Volume 23, Number 2-3, Summer-Fall 2006

I’d relish their earthy, papery smell

Carolyn Greco

University of Western Ontario

kirlyn@rogers.com 

Roger asked me to write this note regarding a conversation that he and I had in his office the other day re. the Inkshed newsletter.

I mailed my membership to Inkshed to receive the newsletter last February. To date I have not received the journal. I wrote to your membership chair after a move last summer to inquire why I hadn’t gotten the journal in the mail.

I was informed it didn’t come in the mail: It was an online journal.

As of today’s date, I have not read the journal.

I can’t tell you how disappointed I am that a small, thin, coarse-papered publication has not been delivered to my home. I wanted to celebrate my name on the envelope, tear the brown wrapper off and dance with it in my living room. There was something about holding the paper journal in my hand that would have bequeathed my position (Part-time Writing Instructor at UWO) a sense of belonging.

The word I used in Roger’s office was “legitimacy.”

I don’t feel like a prof. Seeing other instructors (and writing experts’) articles in print would have helped me to think that I belonged. That we shared a camaraderie.

I’m not sure where my disappointment lies. Maybe because I’m late to enter the profession at almost 50-years. Maybe because I battle technology; it’s a struggle for me to embrace WebCT or the internet. I don’t want to read the journal off my screen. (Do I confess I don’t have a TV or cable? I reward each day with a book before bed). Downloading and printing a copy was only an option a month ago when a friend gave me a new printer. Maybe I fight the technology and the age. Had I entered the profession 20 years ago, I’d have a stack of old Inksheds molding in my garage.

I’d relish their earthy, papery smell.