Happy solstice everyone! Thank you for checking in on Also Archives: Volume 2. And thank you Sun for swinging us around, keeping us warm. Now that you’re taking a bit of a break for us Northerners, I hope we can keep warm in the company of one another.
Cliches aside, thank you very much to all that submitted this time around. I know that I (Sam) was pretty late on getting the ball rolling for this Volume. I figured as long as I post something, the ball still rolls. Nothing is still anyways. On that note – I am thinking of making this Also Archives concept yearly on the winter solstice. That way: we respect the full power of the sun’s time, have a more resolute milestone to archive, and hopefully this becomes more substantial and less laborious. Let me know if there are any objections!
OK, enjoy
Imogene
My partner showed me how to make mini zines one day and I knew exactly what I would make first. I had been driving her crazy for weeks talking about turtles and how they live such long lives. It was a thought that I couldn’t get out of my head. Why do turtles live so much longer than other animals, especially their closest relatives, other reptiles? Do turtles hold the secret to eternal youth and living forever?
In creating this zine, I found resolution and a sense of calm for myself. Doing a little bit of research about turtles scratched the itch I had to find out more, and made me reflect on larger themes of sustainability, longevity, and taking life slow.
I think we have a lot to learn from turtles and the other animal companions we share this planet with. I hope my mini zine inspires others to seek out the hidden truths that the natural world has to offer.
James
Audio Sketch 11-6-2024
For the past few years, I’ve been recording sounds of day-to-day life. I currently carry a small Olympus recorder and a pair of stereo omni microphones that I built using Primo EM272 capsules. I’ve been trying to develop a consistent practice of sound collection and creation using my recordings. The process of field recording has always been enjoyable for me. I like to collect little sounds, like the gentle drip from a pipe near the ground or the chorus of crickets at dusk. I typically don’t have a specific purpose in mind for the recordings when I take them. Sometimes I use them right away, and other times I just store them for years. Inevitably, favorite recordings will be used again and again, while others are never used in anything. One recording I love is the sound of hail on the tent, recorded on my phone in the smokey mountains. The recording also has the sounds of my friends and I complaining about how cold it is. The hail on the tent almost sounds like a crackling fire. Somehow it is very calming. I love the sounds of weather. What slice of reality are you capturing in a field recording? I can place a microphone near a single drip and capture a sound that I could only hear by lying on the ground with my ear to the drop. I can also record the chaotic sounds of a busy street. Without images to distract, what part of the soundscape moves into the foreground? An existential question I’ve thought about is how to understand the act of field recording, especially when done in the wilderness. I walk into the forest with a blend of plastics, metals, and circuitry that records and stores sonic energy. I plug in a copper wire connected to an electret condenser capsule and press a button on the recorder. I put on headphones and listen through the system as the microphone capsule converts the sound into an electrical signal, which is then converted into a digital file of ones and zeros and stored on a little card. I take these files back to my room and do strange things to them on my computer. What am I doing, and how can I make meaning out of it? Obviously, lots of things can be abstracted to this level. It may not be useful at all, but it’s hard not to see how the technology is inseparable from this practice. How can the field recorder connect me to and disconnect me from reality? What is the fundamental relationship between the recordist and the environment? Does it depend on what the recording is used for? I took a class this fall called “Building an Audio Sketchbook.” This is a piece I created in that class.
jmjbarrs@gmail.com
{Redacted}
Layton
The first song is a cover of a tune by Norma Tanega who was a 60s folk singer songwriter. I don’t know a ton about her other than from some wikipedia reading but she seems very cool. My wonderful girlfriend emnet showed this song to me in college and it lodged in my brain permanently. Something about it feels so contemporary even though it was written in 1966. It sounds like a punk song and I love how she writes lyrics (see: “walking my cat named dog”). She has a lot of other great music too, highly recommend.
The second song mud money is something I’ve been stewing on for a long time. I think I first started writing it in 2022 and then forgot about it. It resurfaced and I finished the lyrics sometime early this year. That’s usually how it goes for me with writing songs, things gotta marinate in the voice memos for a long time.
