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We Keep Going.

Care and action on the road ahead

We’re all taking this election result differently here at Microcosm. Some of us are motivated, on fire, primed to rise to a crisis in proportion with its scope. Others are taking time off to cry, zone out, hold loved ones tight. Others are just getting through the days as normally as possible.

We remember eight years ago, when we didn’t see it coming: the shock, then grief, followed by focused action. We remember what hurt and what helped. One thing that helps, a lot, is to wake up knowing that our entire job is to put tools in your hands to counter the world’s bullshit. So we’ve made a new Care & Action Package of things that motivate us and help us deal and might help you too. We’ve also put together a selection of resources for all the different needs we can think of. Read on, find what you need, use the coupons you need to make it work for you.

If you’re having a hard time and need someone to talk to, write to us and one of our crew will write you back. Your voice, needs, and life matter. You matter. And together, we’ve got this.

—Elly and the MCP crew

Check out our recent toplists for other titles and resources that may be of use to you and your community right now. Read on to learn more about selected titles from our Care & Action Package.

From Conflict to Community: Transforming Conflicts Without Authorities by Gwendolyn Olton
Experienced peacemaker Gwendolyn Olton shows you how to use your existing skills and intuition to transform a wide variety of conflicts into working relationships that meet everyone’s needs. In this practical, kind, realistic guidebook, Olton offers a variety of conflict analysis and conversation tools that you can use to navigate the most challenging interpersonal dynamics, and to better understand yourself and others along the way—all without calling HR or the cops.

The Courage Party: Helping Our Resilient Children Understand and Survive Sexual Assault by Joyce Brabner and Gerta Oparaku Egy
After escaping a playground predator, Danielle learns to understand what happened and how to carry herself with pride and conviction after five older women organize a “Courage Party” for her, sharing stories from their own lives. With realistic interactions with police, pediatricians, prosecutors, victim advocates, a community rape crisis center, and the courthouse, Danielle learns she is a “crime fighter,” able to protect other kids in the park, with many good grownups on her side.

Surviving: Getting Through the Shit Life Throws at You by Dr. Faith G. Harper
A zine for getting through it when life is piling it higher and deeper, the political and personal and social disasters that we know always come in waves. Getting Over It was about getting past whatever happened in the past; Surviving is about making it through the present. Even if you don’t believe you can survive this, Dr. Faith believes it for you, and offers some basic tools that anyone can use to make it one more day.

How to Get Your Period: A Guide to Performing Menstrual Extraction by An Anonymous Healthcare Worker
In 1971, as part of their work with a feminist reproductive collective, Lorraine Rothman and Carol Downer invented menstrual extraction (ME), a suction process to pass the entire period all at once, ending any undetected early pregnancy. An underground network of providers has kept ME alive ever since, and in a post-Roe era, demand is surging. This book provides a short history of ME and detailed instructions and diagrams explaining how to safely and effectively perform a manual exam, use a speculum, assemble a Del-Em kit, and complete a menstrual extraction procedure.

Direct Action Handbook: A Guide to Organizing & Protesting Safely by various contributors
Have you ever wondered how to protest safely and effectively? It’s not just about showing up, chanting, and holding signs. You need to know what your rights are, how to handle the police, how to dress appropriately for all situations, what to do when tensions escalate, how to be an empathetic ally, and more. Packed with infographs and invaluable tips, this handbook is a must when you’re organizing your next protest or attending a rally or march.

Other resources available in our toplists and around the site, such as Microcosm’s Election Survival Guide, Protest Power Starter Kit, Reproductive Healthcare Resources, Red State Relief, ways to send books to people in prison, and more.

If YOU have an idea for a book or a zine that might support people in the years ahead, we’re always looking for submissions of most any kind (especially zines!), but particularly about:

▶Abortion, birth control, sex ed, and reproductive health
▶Herbal medicine
▶Gender medicine
▶Queer and trans health, safety, and self-defense
▶How-to projects for resilient living (eg, gardening, building, energy, food preservation, mutual aid, online safety)
▶Activism and movement-building
▶Writing, publishing, and creativity in difficult times
▶Suicide prevention

Find out more about pitching and submitting to Microcosm HERE.

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Make It Last: Sustainably and Affordably Preserving What We Love

An illustrated guide to clothes, food, and home

Make It Last: Sustainably and Affordably Preserving What We Love is an illustrated guide to clothes and food and home. Raleigh Briggs bridges the gap between life in a disposable culture and the basic skills needed to save money and live more sustainably. 

