No. 14 of our politically -focused letterpress postcards is out. We send these cards in the name of INDIVISIBLE / NEWARK, DE, to all of the U.S. SENATORS and another 60 or so essential people. Yes, I know the Senate isn't in session. The card will be waiting for them when they get back.
We love this one highlighting the 7,000 people strong group walking from Honduras to the U.S. That is 1,125 miles by foot to McAllen, Texas. At three miles an hour, that's 375 hours, or about 38 days if they walk 10 hours a day. If they head to Southern California, the trip is twice the distance. Most are just carrying a bag.
And the welcoming committee they can expect is the wrath of the conservative, anti-immigrant Trump administration.
Our card is handset metal Trump (actually Trump Medieval Italic 16 point). We’ve always liked the chiseled quality of the type but honestly is bothers us now every time we see the word. We also happen to have a thorough collection of accented italic 16 point characters to match. We will have to dig around, but we also have the accents in at least one other Trump size.
We took the full poem by Emma Lazarus from the Statue of Liberty and replaced every letter for which we had an accented version. Nice texture.
I hope the 7,000 make it to the border of the U.S. border and get a chance at the new life they seek. We have an extra room. I cannot imagine what their lives must have been like to undertake such an inspiring trip against such odds. 0.0020588235294% of the current population of the U.S. Maybe we could take the $25,000,0000,000 for the wall and go to Honduras and improve things enough that people didn't want to leave. Yeah. Right. Good luck with that idea.
As a creative solution we love this piece. It is so simple and clear. It was fun to set. Interesting to think of all of the accented characters as ASCENDERS. Would be nice to print up 7,000 and distribute them to the marchers as we have done at several marches over the past 2 years.
Women’s March / Philadelphia
March of our Lives / Washington, DC
March for Science / Washington, DC
I wrote that first part this morning.
Then at lunch at Wendy’s we were talking about someone having won the $1.6 billion lottery and what kinds of things you might do with the money. We are quite happy with our lives as they are, but you could drop some large bundles to help family members that are only future dreams to have college educations and the like.
Then I got a good idea, probably from having written the earlier part of this note.
Hire about 30 immigration lawyers. Go to Mexico and bring all 7,000 walkers to Newark, Delaware. Spend some time finding out what kinds of skills the people had that could be useful to a company. Then start that company. Don’t just give people money, but provide them with a path to contribute to their lives and the life of Newark, Delaware. Then just let it happen, though with some slush funding hanging around to make sure the business energy was high enough for success. English classes. Business classes. History classes (of the U.S. and Honduras). Psychology classes. Parenting classes. Public speaking classes. Coding and on and on. 7,000 people would make a pretty lovely connected junior college - high school - middle school - elementary school - kindergarten.
Seriously, that would be fun.
Then I might make an offer on the building in which Lead Graffiti is located.