To All The Little People For Whom This Would Have Been Impossible Without…Thank-You! Thank-You! Thank-You!

Sometimes I find that I don’t say “thank you” enough in my life, so today, that’s exactly what I’m going to say; thank you to all those who were involved with the recent “from Art to Zine” exhibit held at Columbia College’s Book And Paper Arts Center in Chicago from Friday, November 5, 2005 through Saturday, December 17, 2005.

First, a great big thank you goes out to Quimby’s Bookstore in Chicago for posting a notice in their September, 2005 email newsletter mentioning that Columbia College’s Book And Paper Arts Center was looking for participants for the fanzine show. Had I not seen that notice, I never would have known, so…thank you!

Then there was that nice gallery curator fellow Bill Drendel, who took what I brought him from my Cops Hate Poetry archives between mid and late October and arranged it nicely in a huge wall display case. He remained kind and very helpful up to and through the end of the exhibit, so, for his gentle kindness, I say thank you!

Of course, there were those that showed up on opening night and beyond. I must have emailed close to 100 people and while most didn’t come on opening night, some did go see the show during the time it was staged.

I did a lot of self-promotion too and a friend of mine, Lew Rosenbaum (who formerly ran Guild Books in Chicago several years ago) even mentioned the event in his email newsletter. I guess you can only bug your friends so much and they either show up or they don’t, so to those that did and to Lew, I give you all a great big thank you!

Then there were all those nice folks who were looking at the wall case that Cops Hate Poetry was housed inside, as I stood there beaming from ear-to-ear with pride, some 20 or 30 during the ebb and flow of opening night, both older and younger people, pointing and looking up and reading all about Cops Hate Poetry, so to them, I say a huge thank you!

Also, there was that nice student news photographer from the Columbia Chronicle, Mike Jarecki, the same student newspaper, I used to write for when I was a student at Columbia College almost 16 years ago.

Mike just happened to be walking around the exhibit, with his camera around his neck and was kind enough to take several shots of me standing and sitting in front of the display case that Cops Hate Poetry was housed in, (when I asked him to) kind of like the one you see above tonight’s blog. Doesn’t Mike take nice photographs? To Mike: several beaucoups of thank yous!

Lastly, a knowledgeable book editor by the name of Jonathon Messinger from the weekly TimeOut Magazine (Chicago edition), who came to visit the exhibit twice (per that nice man Bill Drendel) and wrote my fanzine up was the “true gem” of the show. He went on to call Cops Hate Poetry not only a “landmark poetry zine,” but “one of the underground press’s most influential zines.”

The magazine even showed a photographed image strip taken from the wall where Cops Hate Poetry memorabilia and the rest of the fanzines were housed. The article ran in the November 24 to December 1, 2005 edition. Although I phoned Jonathon and thanked him graciously for the write-up a week or two later, I still wanted to thank him publicly, so to Jonathon I say a truckload of heartfelt thank-yous!

Thanks to all the well-wishers in-between; folks like Mykel Board, and all the long-ago secret publishers, people and servers who I crossed paths with over the many years while I was publishing my fanzine and helped me find my way around, thanks for making me feel especially proud of my accomplishments and contributions to the Chicago fanzine scene of the late 1980s to early 1990s.

It feels good to be praised and noticed every once in a while.

I bet my late Uncle George would have truly been proud of me.