 Hello, Pussycats! Okay, so I have to say that Susie used to call me Pussycat, and I'm sure I'm not the only one that she called Pussycat, but whenever she did, I felt so special. And I felt so special all day long, no matter what happened that day, Susie called me Pussycat and my day was made. So I was thinking about why we were having this on today. And I realized that, you know, it's not by accident that we're having this remembrance of the calligraphic life of our pal, Susie Taylor, on such an auspicious day as the Women's March, as the first anniversary of the inauguration of that man in the White House, because Susie would be alternately exhilarated, and exasperated, but more likely pissed off. But she would be so exhilarated by the temper, by people rising up, by people standing up and saying something. Susie, there were a lot of Susie-isms, and one of them was grow where you are planted. Another one was whose bread you eat, whose man you are. And that was something that really stuck with me a long time. Susie was really about service, good service, teaching, telling people about the wonders of calligraphy. She was our ambassador. She was full of wisdom, righteous anger, and what a sense of humor. Also, she cursed like a sailor. So she was my great friend. I loved her to pieces. We think about her every day. Her work surrounds us every day. And I just want to point out a few people in the audience who are either family members or staff members who have really turned out for this wonderful program. There's Johanna Goldschmidt, who is a special collections librarian during Susie's, when Susie came, Johanna came shortly after or before and worked for many years with Susie. There's Gail Berger, who was Susie's pal in SF History and book arts and special collections, Gail. And there's Pat Ockry, former photo curator in the SF History Center. There's Susan Goldstein in the back, who is the city archivist and our department head. Sylvia Rowan, who works in the San Francisco History Center. Have I forgotten any staff members? Deedy Kramer, who, oh my God, Anne Carroll, exhibition designer, another one who was a big pal of Susie's. You know, when you really need to covetch about things, Anne and Susie, great people to covetch too. They just lay it all out and they make everything very simple. So what we're going to do today, getting onto the program, is we have a series of mini lectures, which will fill up maybe five minutes everybody each, five minutes, okay, five minutes. Five minutes each. And we're doing... Good luck. And we'll go alphabetically. And the lineup is Alan Blackman, Judy Dietrich, Ward Dunham, Georgiana Greenwood, Thomas Ingmeyer, Linnea Lundquist, John Prasiani, Carl Roars, and Susie's daughter Emily Gatfield will wrap it up for us. So without further ado, I'd like to introduce Alan Blackman. My tales are very, very short. I want to go back to, I think it's probably 1980, and the old library, and we were having an auction. And Susie, and at that time, and England, Liberian were in charge of it. And we had donations from us, I believe. What I remember is I went out and I bought for all of us staff members straw cowboy hats. And each one had a pink feather, would you believe it? And the other event that I want to commemorate is, again, it was a fundraiser for the Friends of Calligraphy. And the council was debating, why don't we have a tour of members' studios? Because several people, I think maybe Sherry Bringham and Terry Engelhardt and one or two others had already become professional calligraphers working for money. And Susie said, whoever tours my studio, tours my bedroom at the same time. And I thought somebody else lives like I do. Thank you. I'm Judy Dietrich, and I know that a great many of you probably have been here before to the sixth floor of the library. And it doesn't do much good for me to tell you who Susie was. You undoubtedly talked to her, met her, or what she did, except I do want to emphasize that she set the bar for what it means to be a curator of the calligraphy collection and probably has set the bar within the whole western hemisphere. Very impressive. Susie understood what it meant to be a calligrapher. She was one. She understood that what calligraphers do, the quality of their work, the words that they choose to write, define our culture. This is no small matter. She took her position very seriously, and she went out of her way to help calligraphers be the best that they could be. So in support of that, for many, many years in her home, she collected all manner of tools and equipment. There were pens, pencils, brushes, inks, paints, papers, skins, quills, all manner of calligraphy materials that have been available to calligraphers from time immemorial. Her drawers and her cupboards were stuffed with them. They were jam-packed with all of this stuff, but she rarely, if ever, used any of it. She just felt that it was part of her responsibility to know what kinds of things were out there and how they were being used to create calligraphic art. For her own part, her plan or her Mutus operandi was extremely simple. She used, as far as I know, maybe some of you know differently, but as far as I know, she used only one brand of pen nib, the coveted Sonneken, and she ground-stick ink in a lovely inkstone, Chinese sticking, I'm sure, and she did that every time that she sat down to write. She loaded that nib with a crusty old brush and she wiped up spills with a dirty little rag, but she felt that it was important to use the best tools to get the best results even when you were practicing. And so that's hint number one for all of you that are struggling with your calligraphy. Don't