It was an idea whose time had come. Right now, in fact. The muslin bags had arrived a few hours earlier in a bit of a heap, the delivery box a dented mess. But they’d been protected from the elements at least by a thick, clear plastic bag. Shop Boy could see that the bags needed some serious ironing, but there was little time for that.

These little beige bags, about 5 inches by 8 inches when flat, with a cute little orange string tie sewn into the top seam, were to be the wrapper for a line of goods – jams, roasted peppers and such – for The Gift Wall at Artifact, a caffeine-fueled offshoot of Woodberry Kitchen. You can’t miss it … it’s right next door to the big Pepsi billboard off I-83. Now serving dinner, prix fixe, different theme every week. Unbelievable. Can’t get in to Woodberry Kitchen? Artifact is a very worthy fallback. Just go. Now. OK, finish this first. But then go.

Mary, of course, designed the paper goods for the place, using “artifacts” from a previous generation of letterpress to add an odd charm. Many of these came from “Mr. Wilhelm’s Shop.” This was the Timonium basement operation left idle, but never dusty, by the widow (Earcell Wilhelm) of an industrious hobbyist. Some years after his death, she needed to move and put the contents of the shop up for sale, everything-must-go style. We jumped at it, and what is now known as Typecast Press was born.

Strange and wonderful scraps from his life of printing have become bits of loopy eye candy on the Artifact menu and coffee-cup wrappers. Very fun.

Anyhow, Artifact sells great stuff made over at Woodberry Kitchen in small packages, like muslin bags. So Mary decided we should go ahead and print the Tuscan O that is Woodberry’s logo on each muslin bag.

We’d done similar jobs, so Shop Boy knew what this meant. The first problem is corraling the drawstring so that it doesn’t flop down into the printing area and get itself inked, thus wrecking the bag, or slip behind the printing area and cause a seam in the logo, thus … wrecking the bag. Not so bad. I simply had to brush the string to the side of the tympan as I fed each one. An elastic band I’d put over the tympan bales helped there, stopping the bags from sagging and also keeping the sticky black ink from pulling the occasional freshly printed one into the maw of the press … wrecking the bag. (Full-bleed coasters, ones inked all the way across, do that sometimes, because an elastic band can’t touch any part of its surface.)

Finally, this would require some tomfoolery with the impression lever. Sometimes you can overcome inking issues by bashing the gooey stuff into an object. And the big C&P can really bring it. But Shop Boy saves that for “last resorts.” This was merely a crisis. DEFCON 5, as it were.

Teachable moment: Many people use the whole DEFCON thing improperly, assuming that a higher numeral means a higher probability of nuclear war. Rather, think “Countdown to launch.” DEFCON 1′s actually the really, really, really bad one, if any escalation toward mutual annihilation can be called less than really, really, really bad. DEFCON 5 is a moment for deep concern and reflecting. DEFCON 1 is a moment for deep doo-doo and genuflecting.

Ahem.

Shop Boy also didn’t want to hit the bags too hard because the material is porous. You don’t want the image to “ghost” on the other side. On that note, I had to account for an unexpected layer of packing — a little sheet of acetate would need to be slipped into each bag to keep the ink from going through no matter how soft or hard I hit it. That meant cutting 25 little sheets, inserting them, printing 25 bags, pulling the sheets out, inserting them into new bags and printing 25 more. Repeat, repeat repeat.

Foo.

OK, so now came the experimenting. Another way to overcome light inking is to hit it twice, or to “trip” once to get a little extra ink on the plate and then hit it once. Sometimes it takes a little more. Here was my dance: Insert bag into guide, throw lever into trip mode for two passes, throw lever into print mode for three passes. Remove printed bag, put new one into guides, throw lever into trip mode, etc.

Now, normally Shop Boy is pretty good at counting to three. But you get the big press going and start dealing with flopping strings, wrinkles in bags, elastic bands, acetate sheets and, well, you’d better have some extras on hand. Because hitting a cloth bag three times in exactly the same spot is tricky under the best circumstances. Pull one out after only two hits and there’s just no stinking way to put it back in for the third … wrecking the bag.

You get the idea. Printing can be annoying sometimes. But you should see the bags.

In fact, go take a look at Artifact. Seriously, we’re finished here. Go.

OK, here they are:

Now go. I mean it.

Let’s set the stage anyway.

