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The Numbers Game
New ajay publishers are usually urged to adopt a consecutive issue numbering system for their papers. This will avoid confusion in the minds of some who may later attempt to acquire a complete set of the masterpiece in question. The Volume I, Number 1 idea doesn’t seem to work because future collectors can’t be sure how many numbers are included in each volume; whether a volume is supposed to run for a certain length of time or a certain number of issues… or neither.
It occurs to me that in 1984, some earnest soul compiling a list of my accomplishments, may be confused by the seemingly scatterbrained manner in which this paper is numbered. You may wonder why any collector, earnest or otherwise, would bother with this feeble rag, but nevertheless I offer the following information just to set the record straight.
The first six issues of National Calamity were published at my Rhatt Phincke Press back in Floral Park. The sixth issue, a two pager printed on 3×5 colored newsprint, was dubbed National Advertiser, with an AKA (also known as) line indicating it was National Calamity 6.
Then I moved to Tampa and numbering confusion became the norm.
The first paper published at my newly established Carpetbagger Press was titled – appropriately enough – The Carpetbagger and was distributed in the January, 1973 bundles of AAPA, APA and NAPA. It included an AKA line identifying it as Flimsie Excuse 18 – my AAPA paper – and National Calamity 7.
In April, 1973, the National bundle included a little gem called Weaker Growl Calamity 189 which was put together by visiting fireman Ralph Babcock and Floridians Lee Hawes, Dave Tribby and myself. The logo didn’t say it, but it was National Calamity 8.
National Calamity 9 was distributed in the June 1973 bundle… no problem. Then #10 was published in a limited edition of 100 copies for distribution at the St. Pete Convention. Incidentally, I have quite a few copies left over and will be happy to send one to anyone requesting it.
In the aftermath of St. Pete, Ralph Babcock and I, with some help from the Segals, collaborated on a Weaker Calamity. Color it National Calamity 11.
Numbers 12, 13, 14, and now 15, have followed in normal order. If collectors have heretofore been confused, I hope this sets them straight.
Butt Out?
Before sending his goose-stepping legions marching into Poland during those dark September days of 1939, Adolph Hitler first accused the Poles of violating German borders near the Polish Corridor and of planning war on the Third Reich. The same act was pulled on the Czechs… according to Adolph, German ethnics living in the Sudetenland were being persecuted by their Czech neighbors so his army marched.
It seems to me an interesting comparison might be made with a situation existing in NAPA today in which I play the part of unhappy Poland.
Just because I published what I considered legitimate criticism of an article in an ajay paper, its publisher first told me “Quit reading it,” and then, after calling me a self appointed censor, orders me to “butt out.”
Unless he is even less a master of communication than he feared, he is forbidding me to publish any more criticism of his writing.
He is censoring me!
My word!
More Censorship
Alf’s Cat 116 has now been distributed and to the surprise of almost no one, it’s tainted with a bit of controversy. A two page insert by members of the Suncoast Amateur Press Society was censored out of the volume because it wasn’t up to the standards of the other contributed material. The facetious stuff concocted by the SAPS may not have been as laudatory as most of the copy Alf assembled, but it had more business in this issue than brother Ralph’s blast at the “Tricky Dick” antics of his San Diego foes.
Gleefully done into print for the NAPA bundle by one Fred Liddle of Tampa, Florida 33606