forget to do that. It really does pay off. When she wasn't in her studio at home, for example, if she was visiting the Fort Mason class or if she was attending a workshop, she took those tools with her in a small wooden cigar box. And she always had a few pieces of fairly decent paper laying around that she would pull out of her backpack. Some of you might have seen this. She came off as being pretty casual and low-key, but her approach to her own work, she took pains with that. She went out of her way to draw very precise guidelines, sometimes very elaborate guidelines to keep her words straight, but that freed her to be able to concentrate on the letter forms and the letter forms for what were important to Susie. They were her end all and be all. Just a minute. It's the symptom of old age. I can't remember why I was going with this. Going back to all of the tools that she had in her apartment, her comment on all of those tools was, so what is all of this stuff for? What should we think about that? And she told me, forget all of the tools. The tools can't make you a better calligrapher. Only you can make you a better calligrapher. So she said, save your money and work hard. And she was the embodiment of working hard and saving money. She did it all of her life. One thing that she did love that she collected in her home were her books and her rooms in her home were lined with bookshelves, sometimes floor to ceiling. And there were books about calligraphy. There were books by calligraphers. There were books about art, about history, about travel usually related to some calligraphy destination. There were books, current books about nonfiction and a few choice volumes of books about vampires and other odd topics. I was always impressed that she maintained a subscription to Archaeology Magazine. She did all of these things in addition to being knowledgeable about calligraphy, being critical, some of you are well aware of her criticism, and being wise and all in service to calligraphers everywhere. She was a remarkable woman, and I'm very grateful that she was one of my friends. I'm Ward Dunham, and like Andrea, whom Susie affectionately called Pussycat, when Susie called me a pussy, I knew I'd made a serious misstep somehow. Susie, as we all know, had compassion in large measure. On the other hand, she had extremely high standards for herself and for others as well. Like Linnea, Susie did not supper fools gladly. Imagine, if you will, what it would be like to travel for days on end or weeks on end with the likes of Susie Taylor, Judy Dietrich, Linnea Lundquist, and most terrifying of all, most of you don't know Alice from New York, but talk about someone who would not suffer fools lightly, and imagine being the only man traveling with these women. Sometimes it was great, and other times it was not fun. We all knew Susie. There's not a person in this room, I don't think, who doesn't have story after story they could tell about Susie. She was a good friend. She was the steward of one of the world's great collections of calligraphy. Her generosity was unbelievable. You'd call and you'd tell her, even if you were from God knows where, you'd tell her what you were interested in by the time you got to the library, she'd have all this stuff that might have taken her two or three hours to put together waiting for you when you got there. We are all fortunate to have known her, and I doubt if we will ever in our lifetimes meet another like her. Thank you. Oh, where I am. Look at this. This looks like Ward's Handling. Oh. Very good. Nice. Bad writing with good mark. And then, here's mine. Not written. Oh, dear. So, yes. I've always trusted that if Susie told me to do something, I should do it. I've tried to remember how I first met her. This was before the friends of calligraphy was formed. My most vivid memory is of Susie and Don Moy sitting on my couch looking at me and talking to me. Susie hung out with Don. They saw eye to eye on how things should go in the world of calligraphy, and they had gone to the first class with Donald Jackson at UC Santa Cruz. Donald said that there should be a calligraphy group in the Bay Area, and that they should do something about it. So they came over to my house, and I remember the two of them sitting together on my couch looking at me and talking. And they said there should be a group and that I should be president. How's that for dumping something in your lap? But I was born with a lot of ham, and it doesn't hurt to have ham on your side when you're in a leadership position. So anyway, neither of them, let's see, did I say everything? Neither of them really wanted to run things, and I've always been good at it. So for today, I did Susie's astrological chart. Forgive me, she would have fit. Her birthday, if you want to do that too, was May 19, 1938, so she was born, she was a sister, really, she was born just four months after my sister. And Susie was a Taurus with a moon and Capricorn. That is, if you know anything about astrology, that's a pretty strong mix. A Taurus is all about purposeful and determined action and power. Oh, I can't read this. A Taurus is one of the most powerful signs in the zodiac, and her moon was in Capricorn, another powerhouse, both earth signs. I won't do this astrology stuff too much, but it's interesting if you're interested. Susie's pissed off. Oh dear, another planet in the trine was Neptune in Virgo, which represents intuition, imagination, artistic talent. So that's the trine in her chart. These were gifts that she had in spades. Taurus types are born to achieve mastery over physical matter. When I read that, I thought about how it was to watch Susie