"Sh*t people say to widows:" Please participate!

The video is DONE! Check it out!

This is the old post with the instructions... skip it!

We are making a group video called ""Sh*t people say to widows" based on the "meme." If you're not familiar with them, here's a list (Watch out…some of them are pretty offensive and some of them have commercials). If you wish to watch only one, this one is very good ("Shit white girls say to black girls"):


This is a group project and we have to work FAST. Please read all the way through. I would love to have all submissions by next Tuesday, 1/24!

Between the thousands of widowed folks who read this blog, are in WidowedVillage.org and my FB pages, we will have TONS of insensitive comments that people say to widows and widowers. Want a taste of the material we've lived through? Read this, this or view this adorable and nasty video. There are also two threads on my FB timeline, each with more than 100 comments. We haz steam!

Want to participate?

You can contribute a quote or a video.

-- To contribute a quote, just fill out the custom form I created.

-- To contribute a video…… 

Email me your SUPER-SHORT videos. They should be less than 5 seconds each! If you want to do more than one, that's awesome, but make each video separately.

Tips:
    •    JUST perform the quote… don't explain it, don't tell us background or who it was. JUST THE WORDS.
    •    Yes, you can film it on your phone.
    •    PLEASE film it in LANDSCAPE orientation (sideways). Try not to be so close that you can eat the camera, and I'd rather you weren't looking down at it (less flattering position anyway). If you think it might be too dark or there's too much background noise... do a test film first.
    •    You do NOT have to use HD video and if you have the option, turn OFF HD video.
    •    You can use any background including your regular old house BUT make sure there are no identifying details like family photos or street signs or anything.
    •    As for attitude: You want to be imitating someone. Pretend you are the clueless or rude person.
    •    You can wear a wig or schmatte on your head, or a costume, if you like, but that's not important. Doing this FAST is important!

If one of you would take a bunch of short videos of yourself eating a bag of chips while looking away from the camera, in different settings, that would be very, very awesome too. Somehow that flavor is part of the series. I nominate Robin Craig and a bag of Beanitos!

When you send your clip to me, tell me in the email if you wish us to use your name in the credits… or a pseudonym, or nothing. Make sure you use the email -- if you post it to YouTube I can't use it!

Email me if you have any questions. Comments are great, but please use the form or an email if you have a question about the project that needs to be resolved quickly -- I will get those sooner!

Deadline extended due to your awesome response!!

Don't forget -- Send your 5-second (or shorter) video clips to me by Tuesday 1/24!!!! Thursday 1/26!

Thank you and yaHOO!!!

I adore FLOR: My Top Ten Reasons

Le result!

Here are the top ten reasons I adore Flor modular carpet tiles:

1. FLOR products are design forward and encourage your own creativity. FLOR has easy online tools to find the right product and (gasp!) design your own wonderful solution for any space. FLOR IS ART, man! And FLOR is kind: they will hold your hand while you dream.

2. FLOR suits your personality — whatever it is today. FLOR can be colorful and playful, or subdued and neutral. FLOR can draw attention or divert it. FLOR can sing, on-key or off-, or speak only when it's spoken to. FLOR loves modern, transitional, and traditional design schemes equally. (Parent company, Interface, also makes modular carpet tile solutions for commercial and contract use).

One of a dozen designs I made using FLOR's online tools.

3. FLOR's parent company, Interface, is a visionary combination of stewardship and profitability. FLOR products are 100% recyclable. Read more about CEO Ray Anderson. 

4. FLOR is economical and versatile. You can use it in basements and entryways. You don't need to get a matching "runner" style for odd-shaped areas. You can take FLOR with you when you move and reinstall it — in a different configuration, if you like.

5. FLOR is practical around pets, children, and others who leak a lot, which is to say, it's very easy to clean. Even spoiled, you can replace a single tile easier than pie. FLOR is low-pile and allergy-friendly.

6. You can use FLOR in ways you'd never use carpet. Because FLOR's low tack "keeps it down," you can create jagged edges or cut curves and not worry about anyone tripping on an edge. FLOR doesn't require accessories (like carpet pads or special cleaners) and its low-tack backing is kind to your hardwood floors.