This book teaches you how to extend the lives of the things you love by repairing clothing, preserving home-grown food, and even repairing your kitchen sink and making your own soap. Briggs takes her longtime commitment to community building through the DIY movement and shares her valuable experience with the reader through a conversational tone in her hand-drawn and -illustrated guide.

The Utne Reader described Raleigh’s work as “A forceful antidote to the cheapening of thrift culture: a meticulously hand-lettered, pint-size volume. When you raise your fist against the values that derailed our economy, lift this book in it.” Now you can save money and save the planet while saving your prized possessions!

Read on for an excerpt of Make It Last: Sustainably and Affordably Preserving What We Love by Raleigh Briggs, now available for preorder from our site or from your local bookseller. Out everywhere 10/22/24.

(more…)

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Zine Month Roundup!

Microcosm began with zines, and they remain our bread and butter as a production ethos, as accessible information transmitters, and as incubators for creativity. We celebrate these pocket-sized testaments to DIY ingenuity year-round, but July is officially recognized as Zine Month, so we’re shining the spotlight on our wide-ranging zine collections to celebrate.

Below are excerpts from a few themed collections we put together to amplify the amazing work being done in itty bitty book form, with each theme containing a little something for everybody. Dig in, enjoy!

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Spooky pink and yellow text over black and gray industrial background.

Radical Care for Physical and Mental Health

In a world of systems that aim to keep us feeling helpless, sick, and disconnected from our bodies and emotions, it’s crucial to learn how to care for ourselves—and each other. From reproductive freedom to recruiting herbal allies, from supporting your own mental health to offering support to loved ones, life is full of opportunities to take back our agency and see ourselves as collaborators in healing.

To celebrate the release of new zine How to Get Your Period, here’s a collection of works that embrace a radical understanding of “self care” as an empowering ethic for healthier individuals and communities.

How to Get Your Period, by Anonymous Healthcare Worker 

In 1971, as part of their work with their feminist reproductive collective, Lorraine Rothman and Carol Downer invented menstrual extraction (ME), a suction process to pass the entire period all at once, which has the side effect of ending any undetected early pregnancy. An underground network of providers has kept ME alive ever since, and now, in a post-Roe era, the demand is surging. Written by an anonymous medical professional, this book provides a short history of ME and detailed instructions and diagrams explaining how to safely and effectively perform a manual exam, use a speculum, assemble a Del-Em kit, and complete a menstrual extraction procedure. You’ll also learn when not to perform ME and find an overview of other safe and effective options for bringing about menstruation or ending a pregnancy in the first trimester. In addition to heralding the incredible discovery of these historical heroes and affirming the need for abortion rights, this book offers menstrual extraction as a method to understand and protect our own bodies, choices, and reproductive rights even as they are under attack.

Alive With Vigor! Surviving Your Adventurous Lifestyle, edited by Robert Earl Sutter III

Alive With Vigor! compiles stories of surviving—and thriving—from a wide spectrum of contributors. Deeply personal essays recount matters of preventative health care, the hard decisions we each have to make, Do It Yourself health care, and how to deal with extracting health care from government/corporate health care systems. Alive With Vigor! has a special focus on queer, youth, and transgender people, recognizing that everyone has different health care needs. Finally a how to book where you can put the advice directly to use in your life!

Reclaiming Our Ancient Wisdom: Herbal Abortion Procedure and Practice for Midwives and Herbalists, by Catherine Marie Jeunet 

A guide for practiced herbalists and midwives to better serve their communities with herbal abortion options. Beautifully illustrated with botanical drawings from Gerard’s Herbal and other early texts. The time is now for us to learn from forgotten knowledge and keep ourselves and the people around us healthy and fully in charge of their own reproductive health and rights. 

Stressed & Overwhelmed: Good Habits for the Exhausted Overachiever,
by Elly Blue

If you’re the sort of person who takes on every project and responsibility until suddenly it’s one thing too many and you get completely burnt out and drop everything and start the cycle again from scratch … this zine is for you. Includes hard-won pointers on how to train yourself to have more sustainable work habits (using tricks from dog training!), shore up your professional boundaries, and get more organized so you can have a better handle on all the things you are very likely to continue taking on. Stress and overwhelm are tough to live with every day, and the go-getters of the world could use to take better care of ourselves and have more fun.

