Pasadena Wind Storm December 2011

If you had trouble reaching us last week, apologies. A powerful windstorm blew Pasadena this way and that. Gusts were clocked at over 100 MPH, and thousands of huge, grand trees were flung down. Roots of three giant old trees ripped up the sidewalk on a short block of Green St, a popular stretch of Old Town Pasadena:

Pasadena Wind Storm Green St Downed Tree

Castle Green in the Background

The magnificent Castle Green is in the background, which helps give a sense of scale to how large the downed trees are!

Scott and I live in the hills between downtown LA and Pasadena, and we got quite a show. Transformers blew all over the city and the arching electricity illuminated the dancing trees. The winds were not sustained – like in a hurricane –  more like whirling invisible devils. Quiet, then some mad spirit would explode through the trees. Quite a night.

Finally, more than a week later, power has been restored to most of the San Gabriel Valley and Los Angeles.

Tornados and freak storms roared through America this year – changing lives, families and entire cities, forever.

2011 is The Year of the Big Wind.

In 1903 William Butler Yeats – the great poet of romance and unseen spirits – used ‘in the year of the big wind“  to end  In the Seven Woods, the first book printed by  The Dun Emer Press (later the Cuala Press). The phrase has haunted me for years. Such a beautiful, sweet book. Printed by women on handmade paper made in Ireland, printed and published by Elizabeth Corbet Yeats, WB’s sister.

Colophon for In the Seven Woods, Dun Emer Press, 1903 WB Yeats

Thanks to UC Santa Barbara Center for Modern Literature, Materialism and Aesthetics for posting an image of my favorite colophon from my favorite poet.  Oh, and my favorite fine press, The Cuala Press of Ireland.

A famous (among women letterpress printers!) photo of Elizabeth at work printing:

Elizabeth Corbet Yeats and her fellow letterpress printers, 1903

First LA Green Festival this Weekend – Join Us! Booth 751

Nation’s Premier Sustainable Event for 10 Years

Get Your Green ON.  Hey! It may be Halloween weekend, but no reason not to match your Orange to your Green. 

InviteSite is exhibiting at LA’s first Green Festival, put on by Green America and Global Exchange. Our booth number is 751. We are going to have a special drawing for $500 gift certificate toward Holiday Cards – or whatever other InviteSite offerings tickle your fancy. 

Photo above is most likely from the San Francisco Green Festival, which is a thing of beauty. Really fabulous. So much fun/

So please, stop by and say HELLO.

Jason Ritter filming at Rubel Castle

Jason Ritter (star of NBC’s The Event) has been shooting at Rubel Castle (home of InviteSite’s Scott Rubel’s first letterpress print shop. His actual home, too.) all last week.  Scott still has 3 of his presses at the castle, and cabinets full of type.

By all accounts, Jason is a great guy and would have fit right in, building the castle, back in the day. Meanwhile, he happily donned the Rubel Castle tee shirt — and looks simply dashing:

Jason Ritter proudly wearing Rubel Castle Tee Shirt

All that vintage horse and wagon gear in the background.  Ritter’s got really neat stuff in his eyes — wish him and The Event well.

LOVE IS … A CARROT  HEART ???

Yes – -we do love orange around here. Still, finding this in the bunch of Valentine’s Day late night noshing carrots from our own home fridge. Well. We just had to heart it,  Carrot luv: How weird is that???

Carrot Heart : Organic Too

From the garden of my favorite organic farmers at the Hollywood Farmer’s Market. Randomly retrieved from a crispy bunch on Valentine’s Evening.

2 for 1 coupon Via Green Bride Guide

Calling all DC, Maryland, Northern Virginia brides! InviteSite is joining the Green Wedding Pavilion at the Washington DC Bridal Showcase. SUNDAY, January 16, from 11 – 5 PM.

GreenBrideGuide has a 2 for 1 coupon:

Courtesy of Green Bride Guide

More information at http://www.greenbrideguide.com/green-pavilion-washington-bridal-showcase

We’re exhibiting with some really great green wedding vendors. Stop by the Green Wedding Pavilion. InviteSite has some exclusive offers just for the show.

We’ll be showcasing some new designs: new pressed flowers, really amazing prices ($1 – $1.50 an invitation).

DIYWedding.com

We started up a new blog and website devoted to producing great DIY wedding projects. Scott and I bought DIYWedding.com and DIYWeddings.com back in 1998 or 1999 to create a hub or website with helpful info.

