The Snow-Storm / by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farm-house at the garden's end.
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.
The 2014/2015 holiday edition:
earlier in the month, I bought a treasure trove of vintage paper
from a local stationer who is only open about 4 hours per week
my local post office ran out of the stamps of Emerson's contemporaries, the Hudson River School painters, so I had them shipped from the USPS underground bunker in Kansas City
So I love this paper. It's crinkly and crackly and has gorgeous red lines. I bought all the stock of it.
500 sheets.
Also two reams of the same paper without the red lines.
The part of me that really wants to be able to embrace simplicity almost left them at that.
The bigger part of me that thinks simplicity is over-rated had opinions about doing nothing.
In an ideal world, this would have been the appearance of all the broadsides in this year's edition.
However, I didn't think through what "Corrasable Bond" really meant. What it means is that when you do lots of things to the surface of the paper, the text disappears.
That would be great for an art project. That is much less great for a poem.
So the majority of the broadsides were treated more simply; splattered rather than manipulated.
Into my personal archive of Japanese airmail stationary for wrappers.
The Big Dipper was chosen because it's one of the few constellations that I recognize,
and the 'random snowflake' punching would have taken forever.
However, after mailing the cards, I looked up the symbolism of the dipper, which relates to stability through the changing seasons, a wrap to the year.