Hot Pants: Do It Yourself Gynecology, by Isabelle Gauthier & Lisa Vinebaum

A thorough and classic examination on tried and true herbal treatments for common gynecological problems, as well as great basic sexual health info for anyone with a uterus. It begins, “Patriarchy sucks. It’s robbed us of our autonomy and much of our history. We believe it’s integral for women to be aware an in control of our own bodies.” Diagrams and herbal remedies teach you how to diagnose and heal many basic problems from bladder infections to inducing your period to ease cramps to even dealing with pregnancy. Learn herbal remedies to ease every stage of the menstrual cycle. There’s references to further reading, descriptions of herbs, and even a section on aphrodisiacs. The sections include: Body Mapping (in brief), About Menstruation, Love in the Age of Aids, 35 years of fertility, STDs and Other Aliens, The Ovaries and the Uterus, Aphrodisiacs, How to Prepare and Use Herbs, Picking Your Own Herbs, Herbal Properties and Dosages, Interesting Reading, Useful Addresses. This book deserves to sit next to your copy of Our Bodies, Our Selves.

Support: Feminist Relationship Tools to Heal Yourself and End Rape Culture, by Cindy Crabb

Support encourages everyone to take a step back, listen, think, and talk about sex, consent, violence, and abuse. If you or someone you know have ever been assaulted or victimized, how to be an ally can be confusing. These words and the connection they offer can help. With ideas and encouragement to help yourself and others cope with, prevent, and end sexual violence and abuse, this collection of personal experiences, advice, guest articles, and comic excerpts wants to help.

Self-Compassion: Be Kind to Yourself Instead of Striving for Bullshit “Self-Esteem,” by Dr. Faith G. Harper

For decades, the U.S. has been obsessed with “self-esteem” or rather with our lack of it. But self-esteem isn’t actually that great, and getting all puffed up about yourself isn’t exactly a recipe for the good life. How about self-compassion instead? Bestseller Dr. Faith explains the difference between the two and offers some helpful exercises in developing more compassion for yourself. It’s actually very different, she explains, than letting yourself off the hook for your bullshit. It’s more helpful to accept that you’re human so that you can learn and grow rather than push aside your problems or wallow in your mistakes. Also, kindness to yourself helps you be more kind to other people as well. Everyone wins!


Fireweed #1: A Zine of Grassroots Radical Herbalism and Wild Foods Connecting With Kids and Family Life, by Jess Krueger 

Fireweed, as the full title implies, is all about introducing your kids to plants. It’s about teaching young children the joy of gathering edibles, and making them into candies, teas, jellies, or even medicines. There’s tips for going on plant walks, and suggestions for good introductory plants like ginger, mint, and marshmallow. There are recipes for prickly pear crisp, catnip tea, and simple fermented herbal infusions. The authors conduct a couple interviews with parents about their experiences sharing plants with their children. This zine is really inspiring.  

Self As Other: Reflections on Self-Care, by  Corina Dross &  CrimethInc

In activist circles and elsewhere, it has become commonplace to speak of self-care, taking for granted that the meaning of this expression is self-evident. But “self” and “care” are not static or monolithic; nor is “health.” How has this discourse been colonized by capitalist values? How could we expand our notion of care to encompass a transformative practice?

Following “For All We Care,” analyzing the contradictory currents within the category of care, Crimethinc presents “Self as Other,” combining that text with three more essays in which individuals recount their personal struggles with the concept and practice of care.

Shop the list for even more of our radical self-care titles, or check out some packs. Keep taking care of each other!

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Interview with Bob Suren, author of Weird Music That Goes On Forever

Behind the scenes of Bob’s quest to bring two outsider genres together at last

Bob Suren’s new book, Weird Music That Goes On Forever: A Punk’s Guide to Loving Jazz is out now, with art by Brian Walsby and forewords from Lucky Lehrer and Paul Mahern. We chatted with Bob about the writing and publication of the book and the punk-to-jazz pipeline.

Microcosm Publishing: What inspired you to write your book?

Bob Suren: An unsatisfactory experience at a jazz club. When I first got into punk rock as a teenager, some more seasoned punks taught me about how punk rock works. They loaned me records and zines and made mix tapes and invited me to shows. The few jazz clubs I have been to have not been particularly welcoming. After a visit to some snobby club, I thought, jazz isn’t supposed to be like that. Really, nothing should be like that. But jazz was the original outsider music. Granted, I wasn’t kicking around when it was but it sure seems dusty and aloof now. I belong to several jazz groups online, to gather knowledge and read opinions, and there’s very little sense of humor in the groups. There is a lot of what the kids call “gatekeeping” and a lot of jazz experts flexing their credentials. Of course, there’s quite a bit of that now in punk, too, and I plead a little guilty. Anyhow, after being given the third-class treatment at a jazz club, I got the idea to write a book that compares jazz to punk and I started writing it the minute I got home. I sent Microcosm the first thousand words or so that very night.