RJ
Hello,
I know my weaknesses and gift-giving is one of them. So lately my go-to gifts have been paintings of some sort on canvas or on clothes. They feel more personal and special than any of the other gifts I’ve given but that also might be a painters bias.
Anyways, I have been living with Sam for the past 4-5 years, and he’s been a great roommate and amazing friend. 2 years ago he brought us another roommate, Irving the cat. This chicken-lovin, snot-nosed jerk was a softy hiding behind a grumpy old man exterior. I loved watching him run, belly skin flopping side-to-side behind sam as he put his food on top of his cat tree to help him exercise. I will miss Irving, and I will miss Sam when he moves out, so I wanted to make him something that reminds him of our time as roommates and honor the man, Irving. Here’s Irving wearing the mini sox hat they give you at the Cell if you get some ice cream.
With love,
Rj
Jim
Sometimes I wonder if the reason my cat talks so much is because I’m often chatting to him. He’s noisier than other cats. But he’s just being polite. Its in his genteel nature to carry on small talk and set others at ease . This is his jingle.
Mary
I made this animated gif about the woes of commuting in Chicago during the winter. I conceived of this idea two winters ago, started it last winter but got too depressed to continue, and finally had a good enough reason to finish it this winter (shoutout Also Archives). Ain’t that just the way!
Sam
When COVID hit, the first thing I bought was a tattoo gun. “I’m just gonna lock myself away until this thing rides out and emerge a tattooer” – I thought. Turns out tattooing yourself is actually pretty hard, who knew? Plus, I am too aware of it’s permanence to practice on other people (with a couple exceptions).
After using my tattoo gun to mangle some poor orange and bananas, I started to fully grasp tattooing’s challenges. “OK I guess I’ll simplify this a bit by sticking to single pokes instead of rapid machinery” – I thought. That strategy was a bit more manageable. One of my first stick and pokes was a reference to my mom’s “where are my kids” call of choice (the Chickadee above).
Eventually, stick and pokes became a bit too slow for me. The rapid machinery did have the advantage of being rapid. Now I am trying to continue tattooing mostly freehand since I am too lazy to buy a special printer with transfer paper.
The cat pictured above is my brother, Irving. He was my Dad’s cat for years, but found a new home with me in his later years. I never had planned to have a cat and I think he never planned to be kept in a house all day, so we clashed. But we also loved. He taught me how to be patient, how to live life enjoying all its moments. Most importantly, he taught me how to forgive by not being so good at it himself. Hopefully, I taught him what unconditional love feels like. It was a symbiotic relationship. Watching him die was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.
People sometimes wonder how I am able to tattoo myself despite the pain, and even more so why I enjoy it.
I have a long relationship with pain. Tattooing has helped me reclaim it. At least now I have something to remind me of my bro.
Libby
My new year’s resolution is to continue learning pottery. I tried it for the first time in 2024 and made some neat little pots, and I’d like to make some bigger and more functional pieces. Pictured is the many weeks long process including throwing, trimming, glazing, and firing.
Connor
Happy solstice to all!
I’m submitting this late (because I’m me and apparently I refuse to change), but when did we all decide that time was not a construct? I definitely did not get that memo.
I’ve really enjoyed browsing through the various submissions over the two volumes, both from friends and people I know and those that I don’t. For those that I know, I haven’t lived geographically nearby for some years now, and this platform has given me a small window into your lives beyond the classic information exchanged in catchup phone calls. It’s made me feel closer to you all again, and I’m extremely grateful for that. For those that I don’t know, some of you I’ve heard about, and now I feel like I know you in some small way. Art n stuff — how neat is that! Huge shoutout to Sam for organizing and to everyone that has shared parts of themselves.
