Welcome to the Workshop Blog

We’ve hit the tenth “Blueprint” documenting the journey of the Rust Belt Rising Almanac. Below, our founder Nic shares on the old almanac format and how that translates into our almanac today and our Philly release party this Friday. Hear from Nic below and, for more on the research and history behind the almanac, check out editorial director Linda’s last Blueprint.

As you all will read in the Rust Belt Rising Almanac, we had a pretty good time using the old almanac format of “on’s” to break up the stories and sections. There’s “On Reverse Pioneering,” “On the Perils of Manufacturing,” and my personal favorite, “On the Artisan’s Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism” (I will send a free Almanac to the first person who can identify the work referenced in this “on;” send answers to info@theheadandthehand.com).

But if we could go back and add another section, I would certainly want to add “On Creative Grit.” Because as anyone knows who is working in an old Rust Belt city, or any city that is revitalizing its downtowns and communities, creativity and grit are the two ingredients that make this work possible. And as the Rust Belt Rising Almanac hits the streets on June 7th, we’re very happy that the first street that it will hit is Frankford Avenue, where the creative grit has been one of our main sources of inspiration at The Head & The Hand Press.

When thinking about how we wanted to release the Almanac, we knew that we wanted to share the celebration with all of the shop owners up and down Frankford Avenue. So we partnered up with the NKCDC to have this celebration during First Friday on Frankford Avenue. As you stroll the many great shops up and down the avenue, you’ll not only find copies of the almanac in participating shops, but we also hope you will witness the many people and ideas that are pumping blood through this once venerable commercial corridor.

There are the Almanac contributors such as Little Baby’s Ice Cream where co-owner Jeff Ziga will be reading from the Ice Cream Manifesto at 7 PM atop their parklet, or Denic Boyce from Karlie Corporation and his daughter Heather from 20th Century By HKFA whose profiles in the Almanac tell the story of where the neighborhood has come from and where it is going.

Then there’s places like Johnny Brenda’s, the Rocket Cat, and F&N Gallery at Circle of Hope, all places that stuck it out for so long as some of the only destinations in the neighborhood as more and more people began to realize the possibilities. And finally, we have the newer shops such as the Bottle Bar, Pizza Brain, the Soup Kitchen, Catch and Release, Two Percent to Glory, Adorn and the Sculpture Gym that are bringing in new life.

Aside from being good friends of ours, the ideas of these shops and the owners behind those ideas are the exact examples of finding that balance between grit and creativity. Sure, it takes a certain creativity to look at a shell of a building and visualize the potential. But it takes a whole other level of grit to build that idea from the ground up, as was the case with many of these shops.

As you’ll read in the Almanac, this work on Frankford Avenue, and on many different streets throughout the Rust Belt, isn’t always pretty. But damn does it make for some good storytelling. We hope that you can all join us this Friday to hear the stories.

Starting at 9 pm we’ll be hosting a few readings from Almanac contributors at the Philadelphia Sculpture Gym. And then at 10 pm we’ll be turning it over to DJ SnkPak of Bouffant Bangout fame for a good old fashioned dance party. We’ll see you there.

-Nic and The Head & The Hand Press

It is easy to prove that no book we read (except the Bible) is so much valued, and so serviceable to the community. Almanacks serve as clocks and watches for nine-tenths of mankind.

–Dr. Nathaniel Low, essay ON ALMANACKS in An Astronomical Diary; or Almanack, 1786

Little strokes fell great oaks.

–Poor Richard

As wait impatiently for the release party for the Rust Belt Rising Almanac Vol. 1, we started thinking about the project’s origins. It was only a year ago that Nic had the idea of creating an Almanac about the Rust Belt, a region where major industry is being replaced by more creative means of production/living/connecting. Now, after an infusion of stories, poems, essays, how-to guides, and a really beautiful map, we are so thankful to see the idea come full circle. 

Nic Esposito likes almanacs. So do I. We knew some of the more charismatic facts about them, like how farmers used to hang them on hooks by the hearth and that at one point Philadelphia was responsible for producing the greatest variety of almanacs in the nation. Prior to recon missions carried out in various libraries here and points northward, our knowledge did not extend much beyond that of the casual admirer. We agreed at the outset to take inspiration not only from Philadelphia’s Don of Almancking, her Titan of Typesetting Ben Franklin, but from other masters in other regions of the U.S. at the height of the almanac’s popularity. We learned from Massachusetts doctor and tavern-keeper Nathaniel Ames and even more from Benjamin West, who introduced anecdotes and illustrations to his publications. We agreed that we wanted our version to pay homage but also be recognizable as a modern addition to the panoply.