MCP: What was it like to publish with Microcosm?

BS: This is my second book with Microcosm. I hear that for your seventh they give you a monogrammed smoking jacket. The first book I edited in person with Joe, side by side at his desk in Portland over five or six days. It was very easy and smooth and the finished product was not much different than the rough draft. For this book, I worked remotely by email with Olivia and there were a lot more things to debate and fix in the edit. I think we did three front to back edits over a period of maybe three months. I was starting to get sick of looking at the thing but Olivia made some good suggestions and she caught a few fact errors in her cross-research which made for a better book. And a much longer book. I used to be skeptical of the editing process but I now realize that a second set of eyes is a big help

MCP: What was the submission/query process like for you?

BS: Since I already had a relationship with Microcosm, it was very easy and informal. I sent Joe a three sentence pitch and the first thousand or so words as soon as I wrote them. Maybe like 10 minutes after I wrote them. Joe’s original response was that it might make a good zine. He told me to keep it around 36 pages. I didn’t think I could do the subject any justice at 36 pages so I said, “I’m just going to write it the way it needs to be and send it when I feel like it’s finished,” which is a very fucking jazz approach to writing. At one point, I thought it was going to top out short, at around 100 pages. But I keep finding great info. I couldn’t believe it when the final page count was 256. 

MCP: What else have you written?

BS: In 2015 Microcosm published Crate Digger: An Obsession with Punk Records, my memoir of 30 years in punk rock as a fan, a collector, a band member, a record label, a store, a distro, a prolific t-shirt bootlegger, basset hound owner, and more. 

MCP: What are you currently reading? 

BS: I read a lot of nonfiction. I like pop science books like Mary Roach and Oliver Sacks. I love memoirs. Some of the best memoirs I have read were by Meat Loaf, Paul Stanley, Geezer Butler, John Stamos, Rob Lowe, Chrissie Hynde, Belinda Carslie, Tina Fey, Molly Shannon, and a not famous guy from Texas named David Crabb wrote wrote something very funny called Bad Kid. I have given two copies of Bad Kid as gifts. Check it out. I have been dipping into non-fiction, too. I think America’s best non-fiction writer is a guy from Portland named Willy Vlautin. I have read every Willy Vlautin book and I have written him fan mail, just like the fan mail I used to send Kevin Seconds. Except I didn’t ask Willy Vlautin for free stickers.

MCP: What’s the best book you read in the last year?

BS: Willy Vlautin’s latest book, The Night Always Comes. Also a novel called The Lemon, written by three people under the pseudonym S.E. Boyd.

MCP: What’s next for you? 

BS: Maybe I will get another idea for a book and maybe I won’t. I have no idea. Once I get the inspiration, I work fast. Crate Digger was written over maybe six weeks. Weird Music took me maybe ten weeks to write. I just need a spark. 

Check out Weird Music That Goes On Forever—not many books out there get a handwritten blurb from King Buzzo.

Bob Suren spent decades as a professional punk rocker, playing in bands, releasing records, running a store and a distribution company, writing for zines, shooting photos, and booking shows. Now he’s kind of into jazz. Read another interview with Bob on our blog.

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How to Transform a Conflict: An Interview with Gwendolyn Olton

This week on the People’s Guide to Publishing podcast, we were joined by Gwen Olton, co-director of the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence, to talk about her new book that’s hot off the press from Microcosm, From Conflict to Community: Transforming Conflicts without Authorities. We love this book, which borrows from many different styles of conflict transformation and resolution to bring us the practical tools we need to listen to each other and navigate the conflicts we face every day — without calling the cops or HR.

Check out the video below, and also read the blog interview Gwen wrote for us to talk more about her book and its process of coming into the world!


MCP: What inspired you to write your book?

GO: There were a few things that coalesced to inspire me to write the book. I had finished reading Sarah Schulman’s Conflict Is Not Abuse and her discussions of “bad friend” groups and the influence they have on conflicts stuck with me. At the same time, I was supporting many folks with conflicts that were relatively minor – not the sort of thing you might bring to a mediator but enough that they were disruptive in a person’s life. Meanwhile, whenever I was invited to facilitate a workshop on conflict or attend someone else’s workshops or skillbuilding on conflict we were very rarely talking about how to support others in conflict when you’re not a mediator or the parties aren’t really sitting down together to discuss. And amidst all of this, has been the growing awareness of just how much we escalate conflicts up to authorities instead of working within our circles to try to work things out. 