There’s a dude stuck on a boat on the Patapsco River, hard by Baltimore, Md. He can’t use his cell phone to call for help or text his friends to let him know where he is and when he’ll be back.

Mostly because it’s1814. September 13, to be exact.

And he’s kind of a captive.

See, the British weren’t quite as squishy back then, and they were kind of bugged by all the smug posturing of a newly independent nation such as the U. S. of A. And they were honestly still a little raw over the idea that a ragtag bunch of militias had defeated them 30 years or so before in the Revolutionary War and had the gall to set up a legit government and ports that could compete (by hook or by crook) with London’s traders. So, they sailed a fleet across the Atlantic to smack us up. That they chose Baltimore will forever be a lesson in knowing the enemy. Baltimore, really? You’re looking for a weak underbelly … Baltimore? Mobtown? Good luck with that one, mate.

Anyhow, our captive’s a part-time poet, name of Francis Scott Key. In the middle of all this War of 1812 mess, he’d gone with a team of ambassadors to meet with the British navy to negotiate freedom for political prisoners. Alas, once he’d stepped on deck, looked around and seen the size of the British fleet anchored just off America’s shores, and accidentally heard a little bit too much, he couldn’t simply be sent home to let the locals know an attack was imminent, now could he?

So the supremely confident British figured, while they’ve got Key and his boys there, why not toast the Americans’ crumpets just a bit, forcing them to watch the bombardment into submission or death of their brave countrymen at Fort McHenry.

Umm …

Fort McHenry’s cool, if you’ve never been there. Kind of a star-shaped set of fortress walls, lots of grass, ancient cannons for kids to climb on and what look like they must have been cramped and cold quarters. They make you sit through a movie before you can see the grounds, but it’s informative and (all right, all right) stirring. Patriotism aroused, or not, it’s totally awesome once you get to walk about. The cell where they locked up the traitorous, South-leaning Baltimore mayor during the Civil War? I get a TB cough just thinking about it. Today, the cannons point out mostly toward industrial loading docks. But in 1814, the fort was the last line of defense for the City of Baltimore and, in British minds, America itself. Washington, D.C., had been whipped. Kill Baltimore and the annoying “don’t tread on me” snake was snuffed too. And the Redcoats were on the right track there. There’s an interactive map of the British plans, by both land and sea — along with the strokes of luck and genius that stopped them — that will scare the stars and stripes out of you. I mean, if you were, like, rooting for the Yanks. British visitors might find their day dampened at the prospect of what might so easily have been.

OK, so Francis Scott Key is stuck inconveniently if not uncomfortably on a British boat as part of a gentlemen’s agreement — today they’d cut off his head and send the videotape to his peeps — and experiences from afar a terror, torment and, ultimately, a triumph that will lead to a poem, and a national anthem.

The first stanza is all (warranted) apprehension over the fort’s fate. Look, the Americans were outgunned big time. No, “big time” doesn’t cover it. The British were loaded for bear, fully prepared with more modern, potent guns to shell the ever-loving hell out of Fort McHenry and its comparatively tiny battalion of defenders. Meanwhile, the British gunboats could park just yards (or what would be known today as “meters” if they’d succeeded) beyond the reach of the American cannons and fire at will.

Well, as the night goes on — and the British shoot and shoot and shoot and shoot and shoot and shoot and shoot, and the fort stands — Key gets more confident himself.

Then, dare we say, lippy?

Don’t go there? Yes he did. He gets all Marilyn Manson, Body Count, “we’re gonna Dougie on your dead.” The trash talking is a bit much, to be honest. But, big American finish …

(Probably best that the national anthem as it’s traditionally performed today stops just as Key is getting warm.)

So here we stand, two-plus centuries down the road in this crazy experiment we loosely call democracy. Say what you will about American missteps, and they have been and continue to be legion, but your mom and dad were basically right that you were lucky to be born in this nation. What’s not so good? We’re working on it.

Anyway …

Nolen Strals and Bruce Willen, two-thirds of the late, great rant-rock band Double Dagger and 100 percent of the superstar graphic design firm Post Typography (they’re MICA faculty, to boot), began talking with Mary about a really star-studded idea for the bicentennial of the War of 1812. The guys are creating artworks for an exhibit at the Windup Space, a hangout on Baltimore’s slowly gentrifying North Avenue just perfect for such things, and they’d like to use — ahem — wooden type from the Globe Poster Collection at MICA to create original prints for it. Show runs September 8 through October 27.