7. FLOR is easy and kind of fun to install on your own or with a friend.

8. FLOR loves me and published my own little story.

9. FLOR is easy to talk about. I pretty much sell it to every person who visits my home, which includes several rooms made better with FLOR. I hand out catalogs at parties. I am somehow still fairly popular because FLOR is so great.

10. FLOR recently started a blog advertising campaign. I hope they see this post because I ADORE FLOR.

Dear Peter and Susan,

Dear Peter and Susan,

I have before me a Christmas card you sent to me and Gavin in 2006 from your home in Italy. While it was addressed partly to me, you'd never met me, and Carolyn, I'm not sure Gavin had ever met you. But I feel obliged to write you, anyway, and to be familiar.

You see, widows do the strangest things. For some reason, your red card, "Buon Natale," has been asking me to respond for nearly five years. I don't know why; It isn't that different from many of the cards we received the previous year, and most of the cards from 2006, I responded to right away.

Yours, I've held onto as if it mattered, and as if I could do something about it.

But your Christmas card from 2006 arrived six months after Gavin died. There was one other person who didn't know, one other holiday card inquiring, GAVIN HOW IS YOUR HEALTH? I had the heart to answer neither; but at some point, she received one of my many memorial emails at a defunct address and gently we talked it through with less drama than I'd expected (she was always dramatic: her notice I really dreaded). Yours was the only "regret to inform" letter that remained. If I could have found you easily online (still can't… what am I doing wrong? Or is your life really idyllic?) I might have said something sooner.

It's very hard to have this duty, and yet, harder to discharge it.

And why? Other than your bright card, I know nearly nothing of you. You were friends before Gavin and I met. I know you, Peter, are handsome, happy, easygoing, and brilliant. You work(ed) in communications and I had a fantasy you could straighten my career out. It's a frail image. The main picture that comes is a fantasy of the Italian mountains, wine, and good friends in the golden light: Gavin and I really hoped to come visit you in your semi-retirement, in Italy. It was going to be lovely: it was a "someday."

And now that I've no thread to you, I suppose that dream is dead, too. Perhaps keeping this glossy red rectangle on my desk, in a pile, lost with a hundred other things that may or may not be of tremendous consequence (I didn't know when I saved them "special," or lost them, which of those two I was doing — and I still don't) was my way of trying to keep that line open, to keep alive some little hope of someday being invited to your home in Piemonte. Or perhaps it's my perverse way of holding onto the mere memory of having once dreamed of five days outside (is it?) Torino.

(Did Gavin ever tell you of my follies, that for many years I manufactured by hand, in my own artist's garret, the Socks of Turin?)

Yes, I feel some guilt over not "telling you" (doubtless you knew by now, somehow, even across the ocean?), over failing in my widowly duties. But I'm also proud that as many jobs as I've neglected in five years our daughter, our most important "someday," is alive and well, and learning to read.

And so it is without the slightest desire to cadge an invitation from strangers, even to Paradise, that I am writing to connect with you around the loss of our own dear Gavin.

I'm very sorry for your loss, and very sorry to be introducing myself in this cowardly, moved-on new life way. These letters should be written by the proud but broken wife of the departed while she's still in her weeds, so she can take a humble tone but stay a little bit official. In both my old and my new lives, it seems I hardly ever do things the way one should.

I am very active online — as is Gavin's career — and would be happy to stay in touch, as long as it's okay with you that this feeble hello from a stranger is something only barely connected with Gavin's widow, but more from a new person who had a good friend in common at a different time. If there's anything else we share, it will all be a surprise.

Warmly,

Supa

Wordless Wednesday: 19 nativities and me

Clockwise from upper left: cluster of 8 sort of neutral colored ones inherited from Frances;
white soap nativity I used to make and sell by the dozens; menorah; teeny tiny,
itty bitty nativity from Puebla, Mx., with tapemeasure for scale
(poultry are invisible, do not know why Jesus and manger are separated);
scattered up from lower center is a big Mexican one we gave Frances;
Salvadorean one painted on bean cross sections;
red roof nativity and last loose bits nativity, mine from Mexico.
Plus misc. Mexican sheet tin angels, insufficient quantity of Hanukah candles
and the grave of a broken Chinese goldfish ornament made from a real eggshell.