writing. I hope that, I know a lot of you have probably seen her writing, but a lot of you haven't. It was an awesome sight. It was the epitome of focused determination. So I'm a Scorpio, which is the, I won't go into this stuff too much, but it is the opposite of a Taurus. So Susie and I were in an opposition relationship astrologically. But oppositions create energy. It's the relationship that is associated with marriage and partnerships. So you're different, but you're linked by common interests or something in common. Because of who she was, the clarity and conviction of her vision, it always seemed right to do what she said. I can't remember ever not doing what she said. So it sounds like there's a lot of people here that knew Susie. Susie was intelligent and she was authentic. She was who she was. And astrologically, it was all earth signs. But she had leavening, which was Venus and Mars conjunct in the sign of Gemini. And Gemini is the sign for the mind and language representing it. So she had this potent combination of emotion, intuition, and intention. Susie's writing was deceptively simple as you have seen. Very beautiful and very potent. I think it's because her physical actions and her feelings were so strongly connected. Our friendship came about because of the Friends of Calligraphy. I was teaching and also was passing along ideas about writing that I had acquired in learning calligraphy at re-college from Lloyd Reynolds. Susie was friends with Richard Harrison and he had learned letter forms from Byron McDonnell. And McDonnell taught at CCAC. Susie had a great eye for quality in art and she was frighteningly honest. This could be intimidating because she was so intelligent and such a very fine artist herself. I always wanted Susie to approve of what I was doing. It was a very big deal with Susie, but it was not as big a deal for me. Calligraphy was a very big deal for Susie, but not so big with me because I had wanted to be a painter. And calligraphy was something that I fell into, which was fun. But I think it was not the main thing for me as it was for Susie. Writing and calligraphy is a special form of drawing and it communicates by language for literal content. So every mark that's made has vitality and consciousness. The wonderful thing about calligraphy is that it's a mixture of mark-making and literal content. When there is a good mix, a powerful mix of meaning and action, it can be really powerful. I wish that she was still here pushing me around because we were a dynamic duo. I was usually doing a lot of things at once, but Susie was more focused. Plus she was the one who was responsible for the Richard Harrison collection of calligraphy at the library. This fabulous collection begun by Richard Harrison has been nourished and was extended, increased by Susie. In 2011, Susie and I conducted a spring seminar in special collections for students in the calligraphy classes at Fort Mason. Its purpose was to review the historical development of Western letter forms by examining books and manuscripts in the Harrison collection. It must have been Susie's idea because it graded on her that so few people came to see the collection. She was responsible for the drawers full of fabulous writing. So this seminar was a chance to introduce a group of mature students to the fabulous Harrison collection. Susie was the brains and impetus for that seminar. The Susie Taylor Fest celebrating her countless contributions to the Bay Area calligraphy book and library communities took place on September 28, 2008. It was a great party. At least a hundred people were there and we actually managed to surprise her. It wasn't super hard to keep it from her because it wasn't anything she would have expected. Susie always knew what was the right thing to do. She was committed to an ideal of fine writing. And because she was so smart and so good at writing and idealistic as well, she was a great touchstone. She didn't have a personal axe to grind. For one as down to earth and sensible as she was to have some sort of idealistic perspective for calligraphy was great good fortune for the Bay Area community. Because it's important for people who make art to be as pure as possible. And by that I mean disengaged from self interest having some kind of idealistic vision of the value of what you're doing. The importance of it is separate from personal achievement and lettering does have intrinsic value because it carries language for us. Susie said things with the voice of authority. But she wasn't really bossy but maybe somebody would disagree with that. Hers was a genuine authority based on knowledge, intuition and love. I miss having her tell me what to do but we can all be grateful that she landed her work life, landed her in special collections at this library. Thank you Susie. And it's written so small I can't read it anyway. So over the last couple of years every time I've come into the special collections I still expect to find Susie here. And I don't know when that changes I still do. Somehow the special collections, forensic calligraphy and essentially my entire life as a calligrapher is tied with Susie. So it feels sort of empty now. We had kind of a ritual every time I came into the special collections. I suspect others of you who came here experienced the same ritual. The first few minutes or longer involved catching up on the gossip, calligraphy gossip. And politics maybe a little bit. Complaining about work sometimes and gossip more. And for me this was actually really great. I came from Indiana and I remember after getting away from Indiana I realized that basically all we do in Indiana was complain. We complained about