The Cuba Connection by Steve Miller  In 2004, on the second trip, my bookbinding colleague Anna Embree, our historian of the book Dr. Tonyia Tidline, several students, and I traveled to Cuba to work with artist Carlos "Tato" Ayress Moreno. We carried with us the printed pages of a bilingual book of poems, Design / Desiño, by Billy Collins, US poet laureate at the time. In Tato's Havana studio we printed a linoleum titling block on handmade paper wrappers, and bound 125 copies of the book, 85 of which we presented to the director of Havana University libraries, to be distributed to libraries across the island. It was during this second visit that we began to work with the papermakers at Taller Experimental de Papel Artesanal in Old Havana. They provided the cover papers for the book. Since then we have worked on several other collaborative book projects, each one more complex than the previous one. Noche, our most recent book project involved collaborating with five different Cuban artists at Taller Experimental de Grafica, editioning their stone lithographs based on a new Billy Collins poem titled Night. At Papel Artesanal the papermakers create handmade papers by recycling used papers from neighborhood businesses including cigar factories. They hydrate the paper for a day, then beat the pulp using an industrial-sized blender/ paint mixer. Sometimes they add cigar tobacco, or mix in dried flowers to the pulp. They pull sheets using various homemade moulds, couch onto old felts, press the posts in a large, angled standing press, and hang the sheets (still attached to felts) to dry with a fan circulating the tropical air. We have noticed that with each of our projects the paper becomes more consistent in color, thickness, and finish. Most of the paper created at Papel Artesanal is made into gift bags for tourists, and used for prints by local artists that are for sale in their gallery. Alabama Mule Dung Paper steve miller & glenn houseI was visiting the papermakers on a recent working trip. We have all gotten to know each other well and kid around quite a bit. They presented me with a small stack of papers made especially for me—out of horse dung they collected from the cobblestone streets around the mill. It was very funny. To the cooked and rinsed horse dung they added recycled paper fiber to give the paper strength. Laughingly, they reported that the smell of cooking horse dung was quite strong and that they probably would not do it again. At the moment they presented me the paper, and the joke was on me, I decided that I should return the gesture in kind. I knew what I had to do and whom I had to see—Glenn House, artist and retired UA faculty member who founded our program's Lost Arch Papermill, and taught letterpress printing and papermaking classes until he retired to Gordo, Alabama. Gordo is known for its wonderful Mule Day parade each June, and its prize-winning mules. The Gordo Connection by Glenn House "You want to make paper from mule WHAT?" I was downright skeptical when I first heard Steve's proposal. As we further discussed the idea, we could see the simple beauty of the scheme. True paper, I always told my students, is made from macerated and hydrated vegetable fibers, usually cotton, flax, hemp, wood, or bast bark. Because mules are strict vegetarians, and the macerating and digestive processes are somewhat similar to papermaking, the mule by-product, we concluded, is already semi-paper from a definitely renewable resource, and it is abundantly available close by. Kathy Fetters, my wife, and I have established a papermaking facility at the rear of our art gallery and we offered use of it to Steve's class for the project. Illegal Use of the Soul by Luis Francisco Díaz Sánchez, bilingual, translated into English by Maria Vargas, a collaborative book project between University of Alabama Book Arts faculty and graduate students with Cuban artists and papermakers, 2006, 5 ½ x 4 x ½ inches, Cuban recycled handmade paper by Papel Artesanal, letterpress-printed text on Biblio paper from photopolymer plates, linocuts by Cuban artist Julio Cesar Peña printed on a hand press at Taller Experimental de Grafica. Photo: Teresa Golson. Design / Diseño by Billy Collins, bilingual, translated into Spanish by Maria Vargas, a collaborative book project between University of Alabama Book Arts faculty and graduate students with Cuban artists and papermakers, 2005, 8 ½ x 5 ½ x ½ inches, Cuban recycled handmade paper wrappers by Papel Artesanal (Cuban edition), Bugra text papers, multiple signature sewn binding in boards over pastepaper (Alabama edition), letterpress-printed text and scanned linocuts by Cuban artist Carlos Ayress Moreno from photopolymer plates, handprinted linocut on wrapper. Published by The University of Alabama Parallel Press in an edition of 125 copies for the Cuban edition, and 75 copies for the Alabama edition. Photo: Teresa Golson. 28 - hand papermaking We went about the preliminary arrangements quietly. A single inquiry directed us to the pasture of Dale and Linda Baines, two miles west, whose spectacular team had taken first place in the previous year's mule parade. They cheerfully volunteered the services of four fine examples of mulehood. Steve, accompanying friends, and I met and mingled comfortably with the herd, and then visited the pasture, gathering dried raw material with shovels and eager hands, and soon we had three overflowing five-gallon buckets. Back at the mill, with no previous research to guide us, we picked out trash and sorted the biscuits, as they are called by muleteers. We cooked lightly with sodium bicarbonate, then rinsed, and beat in a Hollander. We were surprised by how fast beating went, and by the shortness of the fibers. Test sheets of pure dung paper indicated immediately that addition of longerfibered material would be necessary. We added cotton linters until the formed sheets would couch and press successfully. Steve and students returned on Mule Day 2007 to demonstrate the process to dozens of awed onlookers. When arrangements were made to provide samples for Hand Papermaking, Steve's 2008 papermakers returned to the Baines farm for more stuff. We quickly gathered sufficient material as it was now concentrated in mounds near the leeward side of the barn. Mr. Baines said, "Wish we had time. We'd harness 'em up and go for a ride!" We cooked this batch in soda ash. My personal theory that a winter hay-fed diet might provide longer fibers turned out not to be correct, and again, we added cotton linters to the pulp. The event became a papermaking carnival. The students made use of every mould in reach. Every size and shape was put to use. After drying, sorting, and cutting to sample size, though coarse and somewhat brittle, here is a true sample of Alabama Mule Dung paper. Two artworks on Alabama Mule Dung paper by University of Alabama student Jessie Moore, 2008, 4 ¼ x 2 ¾ inches each, screenprint and pen ink. Photo: Steve Miller. Glenn House (facing left) and Steve Miller (facing right) during an Alabama Mule Dung papermaking session at Glenn House and Kathy Fetters' paper studio. Photo: Doug Sanders, Jr., 2008. Alabama Mule Dung Paper Sample For each cook, we placed twelve pounds of broken-up biscuits (about two pounds dry weight, based on volume) in a pot with water and brought it to a boil (we recommend an outdoor cook), and then added four ounces of soda ash. We boiled the fiber for thirty minutes. The best way we found to rinse the cooked fiber is to take small batches and, with one person on either side of a piece of netting, roll the fiber back and forth while someone sprays the fiber with water. A very theatrical operation. In a two-lb. Howard Clark Twinrocker Hollander beater, we half-filled the beater with water, added the fiber, and beat vigorously for twenty minutes, We then added a quarter pound of cotton linters and beat fifteen minutes longer. The pulp was very "wet," and we produced the best sheets by using moulds with coarse wire screens supported with ribs, and couching on dry felts. The UA students who helped make the sample papers are Heidi Atwood, Amanda Clark, Bridget Elmer, Friedrich Kerksieck, Sarah McDermott, Jessie Moore, Katie Shinkle, and Annie Stalling, with special thanks to Kathy Fetters.