I cannot repeat here.

Q. Album cover art, hand-written letters, the ode – all once popular, mainstream practices and now, not so much. Will the comic strip go the way of the ode, something respected but with a small, eccentric audience?

A. I’d tell you if I knew what the hell an ode was.

Q. Did Rat have an unhappy childhood?

A. His father was killed by a circus clown. Other than that, pretty normal.

Q. In “Freaks,” you remark that some characters never caught on, one tragic example being Feral Ballerina. Any particularly big disappointments?

A. There was a killer whale that lived next door to some seals and he was always trying to get into their house to eat them. I loved that whale. But I don’t think anyone else did. So I had him die as a result of an exploding meatloaf.

Q. “Freaks” also resurrects a dizzying array of characters who never re-appeared – Kiko The Lonely Cactus, Jenny Jellyfish and J. Rutherford Shrimp to name a few. Have you ever resurrected a character by popular demand?

A. I believe the aforementioned whale has died, undied, died, and undied again. He’s quite flexible.

Q. Action figures, amusement park ride, Broadway musical, clay animation movie, talk show: If you had your choice, which would be your dream PBS brand extension?

A. Guard Duck action figure that lobs actual hand grenades. (Don’t worry. We’d include detailed safety instructions.)

Q. “Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made” is coming out in February. It’s about a kid who can’t do anything right. Autobiographical?
A. Timmy is a detective who can take any mystery and make it more mysterious. He has few friends, is very arrogant, and is profoundly delusional. And yes, that about sums me up.

:: Stephan Pastis will sign books 7 p.m. Monday, Oct. 7, at Boswell Book Company, 2559 N. Downer Ave.

My “Pearls Before Swine” Legacy

When I look back on my career, just about the only lasting impact I can point to is the funny pages. For about eight years, I had control over the two pages daily and six pages Sunday whose primary, number-one, most important mission was: Make ‘em laugh (except I guess for “Spider Man” and about every other episode of “Marmaduke”). This is to say that I took calls from sales reps pitching new strips and I collected piles of press kits stuffed with funny-page samples and I made the decisions about which comics to kill in order to make room for new ones. Yes, it was me, I yanked “Cathy” from the local newspaper. I know, I know.

This responsibility terrified me at first, but over the years I really warmed up to the job. I like to think I started refining my eye.

Rat, one of the main characters in “Pearls Before Swine,” is pretty much the antithesis of Nancy.

Which brings me to “Pearls Before Swine.” I am proud to take responsibility for adding this brilliant strip to the pages of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 10 years ago. I wish I could remember exactly what convinced me to snap this newcomer up. It could have been the fact that creator Stephan Pastis put Nancy into one of his strips in a sort of cameo appearance — a technique he would later use with characters from “Family Circus,” “Hagar,” “Blondie,” and many others. The juxtaposition of this uncool bow-decorated 1930s girl with a deeply cynical bat-carrying rat was, to me, pure genius. (Looking back, I think it resonated, on a subconscious level, with my anxiety about mediating the tension between nostalgia and relevance on the comics page, a foreboding of things to come for newspapers. But let’s not go there.)

I’ve moved on to other things and that’s good. Space for comics has shrunk for every newspaper in the country, and I don’t envy the folks who have had to manage that new reality. But at least the good people at the JS have held on to “Pearls”, which I still adore.

The newest collection of “Pearls” from Stephan Pastis

I mention all this because Stephan has a new collection of strips out (his 20th) and it’s a hoot. When I learned he was going to be in Milwaukee to promote it, I got in touch and caught up with him a little. He’s been a busy guy: doing videos to promote the strip, launching an iPad app, even working on an illustrated novel for young people.

If you’re nearby this Monday, Oct. 1, come on over and visit Stephan at Boswell Book Company. Things get started at 7 p.m. There have been some rumors of a Lambeau Leap in the fiction section afterward, but I cannot verify this.

Also, watch this space for a Q-&-A I did with Stephan in advance of his visit (it’ll be in the Journal Sentinel, too).

Sometimes, Potato Salad is just Potato Salad

You pay good money for an artisanal stuffed dachsund at a chic art-village boutique, you mail it to your beloved nephew, you picture him embracing it with big happy eyes and a bubble over his head saying, “You are my favorite aunt.” You visit months later to find the dachsund is untouched, but the $3.49 rubber frog you picked up at the 7-Eleven the last time you visited is squeezed and chewed to within an inch of its life. There’s no bubble over the little guy’s head, either.

I suspect my reaction to this phenomenon is something like the way my Mom used to feel about her potato salad.

“You don’t want my Sour Cream Apple Cake? What about this great Bon Appetit recipe for Pan Asian Cole Slaw? You want the potato salad? Again?”

No thank you, no thank you, yes please.

Sometimes you’re stuck with the tried-and-true, however bored you might be with it. And Mom, for the record, I want to tell you that this is OK when it comes to your potato salad.

Potato. Onion. Vinegar. Mayo. And a few basic but critical ingredients in just the right proportions. Boil. Dice. Toss. The best. For going on 50 years now.