everything. And yet it really wasn't serious. That was just kind of a way of life. So coming to visit with Susie was a little bit like walking back home for a while. So I've missed her for lots of reasons. When Richard Harrison was alive we shared stories about Richard. I don't know some of you may obviously knew him better than others. But Richard was quite a character and he saw Susie often because of coming to the library. And then there was a period of time where I played tennis with Richard at 6 a.m. virtually every morning. So there were a lot of stories. And so we usually spent a lot of time catching up on the different stories related to Richard. And in many ways I was the beneficiary of Susie's friendship with Richard. Richard befended me early on and started to collect some of my work and give it to the library. Of course a lot of this work was not very good. Even then and now looking at it it's really hard to look at. And Susie was she I knew what she thought of it. She would make her comments known and she said but you know it's important to have things that are early examples. But I said please don't get certain ones out. And she said well she used it as a kind of blackmail. Maybe she says if you give us something new I'll hold those back. So that was an ongoing debate. But I so appreciated Susie's comments because you knew first of all it comes from someone who really really is talented at doing the work and educated smart. And generally I already knew that it wasn't very good but being reinforced. As Richard's collecting, Wayne the special collections continued to collect my work. And I know this was at Susie's push. She would come there were several years when she would call me in about May or June. It was at the end of the physical year and she'd come to the studio and she would want to get some other works for the collection. And I never felt like my work was quite Susie's cup of tea. I mean I look at her work and I also remember hearing different comments about calligraphy. And I thought what is it she sees because I'm not there in that. But she really had an open mind and was looking for something new. And what I realized is that she was really an amazing person to be involved in putting together a collection of calligraphy. And that was the most important thing to her. It wasn't necessarily we get everything that fits a certain standard but what's involved in making a collection. So I really feel like we are so fortunate to have that legacy with her. The last thing I'll just say about Susie is that I always wanted more from her. I wanted to see more of her work. She did just such amazing work and come on Susie take out some more time do some work. And I would give her a hard time about this. She never responded but boy I got some eye rolls that are amazing. Thank you. Hi I'm Linnea Lundquist. And I might start crying. Forgive me. I want to talk about five experiences I had with Susie. That involved both her relationship to calligraphy and our beloved San Francisco Public Library. The first experience. I met Susie in 1985 when I delivered my piece to the library for the calligraphy exhibition that was to be held that year. I was new to California but not new to calligraphy. And I knew about Susie Taylor because she was well known in the national calligraphy community but I'd never met her. I knew she worked at the library and I knew what she looked like and I was terrified that she would be the one accepting the pieces. I arrived at the old library about ten minutes before closing on the very last day allowed for delivery. And guess who was at the desk. She opened up my piece. She looked it up and down. And over the rim of her frightening glasses she looked me up and down. And with a little curl of her lips and a twinkle in her eye she said well I could say something about your work but I won't. Now those of you that have received such a terse analysis of your work from Susie know that the curl of her lip probably meant your work is surprisingly bad and probably shouldn't go back to the drawing board. But the twinkle in her eye might have meant your work is surprisingly good and I don't want to comment on it because that might go to your head. The second experience. After several forays into the rare book room both in the old library and the new I got the idea of starting a library study group in 1998. I approached Susie for help and she was so delighted with the idea that she kissed me right on the lips. The group met on one Saturday morning each month. I invited all my favorite local calligraphers to participate whether they were friends or not because I wanted to get to know them. The participants turned excuse me the participants took turns presenting to the group. Which involved doing advanced research in the special collections with Susie drawing up a reference list of selections presenting the materials and leading the discussion. The group meant every month for a little more than five years. The topics were diverse and included early writing books modern fine press books collaborative works early 20th century German and script and German posters. 