She’s in. Partly because it’s an awesome idea, to set the first stanza (good call) of the “Star-Spangled Banner” as a four-panel, stream-of-consciousness love poem to Key, to 1812, to Baltimore, to wit, to graphic design and, yes, to Globe. (The wood type is in, too, looking for all the years of hard, magical poster making as though it might have been at Fort McHenry that crazy night, wearing its scars just as proudly.) And Nolen and Bruce, who’ve got some letterpress experience, are up for doing the physical labor if Mary’ll be their sherpa.

Seeing as Mary also has an entire Pandora Radio channel dedicated to Double Dagger (groupie!), it should come as little surprise that she agreed. Any money that Globe and MICA would receive for her efforts was an afterthought. (Shh! Don’t tell the guys!)

If you’ve not worked with older wood type or long forms of hand-set prose, then the amount of labor and the number of hours it takes to produce such a project would likely amaze or intimidate you. But Bruce and Nolen had a clear vision of what they wanted the panels to look like, and they loved the idea that not all the Globe type is in the same physical shape. So, if the perfect E for the line had an “arm” that wasn’t quite type-high anymore, they eagerly set to work on make-ready, painstakingly building up a corner here and there using bits torn from the whisper-thin pages of a phone book. (Phone book … talk about your 19th-century concepts.) And the kerning (spacing between the letters) was just as big a job. Might even say the hours and hours they shot and shot and shot and shot and shot at the 1812 project show a distinct lack of sanity. Very rock-and-roll, though.

The prints they made? I won’t blow the surprise to bits, but they’re bloody brilliant. And available, on a limited basis. But come see for yourself.

If you’re not stuck on a boat somewhere, get over to the opening on the eighth — that’s Saturday night! — for a look at these prints and other cool stuff Bruce and Nolen have created. Mary and Shop Boy will be aboard. I probably won’t be asked to sing the “Star-Spangled Banner” there, either. But I might hum a few bars if you ask nicely. Or just tell you the wet-your-pants story of Mary and Shop Boy loudly trading ideas at 3 a.m. on where the inflection should come on the fourth line of the third stanza.

Our final answer: Wherever you want.

It’s a free country.

By tacit, she meant that because I remained three-quarters asleep and unable to communicate my disapproval, my approval could be “assumed.” Like she had the “power of attorney” or something simply because Shop Boy was what in some states would be legally declared “comatose.”

Well, Shop Boy could huff and puff till he was blue in the face, but Mary had me by the dictionary.

(OK, that was a dirty little pun, but by making me do this with no advance notice and then by not watching Shop Boy’s every keystroke, Mary has tacitly given her permission for me to throw off the shackles of good taste and manners. And that’s enough of that.)

So here goes:

Andy Snair is a Baltimore illustrator and jolly good friend of Typecast Press. Inspired by wood type in our type cabinet one day, he asked if it’d be cool if he printed the letters and put charming or funny mugs on them, creating “Type Faces.” A, O and K by us!

Well, when Mary was asked recently to “sub-curate” an art show at a gallery called Case[werks] here in Baltimore, and bring along the work of artists we’ve been inspired by or loved collaborating with, Andy Snair was in. (Yup, there’d be Globe Poster stuff too, the old and the new that Mary and Bob Cicero have worked to get created as letterpress teachers at the Maryland Institute College of Art. And Glenn Dellon’s 2011 calendar — too good for that year, if you ask Shop Boy. Cool stuff, all. You’ll see.)

Andy’s an idea guy, so when Mary informed him a week before the show that he, too, had granted tacit approval for inclusion in the show (and all the last-minute work that this entailed), Shop Boy could just about see Andy’s brain gears start turning. Mary wanted him to mount the individual letter cards on wooden bases, then carefully paint the bases’ sides to match the colors we’d printed the letters. (He’d done a few a while back … they’re awesome. But the whole alphabet? In a week? The boy’s got a job.)

Unless he could come up with something better, of course.

We knew he would.

And so Shop Boy is here to tell you that a “reglet” is a very thin piece of hard wood used as spacing between images, letters or lines of type in a backward-reading “form” to be printed.

