"how long have you been teaching?"
professor dicey chuckled.
"i won't share that in class but if you're curious, you can ask me after class"
i stayed after class. he didn't tell me.
on the first day of class, professor dicey waltzed across the workshop as an experienced dancer does across the dance floor. his vibrance and energy transcended time physics. he never seemed to age a day in the letterpress lab. the lab was his garden where he's cultivated generations of gardeners to bring their words to fruition over the years. the garden where the seed of book arts was planted in the minds of curious students.
the letterpress lab was located in the second floor basement of the design building. not the first, but the second. the first time i went down there, i saw a giant cockroach.
"don't worry about that little guy, he won't hurt you," he assured.
i stared in horror. all the other times the creatures squirmed disgustingly overtook my consciousness. i shuttered. i then noticed a leak from the roof.
"it comes from the bathroom upstairs. it's not good for the books but this is the best we can do."
he paused. like thick clouds covering the sun on a typical pittsburgh day, his vibrance suddenly disappeared.
"they started throwing away my materials in the summer."
his voice was quiet. he opened a couple drawers to point out missing equipment. he brought me around the room, showing the cabinets of missing lead type, and the place where the lead saw used to be.
"i would go in the dumpster to rescue some things, but eventually gave up."
he spoke in a tone of a mother whose lost her children.
"i'm going to stop teaching after this semester."
suddenly a fire of anger aroused within me. like an angry child unable to control emotions, i struggled to bottle it all in. HOW COULD THEY? with so much funding as a private institution, how could they neglect the very place that holds the very history of all information today? how could they be so careless?
how else are students my age going to trace back and appreciate all the information we have today if there's no way to learn where it all came from?
that semester, i spent as much time as i could in the lab. i stayed past midnight each week, picking his mind and uncovering all the stories. i ran against time, history, fighting to save the lost art, tried with all my might to learn the craft the best i could.
i set my own type, learned to ink a press, create a hard book cover from book fabric and board, and decorate a cover. by the end of it, i had procured 4 books of various stitching styles. these are my proudest possessions.
on the last day of class i added professor dicey's number from his flip phone.
"i hope to start a small workshop of my own in my garage."
his eyes retreated to the ceiling.
"although it's going to take a bit because i'll have to clean up my wife's things in the house. she passed two years ago."
he looked at me.
"you know it's been a wonderful 52 years here."
52 years.
i can barely comprehend 52 years. more than half a decade. more than twice the time i've been alive...
52 years ago we didn't have personal computing. 52 years ago we were still writing letters instead of email. 52 years ago the idea of an ebook didn't exist yet. he's really seen it all.
i thought i was just learning to make books in this class. but what professor dicey ingrained in me was the value of owning your own information. what it means to freely publish and say what one wants, what it takes to place information in someone else's hands. the true power of press.
i never saw a physical printing press before the class. i remember “learning” amendments and reciting the ideas of “freedom of speech, press, religion” in high school government class. i merely swallowed the ideas to regurgitate on paper. it wasn't until this class that i fully digested the merit of freedom.
carnegie mellon lost someone truly special in its pursuit of technology. technology that would never exist without information.
a garden without seeds is a garden that won't live on. that semester, i collected seeds. seeds to spread far and wide, seeds to live on.
thank you, professor joe dicey.