The LA Times wrote a big cover story on our store Fine Paper Company – how we help so many brides DIY their weddings. (Back then we stocked about 2ooo different handmade papers and our letterpress was in the back of the shop.) The reporter got me thinking about DIY weddings — and how great it would be if there were a website devoted to DIY wedding projects. Back in 1998, that kind of web technology was hugely expensive. So we bought the domain names and put it on the back burner.

We’ve been too busy with InviteSite over the past 10 years to devote the love and money it would have taken to do it properly. But, we decided to jump in.  Let us know what you think.  If you want to guest post, let us know too.

The first article  lists tips from theater production to help with your DIY wedding projects.

Rubel Pharms Castle | Adrien Brody Shoot | InviteSite’s Scott Rubel

Scott Rubel is chief of stuff around here, because he can pretty much fix anything. He learned how to fix most anything while helping his uncle build Rubel Pharms.  It’s a 6 story castle in Glendora built out of found stuff, river rock and cement. Sort of a vintage lover’s wild heaven. The 19th century boy version. With a full working letterpress print shop.

Esquire Magazine used the Pharm as a setting for their cover shoot with actor Adrien Brody. Pictures are all copyright Esquire and from the Spanish version. This is a Willy’s Jeep, circa 1948.  Pharm hands used to haul river rock from the San Gabriel Mountains. It has a shovel in the front and rigged like a dump truck in back.

From Esquire Magazine: Mexico edition

The Pharm was built partly on an orange orchard — complete with a late 19th century packing house, which came to be known as The Tin Palace. There are a number of wood lined rooms that stored the oranges, keeping them cool through the hot Glendora summers. Mike Rubel (Scott’s uncle) converted these early fridge rooms into bedrooms. This photo is from one of the bedrooms in Michael’s large apartment in the Castle itself.

Interior of the Castle | Esquire Shoot

This Dodge sedan dates from 1940. All castle cars and trucks still run.

1940 Dodge Sedan | Esquire Shoot

Mike Rubel died recently, and the castle was turned over to the Glendora Historical Society. They run tours every so often, if you want an amazing experience. If the castle wasn’t located in a quiet suburban neighborhood, it would be a wonderful location to rent for a vintage wedding.

Vintage luggage - Garage Rubel Castle | Esquire Shoot

Really – there are some very lovely castle areas that plead for a tender vintage wedding hand:

View from the street of Rubel Pharms

Water Tower + Vintage Caboose | Rubel Pharms

Original Orange Crate Label for Rubel Pharms

Azteca Training Center | Kathy Long and Maria Morales

Have a few pounds you want to burn before your wedding? Burn some of that stress off?  I know what you mean. Contact stress is a part of our business (weddings planning is intense, and making sure all our customers are thrilled with our wedding stationery and service, makes our business a bit more stressful than most.) So, we do indeed appreciate a really good sweat and workout.

Letterpress Printing MMA champ

We’re lucky enough to have a world class mixed martial artist on our staff – Kathy is head of production and she kicks butt.

She also co-owns Azteca Training Center  for kickboxing in NE Los Angeles, with Maria Morales, an amazing trainer.

Their classes are AMAZING. Anyone in the NE Los Angeles area, downtown, or Pasadena will find the best training and caring bunch around.

They have classes in Women’s Fitness Kickboxing, Muay Thai Kickboxing, Self Defense, Ninja Tots, Kid’s Muay Thai, and for the truly fierce, Reality Based Combat.

There are 6:30 AM classes. (You can work out with me, Cindy and Scott) 8 pm classes are really popular.

I’ve been working out 3 times a weeks for about 20 years, and these are the BEST classes I’ve found so far.

We Got Winners!

The Pink Cloud Prop 8 Gay Wedding Giveaway Winners have been chosen.  Meet Andrea Lambert & Katie Jacobson, Congrats!

Invitesite is totally excited to help create and produce the fabulous invitations for such an artistic couple. Both are poets and produce a poetry reading series in LA : Featherless.

It’s going to be fun documenting this process

Helen + Scott

Pink Cloud Prop 8 Giveaway winners Andrea Lambert and Katie Jacobson.

Southwest Museum – the First Museum of Los Angeles – Still in Danger

Scott Rubel of Invitesite has added his voice and talent to help insure that the first museum built in Los Angeles, is preserved and open to the public. It’s been his cause for at least 6 years.  The Southwest Museum, located on the beautiful Mt. Washington, NE Los Angeles, is the first museum built in LA. An amazing place and part of the deep cultural roots of LA. It has been taken over by the Autry Museum of the Cowboy, and shut down.  The Southwest was founded and built by Charles Lummis, an amazingly colorful character. Lummis was a writer, journalist, editor, collector, drinker, cavorting bad boy, horseman, walker (he walked from Ohio to Los Angeles), publisher, builder, advocate for native Americans and serious environmentalist.