You need to know this because you have seen or will soon see Andy’s “word search” puzzle at Case[werks] — that’s him and part of it above — as well as the little sheet that Mary has printed for you to keep score on. (You weren’t just about to write on the actual art, were you?) If you can find them all, you get one of Andy’s letters for free! Anyway, on that score sheet, Mary had printed instructions on where to find more information about the words in the puzzle. (Ahem, on a blog that we’d need written by … oh, how’s your afternoon lookin’, Shop Boy?)

You’ve got “reglet” already, right? Oh, come on. I can’t tell you where it is. But I can tell you that it might read backwards, diagonally, vertically, or be staring you right straight in the face. Then again, all of Andy’s letters are doing that, aren’t they?

Shop Boy’ll give you a hint: A “quoin” is a metal device that expands with the turn of a quoin “key” to lock “type” and “reglets” in place. “Hamilton” is a famed old Wisconsin maker of wood type like the stuff that inspired Andy (a “Gothic” face) … and Globe Poster for that matter. A “Vandercook,” as you surely know, is a “proof” press, used back in the day to give a printer a chance to look for any errors on a “proof” of an individual page before the whole book or newspaper was transferred to the big press, whereupon finding an error would create hardship, heartbreak and significant cost (perhaps even one’s job). Nowadays, a Vandercook is the press of choice for book artists, designers, and poster printers who all relish the fine work it never got full credit for in its previous life.  The “tympan” is a coated paper that holds the packing in place and thus controls how much pressure is placed on the “form” to create the depth of the impression. The tympan is also famous for its annoying habit of getting in the way, picking up an unintended “ink” smear, and then — ooh! — marking the back of 15 or so sheets of paper before the printer realizes there’s a problem with “offset” (which we didn’t have room for in the puzzle).

Those are hints about what they are, not where they are in the puzzle. Hey, Shop Boy’s not going to find them for you. But you have my tacit approval to look as long as you like.

And without fail, right in the middle of the endless line was someone who wanted a mere quarter-pound of deli roast beef, sliced thin, from the rarest part of the hunk, for lunches they’d bring from home to eat at their desks during their work week. Poor things … meaning Shop Boy and Robert, the other guy who worked the Sunday shift. Robert was the veteran. Taught Shop Boy the ropes. He was lightning on the eggs, whether frying them up on the stove or stirring them into a styrofoam cup and sticking them into the microwave. Robert, thus, handled the egg sandwiches; Shop Boy handled as much of the rest as he could. It was a great arrangement. You wanted me on that slicer. You needed me on that slicer. As quick as Robert was on the eggs … turn Shop Boy loose on the slicer.

Then the roast beef order brought down the whole house of cards.

Now, if you’ve ever worked in a delicatessen, you know that there are meats that were meant to be sliced. Salami, say. Hard salami … yeah. Shop Boy could absolutely fly through an order, handing you a beautifully sliced, beautifully stacked, beautifully wrapped paper package of that stuff, at exactly the weight count requested. Boiled ham … you bet. Turkey … no problem, boss. Head cheese — oh, man … yuck, I mean, Coming right up! But roast beef was, quite literally, a different animal.

Those other meats cut into a solid sheet, mostly. Roast beef didn’t want to do that. And the more moist and tender the section of the hunk, the less it wanted to conform into anything that could be easily stacked, wrapped and dropped into a paper bag.

So if Shop Boy was the Leonardo da Vinci of the salami, he was more like the Jackson Pollock of the roast beef. A blood-splattered mess. Robert tended to have a bit more success, being a seasoned deli guy, but even he hated the roast beef. And he was on the eggs. The roast beef was all Shop Boy. Sliced thin? I gave them shards o’ beef. Oh, the moaning from the customers. And the people behind them! I’d re-do the order. Same pile of beef shrapnel. I felt horrible. Like a complete failure. Deli dodo. Meat-counter muttonhead. But what could I do?

Overcompensate, that’s what.

When that customer would at last take the package from the counter, he’d separate a shoulder as about 3 pounds of roast beef — for the price of a quarter pound — surprised him. I’d wink, and ask who was next.

They complained, right?

Baloney. They’d be back the next Sunday for their, ahem, quarter-pound of rare roast beef. Sliced thin. Wasn’t hurting the owner. We hustled a ton of product out the door and a ton of money into the till every Sunday, without fail.