Okay, enough preamble. Over the past 18 months or so, I’ve been working on a biography project of sorts with my paternal grandfather, Don. About 10 years ago, he was sitting on his back porch with his wife, Kathy, and he was talking about how lucky he felt. He was aging well, he had lived a life full of adventure as an international journalist, he had a healthy, loving and successful family. Kathy, hearing this not for the first time, turned to him and said, “Why don’t you go back and leave something for your kids about how your life unfolded?” So he did. He started writing and releasing memoirs to his kids detailing the different “stages” in his life: his early years, college, his time in the army, his career overseas, his return to the States, retirement. An unrefined telling of his life journey and the decisions and memorable moments along the way.
Those memoirs found their way to me, and I gobbled them up. But after reading them, I still had so many questions. I wanted to learn more about him, about my family, about myself. I had the idea of conducting interviews with him to ask those unanswered questions, and I thought it would be cool to create a side-by-side written project: his memoirs on one side of the page and a Q&A of our transcribed interviews on the other side. As a journalism major and his grandson, I felt equipped to do something about this vision. So I asked him if he was interested in the idea, and he said yes.
We have now completed 25 interviews over Zoom, culminating with a final in-person interview during his 90th birthday celebration this October. With the interviews done (unless I decide to expand the project or think of more questions), I’ve moved on to the transcription phase, with compilation and layout to follow. I have almost 20 hours of interviews to parse through and varying levels of free time & productivity, but it’s been really special having this honest and heartfelt experience with my grandfather. I’m hoping by this time next year I’ll have a finished product to share. 🙂
(Above I included a screenshot of us cheesin’ during our first Zoom interview [April 12, 2023] and of a purely coincidental simultaneous head scratch during our last one [June 19, 2024]).
Ryan
I was home for a camping trip in Mid-July 2024 and had a few days to hang out
before a canoeing trip to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCA). We were scheduled to leave Tuesday morning. It was the Saturday morning prior and I was water skiing with my Dad. I cut across the wake, my foot torqued inside my boot, and I wiped out.
It wasn’t painful initially, so I had hoped it was a sprain. The rest of the day, I was propped up figuratively by that hope, and literally by crutches
borrowed from my friend Logan. But by that night, my ankle was severely swollen and purple.
I visited urgent care the following morning. The doctor said my ankle was broken and may not require surgery. I told my friends to go ahead on the canoe trip without me, ending my streak of consecutive BWCA summer canoe trips at 7 years.
Then the news got worse. When I visited the Orthopedic specialist, she confirmed that this type of fracture would not heal easily. I needed surgery.
Thankfully, the doctor had an opening at the surgery center just 48 hours later. I passed the pre-op appointment on Tuesday morning and had my ankle repaired the next day.
I stayed at home the next few days. The oxycodone made the pain manageable enough to sleep and I improved my crutch skills with practice. I flew back to Ohio for work only 4 days after surgery.
I work in construction management, so I am usually walking the job site frequently. This was a non-starter with crutches. My company wanted me to continue feeling engaged, so I got a golf cart.
I couldn’t drive my car the first few weeks, so I got rides from co-workers or Ubered. I ordered my groceries online and had them delivered. Showering and getting dressed was difficult. Mundane tasks now arduous.
This was the hardest part about the recovery process. I had to be far more
intentional about caring for myself and going about daily life. 2 weeks after surgery, I got the soft cast off. In another 5, I was able to shed the crutches and began physical therapy. I did some PT at home and at the gym.
After a few weeks of this, I was able to transition to a small brace. Finally, about three and a half months after surgery, I was able to walk normally without the brace.
I was very angry about breaking my ankle at first. I later adopted a popular saying when people asked about my recovery: “At least it’s not the head or the heart.” My ankle was broken. I couldn’t go back and change it. I needed to play my cards and hold onto hope.
Breaking my ankle taught me three important lessons:
● Seek tangibles and focus on the positives.
● Hold gratitude.
This reminds me of an interesting premise I heard a while ago:
Happiness = Wanting what you have / having what you want = Gratitude / Gratification
● Things that seem like a big deal at the time are often small footnotes of a
larger, more important story. Perspective is paramount.
Thank you for making it all the way to the end! Your support and perception are very important to the also crew. I hope that this Archive can continue to provide warmth. Please consider submitting or subscribing to also for next time! ❤
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