I think that’s German for “on the can,” which was the name of a zine (maga”zine”) my friend participated in, back in the early 90’s. It was a group of women who wrote letters to each other, sharing information on a monthly basis. One woman would collect all the letters, xerox them into a “zine” and send it out to all the participating women. It was called Auf em clou because these women found that the only free quiet time they had to read was “on the can.”
At the time I was a young mother, living in the desert with a wild performance artist for a boyfriend. I was lonely for female companionship … I cursed my weak grip on the German language which prevented me from participating in Auf em clou. I was so envious of those women.
So, I did the next best thing; I started my own zine called WomanTalk in 1993. (Am I using that semi-colon properly?) The first issue only had three contributors (me, my sister and Tiffany) and I wrote a lengthy comparison of different kinds of menstrual protection (boys: cover your eyes here). I compared cloth pads to The Keeper (menstrual cup) and … I can’t remember anymore… (was that it?)
But! but! it grew and grew – and became more and more fun. I started including short stories and poetry written by women I knew and all the women wrote under a pseudonym. This went on every month (or so) for seven years, even earning enough in “subscription ” money to support itself (I only printed about 50 copies a month). I finally folded the zine in 2000 when I started my master’s program at Art Center. I thought that through the journey through my master’s degree that I would figure out where I wanted to go with womantalk. I still own the name womantalk.org. And I like doing this blog thing. And I want to set up the womantalk archives. But then what?
First, I need a business card; pale green lettering on thick vellum card stock.
Then I need to get a site up and running OR just figure out how to get womantalk.org to forward itself automatically to this blog for the meantime.