We especially liked Philadelphia’s almanacs with their “entertaining and informative miscellany” and the print culture’s willingness to call b.s. on the almanac’s prognosticating function. Ben Franklin knew no mere mortal was capable of predicting a year’s worth of weather, so he saw an opportunity for fortifying his version with larger helpings of wit and wisdom. He started printing Poor Richard’s Almanack in 1733 and introduced long-form stories, jokes, and enduring aphorisms to the genre. This infusion of creativity was aided by yet another innovation: pseudonymous authorship. While Boston’s almanacs were published by individuals with actual reputations to uphold, Philly’s Poor Richard and Timothy Telescope could say whatever they damn well pleased and not be shunned at the local pub the following week.

We read about the fragmented nature of the Atlantic world of print during the golden age of the almanac’s reign — from 1750 to 1800 — and how this actually prevented printers from creating a “coherent sense of nation” for a population eager to define itself. This fact could have easily been relegated to the literal and digital stacks of research we amassed, but I was reminded of it after reading the Rust Belt Rising Almanac from start to finish. The editorial team had finally decided on the content’s sequence, and I was reminded of that snippet of research because the stories and images in the Rust Belt Rising Almanac manage to do just the opposite of what that critic described. There is a coherent sense of grace, frustration, and a search for connection. Coherence in the lack-of-but-still-wanting-to-establish connection.

The staff of The Head & The Hand Press was overwhelmed by the quality of submissions we received after putting out the call. We were so lucky to work with the brilliant Angela Miles, whose illustrations and layout skills create a bridge between now and the almanacs of yore. We are still humbled by the support shown by the wonderful writers and artists who believed in our project at the earliest stages of a very long, very challenging, and always worthwhile process. Thank you all, sincerely — we can’t wait to read Vol. 2 next year.

– Linda

After a month’s hiatus, we are proud to report that the new and improved Head & The Hand Press Writer’s Workshop will be open for business starting tonight at 5 PM. We apologize for any pent up creativity that this has caused any of our writers who used the workshop before, but we think all of the work that went into this new space will be well worth the wait. And we are very excited to welcome many more writers into our larger space and our expanded hours.

But I must admit that with the Rust Belt Rising Almanac due to come out in two weeks, and two other books coming out this fall, there was a moment when I was putting the new desks together for the workshop and Linda was painting the walls when I asked her, “Should we really be spending our time doing this?”

For as satisfying and relaxing as the creative outlet of carpentry is for me, I certainly had to ask the question as to whether a publishing company’s time is better spent actually publishing books rather than building a desk or painting a wall. But as I sit here at a desk right now, writing this blog, I believe it was worth it.

At The Head & The Hand Press, we believe that creativity feeds both off of and into other creativity, no matter what form that creativity takes. Even though we also believe in giving work to the craftspeople who surround us, we felt that pouring our own creativity into this space would hopefully inspire as equally as much great writing. And we look forward to seeing all of the work that comes out of our new workshop. We also would like to thank Provenance Philly for helping us source the beautiful silver maple wood for the desks, Jim Zeppieri of Radiant Brains Woodworking for designing the desks, and my Dad for hanging the lights. So we actually did spread the craftsman love around quite a bit.

And if news that we are reopened isn’t enough, we have even better news to report: our workshop will be expanding even more in the future. Over the next few months, the building we are in will be completely renovated to make way for a brand new space for us that will be built out with even more room, for even more desks. This is why we can’t offer hours during the day just yet. But they will be coming in the fall.

For now, I think that we have built a very nice new home and we are excited to invite everyone from our writing community to come visit. For more information about rates, hours and directions, please visit our workshop membership page. Or please feel free to drop us an email and let us know if you would like to stop by. We’ll be sure to have a desk waiting for you.

Until then,

-Nic and The Head & The Hand Staff

The Head & The Hand Press has been mapping out the production phase of the Rust Belt Rising Almanac before its upcoming release (very soon!) with these “Rust Belt Blueprints.” The almanac is a collection of stories and snapshots of the people and the work in Rust Belt cities across America. We are pleased to feature Philadelphia contributor Adrianna Borgia, who contributed the piece “Mastering Failure in Philadelphiaʺ to the book. Below you’ll get a glimpse into her story and her thoughts behind it. Enjoy.