Not even counting the nativities on the tree, the two that are sort of invisible in the picture, and two more types that I used to make and sell by the dozen (in addition to white and clear soap sets):

These were big hits. I sold at least 100 of each, for $25 (sardine cans) and $12 (matchboxes). If I'd stuck to it, I'd be the very young grandmother (perhaps auntie?) of the Crafty Bastards and this whole postmodern craft thing. It was a PITA, making our own market before Etsy, hell, before the Internet... we did it and loved it, but it couldn't be more than a hobby, at least, not the way I saw it then.

So, given my obsession: Do you believe me when I say I'm not a Christian? Do you think there's more to the nativity story? Does 8 years in infertility explain anything? A craving to repeat innocence? I see it as adoration... all loving through the eyes. But to say I understand it, or that it makes sense... does art need to? Does magic need to make sense at all? (Do only Christians believe in magic? Or innocence?)

I still love these, and looking over my vast empire, 19 tiny Bethlehems all on an endtable, and our decked out white glistening tree, it just makes me want to make things again.

Camp Widow: All Packed

Yes, I spent the last minute finishing up badges (pictured) for each and every Camp Widow attendee. What's funny is that the last time I did a manic art project like this as "gifts" for attendees was my wedding to Gavin in 1996. Same number, too: 150. I only realized it as I glued the fifth batch of little felt circles (the 1996 ones looked pretty different, but there was still lots of glue on the kitchen table, like now).

Yes, I am very excited about speaking on on widows and social media this Saturday at 2:45 p.m. Pacific time. Yes, we will be live tweeting it (I'm @freshwidow). I have honed and polished my slide show but sometimes it is just down to whether I've consumed exactly the right amount of coffee...

Yes, we will wake up early and "listen in" on the Grief panel at BlogHer that morning. I have proposed the hashtag @BHGrief, we'll see if they decide to change it at 9:05 a.m.

Yes, there will be margaritas. OK, maybe we will read the #BlogHer10 tweets ex post facto.

Yes, I am so excited to press the flesh (don't get too excited, Sarah!) with so many friends from this blog, from Twitter, and from Facebook.

I am reminded of my last "career trip," to BlogHer last year almost an equal adventure. More this time -- because I'm speaking and (shhhh!) I have NEVER BEEN TO THE WEST COAST.

Like many milestones, like a wedding, I now see that the journey begins the day AFTER the milestone -- like all rites of passage, it can go neither "well" nor "poorly," because it's all about getting through and then getting up the next morning.

And no matter how tired I am, I will always be fresh.

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Proof (Products for an Alternative Valentine's Day)

For several years in the mid-90s I used to sandpaper the mottos off of conversation hearts candies and use food coloring and a teeny, tiny, itty bitty paintbrush to write my own, nasty sayings. It was especially useful because it kept me busy, singing in my garret, after the Christmas craft sales were done.

I sold hundreds, in little boxes of six like the above, and by large handfuls for the occasional party of snarky singles (I don’t think we used to use that word? We’d just say “mean,” right?).

So, now let these pictures serve as proof that I used to actually be funny.
Proof that I have always been somewhat bitter, because I made them fifteen years ago, young and thin, even while I was in love.
Maybe I was fated to be a widow, disappointed, unhappy that others are doing well, pissed to see others in happy true love.

But they’ll also prove that Bittersweets, my version, were made and marketed years ago. You’ll see on the back of each box I’ve painstakingly included the year of copyright with my name (retouched for blogging benefit, but clear on the objects). Because actually, I don’t begrudge anyone their success. I just like to get paid. (Although I will lend the dig that mine are a way lot funnier than most of yours).

You can expect a call from my lawyer.




Also – I used to make these little boxes. It's hard to survive an entire commercial holiday like Valentine's Day with a single product. Imagine the presentation ... it’s funny for about 1 second. Still, at $3 a pop (in 1995 dollars), they moved.