Most Angelenos don’t know how important the Arroyo Culture was to American culture. Most Angelenos don’t know that Charles Lummis was the first Los Angeles Librarian, or that he compiled the largest collection of Native American artifacts in the U.S.  Or, that he was the first editor of the Los Angeles Times. And, all around very cool dude.

I am reposting a post from Nicole Possert, who  has devoted years to help save the Southwest Museum of the Indian:

A view of the Southwest Museum from Montecito Heights, Los Angeles

Vote now to help protect the heritage of LA’s Arroyo Seco region – the birthplace of the Southwest Museum and the Arts & Crafts Movement in southern California.

In the formative years of Los Angeles, the Arroyo Seco region in the northeast section of the City was the place where art, architecture and culture began. The place of “firsts” the first fine art school, the first arts colony, the place where the Craftsman Bungalow emerged, where environmental and historic preservation movements began and the place where Los Angeles’ first museum, the Southwest Museum, was built.

This cradle of history and culture was coined “Arroyo Culture” and the region became the center of the national Arts & Crafts Movement in California.

This is why “This Place Matters.” Yet, today this region and these resources are threatened.

One of the greatest visionaries of Los Angeles was Charles Fletcher Lummis who left an amazing legacy for the City and its peoples. Gone are the days of the newspaperman as adventurer, as a teller of tales, as urban magnet for culture and art. But in the 1880′s, the booming days of the American paper, a young journalist named Charles Lummis, a romantic and adventurer by heart, walked clear across the country from Ohio to take a job as a reporter for the Los Angeles Times. A national legend was born and Charles Lummis soon became a fixture and an outspoken advocate of history, arts, environmentalism, and Indian rights.

Between 1898 and 1910, he hand-built his home with stones from the Arroyo Seco river in Highland Park, one of the oldest neighborhoods in Los Angeles, aptly naming it “El Alisal” or the place of the sycamores. Before long, the entire area, stretched out along the Arroyo Seco, became a thriving artists’ community and an architectural destination filled with some of the country’s best examples of arts and crafts design.

Charles Fletcher Lummis had coined the term “Southwest” and founded the museum in this name to be a comprehensive museum covering the history, science, and art of the American Southwest. Founded in 1907, the Southwest Museum’s permanent home was specifically chosen atop a hill overlooking the Arroyo Seco Valley and since its 1914 opening has remained the iconic symbol of Los Angeles’ architectural and cultural life. This gorgeous building became, in many ways, the pivot point that swung the city from an agrarian community to an urban metropolis of the first order.

Today, Highland Park and surrounding Arroyo Seco neighborhoods are a thriving multi-cultural community with a predominately Latino population. But unlike many Los Angeles neighborhoods, which tend to be transitory in nature, the artists have held fast. To this day, hundreds of working artists call the Arroyo Seco region home, a testament to the far-seeing vision of Charles Lummis.

Yet all is not well.

Countless historic commercial buildings and treasured arts and crafts homes have been lost to the wrecker’s ball or fallen victim to “development.” El Alisal itself, Charles Lummis’ home, is in need of significant preservation work. Now a house museum, there is a very real risk that this national treasure will not live to see another hundred years.

But the worst travesty occurred in 2003, when the Autry Museum (yes of the movie cowboy Gene Autry fame), struck a backroom deal to take over the Southwest Museum of the American Indian. They promised to restore the landmark building and maintain it as an independent museum, but like so many other promises made by cowboys to Indians, this one was quickly broken.

In 2005, the Southwest Museum was shuttered by Autry. Today, permanently closed, the museum’s vast collection is unavailable to the public. The architecturally-designed museum structure, now used as a storage warehouse, is void of public life. This is an insulting jab at Charles Lummis’ vision and the neighborhood that flourished in its shadow.

But there is hope.

The Highland Park Heritage Trust (HPHT) is working hard to re-open the Southwest Museum and to educate the city about all the important treasures of the region’s Arroyo Culture. In a city known for demolishing and forgetting its past, HPHT has a 25-year track record of community outreach, advocacy and preservation action.

But like all efforts that attempt to accomplish much with little, additional funds are needed to ensure that the Arroyo Seco region remains a jewel for Los Angeles and a treasure for the nation. And, working with a larger coalition of organizations and concerned individuals, HPHT works to bring back the Southwest Museum as a museum for all people, just as Lummis intended.

Please vote and help protect the Arroyo Seco region and Los Angeles’ first museum, the Southwest Museum. This place matters to all of us!