(On April 25th I received a first e-mail message from Julie Hagan Bloch. Nothing special, but just a test if she could reach me that way. I replied that her first e-mail arrived and that she could send in her answers that way too. However, I also told her that I would enjoy her snail-mail more because of the wonderful stampings she always uses).

Reply on 4-6-1996 via the internet

JHB: Hi, Ruud! Yes, I will be sending you some goodies in the mail but I'm feeling a tad guilty at how long it's taken me to respond to the last question so I'm answering with the help of Thoth Ram-Dos (I did tell you that's our computer's name, didn't I?).

Astrology. I guess for me it's another bit of potentially useful information. Seems to me that this whole universe is pretty much all of a piece, as it were, and that everything is therefore interconnected. I'm not an astrologer. Not enough time to devote to it. But now and then something I'll read in an astrology journal or and ephemeris will ring a bell and help me to gain a little insight. For example, the time I got breast cancer was when transiting Pluto was squaring my ascendant. (Yes, I know it sounds like gobbledygook. Well, it can't be helped.) Pluto has to do with deep transformation, sometimes pretty heavy duty. The ascendant is one's self-in-this-body, for lack of a more succinct explanation. So. Does that help?

On a different subject, David does the grocery shopping for our household, bless his heart. Last time he went, he brought back a golden-orange pepper, "just because it was so pretty". Now, I ask you, is that man a treasure or what? I'll be sending you a few little eraser-carvings I did using that pepper as a model. It really is a lovely thing, that pepper. The color is exquisite, and the shape of it is wonderful. The funny thing about it is that, since the U.S. Post Office recently issued a commemorative stamp of one of Georgia O'Keeffe's paintings (the red poppy), I was looking through a book I've had (for almost 20 years!) of her work. I had in mind to think a bit about her and what she did, and perhaps carve a print or two in her honor. Looking through that lovely book, I was struck most by her just working with what delighted her eye. And that evening, David brings home the pepper. Aha! So in a way, the pepper prints are in honor of Georgia. What an incredible woman she was.

I'm also thinking that perhaps I'll the grocery store myself (I hate to shop, but maybe it wouldn't be so bad if it's for art supplies, so to speak), and see the shapes and colors in the produce department. In the seed catalogues I see lovely fruits and flowers and vegetables... peppers, for example, in red, green, yellow, orange, white, purple, just to name a few!

I'll send the prints off to you in the morning. Meanwhile, happy Spring!

RJ: Now I think of the subjects of your eraser carvings, it has mostly to do with daily life as well. You latest answer came in by e-mail (you actually wrote it a few hours before I got it today!) and I wonder, what is a computer too you, and what do you think of e-mail?

(this next question was sent only 30 minutes after I received her answer, by e-mail of course!)

Reply on 2-7-1996 via the internet

JHB: HA! I just remembered where I put the interview question. Oy... when I get behind with paperwork, things do get lost! Okay, the question was about Thoth Ram-Dos, our computer, or computers in general.

Computers are great. E-mail is a big help for quick communication (well, it CAN be...!) and can be fun besides. What's not to like? The regular postal system still can be used for sending pictures and what-not. It's good to have both. The more options, the better. It's not as though use of the more traditional mail systems is now prohibited, for heaven's sake!

Besides the e-mail, I hope eventually to be able to use the computer for producing our books, which is the reason we got it in the first place. We still need to get a scanner, though, and until we do we can't do the books from the computer. There's a program that can use my own calligraphy and use it as a font. (First have to have the scanner!) I like doing a LITTLE calligraphy, but it's getting so that my hand and shoulder cramp up too quickly to really enjoy doing an extended session of it. I do want to use my own lettering in our books, though, and having it available as a font is the way to go. Besides, that way I can spend more time drawing and carving, which I prefer. There I think the computer will be a help, too. In fact, that's the argument my husband used to get me to consider a computer in the first place. He said: "Think of being able to have your original artwork, blow it up big on the computer, touch it up, reduce it back to the original size, and have it camera-ready." I told him, "Oh, you tempter!"

And so Thoth Ram-Dos came to live in our house. I love the drawing and carving but I do not like to do the fiddly work involved in getting an image camera-ready. Once an image is carved, I want to do something else! There are so many things that I'd like to carve!

RJ: Besides the e-mail there are also the sites and homepages where people put their information on-line. What do you think of that?

Reply on 11-7-1996 via e-mail

JHB: I don't yet have a lot of experience with this part of the internet. I've played a bit with it, of course, but it still feels like getting a new foreign language textbook and skipping to the middle or end chapters: sometimes one is able to make sense of bits of it, and it is fun to work with it, but to really GET it a bit more study is required.

My impression as a novice is that one could easily spend a great deal of time in it.... So far, I've not had a lot of luck using it as a research tool. Although it seems almost everything is represented in some capacity, the representation usually is rather superficial. At present, I have far better luck in a good big bookstore. It isn't as time-consuming to "download" pictures in a bookstore, either! Using Georgia O'Keeffe as a reference again, I found a scant few illustrations of her work on the internet, but in a bookstore, aaah! Lovely illustrated volumes, and the main problem is to choose which to buy! Such riches...

At any rate, I'm sure there is much good material in magic cyberspace, for one who knows how to access it. I'm sure I will eventually. I did have some luck, surprisingly enough, in finding eraser-carving-related items on the internet! The luck consisted mainly in having friends tell me the home page addresses (if that is the correct term) for them. I found yours, Ruud, and a few others. What fun! Yes, I can see how one could spend a LOT of time there!

