WRITE ON THE RIVER

by holly thorpe

Write on the River’s popular Four Minutes of Fame open mic is returning this Aug. 26. This is the fi rst live event Write on the River has hosted in over a year, and one of the organization’s most popular events. Writers of all genres will gather at the Leavenworth Ski Lodge (10701 Ski Hill Drive, Leavenworth) for the quarterly open mic event on Thursday, Aug. 26 from 6-8 p.m.

The event is free and open to the public. Writers can sign up to read their own, original work of any genre by emailing info@writeontheriver.org. Each reader will get four minutes to share poems, short stories, essays, excerpts of larger work or more.

Winners of the 2021 Writers Competition and High School Writers Competition have been invited to read their work at the open mic as special guests.There are three winners in both fi ction and nonfi ction in the adult writers competition, and a fi rst place winner and two honorable mentions in the high school competition.

We are sharing our fi rst place fi ction winner’s story this month in The Comet - and plan to share other winners’ stories in future issues. You can view all the winners and their stories at writeontheriver.org.

Coming up next…

Aug. 10: Virtual Happy Hour and Free Writing

Tuesday, Aug. 10, 6-7 p.m. Grab a virtual glass and virtually gab with local writers during Write on the River’s Virtual Happy Hour and Free Write. Both members and non-members are invited to this free virtual event. Socialize or do a quick free write exercise with some of our board members. All are welcome! Zoom meeting information and details at facebook.com/WriteOnTheRiver.

Aug. 18: WOTR and NCW Libraries NCW Writers Group

Wednesday, Aug. 18, 4-5 p.m. Join NCW Libraries and Write on the River for an inclusive writers’ club for writers of all ages, skill levels, genres and interests. The NCW Writers’ Club is a virtual writing community created by local writers, for local writers. This club is designed to connect people and artists, discuss the craft, ask for advice and share resources. Meetings are every third Wednesday from 4-5 p.m., with an optional social hour afterward. Wenatchee librarian Nik Penny and Write on the River board member Holly Thorpe will host the club virtually on Zoom. In-person options may be added in the future. All NCW Libraries’ virtual events are free and open to the public. Meetings will be held through the zoom meeting platform. Find more information at ncwlibraries.org

To learn more about Write on the River, become a member, or register for events, visit writeontheriver.org. Membership is $35 per year, and off ers free or discounted access to all WOTR events Questions? Contact info@writeontheriver.org.

FICTION, 1st PLACE

Rose Weagant

THE PIGGLY WIGGLY by Rose Weagant

It begins at the far end of a Piggly Wiggly parking lot on a gray Sunday afternoon. Most folks don’t park back there on account of the long trudge to and from the grocery store. But it is, as contractually stated in many a divorce, a nice, neutral space for transition. Parents lean on Fords and Chevys with their kids tucked neatly in the king cabs, thumbing devices and gnawing candy as they wait for their particular form of deliverance.

Happily married people do not see these ghosts at the end of the parking lot. It’s only those who know the dance that see it happening, when the far end of the Piggly Wiggly turns into a shipyard, transferring the most precious cargo from one parent to another.

Roy was there, too, a big heap of a fella. He sighed and checked his watch. The sky’s indiff erence made him a bit drowsy. And anxious. He yawned and looked at Nathaniel, sitting in the Harley’s sidecar, still in his helmet and goggles. They didn’t bug him too much.

Roy is a fella who tried, but (admittedly) not all of the time. He could have done better for Ellen. He wished he could really show her, but that’s done now. Still, he has Nathaniel. He can show him.

On weekends, they play catch and take walks on the pier. Nathaniel likes to sit on the tailgate and watch Roy tinker with his motorcycle. Mostly, they do this in silence. Sometimes, they listen to the radio. Whatever the case, they have a good time.

Roy hated this part and had hated it for the last fi ve years. There was nothing good about letting Nathaniel go back to Ellen; well, Ellen and George.

Ellen and Roy used to spend the weekends drinking up the sun and loving Nathaniel. But at some point, even Nathaniel wasn’t enough to keep them together.