* * * Comments * * *

Slouching Towards Bethlehem

I made scores of nativity scenes like these between 1993 and 1998. During this period I participated in several craft shows, not the usual kind that you used to see that were all dried-flowers-and-Amish-bonnet shit.

People would say, what kind of art do you do? Or what medium do you work in? You can hardly blame them, it's a polite way to respond to the provocation "I'm an artist." I'd say, "Um, er, I don't really have a medium... I do sort of postmodern crafts. It's not like the craft stuff you're used to. You'd probably like the stuff I make but you might not consider it art, which is fine with me. Instead of making one object for $1000 I do like 40 for $25. And my subject matters is usually religious or political stuff, often I make things that are funny or erotic. Yeah, not really fine art either."

I always mingled sacred with profane. Yes, it's a sardine can. And the matchbook has a Christmas tree on the other side. Undigging, moving, this is the first time I've had to photograph them, and these are leftovers, not my best samples. I'm also responsible for the Virgin of Guacamole and the Socks of Turin.

I gave up on any hope of making stuff for a living probably around the same time the real postmodern craft movement, the Crafty Bastards and Subversive Cross-stitchers, the stuffed tampon and artisanal teddy bear makers, was brewing. As breadwinner I needed to make real money.

So it was, maybe, a coulda, woulda, shoulda.

All my art was consumer-oriented (like the above) and a great deal of it had a sacred sort of theme, even though it was often sacrilegious. So I decided to go to business school. I could, at the least, design products to be made in India and China.

Did I mention coulda, woulda, shoulda?

It is peculiar subject matter for me, with my (lack of) religious background. I really wanted a child. Gavin and I struggled through infertility for nearly eight years. Maybe making dozens of little babies in straw, obsessing over sequined stars and miraculous conceptions while blasting the Roches "We Three Kings" in my garret was my way to cope with that emptiness. Planning to conceive governed all the decisions I made in my 30s, the big ones.

I finished b-school, got pregnant at last, delivered my daughter, and received my husband's terminal diagnosis in less than two years. At 39, I was a widow using my degree to keep my remaining tiny family out of financial catastrophe.

You can see in the artwork that I'm into the "reveal," the surprise, holding out. Peeling back the sky. I try to tell my stories this way, too.

"BASTA!," I cry, an Italian grandmother over a hot pot of caldo verde, underway for Christmas dinner. "ENOUGH!"

I think I've connected the dots, some of which only started to show as I got involved in my Unitarian Universalist church after Gavin's death. After I listened.

I think I'm meant to be a UU minister. I had a "call" last May and have been pondering it, trying not to write about it till I'm sure, thinking, dreaming. I'm considering divinity school nearby, which would allow me to keep writing part-time.

It's really weird to (1) have a direction, (2) find something like this that fits an agnostic New York punk rocker, (3) think about myself as a spiritual person and someone capable of caring for a community. It's strange to me to think of some of my "skills" as just that, when I've spent so much energy in my life trying to change. This choice wouldn't be possible, either, if I hadn't transformed myself a bit.

It had to happen this way, slowly, with detours. In some ways ministry doesn't fit at all, in other ways, it's perfect harmony that was waiting for me to find it.

I'm not sure. I'm never sure.

But sometimes great things grow from unexpected seeds. (Insert a better metaphor here.) (PLEASE.)

Merry Christmas.


* I know, it's Portuguese soup. So sue me. I've seen too many Fellini movies. My vegetarian mother is here and I don't feel like cooking, this is something that can stay on all day while I hide in the bedroom.


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Cancer, Schmantzer. When Will We Market Death Awareness?

October’s over. The debris from the pink tsunami I see in every store I visit could be evidence of the recession or that people are as sick as I am of the idea that consumerism can heal our disease, which I suppose are the same thing. Or they could be evidence that this particular product push has had its day. Maybe it’s time for something new?

In October I got pretty hot in a debate on the BlogHer site on “Do we really need Breast Cancer Awareness month?,”  initiated by the great Denise Tanton. Suzanne Reisman followed up with her own piece, "Breast Cancer Awareness month is bunk." I contended that the pink has done its job, and it’s time to move on.