20th century writing manuals picture books of Mexican history handwriting from Padua in San Vito's time woodcuts and wood engravings French typography and French manuscripts. And of course the work of countless calligraphers from around the world both living and dead. Participants and presenters included just about every oldish Bay area calligrapher you know or knew. Special guest presenters included Herman and Gudrun Zoff you and Clayton you it's a value of itch and Bob Williams. Those are some of my best calligraphic memories of Susie she was truly the woman in the arena. Not only because we depended on her for help with research but we all benefited benefited from her knowledge of the history of our calligraphy and calligraphers her appreciation of typography. Her appreciation for our individual talents and interests her ability to settle arguments with just the right book and especially her cultivated and worldly enthusiasm for the love. The lovely the extraordinary the fantastic the unlikely and the uncanny in the realms of both calligraphy and typography and history. There were many times that we all got so excited about what we were seeing or talking about that poor Andrea or Susan Goldstein had to come into the rare book room and do that thing that librarians do shush. And I'm sure the patrons in patrons in the history room were thinking who could possibly be having so much fun in the rare book room of all places. The third experience was Zotfest otherwise known as type design in the digital age exhibition in honor of the contributions of Herman and Gudrun Zoff. This was a monumental undertaking by the Friends of Calligraphy and the San Francisco Public Library that happened in 2001 and it was spearheaded by Susie and me. For about two years Susie and I worked side by side to design and curate all aspects of this unprecedented series of events which included the exhibition of the work of Herman and Gudrun and of several other younger calligraphic type designers, lectures by the Zoffs, presentation to the Zops of Lifetime Achievement Awards for Excellence in Calligraphy and Typography, a series of lectures by several other notable calligraphic and typographic persons from around the country and the production of a beautiful hardcover catalog. The planning included arranging multiple parties, coordination with book arts organizations and design schools around the city and the state, and targeted fundraising with major corporations and city organizations. When the actual events happened I think I can rightly say that it was a high point in the lives of all who attended. My memories of that period are covered in gold dust and joy and absolute disbelief that we pulled it off and that it was such a success. Years later Susie and I would occasionally remember it was something I can only call astounded astonishment. She would say that was truly a great thing that we accomplished and she was right, it was a great thing and she and I and many of you did it together. The fourth experience is more private. I want to say something about how strongly Susie felt about Edward Johnston and the movement he started and what an effect it had on all of us. It was Susie and Ward who opened my mind to the depth of that great man and his work and his subsequent influence. It was Susie who taught me to appreciate the holdings of the Harrison has of items written in Edward Johnston's own hand, these items that have both a mystical and a tangible significance to many of us. We cannot help but feel gratitude for our heritage when we look at and hold these works. It was Susie who got me to read Priscilla's biography and to study his book writing and illuminating and lettering. A few days after Susie died, Ewan Clayton was at Ditchling in England and he emailed to me a photo of Edward Johnston's gravestone. And as I studied it, I whispered, Dear Susie, you will get to meet Eddie before I do, so please give him my regards. The final experience happened during the 2012 calligraphy exhibition. Christine Colossordo had a piece in the show that was written in very bold and confident Roman letter forms and it said, Calligraphy is at the center of everything. This piece had the virtues of simplicity and truth, both in execution and in meaning. And I was struck by it and I called Susie over and said to her, that's it, that's it, that's the crux of everything we're about. That's why we're here. We are so lucky that we have a calling for this craft. Calligraphy is at the center of everything. And Susie looked a little bit disturbed at my emotional outburst and she said in her Susie way, I think perhaps that statement gives calligraphy an exaggerated sense of importance. And I said, it doesn't mean the center of everything for everyone. It means the center of everything for us, for those of us who are drawn to the pen, who are drawn to the alphabet, who are drawn to words, who are drawn to the library, who are drawn to other like-minded people, who are drawn to our lineage and our history. Calligraphy is at the center of our world and in our world calligraphy is synonymous with love. And Susie, with her characteristic humility and kindness, simply smiled at me and gave me a big kiss right on the lips. Hi everyone, can you hear me okay? I'm John Prestiani. Wow, what to say? I didn't prepare notes for this. I've spoken about Susie before. I spoke about her at the 2008 party for Susie. I think I read from my notes. I've written about Susie more than once. Today I just kind of like to talk a little bit about my friendship with her. She was probably my best friend for several decades. Daily communication. In the last ten years when her health started to go, things changed after she retired especially. But we pretty much texted every day. She finally started calling me her texting buddy. I would check in with her a lot because I was worried. And if I didn't hear from her I would worry some more. Eventually she'd come back. So she was kind of everything for me for a long, long time. I would say I owe Susie so much. I used to be a calligrapher. I retired from calligraphy about 20 years ago. But prior to that time calligraphy kind of was something that occupied central importance in my life. And