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Abarca de la Fuente, Soledad. Valérie kettle-stitching signatures together, 2005, Toronto.

Álvarez, Moisés. Soledad Abarca: Boxes were made for some of the books, 2005, Toronto.

Kaelin, E. F. In the Academy, Between Two Cultures
The Memoirs of E. F. Kaelin.
Toronto: Polyglot Press and Promotions, 2006.

Editor and Visual Text: Valérie C. Kaelin

Copy-Editor, Typographical Design: Mark Goldstein

Trimmed by: Coach House Press

Hand-bound by: Valérie C. Kaelin, Soledad Abarca de La Fuente, and Natalie Wei, with assistance from Alison Chan.

US/ International launch: December 2006.

Canadian launch: April 29, 2007.

In the Academy, Between Two Cultures, a private edition published by Polyglot Press and Promotions in 2006 is Eugene F. Kaelin’s last book. It owes its existence to serendipitous events: the right persons in the right place at the right time. Once my father had granted my wish of memoirs dedicated to a daughter just as Benjamin Franklin had for his son, it begged to become a physical book.

Funds from a living inheritance were invested in the artists who assisted me: first, Mark Goldstein of Beautiful Outlaw Press, a colleague at Muse Cooperative at the time, for book editing and typographical design. Alicia K. Remigio, in the interim, was charged with making its charming map illustrations, one in which “Bordeaux” is without its final “x”. While Natalie Wei and I had both learned book-making from Michael Torosian of Lumière Press, Natalie had interned with him for a full year. We could see that the workflow was still too linear and so I advertised for a third by posting fliers at The School of Image Arts, which had just launched its MFA in Photographic Preservation. Soledad Abarca de la Fuente, in her first year of that programme, sent me, as proof of her competence, a Renaissance Book and a drawing by Leonardo DaVinci which she had both restored for the Huntington Museum.

That seemed pretty good to me! She went on to become Curator of Oral Culture at La Biblioteca Nacional de Chile, in Santiago. Later, Alison Chan, a former G. Raymond Chang School of Continuing Education student from one of my scenography classes, who had also completed a Costume Studies Diploma from Dalhousie University, helped us meet our deadline.

I can only thank the post-9/11 customs officials for accepting the sincerity of the trip across the 49th parallel with two cases of books for my father to sign. The colophons had already been signed by the artisans. Included here are scans of the second of a run of fifty-five, with an additional five, outside the run.

List of Recipients, Numbered

Colleagues of Valérie C. Kaelin: Under verification.

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