2014: A New Direction

You may or may not have been wondering where I have been all year. I'm guessing not. But if you have, here is your answer. I've been focusing full time on my other blog, Awkward Botany. It's a blog all about plants, and it's for everyone - even for people who don't like plants. Why am I spending all of my time over there? Well, frankly it's because I have to learn to focus my energies on one thing in particular. I end up spreading myself too thin otherwise. I can do a dozen things and do them okay, or I can do one thing and do it well. I'm not sure how well I'm doing, but I'm giving it a shot. The problem is that I have lots of other blog ideas (and non-blog ideas), so it's hard to stay focused on just one thing. Regardless, if you want to be in touch (and I hope you do), please point your cursor here and give it a click. You just might like a bit of what there is to read. If not, at least there are some pretty pictures. Oh, and tell your friends, please - that's how movements start. Thanks!

new issue of elephant mess out now!

It's been more than three and a half years since the last issue of Elephant Mess. I thought perhaps it was dead. And maybe it should be? But for whatever reason, I am keeping it alive...at least for now. This issue has words about love, loss, and being haunted by life. It's written in typical emo-phant mess fashion, and it's available for $1 or trade or whatever. You get the idea.

Dan Murphy
PO Box 9862
Boise ID 83707
dnlmrphy@gmail.com

Monthly Recommendations: June 2013

June is the first month of summer, therefore I really only have one recommendation for you: turn off your computer, put your smart phone down, shut off your tablet, etc., and go outside! Go on a hike, a bike ride, or a camping trip. Go for a swim. Spend some time in the park. Do something active or just relax in the shade. I don't really care what you decide to do outside, just get out there and enjoy the sun and the warm weather. Take advantage of the summer while it lasts, because before you know it, it will be over and you'll be back to complaining about old man winter.

Now quit reading this stupid blog, and go do what I just told you to do.

The Juniper #16

Hello friends and foes! The 16th issue of The Juniper is out now! It's about time, right? In this issue, I write about embracing change, being human, raised bed gardening, the proper way to add organic matter to your garden, purposeful gardening, and pruning rosemary plants. This zine is free, but if you have a dollar or stamps to donate to the cause, that would be greatly appreciated as printing and mailing costs add up. I am also, for the first time, offering a pdf version of the zine. If you would like a free pdf copy, just send me a request by email. Otherwise, send your dollar or stamp(s) to the following address:

Dan Murphy
PO Box 9862
Boise ID 83707
USA

dnlmrphy@gmail.com

Weekly Recommendations, Week 52: Awkward Botany

Mission accomplished. One recommendation (or unrecommendation as the case may be) posted every week for a full year. 52 posts in all. And you thought that it couldn’t be done. Actually, you probably didn’t have an opinion on the matter one way or another. I had my doubts, though…but sometimes I surprise myself.

So now, as the year comes to a close (and the world didn’t end), I have decided that I will turn my focus away from this blog and towards something new. Certainly I will continue to post here, and I actually have some ideas for some future posts; however, most of my blogging efforts will be focused on my new blog, Awkward Botany. It’s something that I came up with several months ago, but have yet to do anything with. It combines my awkward geekiness with my love of plants. While it is not yet clear exactly what shape it will take, I am excited to get started on it so that I can watch it grow and evolve. A quick brainstorming session yields this list of topic ideas for posts: the evolution/biology/ecology of plants, rare and endangered plants, the wonders of plants, my favorite plants, tips on growing and caring for plants, places to go to see plants, the benefits of plants, plants in the news, etc. I promise it will be interesting, particularly if you like plants, but even if you are not overly excited about plants, I hope that it will still be appealing to you in some way.

I'm not sure exactly when you should expect posting to begin on Awkward Botany, but hopefully it will happen soon, so check back often. In the meantime, say goodbye to 2012 and hello to 2013. Let’s hope it’s a good one…because for heaven's sake, we all really need it.

