Win Barnstormer

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In the library with the wrench

for details 

(also look in the library with the library)

and look for more Nor By news soon.

My Cadastre Release Parties

My Cadastre / Mein flurbuch by Uljana Wolf,
translated by Nathaniel Otting.
A bilingual, bicolor series of poems printed on 20 Crane Lettra pages, handbound with handmade end papers and waxed linen thread.
Produced in an edition of 250 copies (available $10 each); 26 specials are signed and lettered by author and translator (available at $20 each).
Please come for them to
Schoen Books, 7 Sugarloaf St, S. Deerfield, MA
where the author will read at 8pm on Thursday April 23
And for the rest of them at
the Small Press Fair at the Juniper Literary Festival, UMass Amherst
Friday April 24 at 6pm and Saturday April 25 starting at noon.
If you can't make it to either party, simply send an email to norbypress@gmail.com to order your copy from afar!

What's a cadastre?

You've seen them before. You just haven't noticed them. They're sometimes hung in finer rest rooms. They look like this:

Computers can make them nowadays. Then they can look like this:

Mirriam-Websters say a cadastre is this: an official register of the quantity, value, and ownership of real estate used in apportioning taxes.

So that is what a cadastre is.

Announcing Barnstormer

Heather Christle's Barnstormer, a poem of endless intrigue and heavy-duty whimsy, is hereby by Nor By born and available for pre-order, re-order, shmee-order... but not dis-order, and probably not some other words ending in -order, too. Not even Barnstorder, if you were so clever to think of it. The fresh-printed matter is currently drying and cooling off, and awaiting merely its scoring, which by all good estimates it shall receive, along with a hearty with-the-grain fold, in time for Heather's upcoming reading in NYC.
This sparky broadside-meets-greeting-card features a remarkable vintage chicken block, courtesy of Kelly at May Day Studio, with our mainstays Century Schoolbook and Copperplate Gothic types, printed onto a creamy and cream Rives BFK paper. This tiny and special edition is limited to 52 exemplars, each numbered and signed by the poet. Price is $6, shipping is no cents.
To order yours now, write to norbypress@gmail.com or simply add to cart!

Here Comes Black Oak Speaks

Left to right: one black oak speaking, many black oaks speaking & hanging out
Black Oak Speaks, a photos-just-don't-do-it-justice poem by Miriam Dean-Otting, (I need a tripod!) was printed today in an unprecedentedly limited edition of 52 after being set slowly in the mid of last week (Elagon) and proofed rigorously yesterday (Sunday). The first Nor By Press publication to feature premeditated yet impulse-blended ink tones (russety) and barky, handmade stock (Nattura), this 4 x 7 broadside is available for purchase effective immediately. Please send requests (signed/framed/none of the above) to norbypress@gmail.com or try your luck adding to a figurative cart (don't worry, we have tested, and it works).

Meet Ice Cream Amnesia

Left to right: Ice Cream Amnesia with cones, Ice Cream Amnesia with ice creams

Unlike actual ice cream, supplies of Manny Karkowsky's Ice Cream Amnesia do not respond to demand. They are, however, happy to say 'hello.'
To purchase, please select from sadly curtailed option bar (top right) or write to norbypress@gmail.com. When ordering, it may be prudent to specify cone- or cream-only cover; if you'd like a signed copy, please send an electronic inquiry prior.

More on Ice Cream Amnesia:

"Ice Cream Amnesia is a beautiful letterpress production. It’s also one of the best pieces of short fiction I’ve read in a while, with a sense of humor to rival American conservatism."

--Sean Casey, The Kenyon Review Blog

More on Manny:

Manny Karkowsky shaves the devil's back every Tuesday. As a child actor, his stage name was Manndroid the Magnificent. At age twelve, he built a tombstone escalator for counting: 'one to three oclock four oclock rock, five six seven oclock eight oclock rock.' Then he threw a herpes pie in the graveyard. At the age when most young men start reading, Manny's grandfather evaporated at the stroke of teatime. He found that the Picasso-nightingale had snapped a cat's neck on the patio. With both eyes on one side of its head it warbled from the dreamstufftree: 'one two three oclock four oclock rock, five six seven oclock eight oclock rock.' Dangling the cha-cha, broken-necked cat got the punchline: fuck the swandive! The Hamburgler gobbled zebra haunches in what the camera showed was a close second. Sure enough, Manny knows when it's hammertime.