What was it like to publish with Microcosm?

Easy peasy! I don’t have a basis of comparison since this is my first book, but communication and transparency have been excellent, which I really appreciate. 

What was the submission/query process like for you?

They were pretty straightforward processes. I had an idea for this book, I fleshed it out a bit and submitted the idea. Then, I exchanged some emails with Microcosm and provided a writing sample or two and that was that! 

Do you still have your original query to us? Are you willing to share it?

Sure! See below:

This book would benefit the reader by offering a large array of strategies for transforming conflicts without appeals to punitive authority figures.

Three publications similar to mine would be:

1. How to be Accountable Workbook: Take responsibility to change your behavior

2. Doing it Better: Conflict resolution and accountability after abuse in leftist communities

3. Unfuck Your Boundaries: Build better relationships through consent, communication, and expressing your needs

My book is unique from these and other titles in that it provides the reader with tools for successfully navigating these struggles as both a participant in a conflict and as a 3rd-party intervener without formal training. Folks would be interested in buying this book when they want help keeping community and relationship intact and don’t have access to formal mediators or facilitators, or cannot afford them. I want to offer this book because I see a deep need for collaboration and conflict transformation skills and believe folks can be empowered to work on these practices even without formal training. I want to offer something that is approachable and easy to pick up and brings relief to those who are in conflict and don’t know where to turn. I have a background in transformative mediation, restorative justice and restorative process facilitation, group decision making facilitation, and a number of communication practices including Motivational Interviewing and NVC. I have a MA in conflict resolution. I volunteer as a mediator and conflict consultant for a number of small organizations including a local low-power radio station and roller derby league. I also offer non-court based mediation to folks by referral for free.

I appreciate your consideration and am open to feedback about this pitch if you have time and willingness to share it. Thank you.

What else have you written?

This is the only book I’ve written but I write newsletters for the organization I work at frequently as well as blog posts. I have some things on Medium.

What are you currently reading? 

Right now, I’m reading:

What’s the best book you read in the last year?

This is weirdly hard for me to answer because I have an aversion to choosing a favorite or best anything and also because of my poor sense of time but two books I really enjoyed and think I read last year are:

What’s next for you? 

Besides living, working, and trying to be part of community generally here in Rochester, NY, I’m working on some projects combining visuals / illustrations and writing. Right now I’m working on a visual guide or workbook or zine on some conflict practices, trying to turn some information into some easier to digest and use illustrations. I’m also in the early stages of collaborating with a friend in the Netherlands on visuals, maybe a book, on collaborative practices. 

Where can people find you online?

I’m not in a ton of places / spaces online but here are a few I can think of:

Any in-person events coming up soon?

Not for the book at the moment. I do a lot of in-person events related to conflict with work which you can find at our website. Hoping to do some in-person book events soon! 

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Fix Your Clothes Officially Pubs Today!

Fix Your Clothes: The Sustainable Magic of Mending, Patching, and Darning

 

by Raleigh Briggs

64 pp, 5.5×7″ paperback, ISBN: 978-1-62106-906-5

Out today! April 11th, 2017 from Microcosm Publishing

The bestselling zine is now a charming new paperback encouraging readers to save money (and the planet) by fixing their own clothes.

Clothes are expensive and the clothing industry is the 2nd most polluting industry worldwide, not to mention responsible for oppressive labor conditions. DIY enthusiast Raleigh Briggs offers a simple solution, giving readers the basic tools to fix, sustain, and breathe new life into clothes they’d otherwise throw away.

“Ideal for thrifters, vintage clothes collectors, and anyone into not tossing their clothes because a button pops off or a zipper is stuck. There is something deeply pleasing and satisfying about mending and making clothes last.”— Angry Chicken

“A really solid foundation on sewing.” – Utne Reader

 

About Raleigh Briggs:

Raleigh is one of our best-selling authors, with Make Your Place: Affordable, Sustainable Nesting Skills, Make it Last: Prolonging and Preserving the Things We Love, and a charming collection of zines, like Herbal First Aid and Non-Toxic Housecleaning. She lives with her husband and two needy cats in Seattle, Washington.