When Ellen got fed up with Roy and his greasy jeans and Harley, she walked out, taking Nathaniel. It was rough, but they made it work. Then Ellen met a nice pair of khakis named George, and they got married. It still nibbled at him. And worse, Ellen still made his heart fl utter.

On this particular Sunday, George came to collect Nathaniel, per Ellen’s instructions. And, according to Roy’s watch, George was a whopping 7 minutes late. Bullshit.

A Lincoln Continental turned into the parking lot. Roy tucked his flutter away when he saw the balding silhouette, and not the smooth lines of his former wife, in the driverseat.

The Continental purred to a stop next to the Harley. Roy took a calming breath and wiped his sweaty hands on his greasy jeans.

From inside the Continental, George saw Roy out there–leaned up on a big, beefy Harley like he didn’t have a care in the world. Roy could snap George in half. Easily. George gulped.

Roy couldn’t help but judge his replacement, George the accountant. He looked well enough to do–timeshare well enough. George looked like a man who played golf and a lot of it. But could he provide for Nathaniel with the love and kindness that he was so accustomed to? Roy doubted it.

This is tough, thought George. But it’s what Ellen wants, and he opened the car door.

“George”

“How you been”

“Fair to middling”

“All right”

Roy watched George shake his legs out and smooth the wrinkles in his khakis. Khakis. The mere word chafed him. Of course khakis. After decades of dirty jeans, she gave up and found herself a khakis man.

No matter now. Roy grimaced.

The men stood in front of each other, a respectable distance apart. Roy crossed his arms and looked down at George. From his long, blonde hair to his tattooed forearms and his big boots, he made guys like George shake in their loafers. And yet Roy was, and would always be by George’s standard, cool.

George craned his neck around Roy’s girth to take a peek at Nathaniel, still wearing his helmet and goggles. “How’d our little guy do?”

Roy held his breath. How dare you, he thought. How’d he do? I’ll tell you how he did. Just great, as always. You little turd. Hell, Nathaniel’s been everywhere with me and that won’t ever stop. You get me? Just because you’re Ellen’s husb—

“Hi, Nat!”

What a little shit.

“It’s Nathaniel. Nuh-THAN-yel. Ellen and me never called him that.” Roy flustered and looked at Nathaniel who perked up at George’s voice–a harder blow to Roy than anything George could ever physically muster.

Roy looked down at Nathaniel, excited, his tail wagging.

Roy scooped Nathaniel into his arms and held his face close. Nathaniel licked Roy’s nose.

I can’t leave our baby with this guy. It’s just not right.

“Look, I know this is strange,” George reasoned. “But it’s what Ellen wanted.”

Roy didn’t look. He stared into Nathaniel’s eyes, tears spluttering down his cheeks. His boy, his good boy is all he has now. He buried his wet face into Nathaniel’s coat and sobbed.

Eventually, Roy wrung himself out, and handed Nathaniel over to George who loaded him into the Continental.

“Good service, huh?” said Roy, voice quivering. He mopped his nose with a dirty bandana.

“Yup.”

It was a good service. Ellen would be proud.

The sadness kept them facing each other. Roy wanted to be indignant. He loved her for longer, deeper (though maybe not better). He looked at George. He was wrung out, too. They shared the emptiness, a void big enough to swallow them whole. If not for Nathaniel, the two would hold hands and jump together into their sorrow.

But the accountant and the mechanic, knit together inextricably by four legs and a wet nose, made a promise to Ellen. C

By Melissa N. Morris and Zach Carmichael

Marcia sculpting, image from a 15-16th century version of Giovanni Boccaccio’s De claris mulieribus NOTE FROM THE COMET: This article was written in European English so... stuff looks different.

