JCBA's Annual Community Day of the Dead Ofrenda
Now through November 11
JCBA Lobby
It's the time of year in many traditions when we most remember our beloved dead, and for the past dozen or so years, JCBA has been here to help you do so in a celebratory spirit through our annual Community Day of the Dead ofrenda. If you are local and if you want to honor a loved one's memory with us, please feel free to bring something to display on it, in community with the other items on the ofrenda. We'll have pictures of our founders, Arthur and Mata Jaffe, and paper marigolds and traditional artenanías mexicanas... you bring the rest. But please no food, no plants.
Our ofrenda is in the lobby of the Jaffe Center for Book Arts; you may come visit it even if you're not adding something to it. Our ofrenda is illuminated and visible even when the center is closed, and you are welcome to come look at it through our lobby doors even during the late-night hours when the Wimberly Library is open. We’ll keep the ofrenda on display through St. Martin's Day (November 11), and you’re welcome to come collect the ofrenda items that you've brought after that, should you wish.
Keep in mind Dia de Los Muertos is not Halloween. Halloween ushers in these annual Days of the Dead, of course, but Dia de Los Muertos is more about love and remembrance… and festivity, for sure! It’s a beautiful tradition from Mexico for keeping the channels open, and that is a wonderful thing.
LOVE JCBA PROGRAMS?
JCBA programs are all brought to you by you. Please support us if you can with a tax-deductible gift. At our donation portal, you may make a gift to the Jaffe Support Fund, which helps us acquire new artists' books and prints for the Jaffe Collection, or the Jaffe Center for Book Arts Education Fund, which supports all of our educational programs. Thank you!
REAL MAIL FRIDAYS - Is on Thursday this Week!
This Thursday, October 10th
2 to 5 PM Eastern
From Wherever You Are,
via Zoom
ZOOM LINK & PASSWORD
Here is the link and password for our virtual Real Mail Fridays letter writing socials:
https://fau-edu.zoom.us/j/82597798220?pwd=cmVUbWYyQjJGUVVialJHWjhFdTZVdz09
(And in case you need it, the Meeting ID is 825 9779 8220 and the passcode is Kh51f6.)
Dear Friends,
We've built such a wonderful global community since we began beaming Real Mail Fridays out to the world through our weekly online JCBA Zoom socials, and it is truly humbling and heartwarming to see friends join us each week and new folks, too, from all corners of this vast planet. In that spirit, we have no plans to end our weekly Zoom version of Real Mali Fridays.
We're also making plans to resume our in-person version of Real Mail Fridays, which is, after all, what inspired the global version. We've been awarded a grant to help us update the technical equipment in the Jaffe Book Arts Gallery, and when these updates are complete, we will be able to host in-person Real Mail Fridays events that can connect, too, with our Real Mail pals around the world. We'll keep you posted as we make progress with equipment upgrades and installation, but we hope to have in-person Real Mail Fridays up and running again each First Friday of the month by the end of 2023.
Meanwhile, please do join us online at JCBA Zoom each Friday from 2 to 5 Eastern. What to expect? Three hours of a very Jaffe soundtrack. Friendly faces from across the US and Canada and very often other parts of the globe, too. Time for yourself, in the company of other like-minded folks, to get things done. We do bill Real Mail Fridays as a letter writing social, but the folks who join us each week do all kinds of interesting things during the social: some do write letters, but others are crocheting, some are binding books, some are figuring out paper engineering problems. Some are baking and you can almost smell the cookies as they come out of the oven. We've watched Real Mail friends as they shovel snow in Anchorage and as they garden in the Hudson Valley. We've seen lots of cats, many dogs, and a moose. People join in from home and from work. They come and go as they please over the course of the three-hour social, and you may do the same. We've become a global family that cares for each other and looks out for each other in good times and bad. Some folks tell us it's the best part of their week. It is a supremely heartwarming time.
We'll announce specially themed Real Mail Fridays events as they come, but count on some sort of Real Mail Fridays gathering each Friday afternoon from 2 to 5 Eastern. We'll announce cancelations (should they be necessary due to other programs or other situations) here on the webpage and on our social media pages.
We welcome you!
Sincerely yours,
the Staff of Jaffe Center for Book Arts
at Florida Atlantic University Libraries
LOVE JCBA PROGRAMS?
JCBA programs are all brought to you by you. Please support us if you can with a tax-deductible gift. At our donation portal, you may make a gift to the Jaffe Support Fund, which helps us acquire new artists' books and prints for the Jaffe Collection, or the Jaffe Center for Book Arts Education Fund, which supports all of our educational programs. Thank you!