There’s no other way to explain this, really. I was at a baseball game last month. The score was Phillies 7, Mets 0. That’s right. Zero, zip, nothing. We had even hit 3 home freaking runs in the same inning, and everyone was going completely nuts. I’m sure if Oprah showed up at that moment, telling everyone they were all going home with a new car, everyone would scream at her to shut the hell up. “I’m watching the Phillies win, Jesus Christ lady, you’re distracting me!” I can’t emphasize this enough. The score was 7 to 0. Zero, zip, nothing. And then it happened. In the next inning, the second Mets batter hit a home run. Screams of joy quickly turned into a thick atmosphere of boos. “Well,” said the guy in the row behind me. “We’re going lose now.”

The Phillies did win that night (8 to 3), to everyone’s relief. But that’s not the point. Even when we’re doing well, when everything is unicorns and lollipops and Chase Utley’s beautiful smile, Philly sports fans cannot eject themselves from the dark place that they’ve retreated to for so long. As Jere Longman, a New York Times writer, said, “Here [in Philadelphia], victory is fleeting and ephemeral, not an encouraging sign that further success is ahead but a taunting hint that disaster is just around the corner in a city where defeat has become the natural order.”

A city, a region, a state can be characterized by a number of factors, and one of them is the local sports culture. Besides the usual lore of lurid Phan behavior, I’ve always found it interesting that the sports fandom of Philly has been so closely connected to the city’s skyline these past 20 years. It all started in March, 1987, the same month and year I was born, and consequentially, the same month and year that One Liberty Place usurped City Hall’s claim as tallest building in the city. This upset the old “gentleman’s agreement” that no building rise above the tip of Billy Penn’s hat, and many feared it would start a disastrous precedent for the city’s skyline. There were other unintended consequences, though: two months later, the Flyers lost the Stanley Cup finals to the Oilers by one stupid game. And so began the “Curse of Billy Penn,” a 20-year drought of sports victories in Philadelphia.

In my essay in the Rust Belt Rising Almanac, I chose to focus on interweaving histories: the Phillies, the city skyline, and my own life. On one hand, you can choose to see it as a story of failure. The Phillies became the first sports franchise with 10,000 losses, Philadelphia is pretty lame compared to New York, and I had an existential breakdown in the fall of 2008 when the economy collapsed and my boyfriend broke up with me (I know, boo freaking hoo, right?). But that’s not the full story. Part of mastering the art of failure is acquiring a mental toughness, a relentless grit to “go the distance,” even when we know that it’s hopeless. For me, that scrappy tenacity is what it means to live in this Rust Belt city. In 2009, after years of torment, Philadelphia finally remembered what it was like to have a victory parade. Our once flat-topped skyline is now a dynamic curve of possibilities. And I gained the courage to call Philadelphia my home, despite how much this confuses my New York friends (“But…it’s not New York! How can you live there?”).

It’s easy for us to regress to negative thinking. “We’re going to lose now.” But every time I sit in the stands in Citizens Bank Park, I think of little Susan in Miracle on 34th Street. Wearing my red pinstriped jersey, sinking in my seat as the scoreboard becomes more daunting, I quietly repeat to myself, “I believe, I believe. It’s silly, but I believe.”

-Adrianna

About Adrianna Borgia

Adrianna has lived in both New York and Boston, but Philadelphia will always be her home. Her New York friends think she’s crazy for choosing the dirty, “scary” Philadelphia over the Big Apple, but they’ve never been inside a Wawa. Adrianna currently works in Center City, editing medical periodicals. In her spare time, when she’s not dreaming of owning a goat farm or yelling at the Phillies on the TV, she enjoys blogging, reading, and making awesome Italian food.

The crew here at The Head & The Hand was honored and thrilled to partner with Seun Olubodun, founder of Duke & Winston, in the creation of t-shirts celebrating our respective passion projects. Last night’s celebration of the finished product — extremely attractive, soft, and wearable shirts emblazoned with H&H’s beloved ampersand and Duke the Bulldog’s beloved profile — took the form of boozing and shooting the balmy breeze inside and out of the shop on 2nd Avenue. Winston Churchill’s craggy visage looked on as we toasted the sweet threads with Spodee wine and dodged the Duke’s attempts to liberate pepperoni slices and cheese wedges from the snack tray with his tongue. Croquet stances were demonstrated, hoodies for dogs were mistaken as outerwear for babies, and a good time was had by all. We also announced the winner of our Tales of Duke Contest, Patrick McNeil, for his awesome story. Thanks again to Seun and Krista for hosting us in their effortlessly cool, elegant space!

Wondering why we collaborated? Check out Nic’s notes on our collaboration here, and pictures from the night are below.

-Linda

p.s. One of us, let’s call him Bob, came very close to buying a bowtie and chickened out at the last minute. Thanks for broadening the definition of what is sartorially possible for friends of H&H and new fans of D&W.