(I could also engage further in questions of how much funding BRCA receives compared to other cancers, the politics of cancer advocacy, the limitations of the American Cancer Society, the effectiveness of funding research versus reducing disparities in health care delivery and outcomes, how much money from these purchases actually gets to an organization, or how much each organization actually helps people with cancer. I could argue about the different types of BRCA, the ages they affect women, and the efficacy of mammograms for each type. I could talk about black women’s rates of death, which are much higher. Or about health care reform, pharmaceutical companies, and the changes that would make a bigger difference than mammograms. But I won’t do that here. [Do you like how I spent 124 words “not talking about it? Me too. Where’s a good editor when you need one?])

I do, in general, support medical research and public education about health. I have several friends who’ve lost loved ones to this deadly disease and I in no way wish to diminish their pain, or the courage presented every day by people faced with any cancer.

But I think it’s time for a change. (No, not that one, but thanks.)

See, we’re all going to die, right? No exceptions. And probably, we won’t be the first person we know who will undergo this fate, which many say is the only fate.

My public awareness campaign would encourage us all to plan for the inevitable. Here are the elements:
-- Discussion with your loved ones that specifically gives them permission to remarry and do anything else that’s important to them.
-- Write a will and make sure everyone knows it’s true to your intentions. If folks are going to receive bad news, might as well tell them now, or they will make life hell for everyone else. And for the love of God, put in a fund for a mediator in case of dispute so your family can avoid fighting in court.
-- Prepare an Advance Health Care Directive (I just preached about my experience the other day). Understand that this is a dynamic document, because you never know what the situation may be. Discuss it with loved ones but have paper to comfort and cover them in this most stressful time.
-- In some states, you may need a living will and some other documents. I’m not a lawyer. At least Google it, okay?

Naturally a public awareness campaign is necessary. People can be eased into the discussion. Just like “breast” 30 years ago, “death” is still a fairly dirty word and something most of us would rather not think about at the grocery store or in the garden products aisle at Home Depot.

But just think about the products in this campaign (of course everything is black):

-- Ribbons? Sure, what the hell, black ribbons. Satin, not grosgrain, those Swarovski crystals make a lovely accent and they get cheaper every year.
-- TV ads featuring famous actors: Don’t be morbid. Be prepared.
-- A panel on the bus: Talk about the end: it isn’t just for widows any more.
(and) How much do you love your family? Will love be enough? *
(and) Wow! What bargains! How much did you spend today to protect your family?
-- A frisbee: Life’s a breeze when your Advance Health Care Directive is in place. (Maybe we make a boomerang for Hindu outreach).
-- Bumper stickers: Shit Happens. That’s why I just updated my will.
(and) In case of apocalypse, I speak to Jesus. In case of cancer, I speak to Hospice.
(and) I wrote my will. What’s your excuse for driving like that?
-- Produce state-by-state kits of the necessary documents and sell at FedEx office, Target, etc. Cute designs for men and women, Gen-X and Gen-Y, Latinos. Lots of butterflies on the chick stuff, motorcycles for guys. (Yes, it’s all available for free, but to reach everyone you need a consumer option. As demonstrated by BRCA).
-- Partner with banks to produced branded kits to offer FREE when you open an account.

Yeah, I presented it as sort of a joke (sort of), but I do believe in this cause.

Don’t you think there’s room somewhere, somehow, for a more public discussion of what death requires of each and every one of us?

* Note the potential synergy with life insurance marketing -- we can learn from their successes and failures, and I bet they'd love to work with us. Win-win!


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BlogHer Swag Without Controversy

Maybe in the end, the swag you take is equal to.... the swag... you make?

(Nah!)

What I Gave
Here are the special edition Widow Cards (view or download the original set of 'em here) I had printed up for networking at BlogHer. The first two are the two different card "fronts" I presented; the third is the verso used on both cards. (For some reason, I couldn't get these pix into the post above.)