a lot of what I accomplished as a calligrapher and as perhaps somewhat a writer about calligraphy, I really owe to Susie Taylor. Susie, if she liked you, there was an if there, if she thought you were worthy of her attention, and even if she might not have thought that as several people here today have pointed out, she was uniformly, regularly, consistently generous to anyone who expressed an interest in calligraphy, even if it was the style of calligraphy that she didn't particularly like. She didn't like everything. Generosity. For years, every time I met Susie, Susie would hand me an envelope. It would be, not a small one, you know, like a 11 by 9 envelope. And in that envelope would be photocopies of articles that Susie had found about calligraphy and many other things that she thought I should read. And she'd photocopy it and give it to me. And often I would, there were things like book reviews or articles from journals, you know, all kinds of stuff. When the internet, you know, came to us, she would download things from the web and give them to me. And, you know, I have several thick file folders. They are all labeled Susie's photocopies. She, everything that everyone has said about the way Susie would treat people who came here was absolutely true. She would drop everything and bring out what she had. She knew where everything was. She knew where every book was. If something got misplaced or mislaid, she would be relentless until she found it. She collected people's work. She made it her business to collect people's work, to seek them out and, you know, ask them, do you have things you can sell us? She would always accept gifts. It's just incredible to me what she actually got and the momentum that she created. So she was very purposeful in what she was doing. I think in the end, I don't want to talk too long here because people have really said a lot about her and it's all true. I have memories of things with Susie that I'll never forget. I first met her in 1976, I believe. I had been working as a student worker in the County of Los Angeles Graphic Arts Unit where they employed such things as calligraphers. I was a student worker, worked there for three years. So when I first met Susie on a trip up here, I was astonished by her work that I saw, was mostly in the form of little labels on cases and book spines and little signs everywhere. Some of them are still around, particularly the ones that say gloves only, please only pencils only, all Susie. She was very gracious to me and the friends that I was with, that was back in the 70s. In the 80s, we went to RIT to take the master class in calligraphy with Professor Hermann Zopp. That was a big deal. It would be a big deal for anyone to do that. At that time, it was sort of just seemed like a dream and it was that for her too. She really looked up to him. She modeled a lot of her calligraphy directly on his work. She read his books, she collected them. She was, I won't say a groupie, but a fan, definitely a fan. Professor Zopp responded to that. He recognized her. He recognized the authenticity of her interest and the depth of her knowledge and the significance of what the San Francisco Public Library has in the Harrison Collection as a focal point for the book arts and for calligraphy in particular, in the world. She cultivated that friendship, that relationship. She would say, Herman's birthday is next week. Come over and sign the card that I am going to fax him. This went on for years. We lost him, unfortunately, in 2015. His wife, Gudrun Zopp, by the way, is still alive, just celebrated her 100th birthday. One thing, knowing her and hanging out with her socially and in pursuit of this whole calligraphic odyssey, I remember Rochester in the summer of 1982 with Susie. A lot of other people were there too. Julian Waters, Jerry Kelly, John Stevens, Georgia Dever, all these names. We're all together in the heat of Rochester drinking the lovely Genesee beer, going to the rodeo that Professor Zopp insisted that we go to. Rochester Institute of Technology is a big campus and it gets very cold in Rochester in the winter. So they have all these tunnels that run under the ground that you can go from building to building in the winter when snow, Canada, other schools. We'd hang out down there and drink beer. This was after class. We would do things like check out books from the main library, not the fabulous Kerry Library, which is a special collection like this, but the main library that the undergrad students used. Even that library had books on typography and calligraphy, and we'd check them out, we'd take them down to the tunnels, and we'd turn the pages and laugh. I remember there was an essay about William Dwiggins that we just could not stop laughing about, things like that. We did the same thing. We traveled to Europe several times. We visited the Zoffs. I'll never forget. Frankfurt in a hotel room with Susie wrapping presents for the Zoffs. And we had no materials. We basically had to go to a dollar store in Frankfurt and buy things like scotch tape and wrapping paper, and we took them back to the hotel and dutifully cut them up with little nail scissors and tape and just hilarious. And you had to be there. Okay, so Susie, I miss her. I miss her a lot. Even in the end when we knew the direction things were going, she was still there. And I'll never forget the last time I met her at her apartment on 19th Avenue, and she had everything all laid out on the table. I brought lunch. The table was already covered with all these books, which we had to look at first. Magazines, letters, everything that Susie always gathered around her to engage with her favorite