 

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On Grief

Dr Faith Grief zine coverThis week, in the midst of national grieving, I happened to be editing a new zine by Dr. Faith… about grief. When I sent back the edits, I asked if she had any thoughts to share for folks coping with the tragedy in Orlando. She sent along the thoughts on Intimacy in Times of Fear she’d posted on her own blog, and suggested we blog an excerpt from her zine: The Griever’s Bill of Rights. Here it is:

“June Cerza Kolf created a Bill of Rights for the Bereaved, published in her book How Can I Help?. Her bill of rights, with my slight alterations and suggestions are as follows:

Grievers Bill of Rights
1) Do not make me do anything I do not wish to do.
Unless you are in literal danger, you have the right to not have someone’s will forced upon you. Even if it is for your own good. Even if they are dead right and have all the best intentions. At least not in those first days and weeks when you are absolutely shattered. Keep breathing in and out. It can wait.
2) Let me cry.
Fuck, yes. Cry. Be angry. Be numb. Be hysterical as all fuck. Whatever you are feeling is what you are feeling. Don’t hurt yourself, don’t hurt others. But get whatever you need to get out OUT.
3) Allow me to talk about the loss.
Kolf’s original said “the deceased.” But I’m opening this up to any grief experience. You get to talk about it. If you don’t have people who can be with you in that process, find a good counselor or join a support group. Find closure. Don’t hold in your story. Telling our story helps us find meaning and helps us heal.
4) Do not force me to make quick decisions.
If decisions need to be made quickly, pick someone you trust to be your point person. Everything that isn’t pressing can fucking wait. You don’t have to make decisions when you are reeling. In fact, making BIG decisions right after a huge loss often leads to regret and damaging fall-out in the end.
5) Let me act strange sometimes.
You may be fine for long periods of time and then something may trigger you. You may not even know what. But you may weird out. You’re allowed. You’re allowed to act strange. You are allowed to not even know why. With time you will start to recognize these triggers and be prepared for their eventuality.
6) Let me see that you are grieving, too.
It can be very healing to share your grief, whether with someone who is hurting along with you or for your pain. Human connection is vital.
7) When I am angry, do not discount it.
Anger is a secondary emotion. It’s coming from a place of pain and makes sense. You’re allowed anger as part of your experience. It’s a healthy part of the process and can be extraordinarily healing if you attend to it.
8) Do not speak to me in platitudes.
This goes back to what to say/what not to say. Platitudes are far worse than silence. They are a tiny Snoopy band-aid on an enormous wound. They don’t help, they don’t heal.
9) Listen to me, please!
You have the right to be heard. Not just listened to enough to respond to, but deeply heard in your experience. If you aren’t getting that from the people around you, ask for it. Or find it in a more formal support experience (therapy, self-help group, etc.)
10) Forgive me my trespasses, my rudeness, and my thoughtlessness.
Ok. Don’t intentionally be a dick because you can get away with it. But you do have leeway in this regard. You are not responsible for the care and feelings of others. You need to try to not actively be awful, but you get space to be spaced. Keep breathing. Apologize if you do or say something un-fabulous. But don’t beat yourself up for being in the muck if that’s where you are.”

***

In case you haven’t discovered her work yet, Dr. Faith G. Harper is one of our most prolific authors whose book hasn’t even come out yet. Her forthcoming book Unfuck Your Brain will be available in fall 2017; meanwhile, her constantly growing collection of zines combine science, compassion, and a lot of wonderfully hilarious swearing to tackle topics from Anger and Anxiety to healthy Relationshipping. The Grief zine comes out as soon as it’s back from the photocopier.

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Building a Cookie Tin Banjo with How & Why!

I’m a banjo enthusiast. That’s something I’ve made peace with. But building a banjo? I never thought I’d be capable of managing a hacksaw while keeping my jugular intact, let alone make a scrappy instrument that sounds rad! While editing How & Why, our latest DIY guide for the next apocalypse, Matte Resist’s instructions for building musical instruments gave me the push to try it out myself—and build a fretless banjo from a cookie tin.

Cookies plus banjos. It wasn’t a hard sell for me.

I bought an old cookie tin with a 9” diameter for $1. It provides a sturdy base to hold the neck (along with the tension of the strings) while being a good carrier of sweet tunes. Bigger equals louder. Then I cut a slot for the neck with a box cutter (see below) on what would be at the bottom of the tin’s side—that way, I can still take off the lid when the banjo’s done!

Diagram 1

Want to learn to construct your own banjo f or just a few bucks? Pick up your own copy of How and Why!

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