Thirty years can change a lot of things. But not everything. I thought my friend Jan, who got me the job at Wilkes’ Deli, would always be around, that we were best buds. Life happens. Haven’t seen her in a decade or more. But if we ever do happen to be in the same room again, I’m sure it’ll be like those years never happened. Mary and Jan’s spouse will be, like, “Who are you people?” We’re not those best New Jersey buds, anymore, really. But of course we are, sorta, you know?

And today, as a printer, Shop Boy still on occasion has the “roast beef reflex.” If I’ve done something I’m not sure quite hit the mark, I push it so over the top that you’d never complain. Mary’s like Robert with the eggs. She’s good, man. Gifted. Dogged. Very smart and resourceful. Shop Boy’s fast, accurate, and can stack whatever Mary wants printed into beautiful rows to be packaged. But I choke on the trickier jobs. Mary’s been the lead printer for so long that she sometimes assumes that Shop Boy’s absorbed all that she has and thus has the same skill level as she does.

Then sometimes I’ll remind her not to make that assumption. Not on purpose … but neither was the roast beef, eh?

Take Jan’s 50th birthday card. You’re not 50 every day, right? Over the years, it had gone from flowers for the birthday, to phone calls for the birthday, to e-mails for the birthday to, “Hey, honest, I remembered your birthday, but Facebook was down.”

Shop Boy had an idea: I’d make — start to finish, by myself (Mary was crazy busy) — a simple but fun card with an image on the front, an image on the back, and a pithy birthday message on the inside, using wood blocks and lead type already hanging around the shop. I wanted to do it almost as much to surprise Mary with how proficient I’ve become at the Vandercook as I wanted to let Jan know that I’d remembered her well — well before her big day.

Nothing says, “I thought of you, but not until it was almost too late,” quite like a rush FedEx envelope through the mail slot on your birthday.

Anyway, part of Shop Boy’s, ahem, genius is starting way ahead. It leaves lots of time to correct for, ahem, stupid mistakes. Mary doesn’t tend to make stupid mistakes, so she’s never been in the habit of leaving too much extra time. Whatever. So a week before the appointed time by which the card needed to get to the post office, Shop Boy had already run the first color, both sides of the card. My idea was to build a form on the bed of the Vandercook SP-15 into which I could easily swap some gorgeous lead type — Stymie, Mary says it is. We’ve got four sizes of this stuff. Heavy as heck, because it’s so thick. But it prints beautifully. Shop Boy’s been getting into the lead type scene a little bit more recently, partly because it’s so easy to manipulate on a Vandercook bed vs. locking it up in a chase and carrying it carefully over to a C&P. I’ve had a chase collapse and drop a heavy metal Boxcar base … NOT on my foot but close … and I can’t even imagine … OK, yes I can … how horrible it would be to painstakingly set some poetic language in lead, space it all out just so, and then have it dump into a big pile on the floor, or “pie,” as they say. The flat Vandercook bed allows no such dumping.

I’d cut pieces of 110-pound Crane Lettra long enough to accommodate a 5″ x 7″ card with a fold. I did the math myself. (Foreshadowing alert!) The idea was to build a form for the first color using non-printing spacers to mimic the size of what would sub in for the second color, in this case the words in lead. I set the lead type, measured the space it would take up, blocked in the space-holders and printed the red images — bits of the old Globe Poster collection. Then I cleaned the press, put on the black ink, swapped in the lead and used spacers to mimic the area previously occupied by the Globe cuts and, voila! It looked, well, lovely. I cleaned the press again, stuck a proof in the truck to show Mary and headed home.

She loved it. Said I’d nailed the printing. Shop Boy beamed with pride.

Which comes before a fall, or so it is said.

Let it be written.

For, a day or two later (we got distracted with a project), as I used a bone folder to crease the paper, having cut it to the perfect size with an X-acto knife, Shop Boy realized that he’s not so good with numbers sometimes. Oh, the card was perfectly registered front and back, but the fold was a full, honest-to-god half-inch off.

Shop Boy was near tears. Honestly. Crushed. It was a bloody pile of worthlessness. All that effort for nothing. Mary saw the panic on my face. She had guests at the studio, but I couldn’t help letting out a little “no, no, no” from where I worked, and she came over.

Too late to reprint, and she couldn’t really afford to help. But she did have a great idea … make it even better than a simple folded card. Take each of the panels, mount them with double-stick tape on beautiful backing paper, drill holes at the top and tie it all off with a big bow of red-and-white baker’s string.

Jan gonna complain about that? Nope. She’ll give me the business once she hears the story, naturally. That’s cool. So’s the card.

