I just realize that Vietnamese Typography went live today eight years ago. Time had flown by quick.

Even though the project was my final thesis for my MA in graphic design, I have never stopped working on it. A website is never finished. I still add recommendations for new typefaces with Vietnamese support. I still create new samples, which no one else cared but me. They have become my favorite design exercise. In addition, coming up for the content for these samples has been my way of learning the Vietnamese language through music and poetry.

I also update the client list. It has been such a great pleasure collaborating and getting to know designers all over the world. Type design is such a global community.

I also would like to thank those who had support this project. I appreciate your generosity.

Lastly, thank you for reading Vietnamese Typography.

I was
You were
He, she, it was

Wait a minute

Why shouldn’t you
also be followed by was?

If I were you
I’d say “was”

But I wasn’t you
I never was
nor will I ever be

In class we chuckled
when we recited “He, she-it is”

and the masculine came first
except when going through a door

Then the word she
went through a door

and into a new world

You wasn’t there

You were “he”
and it kept being “it”

but don’t blame “it”

“It” doesn’t even know it’s there

Ron Padgett

Skiing season is coming soon. It’s time to prepare all the equipment. Tighten up all screws. Grease ski bindings. Install snowboard bindings. Check all boots to make sure they fit and are secured in bindings. Scrape off excessive wax.

I’ll be off work early mid December and return early mid January. We’ll head to Stowe in the third week of December. I can’t wait to get back to skiing and snowboarding. I hope I will be able to get some of the snowboarding techniques down. I have been watching them all year long.

It’s going to be a great winter.

I love Padgett’s poems in which connected the dots. For instance, he gets annoyed that the letter u in four is dropped in forty. He also points out the eccentricity in subject-verb agreement. It’s a fun, witty read.

The spelling of 40. We have four and fourteen, and then, for no reason I know of, the u is dropped and we’re left with forty, not to mention the schizophrenic forty-four. Most annoying, as Sei Shōnagon would say.

Ron Padgett

I purchased a license of Lang Gothic to accommodate AT Lang, designed by Stephen Nixon. I know Stephen will support Vietnamese and will turn it into a large family. I was hoping that Stephen would expand AT Lang to include reading text, but it looks like that will be on Lang Gothic. It is only $35. Definitely worth spending.

A concise book providing tips for landing a job. It’s a good beginner guide. It’s a quick flip-through book, which is what the author intended. I wish Foss delves deeper into specific situations. Maybe I am just too old to deal with office politics and co-worker conflicts.

for my husband, twenty-one years my senior

There are so many times
I could have killed you.

After twenty-eight years of marriage—
the only contact sport I’ve ever stuck wit—

I found myself

crying this morning,
after a trip outside,
singing Happy Birthday

three times through,

just to be sure,

scrubbing despite
the sting of my split skin

as I’ve loved you through
even the rub
of the raw years.

I held my hands steady
in the water’s reassuring scald,

trying and trying
to save you.

Francesca Bell

I voted yesterday. I didn’t even know any of the candidates. I just filled in the names with a D next to them. If there were no D next to their names, I relied on the sample ballot handed out by the Democrats. I don’t care for the Democrats. I just can’t stand the Republicans. I was also glad that the Democrat incumbent beat the Vietnamese-American MAGA magnet in District 9. He was such a joke. Flipping the House of Delegates is a huge blow to Youngkin’s right-wing agenda and his limits on access to abortion.

I required, finally, a boy with twelve years
of piano lessons singing in his hands,
and the girlfriend before me who taught him
to play scales up and down her body.
He reached casually between my legs,
without needing to look,

to place one practiced finger on my clitoris
and press as if freeing a clear note from his piano.
My body did the rest, bucking against him,
then arching with an involuntary, jubilant moan.
I lay after, amazed and chagrined to think of pleasure,
a spring coiled all that time in my body.

Francesca Bell