Postcard mobile

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A mobile made of postcards clipped to a wreath form

When I participated in the Disney College Program, I made some lifelong friends. After we went our separate ways, scattering across the country, we decided we would exchange postcards. Sometimes we send them when we’re in the places we visit, and sometimes we send giant envelopes collecting a year or five’s worth of missives.

This year, I decided that it was a shame these postcards and the cards I’ve received from other friends lived in a box where I never looked at them. Postcards are tiny art pieces that can carry someone’s love across a great distance. They deserve to be seen.

In an attempt to make these postcards come to life, I found a way to suspend them from the ceiling in my office. I used a wreath form and with some assistance, wired three hoops together. Then I took some wire and twisted it to clips on either end. Clip one end to the hoop and the other end to a card, and voila!

T. Swift gift

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Canvas tote bag quoting Taylor Swift’s “All Too Well” surrounded by a red scarf, a “Fuck the patriarchy” keychain, and playlists attached to pens.

I am the best Secret Santa and I will hear no argument to the contrary. When I pulled one of my closest work friends’ name for our work Secret Santa, I knew I wanted to put together something special. I nixed a bunch of ideas before coming up with a bag themed around her favorite Taylor Swift song, “All Too Well.”

The biggest project was knitting a red scarf. While it knit up pretty quickly, in comparison to everything else, it took the longest. Specially for this project, I learned how to soften acrylic yarn by soaking the finished product in a mix of water and hair conditioner. It turned out well and is definitely softer than other acrylic-based projects I’ve made.

The keychain is a shrinky dink I made by tracing a design I put together on Canva. Thank goodness for Canva and its ability to make designs neat and crisp. I also used Canva and a Cricut for the tote bag‘s lyric, “Wind in my hair, I was there, I remember it (all too well).” The final Canva project was the Spotify playlist cards for each of T. Swift’s pen style songs. I grabbed her quotes talking about gel pen, fountain pen, and quill pen songs and made them pretty. And of course, the pens to go along with them.

Baby blanket 2.0

yellow and white blanket draped on a couch in front of a brick wall
crochet baby blanket
detail of yellow and white crochet blanket
crochet detail
yellow and white blanket draped on a couch in front of a brick wall
two baby blankets
detail of knit yellow and white blanket
knit detail

Another one of my best friends had a baby recently, so I’m an aunt! During The Pandemic Times, I taught myself how to crochet in an effort to crochet enough snowflakes to fill a flat rate USPS shipping box for my grandmother’s Christmas present. Alas, the winter holiday flurried past and no snowflakes were shipped.

The unintended consequence of learning how to crochet meant that I now had another method of making a baby blanket for the new arrival. I found some of the softest yarn I could in the most cheerful colors, and these two beauties resulted.

I used this pattern from Mama in a Stitch for the crochet blanket.

I used this pattern from Leelee Knits for the knit blanket.

Poem dispenser

Once upon a time, I started my Poem-A-Day Project in September 2011. After a whole bunch of writing, I gathered a bunch of poems.

In the summer of 2013, I brought this poem dispenser to the Printer’s Row Lit Fest.

            On the weekend of June 8 and June 9, 2013, Printer’s Row Lit Fest was held on a block of Dearborn where printing and publishing houses were located. In previous years, I have only ever attended Lit Fest as a casual observer of the beautifully bound vintage books, the old movie posters, the speakers, panels, and cooking demonstrations. This year, working with Here’s the Story, I helped man the table where we sold t-shirts, talked about our organization, and my gumball machine poem dispenser made its debut.

My overall experience of Printer’s Row Lit Fest was a warm one. In addition to the heat pounding on the tops of our heads, we were met by the warm words of countless people who stopped by at the Here’s the Story table. Setting up a gumball machine dispensing poems printed on brightly colored paper meant that people stopped to buy poems, take pictures, or talk to the poet and the organization that supported her.

With the exception of one vocal person.

