Soil Chart

Soil Chart
Stacey Greenberg

Since issue #3 is so late, I thought I’d pop in and explain a bit. First off, Hi! Thanks for buying/reading my zine. I have a lot of fun putting it together and am amazed at how many I end up selling/trading. I hope this zine sticks around for awhile and continues to grow as I do. I welcome submissions and love hearing from my readers both by email and snail mail.

Ok, the lateness. In my defense, the second issue was actually kind of early making the lateness of #3 seem much worse than it actually is. Ha. I had visions of doing a grand Mother’s Day issue, then those thoughts turned to possibly celebrating Father’s Day, but now I’m seeing the theme, if there is one, as “A Long Summer.”

So what have I been doing, other than trying to get this puppy out on time...Well, I had a massive undertaking called the Mamaphiles. It is a compilation zine with contributions from nearly every mama zinester I know, including the well known Ariel Gore, Ayun Halliday, and Bee Lavender. It was an idea that I had that, thanks to the great women at Mamaphonic.com, actually came to fruition. It was quite a task just tracking all the mamas down, let alone formatting all of the submissions, sending drafts out for editing, riding out a few minor dramas, etc. The Mamaphiles’ theme is “birth” and it will be available at several online distros in the very near future. So, yeah, that was big.

I also spent some time contributing to other zines and working on getting my writing published elsewhere. You can now (hopefully) see my work in recent/future issues of these fabulous zines: “Mama Sez No War,” “The Edgy-catin’ Mama,” “The Deep South Mouth,” “Are We There Yet,” “Lone Star Ma,” and “Wrinkle.” I also had a piece published in a glossy new magazine called “Pandora’s Box.” And I have a few things online at Philosophicalmom.com and Imperfectparent.com. Not bad, huh? I have recycled a few of those endeavors here to give you a late, but super fat, issue #3.

Outside of my writing life, I celebrated my fourth wedding anniversary, my son’s first birthday, my thirty-first birthday, my second Mother’s Day, and a new pregnancy. Unfortunately, I had a miscarriage recently, and I am still trying to heal/adjust. That’s where “Fertile Ground” comes in. I can’t think of a better way to start healing than to write about what happened and share it with others. See “Unbirth” for a good cry. In this issue you will also find some great essays and poems, the story of my birth (written by my mom on my 30th birthday), and an interview by Christoph Meyer (the only daddy zinester I know). You may notice more and more ads in Fertile Ground, but I assure you that all the ad space is provided for free and all of the businesses advertised here are well worth supporting!

Thanks for being patient and I hope that #3 was worth the wait.