Occasionally a magazine rolls in that’s just a treat from front to back. The recent issue of Tin House is themed “Games People Play,” and the editors have cultivated a fresh, fun collection of writing on games, from Blake Eskin’s foray into “The Seriously Fun World of German Board Games” to Michelle Wildgen’s dissection of the seemingly complicated card game Sheepshead. 

My personal favorite is Henry Alford’s “Fun Is What,” a hilarious look at the tradition of parlor games. Alford heralds the old form of revelry, introducing a few games and their instructions and imagining how an evening might pan out for two fictitious couples as they play such classics as Hot Cockles, Ha!, and The Game of Trussed Fowls.

Source: Tin House

Congratulations to Tin House, which is nominated for a 2010 Utne Independent Press Award for best writing.

Meatpaper is why I love magazines. Obsessive, obscure, and beautiful, this “journal of meat culture” is a true labor of love. Almost nobody gets paid and the magazine keeps coming out—another issue is on its way to the printer as I type. So what exactly is it?

“Meatpaper is about meat as a provocative cultural symbol and phenomenon,” cofounders Sasha Wizansky and Amy Standen wrote in the premier issue in 2007. “Meat isn’t a straightforward or neutral topic. In conversation it tends to ruffle feathers and provoke debate. We hope you’ll join in.”

Whether they are exploring what meat art can tell us about life and death or why Filipinos eat Spam, the good people at Meatpaper are always eyeball-deep in some cultural investigation or another.

I spoke with editor in chief and art director Sasha Wizansky about the magazine.

Jeff Severns Guntzel: You folks must get your fair share of hate mail.

Sasha Wizansky: It’s actually kind of stunning, but we get almost no hate mail. I’ve been very surprised by that.

Severns Guntzel: How often do you have to explain the magazine to people? Do you do less of that after 10 issues?

Wizansky: I’ve been noticing that I spend a lot less time explaining the point of Meatpaper than I did when we first started. I think the culture is sort of catching up to us in a certain way. So many people are concerned with food, sustainability, and looking closely at the meat industry.

Severns Guntzel: When you do have to explain it, what do you say?

Wizansky: I start by saying that Meatpaper is about art and ideas related to meat. Then people usually ask, “Are you for it or against it?” And the answer is neither. I list the angles we take. There are anthropological and historical articles—and then the journalism, art, and poetry.

Severns Guntzel: Do you personally commission the art that you’re putting in the magazine or are you using art you’ve discovered?

Wizansky: It’s a combination. Some people submit their art—they’ll say, you know, I’ve been painting beef sticks for several years and I just found out about your magazine! We also have a roster of really talented illustrators and artists and we’ll send them an article when it’s still in draft form and have them create art to respond to it.

Severns Guntzel: And do you have to hunt for the editorial content?

Wizansky: We get a lot of submissions at this point and we have to turn a lot of them down. We try to publish perspectives on meat that you aren’t seeing elsewhere. We’re not that interested in material that you can find in a food magazine.

Severns Guntzel: Is there a kind of story that you’re always rejecting?

Wizansky: We get a fair number of stories about people who eat offal, and we feel we’ve reported a lot on offal already. We’re clearly entering a new realm of carnivorism—I think people are becoming more adventurous about meat.

Severns Guntzel: So is the magazine healthy?

Wizansky: You mean financially healthy? [laughs]

Severns Guntzel: Yes!

Wizansky: We now have a 501c3 arts organization acting as our umbrella and fiscal sponsor, so we can apply for grants and accept tax-deductible donations. We have just begun fundraising, and are developing several side projects that will hopefully support our work. The reason why we’ve been able to publish 10 issues is that it’s pretty much all volunteer. At some point we’d love to be able to compensate people handsomely for their contributions, but right now it’s a labor of love for everybody involved.

Severns Guntzel: So nobody on the editorial staff gets paid?

Wizansky: We pay a few contractors: one copy editor, one database developer. All the editors are unpaid.

Severns Guntzel: What are you doing otherwise to earn money?

Wizansky: I do graphic design.

Severns Guntzel: Can you imagine an end to Meatpaper?

Wizansky: I’m not bored yet and we’re not running out of things to say. We're certainly not drying up in terms of enthusiasm. So yeah, I’d like to keep going as long as I can.

Severns Guntzel: Having created this very unique thing, can you offer any advice to people with a similarly unique vision for a publication?

Wizansky: I would say go for it. Back when we started Meatpaper, the idea sounded really strange to people. So instead of finding advertising or drumming up support we just went ahead and made a prospectus issue. That was the best thing we could have done because there was really no way to talk about this idea—we just had to do it. So we created a 20-page, full color prospectus, which we called Issue Zero and people really got it. Through that we were able to get national distribution for Issue One and a bunch of subscribers. We just kind of went for it.