Might have saved me hours and hours of work had Shop Boy thought of that right off the bat. But I’m sure Mary didn’t mind me spending all that time on a 50th birthday card for a woman from my past. Right?

Um.

Mary: “Boy, my Valentine had better be something else.”

I’m dead meat.

Not a scale, mind you. Shop Boy doesn’t want to know what the thing weighs. See, Typecast Press is actually a series of four rooms. Three of them sit atop a concrete foundation. One does not. So when you’re talking — roughly — a ton, it begins to mean something, weight-wise, where you place it.

When the building manager says he half expects to see the whole shootin’ match in a pile of debris in the basement by morning, then winks, that means something too. If you said it means, “Cover your ears, cross your fingers, and load the darn thing in anyway,” well, golly, welcome to Typecast Press, Mr. or Mrs. Vandercook Universal 3.

From http://vandercookpress.info/

It’s really all Shop Boy has heard since we started acquiring TLC-needy Vandercooks some time ago. “If we can only find a Universal, we’d be set.” They’re like the Cadillacs of Vandercooks, apparently. Some of them even turn the crank and take the paper down the length of the bed for you, an idea that sort of freaks Shop Boy out even as it sends his fatigued right arm into ecstatic fits. Unfortunately, they never come onto the open market…

So the phone rings one day at the studio. Perry Tymeson, master printer and Vandercook restorer and relocator, has found a couple of presses Mary might be interested in looking at. They’re pricey by our standards, but we might be able to get a package deal. Perry knew that Mary was hoping to get a jumbo Vandercook at a good price for the Maryland Institute College of Art, new home for Globe Poster and a lot of its larger-than-life cuts. It’s awesome to have a hand-carved 26″ x 44″ wooden FBI shooting-range target plate, for instance, but a little less so if you can’t print the dang thing.

Perry had been called in by a New York City printer to help sell and move a 232 Vandercook, an absolute monster, and the Universal 3, a mere giant by comparison. He called Mary and, long story short, once the screaming subsided, the Maryland Institute College of Art owned a Vandercook that could make full use of all the poster cuts that came along with the Globe Collection … and Typecast Press had its Uni. With a counter. No small thing when your doing a run of a thousand or so. And pretty rare on a Vandercook (in Shop Boy’s admittedly rather limited experience). Oh, it’d cost us. But it was still a relatively awesome deal, and since it was the last press we’d ever need to purchase, well, who was Shop Boy to complain?

Right, Mary?

Mary?

Right?

So, Mary says, the next APHA conference is on the University of California-San Diego campus.

Shop Boy: “Are we there yet?”

Truth be told, Shop Boy loved his years on campus (all the while complaining about them — that’s just what you do). A young man of letters, I was … like “C,” for instance. At least until journalism came calling, with a chance to write about sports and hang out with athletic types. I’d never imagined myself as a jock or a writer, so this was quite the life turn. And the A’s flowed as I stumbled onto something I loved. My story’s pretty ordinary. There’s just something that screams “possibilities!” on just about every campus out there. An energy or something, I don’t know. Especially campuses as breathtaking as UC-San Diego’s. It’s in La Jolla, to be accurate, land of the $2 million average home. Estancia La Jolla is quite literally right across the street from campus.

Yes, yes, it’s the place I swiped the fruit from. Shhh!

So, the bear. It’s called “Bear, 2005″ by Tim Hawkinson. Strangely appropriate. We were wandering across campus back to the Estancia on our last full day in La Jolla, taking a route we hadn’t tried before. From the Geisel Library, down a path adorned by a fantastical snakeskin brick pattern, past a building topped by the work “Vices and Virtues,” where big neon words alternate to display them. You know, FAITH/LUST, HOPE/ENVY, CHARITY/SLOTH, PRUDENCE/PRIDE, etc. Of course Mary knew it had to be by Bruce Nauman, the dude who did the “Violins Violence Silence” neon piece at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Affecting stuff, especially as dusk began to make the colors pop.

We’d walked a little farther through an open courtyard when Mary squealed.

It’s funny how one little curve of an object out of the corner of an eye can suggest the whole. But  whatever, Mary grabbed Shop Boy’s arm and we tore down a side path. It opened onto a grassy knoll where we spotted Hawkinson’s sculpture. “I just knew it was a teddy bear,” she said — suddenly a little girl again — of the mammoth sculpture, which does look amazingly cuddly up close. A photo can’t really conjure the feeling of the piece. Just … peaceful. We stood and looked at the stone beast in the fading sunlight of a final day in paradise and just had a moment, you know?

