We Found Each Other: On the pursuit of happiness through printed matter, an excerpt from the Kinderhook Memorial Library presentation

Thanks to the support of those who attended the Birds of the Hudson Valley art show and my presentation at the Kinderhook Memorial Library, I was able to reach my fundraising goal!

Jun 03, 2025

The Birds of the Hudson Valley art show took place throughout the month of May at the Kinderhook Memorial Library. Special thanks to the library director Matt Pavloff, the library staff, Marian Sole and Patrick Gubler for helping me set up the show.

The presentation was on May 3rd. To my happy surprise the room was packed and the audience was very engaged. I spoke for 30 minutes covering various topics, such as the Mingei folk art movement, DIY culture, DEI, and my Beakuency zine project. Below is an excerpt in which I discuss the power of printed matter as a happy way to relate to the world, and explain that this is one of the project's goals.

Photos from the presentation courtesy of the Kinderhook Memorial Library.

An excerpt from the presentation

1×

0:00

-6:29

In the world we live in today, if you have a radio show or a podcast, what often matters is how many listeners you get, or how many downloads you get. And that's an important metric to assess how much are you reaching out to people. But I want to also not always look at the world and our lives from a marketing consultant perspective.
I know Beakuency is a good program because the people I talk to are great. I believe in the ideas and insights and observations that all the bird people [that I interview] have. I know these are great ideas that's being shared on my radio show. And so, how can I have a long term relationship with the listeners and the world, not just the short sighted “how many listeners you get”? You know, those are the numbers you present if you want to get a sponsorship or something. But if you're really thinking about just communicating with people, there are many ways to relate to people and relate to the world. How can I accomplish that kind of long term goal was the question. I really want these interviews to be an archive that will be accessible 25 years later, 50 years later, 100 years later. Somebody may be interested in learning about birds and bird conservation efforts in Hudson Valley, for whatever reason, they might want to look it up many years from now. And I want my interviews to be available to those people.
And so how do I want that connection to happen? I was talking to my partner Pat, who’s standing over there, who was playing the harp [for the opening reception]. And he said I should make a zine because printed matter has a long lifetime than an online archive.
I have some physical materials that I want to show you as an example. This is Walks by Protected Land in Columbia County by Sheldon Evans. Second edition, produced by Columbia Land Conservancy. This came out in 2002. In 2002, I had no idea that I was going to be here. I was in Japan, and I was not even interested in birds. I was not even interested in nature. I found this book at this bookstore called Old Books on Warren Street. Really cool store. I try not to go there [because] I lose tons of money every time I go there. It's run by this artist, Mike Donovan, a friend of Pat. Every time I go there I find really cool stuff. And this is something — well, it's pretty self explanatory — it's about the places in Columbia county and it's even got the map of our sanctuary, Wilson Powell Wildlife Sanctuary in it. And when this book was made, whoever made this [book] had no idea [that] some Japanese person [would] show up 20 years later and get excited about it. This is a once-in-a-lifetime meeting that can happen to printed matter. You don't really get that experience over social media. This physical object that happened to be in this one cool bookstore, and I just showed up, and I found it. I find this to be a really happy encounter. And that's how I want to relate to the world. That's the happy way of relating to the world.
I want to show you another example of such a happy meeting. This is a 7-inch record… or [rather] I found it in a 7-inch record shelf of this record store in Tokyo that I used to go, which was filled with DIY, handmade or small scale production records and cassette tapes. Some of you [in the audience] are really familiar with the culture, I'm looking at my friend Bryan Zimmerman who's really into self release underground music scene. That was what I was interested [in] when I was in Japan.
This [7-inch] record is called No Electro. I have no idea who the artist is. And it's got... [shows the disc inside] cardboard in it.

When I saw this, I got really excited because, I don't know what this artist was thinking but I thought, well, this means that I have to exercise my imagination to enjoy this 7-inch. I have to be an active participant and can't be a passive consumer to enjoy this piece of art. I really resonated with that idea. And I just love the fact that some crazy person thought of making this and even tried to sell it. And some shop owner said, okay, we're going to sell it for you. Which is pretty crazy. And then, I showed up and be like, okay, I'm gonna buy this. I paid money for this. And so, we found each other. And it only takes three people to create this happy encounter. This is completely wrong from market consultant point of view, this is completely wrong. But this brought such happiness to three people and I think it's great.
And so that's the kind of happy encounter for my Beakuency zine project to happen when I print it. It has to be printed in the future, in, I hope, October or September.

Thanks to Marcia Anderson for documenting the presentation!

The fundraiser was a success!

One of the goals of this show was to raise funds for the Beakuency Art Zine Project. The Beakuency Zine project was selected by the community members to receive the Statewide Community Regrant Program administered by the Create Council on the Arts, which will cover printing costs. However, some expenses are not eligible for coverage, including equipment costs. I was still using a 2012 Macbook, but creating a 90-page zine project required more power. Thanks to those who came to the show and purchased paintings, prints, and cards, I was able to purchase a newer model refurbished MacBook powerful enough to run Adobe InDesign while also supporting the Kinderhook Memorial Library. After covering the show's expenses and the cost of the MacBook, 50% of the remaining sales from this show were donated to the library.

The zine will be printed in fall 2025. In October, I will give a presentation about it at the North Chatham Free Library as part of their program Literature and the Arts, a series of varied arts programs with the theme, "Nurturing community through the arts.”