Severns Guntzel: I have one last question for you. In looking through old interviews with you all there were mentions of various meat parties, including a party to help a friend of yours learn to appreciate bacon. Do you have a favorite meat party you’ve been to?

Wizansky:  Meatpaper has co-produced a series of rabbit-dinners, featuring local rabbit meat and a collaboration between a San Francisco chef and a Brooklyn chef. We got to experience the coming together of a really special community of people who are passionate about food and hospitality. And a year ago we had an issue launch party with a butchery demonstration. Basically people came to the party, got a cocktail, and watched a pig being butchered. The meat from that pig was cooked immediately and then served. I wasn’t sure how people would react but they were really fascinated and into it. Since then I've seen a trend of “butcher parties” grow. I've been very happy to close the gap between animal and food. That’s a particular opportunity that’s very interesting to me and people seem to be responding.

Instead of filling their instruction manuals with incomprehensible computer-speak, the makers of the Franklin Ace 100 and Ace 1000 decided to have fun. The computers—released in the early 1980s—were knockoffs of the Apple II. The manuals, on the other hand, were completely original and now represent fascinating cultural documents. Two of the manuals that were unearthed on the blog Ironic Sans are filled with pop culture references to Hill Street Blues, The Dukes of Hazzard, and former Good Morning America host David Hartman, who is described as “nothing but reconfigured electronic signals [you watch] over coffee in the morning.” The manual also has this prescient and funny paragraph designed to warn its patrons:

Be forewarned that somewhere, sometime, someplace, some enterprising young man who seems to know ten times what you do about computers is going to try to convince you that his program will make a jug of cider jump off the table and turn ducks’ eggs into solid gold. Look this man straight in the eye and ask for names of people who are successfully using his program. DO NOT, under any circumstances, bet him he can’t do it. There’s no telling what someone might be able to make a computer do.

Source: Ironic Sans

Image by Marcin Wichary, licensed under Creative Commons.

A thankful nod to American RadioWorks and Third Coast International Audio Festival for digging up Trey Kay’s audio documentary “The Great Textbook War” in the midst of shiver-inducing news from Texas, where right-wing activists who dominate the Texas Board of Education are attempting to rewrite U.S. textbook curricula.

The audio documentary revisits the 1974 national media frenzy over one West Virginia school board’s deliberations on which textbooks to employ, pivoting on conservative Christian belief systems. Violent protests ensued and vehement coverage spread through national media outlets for months.

The listening experience here is rich, thanks to a deep well of archived press recordings and original interviews. Kay’s biography also informs the story: He was a seventh grade student in Kanawha County when the war broke out. It didn’t matter then, or now, that Kanawha’s population is slight, around 191,000 in 2008, even though it houses the state’s capitol: America loves the allegory of its small-town self demonstrating the sentiments and antics of the country as a whole. But when the sediment of media flurry settles, the ’74 textbook war and the current battle in Texas are both debates about degrees of mediating information and opinions in the school's domain. One Kanawa parent testifying on tape in 1974 hits a resonant note in each era’s textbook war: “If I have been successful as a parent, nothing my children can read in school will hurt them.”

Related Reading:
“Revisionaries,” Washington Monthly
“How Christian were the Founders?” New York Times Magazine

Related Listening:
“Textbook Diplomacy, Part One & Two,” BBC World Service Documentaries

How would you maintain your composure as a guest on a right-wing media program, in the face of a screaming Rush Limbaugh or a battle-ready Bill O’Reilly? Yes! magazine asked Pramila Jayapal, founder and director of the immigration-rights group OneAmerica, how she approaches her guest spots on such programs. She does believe that these appearances can be effective, she says, “not because I think I’m going to change the host’s mind or because he or she is going to give me a fair hearing, but because I know a lot of people listen to those shows and are moved by what they hear.”

I look for something that I can agree with. The host says, “I believe in law and order.” I find a way to take that argument and connect it to my values. When I become reasonable, that deflates both my anger and the conversation. The host is not expecting me to agree with anything they say. They’re expecting an all-out fight.

I cite statistics. I am the one with the facts. The facts are not to convince anybody but to establish my identity as someone who is calm, uses logic, and isn’t just speaking wildly. The host becomes the angry, shouting, loud, mean person.

I focus on values that I believe most people hold deeply. I say, most Americans value respect or hard work, and that’s what this debate should be about. The host is not going to say he or she doesn’t believe in respect or kindness.

Then when I come home, I need to be around people who can shower me in wonderful, nice things. The hosts’ comments are not directed at me personally, but they are personal. A good glass of wine, good friends, good family, good love are important if you are going to be out there on the front lines.

Source: Yes!

Image by Gage Skidmore, licensed under Creative Commons.