Incidentally, Ruud, my lack of expertise is the reason for the delay in responding to your question. I don't have a lot to say that means much. But heavens, for not having much to say, I sure did natter on, no?!

This kind of communication is a far cry from that of even 50 years ago. I wonder what will be available in another 50 years! I guess that's all for now. Be well, dear. Love and blessings, Julie

RJ: Another subject I would like to ask before we end our interview is, "your archive". Do you keep all the mail that you get in? How do you deal with the flow of incoming mail?

Reply on 5-10-1996 via e-mail

JHB: Your last question related to archiving: "Do you keep all the mail that you get in? How do you deal with the flow of incoming mail?" As you can tell, sometimes the flow of incoming mail does not have a corresponding outflow very soon! Some mail is answered quickly, such as orders for the small books I publish; I try to fill orders and mail them out again within 48 hours. Questions about carving I put at the front of my "mail to be answered" stack. I must confess that though I like to answer mail promptly, often that stack waits a while for me to attend to it. The nearly three-month interval between your last question and my answering of it is surely a case in point! It was an interval, however, that saw the completion of the camera-ready copy for the next haiku book, which is now at the printer's awaiting its turn on the press. (I am glad about the book's reaching that stage, for sure!) Usually when I begin a correspondence with somebody, I warn her/him that while I do answer my mail, the timing of the answer is totally unpredictable.

I don't keep all the mail that comes to the house. There's just too much of it. I keep what is special to me personally for one reason or another; and most of the rest of it I pass along. Some things that are not "keepers" but are of a large enough size, I use to line the bottom of the rabbits' cages when I clean them. I have to use something, after all! Mail art is sacred in the sense of the communication that takes place, but not necessarily as an object once its purpose has been fulfilled. Besides, paper does not keep forever, and space is somewhat limited. The more one has, the more time is necessary to take care of it. I have fantasized about dumping the entire contents of my files into a bonfire, and enjoying the lightening of spirit that accompanies lightening of posessions... but then when I weed out some of the files, I end up keeping most of them after all. "I can't throw THIS away...". The trick in not becoming inundated in paper is to be strong in the first place and not let the paper enter the file at all; pass it along right away. It isn't easy. When a piece has been put together with a lot of care and love, it is hard to let it go. But then, it is also fun to share nice work with mail art friends. It is a bit of a paradox for me. I like to have interesting things on hand to look at and respond to, but I don't like to be responsible for a lot of stuff to take care of. And I like things to be fairly tidy and clean, and of course the more things there are in a space, the more complicated that becomes. I find it easier to think clearly in a clean space. Not only a physically clean space, but also a mentally clean one. If I have to many things to do, I often find it hard to accomplish anything beyond the most essential tasks. The mental system (or mine does, anyhow) gets overloaded with too many things to do, it seems, and fizzes out. Poof! It's a great exercise in focus, though, to concentrate on one bird in the flock, as it were. It is an interesting question: if a system is best served by simplicity, then why is there the tendency towards complexity?

Ummmm, I dunno. I'm a slow learner, maybe??? ;-) Back to you, Ruud, and I hope you are having a fine Autumn. It is so very lovely here now. I love this time of year. spectacular in their blazing brightness, and the clean, crisp air is ambrosial. Aaaaahhh!

P.S The lift of spirit that follows the letting go of possessions is mild compared to the lift felt after completing a major task. It's almost as though a physical weight were removed from me. (I wonder if it's like that at the time of death, the feeling of a major job completed, great relief and lightness, and now it's time to move on to the next thing...) I love the work I do, but completion is nice too.

There, that was my after-midnight nattering!

RJ: Well, maybe it is time to round up this interview. It started in March last year, so if we don't stop now we might 'natter' on year after year (just joking). Was there anything I forgot to ask you?

Reply on 26-11-1996 via e-mail

JHB: I don't know if you forgot to ask anything or not, but there is one more thing I'd like to put out there for people: There is a great light at the very core of your being that is made of nothing but love. Find it. And realize that the light wears your form, has your tendencies, your loves, your brain, your skills, everything that makes you who you are. You ARE good enough. You are great, just as you are. You must do what makes your heart happy, what you know is right for you in your own circumstances. Honor who you are. Everyone has this light; it is everywhere and in everything. We are surrounded by love.

One of the finest things about mail art is that people share their own unique vision, freely and without external judging. They share who they are. We are surrounded by love.

Well, Ruud, no doubt there will be something else I'll remember after this is all done, but I can live with that! I suspect that the "nattering" will continue in any case! In the snail mail printout of this that I'm sending, I'll enclose the latest haiku book, hot off the press, as it were. I hope you like it! Now it's back to answering other mail, trying to fit in as many projects as possible (one of the first of which is revising my carving book. It's hard to believe it's been out for almost ten years...products have changed, and there is more I want to share with those who'd like to carve! The more I teach, the more I notice patterns of things people keep asking, or not realizing that they need to know. I need to address that in the book), and not wear myself out...well, not too much, anyhow. Bless you for doing this project. It's led me into some helpful contemplations, and I hope that it may be of some interest to the readers. Be well, be happy, and remember that you are fine, just as you are, and made of love.

Love and blessings, Julie.

RJ: Thanks for this interview Julie!

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