Thanks to everyone who got a 2009 Slingshot organizer — selling them enables us to publish and distribute this paper. Perhaps in part because of the economic collapse, we have a ton of extra organizers hanging around looking for a home. If you want to order some or know of someone who might want some, please let us know. We’re about 60 percent of the way to paying the printing bill, so if you have an outstanding invoice, please pay us anything you can even if you can’t afford to pay the whole bill. We realize many projects are on the verge of collapsing financially — hopefully we can all pull through this together. If you are an infoshop or bookstore with extra organizers that you want to return, please contact us before you physically return them since we’re so overstocked.
We tried a few new things in the 2009 organizer and we would love to get feedback on whether we should try them again in 2010 (assuming a revolution or famine prior to 2010 doesn’t make next year’s organizer a moot point.) If you noticed, liked, or didn’t like these changes, drop us a card or email to let us know:
• Laminated cover for pocket organizer: good, bad or didn’t notice
• Month-at-a-glance calendars in pocket organizer: good, bad or didn’t notice
• Lay flat binding in pocket organizer: good, bad or didn’t notice
Each of these features costs extra money and uses additional natural resources. The lamination uses plastic, which we don’t like, but if it keeps the organizer from falling apart it may be worth it. This year we did half laminated and half non-laminated so people could decide which they liked better. Should we make both kinds again next year or just make them all either laminated or non-laminated? The month-at-a-glance calendar makes the organizer 16 pages longer which increases the printing bill by about 10%. We could add it to the spiral calendar in 2010 but we might have to raise the price because the spiral calendar is already expensive to print and bind. Do you think it is worth it?
We’ve noticed a few mistakes in the 2009 organizer and we’re sorry about them:
• We got the wrong address for a zine listed in our zine reading list: Cracks in the Concrete is really at PO Box 2748 Tucson, AZ 85702.
• We mistakenly described the subject matter of POZ magazine — it is about people living with HIV/AIDS.
• The wrong date was given for Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s birthday, his real birthday is March 24. He turns “90.”
Let us know if you spot any other errors.
Work on the 2010 organizer will start in June. We send it to the printer in mid-August. Please send us cover art, corrections, additions, historical dates, ideas for features, doodles, radical contacts, and/or move to the Bay Area to join our collective by July 31. If you think the organizer is hard to use, you can make some pages next year that address the problems. The 2010 organizer will be available October 1, 2009.
Finally, because we have so many extra organizers hanging around, we would like to figure out ways to give some extra organizers away to projects that could get them out to people who wouldn’t otherwise have access to the organizer or who could not afford to pay for it — think inmates, oppressed high school students, homeless, etc. Contact us if you have any ideas.