Its dizzy heights may have passed, but the fad for adult coloring books is far from over. Many trace the origins of such publications to a wave of satirical coloring books published in the 1960s, but as Melissa N. Morris and Zach Carmichael explore, the existence of such books, and the urge to color the printed image, goes back centuries

For many publishers around the world 2015 was, fiscally speaking, an excellent year — a welcome boost in an otherwise uncertain decade. But this upturn had a perhaps surprising source: coloring books for grown-ups. What strange winds conspired to suddenly urge adults in their droves to take up colored pencils again? Whatever the reasons, sales rocketed: Nielsen logged sales of 12 million for the category in 2015, up from a measly 1 million the year before. In February 2016, with the craze still going strong, New York Academy of Medicine Library gave birth to a new initiative called Color Our Collections Week, a scholarly take on the coloring trend. Now in its third year, the campaign sees, on the first week of February, archives, special collections, and libraries take to social media with individual images and even entire books compiled from their holdings for the public to color. While these chosen works are all in the public domain, and so can technically include (in the US at least) works published up until 1924, the images in these coloring books more typically hail from the fifteenth through eighteenth centuries. And it is in these images — published in the centuries prior to the advent of color printing — that we can see a precedent for this seemingly modern fad. While it may seem like simply jumping on the adult coloring bandwagon, Color Our Collections Week, with its naturally historical focus, is actually tapping into (and shedding light on) a tradition much older. Fuchs’ monumental 1542 botanical work, De historia stirpium commentarii insignes (“Notable Commentaries on the History of Plants”), to promote the event. An archivist from the History of Science Collections at the University of Oklahoma chimed in on Twitter to say their own copy of this book had already been colored in.

Should we be surprised by this? Color Our Collections Week might give the impression that these images, from the era before colored printing, are at last being colored — rescued from their hitherto drab monochrome existence. Yet printed images from the early modern period were regularly colored by hand.

The practice goes back to the earliest days of print in the fifteenth century. Artists, printers, booksellers, consumers, and readers all applied color to originally blackand-white images. Before Gutenberg’s innovation of the moveable-type press, both woodblock and engraved prints, single sheets with printed images, were popular in Germany and parts of Central Europe. They were used in various ways, and many people did what we might do with them -- hung them on the walls of their home.

With the emergence of the printed book the coloring trend continued. Colored illustrations were common in medieval manuscript books, most notably in the intricately illuminated manuscripts produced by monastic institutions. The early printed books from the fifteenth century and after often imitated the textual design and illustrations of these medieval manuscript books. Indeed, illuminated manuscripts and printed books were not mutually exclusive: some printed books contain illumination, while some manuscripts have painted prints pasted into them. It would seem that at least some early printers and readers attempted to create color illustrations for these works the only way they knew how: by coloring the pictures themselves.

illustrations played. Both are from De Claris Mulieribus, a fourteenth-century book by Giovanni Boccaccio (author of the Decameron). This work was a compilation of biographies of women, real and mythical, famous and infamous. It was first circulated as a manuscript, and surviving examples are richly illustrated with images of the women they discuss. The book was among the first to make the leap from manuscript to print, and the illustrations came with it. In order to recreate the feel of previous versions of the work, it needed colored illustrations.

Most illustrations found in books from the early days of print are in the form of woodcuts and etchings. Woodcuts were most compatible with moveable type because both used relief printing, and early printers could easily print a page with both text and illustrations.

Because of the carving and printing process, woodcuts have simpler designs with less shading. They therefore make for excellent coloring pages, and Color Our Collections participants frequently choose woodcuts for their images. Moreover, art historian Susan Dackerman argues that they were meant to be colored. Many of these color prints were created in a workshop setting, with an engraver, printer, and colorist working together. The “vast majority” of surviving fifteenth-century woodcuts are hand colored, and they were produced in the tens of thousands in the fifteenth century.

Some images, like this fifteenth-century German woodcut of Christ on the cross, are only complete once colored. In this case, angels hold cups to catch blood that needs to be added with paint. The National Gallery of Art owns a number of examples of this woodcut, each differently colored. Some have been left uncolored, and a couple have only the requisite blood added to complete the image. Among those more fully colored, we can see that quite a bit of artistic license was taken. ed color, seeing it as nothing more than a way to hide the flaws of poorly-executed engravings and woodcuts. Well-executed prints, they argued, needed no color at all. This disdain for colored prints helped to obscure their place in art history. This line of argument harkened back to the debates that emerged during the Italian Renaissance over whether design or color were most important (disegno/colore).