All the Golembeski daughters had their staples at the family picnics, the things they’d be expected to pack in the ice coolers without being asked. They could turn them out in their sleep (or, I imagine, when sleep deprived). If Aunt Marlene did not bring her elbow-macaroni-with-shrimp salad and if Aunt Dot did not bring her potato salad, the disappointment would be palpable.

Mind you, I grew up at a time when a fresh basil leaf was exotic. If it wasn’t in a can, a jar, or a Green Giant frozen-food box, I would not know what to make of it. Creative cuisine meant making chip dip without Lipton’s Onion Soup Mix. At some time in my high school years, though, I sensed change afoot. A copy of Craig Claiborne’s The New York Times Cook Book showed up. Someone introduced red-skinned potatoes to one of our family picnics, with the skins still on! Mom even started putting wine into food, for God’s sake.

When I moved out on my own, I started getting invited to picnics of my own. I am not sure when the inevitable dish-to-pass question first came up, but I know that my reflexive answer was: Mom’s potato salad. I knew exactly how to make it. I could shop for the ingredients without thinking. It was always a snappy solution. And you know what? It was a hit! People started expecting it.

In more recent years – OK, decades — picnic activities have fallen off, my potato-salad fans have moved on, and I guess it’s fair to say I’ve tried rebranding myself. I felt I should evolve from Picnic Dish-to-Pass to Dinner Party Cuisine-to-Impress (“We’re thinking of regional Mexican next Saturday, does Oaxacan mole sound OK?”). But a call came a few weeks back, my first in ages: A neighborhood backyard picnic. Smoked pork shoulder, cole slaw, the works. I said I’d bring Mom’s potato salad before it occurred to me that the unthinkable had happened, and I no longer remembered how to make it.

Shockingly, it didn’t take long to find the “recipe,” stuffed into a folder that was shoved to the back of a closet shelf. There you go, scrawled onto the back of a Niagara Gazette memo slip, I’m sure as I was talking to her on the phone at work: Mom’s Potato Salad.

Potato. Onion. Vinegar. Mayo. And a few basic but critical ingredients in just the right proportions.

I boiled. I diced. I tossed. The muscle memory came back as I put each potato into my palm, took up a blunt-edged dinner knife, and cubed. I had jotted down proportions, but I knew they were rough. I had to use instinct. Was a time it would turn out just right after a few tastes, but that takes practice. It had been so many years that I didn’t trust my judgment about the celery seed, the sugar, the salt. I was just hoping for approximately right.

I tasted, adjusted, and thought – not bad.

I think everyone like it. It seemed to stand up well to the red-skinned competition someone else brought along. I think I’ll make another batch this weekend. I figure it’s my time of life to embrace my brand, even if it’s just white-skinned potatoes and mayo. I’m OK with that.

Thanks, Mom. And happy birthday!

Face jugs: Presence and the past

Face jug created 1860-1880, Private Collection. Photo by Jim Wildeman

This essay originally appeared in the Milwakee Journal Sentinel blog Art City.

In a small exhibition space at the Milwaukee Art Museum, 23 stoneware faces confront visitors with gnashing teeth, wide eyes, and a haunting question. Created by artists who were denied the freedom to read, write, or express their beliefs, it’s easy to imagine they were used as a covert way to say something, or even do something. But what?

The Chipstone Foundation offers some intriguing theories in “Face Jugs: Art and Ritual in 19th-Century South Carolina”, an exhibition that attempts to unearth the language behind objects some have dismissed as grotesque oddities.

If you’ve seen pottery face mugs and jugs and pitchers at craft fairs, consider them distant, diminished relations to the objects on display here. These are the originals, and there’s nothing kitschy about them. They came out of a South Carolina pottery community called Edgefield, where abundant sources of clay and kaolin kept manufacturers busy in the 19th century. Essentially, they are stoneware vessels with faces on them – eyes, nose, mouth, ears – produced roughly between 1860 and 1880. They are animated, rich with personality, full of emotion. They were created by slaves and, later, freed slaves.

Face Jug, 1860-1880, Collection of Carl and Marian Mullis. Photo courtesy of the owners.

This is the first time so many face mugs have been gathered into one show, and to see them side by side is an event in itself. Edgefield face jugs are considered rare — it is believed that only 200 exist — and there’s debate about why they were created. The Chipstone team has influenced that debate by digging into previous scholarly studies, conducting its own research, and consulting archaeologists. To hear the show’s curator, Claudia Mooney, describe their work is a little like listening to a mystery book being narrated aloud.

In the presence of the face jugs, it’s sobering to imagine what they have witnessed. They are among the very few slave-made artifacts in existence. Empty as they are, they carry a weight.

They were described as water jugs as early as 1893, but they’re not glazed inside and they’re small, so how could they be functional objects? Could this description be intentionally misleading to disguise their real use?

They exhibit similarities to African design, but they emerged 50 years after the importation of slaves was made illegal; how could artists so many generations removed from Africa be so familiar with African visual culture?

What does it mean that every jug has eyes and teeth made of kaolin? The material, used to make porcelain, is difficult to work with in combination with stoneware, and clearly required extra effort and skill. As Mooney puts it, these pots “weren’t just whimsies.” Why did the artists go to so much trouble?

