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                                    articles%u2014longhand, with a mechanical pencil on cotton typing paper%u2014and designed a new cover. John typed my articles on his first computer, had the newsletter printed, affixed mailing labels, and delivered them to the post office. He also wrote another book, Healthy House Building, which was a how-to manual for building a healthy house, and we founded our own publishing company so we could release it ourselves. For this venture, I did some of the proofreading, and designed the page layouts and cover. As time went by, we received many phone calls from people with MCS, and I spent a lot of time dispensing advice and comforting them. I also took orders for John%u2019s books, and set up appointments for his consulting work. In between, I wrote a book called The Healthy Household, which dealt with decorating a healthy house, using less-toxic cleaning products, and how to live a healthy lifestyle. Once we had it printed, we mailed out a few dozen review copies. I was most pleased when a review in Library Journal said, %u201cExtremely thorough and readable, this volume belongs in all public library collections.%u201d Together, John and I wrote yet another book, a small one, which contained the most common questions we had received over the years%u2014and the answers. As I continued working on my pencil drawings, we decided to reproduce one of my older pen-and-ink drawings in a limited edition. We thought we could give a print as a thank you to the people who were consulting with John on their own healthy-house projects. It featured a hefty, older woman sitting on the front porch of her rural, rundown, dilapidated home, surrounded by a rotating fan, house plants, dogs, and cat, on a hot summer day. Done in fine, detailed line work, it was titled, Be It Ever So Humble%u2026 After seeing how nice it looked, I decided I%u2019d like to start working in pen-and-ink again, so John made me a %u201creading box%u201d which worked somewhat like a fume hood in a laboratory. Built of hardwood, with a glass top, it had a cotton curtain across the opening in the front. It also had a fan and that pulled air past the curtain, across whatever I was working on, and then pushed that air through an activated-charcoal filter before blowing it back into the room.At one of many conferences John was invited to present at, he met a fellow by the name of Dave, who was a senior editor for Mother Earth News. Over lunch, they spoke about a possible article, which John subsequently wrote, and they published. As a thank you, he mailed Dave a copy of Be It Ever So Humble%u2026Not long after that, Mother was sold to a New York outfit, and all the editorial staff was fired. But they remained united and undaunted, and founded a new magazine called BackHome%u2014which was to be a quarterly. As they were working on their very first issue, trying to decide on a cover, Dave showed his colleagues my print%u2014and they told him to contact John to see if I%u2019d be interested in creating their new magazine%u2019s cover. I was, and I did, by cropping Be It Ever So Orange Stripes. Cotton yarn weaving. 1976Cotton yarn weavings. 1976
                                
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