In many of these images, the paint seems hastily applied. This haphazard coloring was often a result of the artist having many prints to paint rather than a lack of skill. Artists applied paint freehand, using a brush, but they sometimes employed stencils made from extra impressions of the images in order to paint more quickly.

Many works were colored not by professionals, but by readers. A lot of the examples we have found of hand-colored illustrations come from botanical works and herbals. For example, a copy of John Gerard’s Herball (1636), with selective images colored in, suggests it was the reader who painted it, perhaps as a way to record plants he or she had seen in person. Botany and painting were favored pursuits of genteel men and women in this period, so it’s not surprising that the same people would share both hobbies.

While publishers may have informally expected these monochrome images to be colored by some readers, it wasn’t until the eighteenth century that the practice was formalised in the first purpose-made coloring books. And in these, the link between botany and painting persisted. Robert Sayer’s The Florist, published in London in 1760, was one of the first books where the author explicitly intended readers to color in the images. Comprised of pictures of various flowers, the author gives his (presumably) adult readers detailed instructions for paint mixing and color choice (including the delightful sounding “gall-stone brown”).

“Christ on the Cross with Angels” (1481) minimally colored and below a few colored variants.

Page from Robert Sayer’s The Florist (1760). Two pages from The Young Artist’s Coloring Guide. No. 12 (ca. 1850). ABOVE:Walter Crane’s Painting Book (1889 edition). BELOW: The “Little Folks” Painting Book (1879)

images of things that could be observed in the natural world. Although the images in this particular copy of The Florist were left uncolored, the owner used the book to press actual plants. Many botanical works were heavily annotated, sometimes by several different owners, and pressed plants are often found in their pages.

The Florist was produced “for the use & amusement of Gentlemen and Ladies”, but most subsequent coloring books were created with children in mind. By the nineteenth century, these books became increasingly popular. Although they helped children develop artistic skills, creativity was not particularly prized. In The Young Artist’s Coloring Guide, a series published in the 1850s, a fully-colored version accompanied the uncolored image, ostensibly to imitate. In Walter Crane’s Painting Book, originally published in 1880, there’s also color companions to copy, though one could argue in this case, they being from the hand of one of the nineteenth century’s greatest illustrators, such an approach made for a significantly more beautiful object and one likely enjoyed by adults as well as children.

Crane wasn’t the only noted illustrator of the time to lend his name to such a book. A year earlier came The “Little Folks” Painting Book, published by the McLoughlin Brothers, with illustrations by noted artist Kate Greenaway. With no accompanying colored example to copy it was a bit less didactic than Crane’s but it still cautioned children to use a “fitting choice of colours”, and there was a pre-colored frontispiece which would have acted as a guide of sorts to the color scheme. Of course, in the case of these Victorian examples, and earlier offerings such as The Florist, the coloring-in is the very raison d’etre of the book. The early modern examples less so. Though that’s not to say a similar enjoyment was not taken by early modern readers wanting to colorize their woodcuts or etchings, that same thrill of bringing color to what was once blank. It seems the therapeutic effects were not unnoticed at the time either. In his 1622 work The Compleat Gentleman Henry Peacham, in a chapter encouraging the practice of coloring-in printed maps, talks of how “the practise of the hand, doth speedily instruct the mind, and strongly confirme the memorie beyond any thing else.”

As for the modern trend in adult coloring books, critics have charged markerwielding grown-ups with being childish, and have alleged that the success of these books is a product of a dumbed-down culture. It may indeed be a fad, but it also has a longer history. So, the next time you buy an adult coloring book or get excited about Color Our Collections Week, know that you are not being childish. Rather, you are taking part in a long tradition of printed images that were meant to be colored.

This article was originally published in The Public Domain Review under a Creative Commons Attribution - ShareAlike 3.0. If you wish to reuse it please see: publicdomainreview.org/legal/ C