What I Received
There's been a lot of talk in the BlogHer community about marketing through building relationships. We're expected to "have a relationship with the brand." Well, leave it to my kid to figure out the relationships between the products themselves. Did you know Mr. Potatohead is the grandpa of the Kiwi stamper?



Last I checked, they were having a pretty good conversation with some crayons.


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More About that Artwork (the Zen one)

Presenting one artwork, and the detritus from the Day of the Dead performance, makes me want to present everything I wrote about that blank piece of paper, which I cut up and distributed with this note, to all the guests. Forgive the repetition from a previous post. In real life, things weave, repeat, abbreviate, rephrase, expand, as they will here.

For Gavin O'Leonard

I have very few regrets, but I do wish I had said this at Gavin’s memorial service.

Gavin always believed the meaning of his work was in the eye of the beholder. He hated writing artists’ statements and trying to explain. “That’s just what I think the work means,” he’d say. “That has nothing to do with anything!” He believed that only your eyes at a particular time can see the work and give it meaning, a highly individual meaning each time you view any piece.

And God, Gavin hated the way his work looked on slides. When you have a slide, you have a feeble reproduction, with light shining through it, of what the camera saw on that day. Light is so much brighter than white cotton. It just gets flattened by the lights given the camera, which reflect back on the surface, and then the work would get washed out from the bright light of a slide projector. He said his work looks better in person because in his technique, the light comes from inside the paper.

I saw from watching him work how well he understood every fiber of the Arches he listened to every day from 10 to 10 with breaks for lunch, dinner, the news and a few beers. While it looked pale, in Gavin’s classic work he ground the pigments of the pencils deep into the paper, punishing the cotton fibers while he made them sing. (Ask me about the “original” Smithy drawing if you don’t believe me.) The paper was another skin. That Arches 100% rag paper was his partner more than anything.

He also pointed out how in the classic O'Leonard, the source of the light is never pictured. A device from Vermeer and others, very classical.

So this what I wish I had read at the memorial service on June 25, 2006 – when we showed his “Audubon of Lamps” drawings – this quote from the Buddha, whom Gavin respected more than any other teacher:

Therefore, be ye lamps unto yourselves, be a refuge to yourselves. Hold fast to Truth as a lamp; hold fast to the truth as a refuge. Look not for a refuge in anyone beside yourselves. And those, who shall be a lamp unto themselves, shall betake themselves to no external refuge, but holding fast to the Truth as their lamp, and holding fast to the Truth as their refuge, they shall reach the topmost height.

- - - - - - (p. 2) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

This is a piece of the first drawing that Gavin did not start. It was hung and ready to go on the studio wall. It would have been used as the base for the fifth piece in The Mysteries, which I always considered the culmination of his life and life’s work. I only wished he had started it earlier.

(Wives!)

Please use this paper to write a note to someone you love right now, to write a note to Gavin which you can burn and thus send to him in the afterworld (if he’s in one of the seven Chinese hells still), or to make a drawing. Or just feel the cotton and remember his every day. Or all of the above.

It’s yours now.


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Death is the Mother of Beauty.

It occurs to me how wordy I can be when there are wonderful visuals. Writing about the Days of the Dead reminded me that I have pictures of them.



































802, 801, 800. The top of the ofrenda. (Left) Fertility charms from friends, hospital bracelets. (Center) Gavin’s baby sweater, birthday greetings, our rings, a sex charm I made in a sardine can. (Right) Photos, wedding invitation, more hospital bracelets.







































806, 807, 808. The base of the ofrenda. (Left) Portrait of Gavin by a friend, milagro. (Center) Wooden flowers intended for our wedding, mums, painting from Oaxaca. (Right) Drawing of Gavin by a friend.

















2006_Cancer Drawings. I’m not actually sure when Gavin did these, possibly in the summer of 2005, before the spine surgery. Everyone is drawn to them. I despised them on first sight. “Look, honey, I’m drawing the cancer going away.” Grrrr. It looked to me like he drew himself fading away. Losing weight, holes in his bones, mets all over, one drug after another, it still looks like prophecy.