The rug is embarrassed

The rug is delighted!! It has not received so much attention since it was hauled up 2 flights of steps over the course of 2 days 2 years ago, and that was not a particularly nice attention. Originally from Iran, it arrived in an antique shop and later to Nor By headquarters before there ever was such a thing, where it has been nothing but stomped, spilled, and picked upon.. until now.
This afternoon it behaved splendidly, patiently awaiting, with its minor lint, the 1 by 1 arrival of orange cardstock covers bearing the boding image of what it is to have Ice Cream Amnesia; at least to a Kelsey 5x8. Somewhat more true to a title like Ice Cream Ambivalence, these fun covers feature two very different designs, not for the sake of variation alone, but simply because nobody knew which was better. We briefly considered setting up a blog poll and letting you -- the readers -- decide, but contrary to our unprompted self-compromising notes on character recorded here earlier this summer, we were impulsive. We apologize. And we do hope you like (both of) them.
Stay tuned for details on the matter-of-time completion, and for the ever-possible poll after all.

A printing machine

I know not whether I refer to the 19th century printing apparatus of Meriden, Conn. at my side, or more obnoxiously and a bit abashedly to myself, also at my side, blackened in story print and exhausted! I probably mean simply to refer to the two of us in unison, as it were; the idea being mostly that our operation of the past few days since last Thursday has been machine-like on the whole overall and in a physically and otherwise exhausting way, for both of us (now I am speaking for both of us) making us repeat repetitive motions over and over all day. That is the only way you can manually have more than one of one thing, I chose to repeat to myself, while listening to Cat Power repeat herself about angelos negros no less than two hundred and twenty times. In our ambitious but self-doubting overshot run of 120, we only lost 4: two to blurry-back, one to malalignment, and one more to blurry-back, which leaves 116, an ok road in the vicinity and not a mathematically significant number.
And so, and this was the object of the post, in less than one week, we have concluded major printing operations on our second project and first ever book project, ICE CREAM AMNESIA, a tale by Manny Karkowsky. Above you see the newborn page 13s drying before being moved to a real non-incubating cardboard box. Indeed at this point all 15 pages have been through and past this phase and are now all together in boxes maturing but staying kind of humidity-free. All we are waiting on is a cover to judge this by.

In the week of Apscase 2008

the inagur-annual edition of the weeks calendar was printed.

For those unfamiliar with the project, here is a brief background: finding titles like "Week 6" dry and undesirable, and weekend renditions of "this week, next week, last week" so ambiguous, we configured 52 pronouncable phoneme-clumps and assigned them to the otherwise nameless but not mysterious weeks of the year, making each Mon-to-Sun loop unique, character-laden and unmistakable, for an overall heartwarming and immensely functional effect. Under this new schema, interlocutors will no longer be confused by the highly relative and regionally-informed understandings of "this" or "that" week; events or ideas occurring at early or late parts of months may be identified with greater accuracy, nostalgia, and possibly even the kind of kinship often reserved for, say, day or place names; and the natural continuum of time movement is for once honored over the arbitrary, unanswerable cut-off dates imposed by otherwise well-meaning months. The calendar is also extraordinarily useful for movie theaters running week-long showtimes, classes and seminars meeting every Wednesday, for example, as well as for a giant lot of remaining activities and functions occurring all over time which we could not attempt to mention here.

Enough plugging; indeed too much.
This was initially just to say that Nor By Press' first project is now complete, culminating in an edition of about 400 calendars, 70 or so of which manifest satisfactory ink consistency. When ordering, please specify if you'd like an even-ink copy or a slightly "get to know your press" copy. Again, this "Weeks of 2009" edition is only the beginning; a guide to 2010 will be made available next year, and 2011 the year after, and so on, until the weeks are embraced by pop culture and run standard on all wall, desk and digital calendars alike, and Nor By goes on to name another essential and overlooked little unit.

Kind of in business

I generally like to avoid "kind of" at the beginnings of things, but when business cards print only the top and then you adjust the screws (I think I mean bolts) and then only the bottom prints and you adjust those things again (I hate saying "nuts and bolts" but this is indeed what they are) and only the top prints, you cannot really say "in business;" what you are in is a kind of business, a kin of business, something kind, and as such perhaps not as business-like as it is simply card-like. For such reasons no business card could be pictured here today. My manual says -- and I think I must have quoted this here already, for I quote it oft! -- set high standards, be impeccable, do not let yourself get away with schlock (paraphrase), and so I thought it would give the wrong idea (at least kind of wrong) about what it is we are doing here. We are striving for perfection. Today each lead slug and bit of wood furniture was matched perfectly to a little standing hut to suit its picas; a new perfect 90 degree angle was added to the studio, lending it a novel nearly dangerous pivot option; and many platen pieces were misconstrued and then washed vigorously....and perfectly.

Foot or rocket?

This Norby's temporary logo (at least until we find an image of someone doing something as a last resort)
We like the optical illusion quality of this
We have specially adjusted our comments capacities so that you can help.