Weekly Unrecommendations, Week 38: Writing Weekly Recommendations for a Year

This is both a recommendation and an un-recommendation. Committing to write weekly recommendations for a year without being able to see into the future (which no one can do, of course) is kind of gutsy and perhaps a bit crazy. I try very hard to be a man of my word, so if I say I'm going to write one recommendation a week for a year, you better believe that I intend to do it. The problem is that life gets in the way, filled with all kinds of activities and various other commitments, and following through with a commitment made without the ability to see future obstacles and interruptions is challenging. Another setback is that I did not enter into this yearlong commitment with 52 things in mind to recommend to the general populace. Instead, I started with a list of a dozen or so recommendations and figured that the rest of them would come with time, week by week. Personally, I think this is the best way to go about it, so I really have no issues with such a tactic. The trouble comes when I get super busy (as per usual), and it becomes difficult to come up with something to write about; and then, when I do eventually think of something, finding time to write about it becomes the trial. However, these are challenges I expected to face and was willing to accept. The reality is that I wanted to find something that would force me to write more. I love writing, but I just don't feel like I do it enough. Writing weekly recommendations is what I came up with to remedy the situation. So, now that I am 38 weeks into the process with only 14 weeks to go, I'm fairly certain that, come what may, I'll be able to fulfill this commitment despite the obstacles. However, I will not pretend that it's been easy or will be easy. Thus, the question becomes, would I recommend such a task to others? Yes and no. I have (despite everything) enjoyed it more than I have hated it, so if you're the kind of person who thinks they could enjoy such a thing, I say go for it. If not, I very highly un-recommend it.

Weekly Recommendations, Week 35: Responding to Mail

I used to write letters. Actually, I still do, just not at the rate that I once did and not at the rate that I  would prefer. Embarrassingly enough, I have been letting my mail pile up for a long time now, and the duration I go without responding to letters I receive keeps getting longer and longer. I don't really want it to be this way, but for whatever reason, I just haven't made it a priority to respond in a timely manner to the letters I receive. It's disgraceful as far as I'm concerned. I'm not saying that everyone who receives letters should respond immediately - we all have our busy lives with plenty of other stuff going on - I'm just saying that I would like to do better at it. I greatly appreciate the mail that I receive from fellow zinesters and zine-interested folks, and I love the connections I've made with people all over the world. I consider my pen pals to be my good friends and confidants, and I really want to maintain the associations that I have with them. However, I have not been great at writing letters lately. Perhaps I've never really been great at it, but these days it's gotten worse. I intend to mend that though. I will do better. I am making it a point to. One day soon, I'm going to sit down and write responses to all the mail I've received over the past year or more that I have yet to respond to, and then (mark my words) I will keep up on it. I recommend that you do the same. The connections we make in life are of upmost importance, and it is imperative that we maintain these relationships. Our lives are enriched by our friendships (whether they develop in person or through the postal system), and in turn, our correspondence, communication, and attentiveness can enrich the lives of others. To get a letter, write a letter, and if you get a letter, write a letter back. To those who have written to me lately and are anxiously awaiting a reply, I promise you that a response is on it's way. And to those who haven't written to me in a while (or ever), I'd love to hear from you. I promise that it won't take me eons to write you back...not anymore anyway.

relocation update

So, I finally have a permanent address back in Idaho. Actually, I have had this PO Box for a while now but have neglected to inform you about it (not that you were overly concerned, I'm sure). If you are interested in writing to me the old fashioned way and/or if you are interested in any of my various zine projects, etc. (please, please be interested), you can contact me at the following address for the foreseeable future.

Dan Murphy
PO Box 9862
Boise ID 83707

Weekly Recommendations, Week 13: The Juniper #15

This week’s recommendation is blatant self-promotion, so consider yourself warned. However, this is my blog, so I can do whatever I want, right? Plus, everyone else is using their blogs, tweets, and wall postings to aggressively and excessively promote themselves, so what’s stopping me from doing the same? Hey, everybody! Look at me! Check out how cool I am and all the cool stuff I do! Please like me and be my friend! Post, post, post, tweet, blog, post, ad infinitum.
The Juniper is my 8 years running eco-zine. It's all about living the slow/simple/small life: bike riding, gardening, doing it yourself. In this issue I talk about finding sanity by being in nature, my obsession with my bicycle, how to set up a plant variety trial in your garden and why you should do it, and how lots of things in the world are actually getting better (despite what some folks might say or think) and as long as we make the effort to stay on this course, amazing things can happen. I also include a recipe specifically for springtime. If any of this sounds even remotely interesting to you, send me an email and I'll send you a copy. I usually ask for a stamp, 50¢, or a trade in return, but a nice note should also suffice. I'd give my address here, but I'm still in the middle of a transition and don't yet know what my permanent address will be. Either way, write to me here and we can figure something out: juniperjournal@hotmail.com

relocation

Hello folks...
I am interrupting your regular programing to inform you that I have moved. I had been living in Illinois for the past 2 and a half years while I was working on a masters degree. Alas, I completed that endeavor and have returned to the state of Idaho. I don't have a permanent address at this point, so the best way to contact me is by email. Stay tuned for future updates as to my whereabouts...

