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Tiny Tea Dispatch

ISSUE 017

This is the longest car crash I've ever been in.
Not as gigantic as 2 years ago but beautiful none the less. We did lose the other 3 sunflowers to the wind today. Woke up to find the stems broken. They live in a glass of water now instead of standing tall in the garden.

~~ Ink well ~~

The last pens I got were a beautiful blue FPR Himalaya (with very flexible nib), and a Picasso 916 with an extra fine nib.

That first one was a nightmare to get working. I had to reshape part of the feed (the part that guides the ink to the nib) to get the ink flowing because it just wasn't properly formed and I had to figure out how to properly reassemble because there part where the nib and feed fit in, is irregularly shaped.
I had read about issues with the first version of the pen from a year or so ago, but had higher hopes for the newer ones. Especially because the owner (or some customer service people under his name) seemed to take genuine interest in how their pens were used and reviewed. I've seen multiple instances of them popping up in comments and mentions. I've even had a good e-mail exchange with them myself.
But as I've come to find, if they spent a bit more time of quality control and applying the feedback from customers (eg. properly deepening the ink channel), they wouldn't have to put in the time and money to follow up on reviews and sending replacements.

In the end, I did get it working well and made some small adjustments to the nib itself to get a finer line.

~~ Raging against the machine ~~

I don't know what side you fall into when it comes to the societal unrest that's been showing this past month but I think most of us here can see where movements like Black Lives Matter and LGBTQ+ protests are coming from.
The GF and I did not make it to the protests in Brussels and Ghent but I'm glad a lot of folks did. Luckily, there are other ways to help. If you live in Belgium, there's a document making the rounds that lists some organisations and people that can use your support. We picked a couple to donate to in June and others in Juli. We're making this a recurring, monthly thing.

Other that that, I think educating ourselves and being aware that things are not always what they seem on the surface, are the best ways to move forward. For example, think of how baffling it is that Belgians are not taught in school what Leopold II did, how unsettling it is to realise it wasn't that long ago, how cruel it is to people who's history was so awfully twisted, that we put up statues of the bastard.
There's a lot of work to be done (some would argue, more important work) but presenting symbols like this, reflects very poorly what we want to be as a society. And symbols and representation are a powerful thing.

Along with this, I've also been reminded this week of how little progress the comics industry has made when it comes to treating women. A week or 2 ago, a new wave of accusations against comic book creators and editors abusing their power to various degrees. Going from blacklisting and blocking someone's career advancements to outright sexual assault.
Most disappointing one of all, for me and many others personally, was the outing of Warren Ellis as a genuine creep and Bluebeard. While not physically assaulting anyone, more than 50 cases came to light where he abused his power and damaged those women's lives.
One thing that makes it perplexing, is that he has also genuinely helped and supported many people and always showed himself on the side of feminists, cultivating many friendships and professional relationships that way.
And then there are many accounts, such as this one, proclaiming it didn't come as a surprise. As with other such outings, I am maybe most baffled and angry that none of the men who knew this went "Hang out a minute, this is not okay" in public. Especially since we've already had multiple waves of comic creators being ousted in the past 5 years.

~~ Writing ~~

I skipped a few update-emails this month, but I have been keeping up with the Transmissions. It starts with this one and goes up until last Friday:

I might just skip the weekly mails altogether. We'll see.

~~ Seen ~~

I've been going through the Biodiversity Heritage Library albums on Flickr lately, finding gems such as this picture above. The albums contain all the pages with visuals from various old books and publications about natural history. They are also free to download so I've been collecting the ones I find most visually interesting, in cloud storage. I'm thinking about drawing some fictitious alien life depictions to go along the Transmissions when I turn it into a book. Or maybe just make a separate space explorer's guide to life outside of earth.

There are also a few books on the way about cabinets of curiosity and natural history

~~ Final notes ~~

We're back to 100% capacity at work, so I'm doing 40+ hour weeks again. I can already feel the pre-corona tiredness coming back. Looking back at it, working-from-home at 4/5ths capacity was a pretty good deal (despite the health crisis). Makes you think about the kind of life we lead sometimes.

I hope you're somewhat healthy, wherever you are. Be careful where you can, we're not out of the woods just yet. Some things may not go back to before but that's okay, life just goes on and we adapt.

See you next month.






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Rembo · Somewhere · Gent 9000 · Belgium

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