Dark-eyed Face Jug, 1860-1880, Chipstone Foundation Collection. Photo by Jim Wildeman.

And what about the dark-eyed jug? A face jug that the Chipstone Foundation acquired earlier this year is an outlier: Its eyes are black instead of kaolin-white, and words are written on its back. What does this signify?

The Chipstone exhibit posits fascinating theories about all these questions. For instance, it points to The Wanderer, a luxury yacht retrofitted to hide slaves in its belly at a time when the slave trade was illegal. It’s known that more than 100 of The Wanderer’s unwilling passengers were sent to the Edgefield region at around the time face jugs first emerged. Most of these new slaves were from Kongo societies (not to be confused with the Congo), a culture with a tradition of sacred vessels, or nkisi, that attract and channel spiritual powers. And – in another intriguing connection – kaolin is found in African Kongo communities, where it was considered a sacred substance.

Signature on the back of the dark-eyed jug. Photo by Jim Wildeman.

The most exhilarating research moment came when a hunch and a Google search connected the dark-eyed jug to Kongo culture, explaining its eyes and strengthening the case that the jugs are descendants of nkisi created to conjure spirits who would answer needs. Since mysteries are best when you can read the ending yourself, I won’t give this one away. You’ll have to see the exhibit.

Staring out of exhibition cases, each face will challenge you and draw you in. They are hauntingly charismatic. This one looks defiant, this one looks mournful, this one looks angry, and I think I see that one winking. The fellow with the cleft chin is rather dashing. A few are shaped as pitchers. Mooney’s favorite is an “enigmatic and fascinating” one in the Chipstone collection that is the only known face jug with a tongue. “Its small size suggests that it was probably one of the earlier face jugs,” she says. “Its expression hints at its hidden symbolism. When you hold it, you feel its power.”

There’s still much to learn about the jugs, says Mooney, and the research will continue. Maybe the power she describes is in the learning. It’s impossible not to be moved by the truths these objects represent, truths both uncomfortable and stirring.

“Face Jugs: Art and Ritual in 19th-Century South Carolina,” is on view through Aug. 5 at the Milwaukee Art Museum. After that, it travels to the Columbia (S.C.) Museum of Art, the Birmingham (Ala.) Museum of Art, and the Georgia Museum of Art. The exhibit includes a piece commissioned by contemporary artist Brian Gillis, who designed a nickel-plated vessel to house and protect knowledge about the Edgefield face jugs now and in the future.

++ Mooney’s “Under the Wings” blog post about the face jugs: click here
++ MAM web page about the exhibit: click here

Curator Claudia Mooney’s favorite, ca. 1862, Chipstone Foundation Collection. Photo by Jim Wildeman.

Dear readers, Let’s talk. Thank you, Me

Dear Readers,

In recent weeks and months I’ve become aware of something troubling. It’s an issue I’ve noticed while communicating with acquaintances regarding items of mutual interest. Say, meeting up to discuss a volunteer project, or sharing a job opportunity with our buddies, or organizing a group activity. Things like that. In most cases e-mail, that modern-day curse and necessity, is the means of communication.

Now, I do not check or write e-mails on a mobile device. Given my life and work circumstances, using a good old tethered keyboard has worked out fine for me, plus it keeps my obsessive-compulsive tendencies under control.

Now, I understand that most people I know are not like me. They might be surreptitiously checking their e-mails during a meeting, or while they’re walking to their car, or when they have a spare minute between shuttling the kids from school to soccer practice. I get that.

But is it so hard to insert a few little human touches before hitting “send”?

Call me touchy, but when I write this:

“Hello! What do you think about inviting Jane? She seemed interested in joining the discussion. Let me know and have a great day, D.” (108 characters, 18 seconds)

And I get this:

“Whatever you decide.”

Or even:

“Sure.”

I let out a sad sigh. I feel a little less like a friend, a little more like a task.

I can skip the niceties in plenty of circumstances (“Fire!”), and especially when texting (“Running late be there in 10 minutes”). I’m not an unreasonable person. But my communication DNA always defaults to something I learned in 2nd grade.

Salutation / Body / Closing / Signature.

The elements of a letter. I’ve always liked them. They are a formula for making life clear, human and civil. They embody a micro-life-philosophy.

Hello You, / Here’s my message. / Thanks, / Me.

Is this asking so much?

Warm regards,

Diane

What I am doing this weekend

The only vinyl I never sent to the secondhand store.

I am listening (again) to Bruce Springsteen’s speech at SXSW and then downloading every song he references, familiar and obscure. And tracing, like he did, where I was in life when I first heard Dylan, Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound, the Beatles, Curtis Mayfield, James Brown, Roy Orbison, Elvis, Woody Guthrie, Public Enemy … and Bruce Springsteen.

It is a poignant thing to be doing — reflecting on the songs of the times I grew up in, and on which ones grabbed me by the throat. Poignant but also joyful. Which is kind of a good way to sum up Bruce. Don’t you think?

Here’s a great NPR link that’ll help me out with my project: Listen: At SXSW, Bruce Springsteen On The Meaning Of Music : The Record : NPR.