topic, which was calligraphy and book arts. And she had all these things out, and she wanted to show them to me. And so we sat there. And she was very ill. She was very weak. It was very poignant, but she held on. And we looked through every book, every article. She told me what she thought. I told her what I thought. And in the end, I thought this is, she does not stop. She does not stop. Thank you very much. Hi, everybody. I'm Carl Roars. First off, Andrew told me that we were going to go in alphabetical order and that I would be last. So I promised her I'd make sure to come up with something that would make people glad it's over. And Georgiana, I put a quote aside for you the other day. And because Arthur C. Clarke and I have a similar birthday, I think I can say this in my voice instead of his, which is, I don't believe in astrology. I'm a Sagittarius and we're very skeptical. So my first sentence that's written down right here, I can show it to you, is exactly the same sentence that's on the biography on the wall back in the corner, which I just wrote. I just want to say that Susie was the force to be reckoned with in FOC, in lettering matters here at the library, in lettering matters in the world, and really in lettering matters throughout history. She knew her stuff. She shared it with anyone who expressed an interest way past, I'm sure, whatever they may have expected. But she was so modest about these things. She was finally awarded honorary member status at the big party Georgiana organized for her in 2008 at Fort Mason. Meredith told me, though, that the council had wanted to make her an honorary member years before. In the previous century, as a matter of fact, but Susie refused. And what a calligrapher. You'll just have to look around. I thought we'd be surrounded by it here, but it's in the back. You will love to see what's back there. I have the most exquisite Susie piece on my wall and it really classes up the atmosphere at my house, which really isn't that hard to do. But she was so modest in these matters, too. She sent it to me unsigned because it was ostensibly from the guild, not her. When I asked her to sign it for me, she did reluctantly in the quietest, most possible way. I mean, just a tiny ST. There was kind of a calligraphy disaster for all of us in 1985. Susie was selected for the faculty of the calligraphy conference in Los Angeles, but her class didn't fill and was canceled. I never asked her about this, or even talked to anybody else about it, but the fact remains from that point forward, the opportunities to have her as a teacher were very, very few and far between. I always wondered how much impact that cancellation had to do with her confidence as a teacher, and I am glad to blame that on those Southern California bastards. Luckily, you could get Susie lessons, one-on-one Susie lessons from her right here at the library. Her appetite for knowledge was voracious. She was no nonsense about things, but she was incredibly playful, too. Yeah, she was large. She contained multitudes. I knew her well enough to know that I would never have claimed that I knew her, but still she surprised me continually. That being said, I'm so proud to be able to say that I knew Susie. She was so supportive of so many people in so many ways, and when I got some of it, I glowed. When Christine Colassardo volunteered to write a story about me for Letter Arts Review in 2006, she asked me who I should talk to, and Susie was my immediate reply. But Christine had used her as a source for a story on Georgia Deaver and didn't want it to be seen as her hitting the same spots in her writing. I knew she had a point, and I didn't say anything. And the story was great for me. Don't get me wrong, but I was crushed not to get Susie's official view in there. She had a way of letting you know she understood what you were up to. She got me, and I was far from the only one. It was her idea that I should be editor of Alphabet again, and I'll confess that she was target numero uno for me, for the journals. I'm sorry, folks, none of your opinions matter to me as much as hers. Here it is more than a year later, and it's still an ongoing adjustment for me and for lots and lots of people. Meredith wrote me as we were putting together her issue a year ago saying, even though we never would have been prepared, we just weren't prepared. I found that looking through the emails the other day, and there was one I wrote to Judy that simply said that nobody was more important to me in the world of calligraphy than Susie. And just about everybody matters to me, calligraphy slut that I am, but Susie had my heart. In her issue last year, I stated that she was the most important person in Bay Area lettering history ever, and of course she was. She still holds the title. I'm sorry, Carl had it a little bit wrong because I'm the last speaker. My name is Emily... That's true. My name is Emily Gatfield and I'm Susie Taylor's daughter. I thought since we've had a number of people speak about her work and her calligraphy, I tell you a little bit about who she was beyond that. Once my mother discovered calligraphy, that was her passion. That was the focus of her life and her work, and she had a little bit of a life before that as well. I'm not going to talk at too great length. I was trying to think of what sorts of things to tell people about. My mother was a very private person, and I don't want to tell stories out of school. One of the things that occurred to me though is that she was full of contradictions, that she was so many different things. We've all heard a lot of people say that she had so many different facets to her. I thought about when