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Governor Will Set Type
Utah Governor Calvin L. Rampton has given Utah Amateur Press Club a firm commitment to appear at the National APA convention on Friday evening, June 30, 1967 in the Jade Room of the Hotel Utah!
The governor will get his golfing fingers dirtied up with good, sticky printer’s ink by setting at least one line of type for the convention paper. NAPA President Victor Moitoret will teach him the rudiments of typesetting and press pumping.
As of March 1 we have a tentative commitment from Salt Lake City Mayor J. Bracken Lee to appear also. The firm yea or nay will come by the end of March, his secretary says.
The local news media will be on hand to record this historical event of amateur journalism and politics: a governor and a mayor performing honest toil setting type and operating a press. That kind of picture should make the wire services.
And even after an opener like that the main event will be ajay affairs. It looks like we will have lots of fireworks at the business sessions – all in the spirit of the holiday of course.
The evenings will be kept comparatively free as a time to rest from the arduous “think” sessions of the days. Saturday eve is scheduled for showing ajay movies and slides, et al. Bring yrs.
Sunday night Esther Ainscough will show some of her colored pix of Utah scenes. Salt Lake City is the Center of Scenic America, so we will have a treat.
Sunday morning we will have reserved seats for the broadcast of the Tabernacle Choir show. Then we will tour Temple Square. Lots of new things on the Square this year, including a building housing the features from the Mormon Pavilion at the NY fair.
If there seems to be some advance interest, we can arrange a July 4 morning bus trip to the top of one of the nearby canyons. The Greatest Snow on Earth will be melted by then, but there will be chair lift rides to some fantabulous mountain peak views. Let us know by postal card if you would be interested in something along this line.
The more we work on arrangements the more excited we get about the convention. For instance, Gladys Maycock hopes that lots of poets come to Salt Lake, because she enjoys the poetry in the bundles more than surface accounts of what goes on at a convention. So, poets of the ajay world, unite! And come to the Salt Lake City convention this year.
We need lots of printers, too. Lots of you. Vic taught some of the boys to operate the 6×10 Kelsey, but they haven’t had enough experience to make it move very fast.
Maybe we’ll try to do something about an offset paper too. Tom Thulin has learned to operate the press where we have had most of our Salt Lake papers printed, so maybe we can have two papers from this convention.
American APA Invited to Salt Lake
We are inviting members of the AAPA to attend this meet. Looks like that group might convene this year in the Carolinas, even though they met last year in Tampa. Regardless of where any other group meets, we will welcome, eagerly, especially, western ajays of any affiliation when they show at the Jade. Can anyone remember the AAPA ever meeting in the west?
The Hotel Utah is the hub of everything that is going on. It is the center of a mile-and-a-half north-south strip of interesting historical spots. It is just across the street from Temple Square. And yes, chilluns, a pool is available – just across Temple Square at the Hotel Utah Motor Lodge.
Bill Haywood of the Fossils, Inc. has given us the green light to schedule a Fossil luncheon. This will be held Monday, July 3 at the hotel. This meeting is open to Fossils and also FUTURE Fossils. I had never heard of a Fossil luncheon until Des Moines, so did not feel really free to attend. Thus, my first Fossil luncheon was at Frederick. It gave me an even greater appreciation of the perpetuity of amateur journalism, and that’s good for all of us.
The banquet will be Monday night, July 3 with Lawrence R. Giles as emcee. Larry is a philosopher: “Tears do pleasantly distress the moments of man’s happiness.” but don’t let the quiet manner fool you. Watch those mischievous blue eyes as he writes:
I have a date at midnight,
If the moon goes down too soon,
I’ll pitch my woo by arc-light
And get even with that moon.
Both these quotes are from early issues of Inklings which came a few days ago from Willametta. I had asked her for any extra Utah papers, and even greedy me couldn’t have expected or appreciated more. There were copies of ultra-scarce Inklings 1 and 2, some Busy Bees, Utam, some papers from Oakland, and some copies of Remelda Gibson’s The Utahn, which I had never seen before, shame on me.
Remelda, we need you! Hurry back to the fold and come to the convention.
We’ll keep everyone posted (in print) on convention arrangements as we finalize them. One arrangement I’m working on real hard: get some extra sleep now to save up strength for the convention. Of course I’ll never do it. Wonder if I could live on pennies for five days – sleep is such a waste of time, especially at a convention.
Teenagers Learning to Set Type
The UAPC is still working with the Kiwanis-Felt Boys’ and Girls’ Club to build interest in printing. We will organize a press club and publish regular editions of a paper with a name yet to be chosen.
Kiwanian Ed Cannon donated some 200 lbs of pied type, and we are cleaning it, trala, and sorting the sizes and faces. Anyone know of an easy, fast way to clean type? All we’re smart enough to do is slosh it in kerosene, blot it with paper towels and sort it in sizes. Mr. Cannon donated five Hamilton type cases to us also.
In July we will have a typeface-naming contest so you typeophiles can tell us what we have.
WHO IS COMING to Salt Lake? We’ve had definite word from Harold Ellis, the Haywoods, Les and Lea Palmer, Bob Kunde. It is only certain “depending on the Navy” for the Moitorets, and lots of “we hope we can make it, but don’t know yet” from others. We hope lots of western ajays hop freights, trains, busses, or even planes, shank’s ponies or unicycles to get here. Salt Lake is on the transcontinental routes and The Different World of Utah will make extra time spent here completely worthwhile. The mountains, seashore, sports, theatre, Old West, natural scenery you won’t believe till you see it – all this and heaven (amateur journalism) too!
Y’all come, hear?
Notes From the Hook
Thanks, Willametta, for the plug you gave The Instructor. And to all you educators, no, it is not the big magazine which gives you schoolteaching hints. It is a 40-page 8½x11” magazine for Church Sunday School teachers and officers, and Goldie Despain and Virginia Baker are allowed to help edit it.
Let’s make one small annotation to Willametta’s story: Like some 50 million (more or less) other persons, she listed the name of the Church incorrectly. Official and accurate name: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, complete with hyphenated Latter-day and a small “d.” We know that it is a pretty big stickful, so we do answer to the name of Mormons.
STOP PRESS! STOP PRESS! STOP PRESS! STOP PRESS!
It was announced today that a prize-winning musical, Promised Valley, will be presented in the Mormon Tabernacle each evening but Sundays and Thursdays during the months of July and August. Just in time for the convention. We’ll try to arrange for reserved seats for Saturday, July 1, opening night. Admission is free.
Promised Valley is a classic in Mormon country. Music and lyrics are by professionals; performers are (for this production) topnotch. Some of them will be Tabernacle Choir quality. The show tells the story of a company of pioneers who cross the midwest plains to the “promised (Salt Lake) valley.” Some are devout; others resent the hardships of pioneer living and the way the Church controls the community. And therein lies the conflict – if you can call it conflict when the cast stops every few minutes to burst into song.
UTAM
Published by the Utah Amateur Press Club, on a rotating editorship. This issue is edited by Virginia Baker, Salt Lake City, Utah 84103.
This is UTAM #7, March, 1967.