Anna K. update: casting disaster

It has bothered me a bit that each Vronsky so far has had to have a mustache. It's been a bit since I read the work and I couldn't recall how critical this feature is, so I opted for giving the benefits of doubts to these mustache-happy directors and make-up people, making do, production after production, with a swively snurly or bushy hedgy mustache smothered over or cheesily ornamenting the beautiful, enticing mouth of Vronsky, and trying to imagine what it all would have sounded like without that muffled lintbrush overlay component.
Which was why I was so disappointed when the first Vronsky to defy the mustache convention was Kevin McKidd --an actor who actually needs a mustache-- in David Blair's 2000 TV production. How did this one get away with it?
The answer lies perhaps in the flukes & skewed exploits of casting director Joyce Nettles, a generally reliable caster. Indeed I thought she was fabulous when I saw the name Stephen Dillane on the back blurb of this Anna K production.
Which was why I was soooooo disappointed when I learned that Blair had somehow allowed Nettles, or Nettles had defied Blair, or they had both agreed somehow, to cast Dillane as KARENIN! What an outrage! What an undeliberate slight to adultresses!

What's wrong with these pictures?!

Needless to say the production is worthless and senseless after Anna gets picked up in St. Petersburg by her husband who is a deity and looks back longingly at the freckly bulky sunburned Vronsky; credibility is immediately lost. I have never wanted Anna to be so faithful in all my life. This production forces me to consider Karenin's words and concerns in a whole new light; I am even thinking of taking him up on his sensible, charming, motto, "Without haste and without respite." Indeed, Karenin, a fine way to get things done!

I set type

The title of this post should be understood in the present tense. I am not done setting type. I set type. Today I set type... tonight I set type.... tomorrow I set type. I do not anticipate the formulation as of yet of "I will have set type" for it is a seemingly unending --- thing one does.
From my letterpress reading today I have learned that this thing some do is a high and enobling craft... to be undertaken in the most meticulous and artful ways. That is ok with me. Except that I am very impulsive and am but a click away, by golly, from ordering 25 lbs of garamond 11pt in a box! Some of my letterpress sources seem to suggest that jumpy and anxious attitudes are unfit for the thing, but I am hastening to suggest kind of otherwise, such that I may continue onwards and mostly upwards without being dishonest about general stances and if you will, aptitudes. For Printing with the Handpress, by the fine Allen Press, "printing with the handpress can be a stimulating marriage. But she is not a jealous companion; for he who sleeps with her need not sleep on a castiron bed." I appreciate this. I do not want to need to sleep on something like that. And I am glad she is a she! (Readers were previously advised that tabletop handpresses are well suited for women, so this is a nice unintimidating extra. My car is a he and we have very different dynamics) (of course none of this having to do with sexuality, by God). Gee. Later we learn that one must be favorably inclined, or at least in some way capable of imagining the attainment of perfection, from the very getgo: "At the beginning, set a high standard; if work below that level is permitted to pass, it will surely return in future years to haunt you." This sounds completely credible, and depicts a phenomenon I can wholeheartedly relate to. I am going to be as perfection-oriented as can be. I have enough haunting going on to keep me up nights, and that's sleeping on a foam and wire bed.
This edition (quickly becoming my favorite reference material for the "thing") then lays out some small steps one can take, or try taking, towards this perfection-goal (English should be more German). And the small steps, you would think, make the perfection seem like it is just at the end of this long road that you walk on tinily. That is what I thought. But after I closed letterpressing, I opened up War and Peace, and was harshly reminded that walking so slow does not lead anywhere, that Achilles will never get to the tortoise, and I became confused about these small measures and if I should even do them. I will be the first to admit that I am now making the blundery blunder of blogging about two things read in a span of some hours... a genre I have often been scarily wary of. But to go on unself-effacingly, Tolstoy told me this: "By taking smaller and smaller units of movement, we only approach the solution of the problem, but never reach it. Only by allowing for an infinitesimal quantity and the ascending progression from that up to one tenth, and by taking the sum of that geometrical progression, do we arrive at the solution of the problem." Of course, Tolstoy is writing about continuous movement and human attempts to understand it and draw it into a history of directly linked thematic events, but most of the time what Tolstoy says goes for many a thing. And this "thing" so preoccupying me today slipped into that attractive tract, and I was feeling disillusioned, and I am feeling wary, and like I should be sorting out some of my 'demons' (pqbdun) and all the rest.

Detour: Annas Karenina

Because sidetracking is fun and because we like to do it in an organized and meaningful way, we are participating in the screening of 8 back-2-back productions of Anna Karenina, the world's top novel. As the viewings dawdle, we are collaborating to elaborate a comprehensive schema of categories such that each production may be the best at something. Awards so far include:

best wobbly train shot
best vronsky mustache
best opera panorama
most innocent kitty
most annoying aleksandrovich
most flamboyant princess
best greenhouse
best window condensation love declaration
best horse
and, of course, best anna (above)

Meet Nor By

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Nor By is perfect!!

Nutso Buoy, or, in webding, , welcomes you to a blog about just that.