she was very young, people know that my mother was afraid of many things, and yet she did a lot of really remarkable things. When I was three years old, she invited my father's absence from our life, which at that time in the 1960s, middle-class women didn't do. At that time in the 1960s, my mother really didn't have marketable skills to support herself. That took a huge amount of courage on her part to take that step and make that leap. She did it well. It was the right decision for her despite her fears. Later on, when her friends started to catch up with her confidence and her courage to leave their husbands, her friends would come to her for help. At that time, it was very difficult for a woman to establish credit in her own name. We were poor, but my mother had a little bit of money set aside, and she would use that to secure loans for her female friends. She would go into the bank with them. I don't even know how they found out you could do this. They would go into the bank and sit down with the manager and put my mother's little stash of money into an account so that this other woman would be able to have a bank loan to use to establish credit. It's something that was kind of extraordinary. I remember sitting in the banks with her when she would do that and thinking it was kind of magic. She was very intent on a citizen's responsibility to vote every time, to be aware of what was happening. She stopped getting involved. I do remember walking precincts with her as a child, but she stopped getting involved directly in electoral campaigns when she found calligraphy because now she had her passion. My mother was very shy. It took a lot for her to gather up the courage to walk up and speak to people. And yet, as some of you know, she got her start in calligraphy by knocking on the door of Byron McDonald and when he didn't answer, leaving a note saying, I've decided I'm going to become a graphic designer, I'm going to become a calligrapher, and you should be the one to teach me. So she is very... She had many different pieces to her. As everybody has said, she was absolutely uncompromising, particularly about calligraphy. This was something she had too much respect for to allow anything except the very best. And she could be a little bit critical in looking at other people's work. And what I've heard from everybody who's talked to me about it is how critical she was and how meaningful it was later on when mom commissioned a piece from them. That's when I knew I really had gotten good. She wouldn't have spent that time on you if she didn't think that you could get that really good. One of the things that I'm truly touched by today is how many people I see who really were our calligraphic family, my family, because I grew up with you. I see Ellie Wong in the back, Don Moy, who was our partner in so many different adventures. He and my mother were best friends and playmates together, and he was so generous to allow me to come along in many of those. My mother created long-time, lifetime friendships. Georgia Dever, of course, who's my honorary auntie, and my honorary auntie and friend Linnea. All of these people have been so close. I also see somebody, I'm going to tell one last story about my mother, and then I will let you all go. When Michael Neugebauer first came to this country to teach a workshop, my mother took that workshop along with our Georgia peach, Georgia Dever, and Toby Salk, and Barbara, were you in that class as well? I'm sorry, but my mother and Georgia and Toby were travel makers, and they had a lot of fun. There was a woman in the class who would unconsciously say, oh, shoot, whenever she made a mistake, and Georgia brought in a cap pistol, and sure enough, the next time she said, shoot, shoot, shoot, Georgia did. My mother really was an extraordinary woman. She did so many extraordinary things, and I look back. Particularly, I was thinking recently about the founding of the Friends of Calligraphy, and the time spent with Georgiana and Don and Thomas. Remember Nick Gregorick? Sure. Yeah, and Ellie, I think weren't you one of the originals as well? And it was such an exciting time, because who knew that you just did it? If you wanted to create something that hadn't existed before, like a guild for calligraphers in the Bay Area, you just did it, and they did, and that was a really amazing accomplishment. I feel honored to have had the opportunity to watch all of you do the wonderful things that you've done, and I also feel honored to be able to say I'm Susie Taylor's daughter. Thank you. Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. It's not over. If you would like to repair to the south salon, as we are calling it, there's a small exhibition of Susie's work that she did for the library, and we have it out there for about the next couple of weeks, and we also have some refreshments. I have a brief request. Oh, sure. I am in a sort of a pickle. I cannot find my iPhone. I believe it is in my house, so I have a request here for everybody. This evening at seven o'clock, please phone this telephone number. I hope you're writing this down. 415-361-7805. Got that? Did you say it again? 415-3, I have to look. 361-7805. I don't expect a lengthy conversation, but if it rings, I will know where it is. Thank you very much. Thanks, everybody. Thank you to the speakers. Thank you to everybody for coming, and did you want to say something? Ward has one last thing to say. One last thing I'd like to say, those Sonic and Nibs that Judy Dietrich talked about, she got them from Byron McDonald, who got them from Hermann Zapf. They were pre-World War II Sonic and Nibs, the like of which have never been made again.