So apparently, there's this whole population of people so intent with sharing their experience, their writings, and the flotsam of their daily lives, they create elaborate--but tiny, almost invisible, really--publications all on their own. They labor and sweat over the minutest details that most readers probably won't notice. They do all these things by hand that have been automated and digitized for generations. They do it without any obvious sign of reward, it takes way more time and money than they can ever hope to recover, they often get no or very little feedback or sense of who's even reading their stuff. A few of them even do it while being full-time dads to small children.
28 Pages Lovingly Bound With Twine is a zine, published by an at-home dad from Ohio named Christoph Meyer. It's exactly what its title describes, and then some. A good portion of 28PLBwT is devoted to Meyer's son, and his family. There's a regular discussion of the twine, some shoutout to other zine people, and a variety of hand-printed, etched, painted, cut or bound elements that remind you this is a deliberately, individually created product.
There's an unmistakeable sense of oddness, but also of identification, because so many of Meyer's experiences and perspectives will be instantly recognizable to new dads. But it's also enlightened enough to make you wonder who's really the odd one: the vegan with no email or TV living in an olde mill, or the Taco Bell-bloated blogger shuttling between two cities who's figuring out how to download Oscar ceremony updates to his cell phone. [don't answer that.]
I have written to Mr Meyer expressing my admiration and asking his permission to republish a couple of excerpts here. In the mean time, if you're really only going to sample one issue of 28PBLwT--and come on, back issues are only $2, and #13 is $3 via a distributor; zines are the only thing that make less economic sense than blogs--you should sample #12, The Alphabet Issue. It's hilarious, from "A is for Answering Machine" all the way to "Z is for Zinemaking."
You can just stick money in an envelope [$4 per to cover postage] and send it to YOPSE, Christoph Meyer, PO Box 106, Danville OH 43104. Or you can get all fancy and buy from some zine megasource like Parcell Press, which is what I did at first, too.
In case you think I'm making this whole thing up, check out the article about Meyer in the Columbus Dispatch: "Writer neatly wraps pages of his days". And if you still don't believe me, ask Rebel Dad. He pointed me to it in the first place.
Oh wow, I didn't even know he was a dad now...guess I need to catch up! I used to trade zines with him. Ahh, the old days before pixels. His zine is a lovely one.