messyelephant@hotmail.com

"there's a violence in everyone"

After a several month long hiatus, I am back to posting zine reviews at Syndicated Zine Reviews. I didn’t mean to take such a long break. I just got a little swamped with other things. However, the zines kept piling up, and I started feeling like a jerk and a lazy bum for not getting around to writing reviews for the nice folks who were kind enough to send me their zines, so I finally decided to get on it. You should visit the site and check out all the great postings that are updated regularly (and not just by me, of course). If nothing else, it provides proof that the zine scene is still alive and well, and that all those naysayers and nincompoops that keep on saying print is dead are just dead wrong.

Additionally, I received a postcard from a zine friend a few weeks ago that is just too awesome not to share with someone, so here it is.

How cool is that?

"we should live until we die"

I recently moved into an apartment in the woods. It is a small place in the lower floor of a modest house. I am not completely isolated – I have neighbors, but they are no longer just across the hall or right next door, and the nearest store (which is unfortunately Wal-Mart) is about 4 miles away. I am not a city boy by any means, but I have grown accustomed to living in town, walking distance from the post office and biking distance from pretty much anything else that I might need or want. I hate driving, but now I don’t really have a choice. It’s not that I’m complaining or anything; after all, it’s beautiful out here, and the solace and solitude are unmatched. I can play my guitar as loud as I want (as long as my landlord isn’t around), and I can listen to the insects and birds all day long rather than being inundated with car and pedestrian traffic continuously. I can walk aimlessly through the woods and spy on the deer. I even saw a chipmunk outside my window recently, plus I’ve heard owls hooting and seen bats swooping around eating mosquitoes, etc. However, there is one major drawback, my cell phone and internet access is extremely limited. I can’t get any kind of access inside my apartment, so I have to step outside to send text messages, and I don’t have a strong enough signal to reliably make phone calls, so I’ll have to go somewhere else to do that. I reluctantly purchased a smart phone just so that I could have semi-convenient access to the internet and so that I’ll at least be able to check my email regularly. Oh, and if that’s not enough, I have no TV.

Over the years I have become a chronic multi-tasker and a lover of chaos and noise. I blame it on the fact that I grew up in a family of eight kids. As you can imagine, there was always a multitude of things happening at once in my house – constant noise and endless activity. Over the years, I became very accustomed to it. So, in my adult life a typical evening often consists of the TV on but muted, the stereo blasting, and me eating dinner while surfing the internet. Sounds ridiculous, but it’s true. So, you can see why no TV and limited internet access is causing some serious reflection. What am I going to do with myself now that I have been abruptly cut off from such things?

Actually, this is a good thing. I have so many things that I have been meaning to do, but the constant technological distractions seemed to have been making it nearly impossible to get to any of it. For example: I own stacks of books, comics, and graphic novels that I have never read (and there are lots of others that I have been meaning to read), I have piles of cassette tapes and CD’s that I rarely listen to (some that I haven’t listened to in years), I have dozens of zines and magazines that I have only browsed through, I have a small collection of DVD’s that I rarely watch (some that I have never watched), and I have multiple notebooks with blank pages waiting to be filled with writing, etc. Additionally, there are so many other things that I could do to pass the time: I love radio but I rarely listen to it. I have a box full of letters awaiting replies. I haven’t made a screen print or block print in months. I have tape loops to make and songs to write and record. I have languages to learn, and I’d really like to become math-ier. I like to cook and bake but I rarely get around to it. I have exploring to do and botanizing to pursue. I can even go skateboarding once in a while.

The bottom line is that I have no reason to be bored. I have no reason to complain. In fact, I should be celebrating my freedom and giving high-fives to all the neo-luddites. Life is packed with possibilities. My current situation may not be what I am accustomed to, but that doesn’t mean it’s not ideal. I am excited for the opportunities that present themselves. With time, I am certain to become acclimated to not having the technological conveniences that I once had, and I will probably look back on this time with longing, wishing I could go back to the days where I didn’t have it so easy. Either that or this will be my first step towards unplugging myself for good. Only time will tell.