Continue reading →

Marquette University: The 1969 Chapel Incident

Tuesday, April 22, 1969 began like any other spring day at Marquette University. Classes were in session, and Father Raynor (1969) sent a memo to Moeller directing him to “appoint a committee of faculty, administrators, and students to address itself to points c. and d. raised by the ASMU sub-committee investigating ROTC.” This marks two months passing since the formation of the ASMU sub-committee and six months since the original Coalition for Peace request. 

“Members of the Anti-ROTC Coalition attended the mass [in the St. Joan of Arc Chapel] celebrated by Father Patrick Burns, SJ, assistant professor of theology. After mass, the students asked him to get word to Fr. Raynor that they wanted to meet with him” (Riordan, 1969, p. 4) to discuss issues related to the ROTC program. According to Riordan (1969), “the statement demanded a dialogue with ‘the man whose name is on the Defense Contract’ and said that the students were occupying the chapel until ‘the channels of communication are opened'” (p. 4). 

Want to read the full paper?

Marquette-Archive-Paper-KratzDownload
Chapel-Incident-PresentationDownload

Sources:

Raynor, John P. (1969, April 22). Committee to study points c. and d. raised by the ASMU sub-committee investigating ROTC at Marquette (Series 20.2, Box 12). Rev. John P. Raynor, S.J., Chronological File, Department of Special Collections and University Archives, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI.

Riordan, R. (1969, May 2). MU still unravelling confusion of chapel incident. The Marquette Tribune, 53(57), 1, 4.

Good-looking people in small clever rooms…

Brianna, Andrew, Vvinni, and Norma read a really long book.

Back in 2014, my boyfriend got Infinite Jest as a gift from his brother. When he explained, I asked, “Why did he buy you that? Does he hate you?”

As it turned out, I would read Infinite Jest with him over the summer of 2014 and much of the 14-15 academic year. Because of my reading style, I also paused occasionally to read other “palate-cleansing” books, but I ultimately finished the brick.

Now, roughly 5 years since I first read that book, I’m rereading it with my once boyfriend, now husband and we’re making a podcast with friends. I’ve never done anything like this, but I’m excited to get started!

Brianna’s Timeline and Character List for making sense of Infinite Jest.

Yelp

Coffee mug in indie 80s coffee shop
Cup of Joe
Chinese food dinner; sweet and sour tofu
Sweet and sour tofu
Vegetarian Mexican breakfast; soy chorizo and eggs with black beans
Soy chorizo and eggs
Two mugs of coffee in front of a bookshelf
Coffee and books
Orange and white cat in front of book shelf
Bustopher Jones

I don’t think a whole lot of people spend as much time on Yelp as I do. I’m not a regular community member, but I like to think I contribute to the community.

One of my favorite things to do is paint a picture of a business and my experience there. More often than not, I write about restaurants or coffee shops, and since I love them all so much, my reviews are usually pretty effusive. You have to mess up big time to get fewer than four stars from me. And even then, I’m still pretty nice about it.

Would I say that Yelp is a hobby? Probably. It’s an added bonus that it has the potential to help people connect with local businesses that they too might fall in love with. It makes me feel like the fairy godmother to the city, dropping in, being a regular person, writing a review, and poof! More people find the business! That feels like magic to me.

Yelp

Baby blanket

Folded striped blanket on a wooden chair

My first friend to have a baby was my roommate from Disney. I was so excited to hear she was expecting a baby, I immediately started knitting. I knew I wanted gray in the blanket and this green was the best color in this yarn, so it accidentally became a pseudo-Slytherin color scheme.

I used this pattern from Purls & Pixels for the rice stitch baby blanket.

everylittlebitt

https://www.instagram.com/p/BZKlDf6AdjC/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Inspired by Julie & Julia, I decided I needed a cooking and photography project. I got How to Cook Everything Vegetarian from a used book store and started my intermittent project.

I love Mark Bittman’s voice in his cookbooks because he uses simple terms, but he doesn’t assume his readers know absolutely nothing. I’ve found a couple recipes that I’ve used again and again!