It saddens me that people respond well to them – that he thought they would work, as part of his “visualization” routine, making it real with his eyes and his hands. And perhaps it’s contempt that makes me tell visitors how I thought these pieces foretold how he would erode and then disappear from this world. People want to buy them, I am broke but I don’t care. (Though I don't really want to keep them, either).

It’s not what he would have done, before disease, during, or now.




























810. The blank piece of paper, hanging at the ready, which I cut up to make “party favors” for the 2007 Day of the Dead fire dance dedicated to Gavin.

I could talk more about how my Dad was a a photographer, and how careless I am about my history through images. I could talk about how a collective offering with Felipe Ehrenberg turned me back into an artist again, a long time ago. But for now, I’ll let the pictures do the talking.


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Introducing My New (FREE) Product!The Widow Card!

One night in my support group, S. said casually that he’d “left work early… I just pulled a widower card.” I thought about how often I’d done this in the months since LH died, but more about how I could make good use of some little advantage. All the handicaps I was living with… single (really, double) parenting, how impossible it was to go grocery shopping with a toddler, and how no one could see that anything was wrong. The side of me that is tempted to shoplift (but only cashmere or chocolate) was aroused.

I was always comfortable as an underachiever, but could I have some legitimate “cover” after surviving catastrophe? Something versatile? Something I could use every day?

And so the concept was born: Not as useful as a “get out of jail free” card, more powerful than a hall pass… it’s… it’s… The Widow Card!

How to create your own REAL LIFE Widow (or Widower) Cards:

1. Download the PDF

Womenfolk – Download the Widow Card Set A here (PDF)
Menfolk – Download the Widower Card Set A here (PDF)

2. Purchase Avery 5871 pre-perforated business card stock at your local office supply store.

3. Print the PDFs out on your stock. They are double sided; you’ll have to figure out how to run the paper stock through your machine twice.

Also, please note that you WILL get error messages saying you’re printing outside the print area, and so on. Just IGNORE it, and don’t let it automatically adjust the margins, or your widow cards will look a whole lot less slick.

4. Didn’t buy the special paper? No problemo. Print your Widow Cards out on heavyweight paper or card stock and cut them out by hand. The stripy border will hide mistakes if your scissors get shaky because you are laughing.

When can I use The Widow Card?
Pull The Widow Card on someone at work, at home, or in line at the grocery store… heck, take more than one, we’ve got nearly a dozen* here for you. You’ll be amazed at how often these little babies come in handy!

What good will it do me now?
Let The Widow Card simplify your life … avoid long awkward conversations (or silences) … evade minor niceties like being polite, remembering people’s names, and participating in adult society in a normal fashion.

But, dude, I’m a guy.
Chill – there are widower versions as well. Since there are seven widowed women to every widower, I think I can be forgiven for favoring the gals linguistically.

Okay, I get it. I can’t wait to start using my Widow Cards!
Slow down, cowpoke. There are three steps – well, four. Did you read the instructions yet? If not, there is one more – so that’s five. Number 0: read the instructions above! Then follow steps 1 to 4 in order.

How long can I use The Widow Card?
Use The Widow Card until it stops working.
UPDATE 06/09: Keep a couple handy. They work great around anniversaries, even years later!

But I need an excuse for something and you don’t have a Widow Card that fits!
Relax. You can send in your requests for new situations that deserve a Widow Card. Don’t like the suggestions for men? Find the women’s ones inappropriate? Your wish is my command. Let me know what you want, and I will issue a new set B, C, etc. Write to supa.dupa.fresh AT gmail.com. (I don’t promise to be prompt.)

About the design
The font is Mrs. Eaves by Zuzana Licko and published by Émigré. Of course, I thought the character Mrs. Eaves was fictional, and I’m a bit disappointed to find out she was real (or, I am delighted that this fictional character has been accepted as real, as the font and its hyperactive, sometimes shizoid ligatures have gained legitimacy).

Either way, however, Mrs. Eaves was a widow, so my point stands.

Full disclosure: In this project, I owe a significant debt to the work of conceptual artist Adrian Piper.

* Hey, that’s a new expression: widow’s dozen – ten of something. Huh!


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