There, at the end of a magical journey, it seemed the campus was making sure we didn’t miss things we might never be within hundreds of miles of again. The things that students pass every day, late for class, without a second thought. It happens all the time at Typecast Press. People who’ve stopped by for a tour or an appointment to talk stationery will fixate on some object or another in the studio and be, like, “Wow! What is that?”

And we’ll have walked right past the cool thing without a thought for months, or years even. It’s odd. We just sold one of the Vandercooks, a No. 1. We hadn’t used the press for some time. It wasn’t fair to the craft of letterpress to keep it out of circulation any longer. Anyway, when it was time for the press to go, Shop Boy had to disassemble an entire still-life tableau that Mary had created with a gorgeous brass oil can, an ancient brayer, a funky ink tray, that kind of stuff.

So now, there’s just an empty space in the corner.

It made me think back to the bear. Some day, in all likelihood, it’ll be gone from the UCSD campus. Perhaps it’s on loan, and the artist or owner will call it home. The science building will need to expand. Maybe it will simply age and fall down like everything and everyone does eventually. Some students will never have had any use for it anyway. It blocked the straightest path to the candy vending machines or whatever. Heck, we now have a clearer path to our original printing press, the Vandercook No. 3, a sweet piece of equipment itself. Still.

Shop Boy’s always had a love/hate relationship with Christmas. For one thing, my parents worked their butts off to pile up toys for seven kids to spend hours opening up on the big morning. It was overwhelming. Numbing, actually. A half-hour later, I couldn’t name half the awesome presents I’d received. Same with Mary’s incredibly generous parents, holidays or anytime. It’s just so hard sometimes to stop and … truly appreciate the possibilities that we’ve been handed through the years.

They don’t really teach you that in college, after all. Never too late to learn, I suppose. Perhaps Shop Boy should thank the Bear first of all.

Yeah.

“If you’re after getting the honey, then you don’t go killing all the bees.”

It’s a lyric by Joe Strummer, once of the Clash, then of the Mescaleros, and now sadly R.I.P. That lyric is from a song called “Johnny Appleseed,” which Spike loves and whose nature-respecting theme his restaurant sweats to uphold.

Anyway … Spike’s apparently got a musical soundtrack running through his mind 24/7. Turns out he’s also a fan of They Might Be Giants, a sometime rock, sometime kiddie-music band with a huge cult following. He tells the story of, in the way-old days, peppering the band’s manager with faxes (lol!) pleading for the boys to stop into Spike & Charlie’s, his first restaurant, when They were in town. Lo and behold, They — John Flansburgh and John Linnell, et al. — walked through the door one night, ate well (no surprise) and invited Spike to a Baltimore concert, giving him a shout-out from the stage. Fandom cemented.

They Might Be Unisex

Woodberry Kitchen had inherited some fairly so-so restroom accommodations at its inauguration a few years back. Not horrible or anything. Just not … special. Well, it wasn’t long before Woodberry was so special that it needed to expand, and it was decided that the restrooms should be spiffed up big time while the whole kitchen expansion/remodeling deal was underway. And that the restrooms should be for both men and women. Equality. No waiting. Cool, right? (Shop Boy wonders if they wondered whether maybe the guys’d be shamed into keeping a place they shared with women a bit tidier. Couldn’t hurt. Shop Boy had four older sisters, one younger sister. I learned quickly. Painfully.)

And so it was that Woodberry came to have three unisex restrooms. With fancy sinks, soaps and, tra-la-la, cloth hand towels. The three doors were given a distressed-wood look, smoked-glass panels and the walls around them painted a nice gray. Classy. But what of the signage? How to alert a newcomer that, yes, whether you were a man or woman, boy or girl, this was the place?

How about this:

OK, so-so photo, but you get the picture: The title of one of Spike’s favorite They Might Be Giants songs, “Women and Men,” on each of the windows and the lyrics applied to the surrounding walls by a real, old-school sign painter. The story of Mary’s hunt for the right painter is one for another day (guy named Bill Pickett, out of Richmond — a find), but for today we can just skip to the happy ending. It’s a gorgeous sight in real life. When you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go see it.