{"id":903,"date":"2013-12-26T14:19:57","date_gmt":"2013-12-26T22:19:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lummoxpress.com\/lc\/?page_id=903"},"modified":"2020-12-01T20:10:21","modified_gmt":"2020-12-02T04:10:21","slug":"about-the-head-lummox","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.lummoxpress.com\/lc\/about-the-head-lummox\/","title":{"rendered":"ABOUT THE HEAD LUMMOX"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_4765\" style=\"width: 297px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4765\" class=\"wp-image-4765 \" src=\"https:\/\/www.lummoxpress.com\/lc\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/2012_Raindog_Adjusted.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"287\" height=\"216\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.lummoxpress.com\/lc\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/2012_Raindog_Adjusted-200x150.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.lummoxpress.com\/lc\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/2012_Raindog_Adjusted-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.lummoxpress.com\/lc\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/2012_Raindog_Adjusted.jpg 318w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 287px) 100vw, 287px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-4765\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Raindog (Steve Armstrong)<\/p><\/div>\n<h4>In Feb. 2021 I will turn seventy. My journey began in Indiana. My parents and I came to Cali soon after. I had a very average life as a kid but I began to sense that something was missing, or at least that I was missing something, but it was years before I figured out it was. In my early teens I saw a glimmering of what that \u2018missing thing\u2019 was. I always seemed to be out of step with everyone else. It wasn\u2019t until my junior year in high school that I realized that I was an oddball, an outsider always vying to see what was happening behind the glass, always trying to fit in, or find a niche that could fit more than one. Eventually I gave up and settled into my life as a \u201cone\u201d.<\/h4>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div class=\"video-shortcode\"><iframe title=\"R.D. Armstrong: &amp;quot;When I close my eyes it&#039;s always raining&amp;quot;\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/17334921?dnt=1&amp;app_id=122963\" width=\"1200\" height=\"675\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>But things change. Even death isn\u2019t static. The cosmos is in constant flux all around us. One day I woke up and wanted something else besides my job as a handyman\u2026I turned to music for a while, but didn\u2019t have the chops to be anything more than a curious sideshow (for which there wasn\u2019t much of a market at the time). It was then that I started writing poetry again after a 10 year hiatus (long story). That was almost 28 years ago\u2026<\/p>\n<h4 style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><span style=\"color: #0263d3;\">It\u2019s been\u00a025 years since I started making books of one sort or another. It has been a long, strange trip. Sometimes, I think I&#8217;m the great oz, the man behind the curtain, the stranger in a strange land, the grand poobah, the head lummox. In short, I am RD Armstrong: the man who is Lummox Productions. Together with the intrepid Yazoota, I&#8217;ve plumbed the depths of the shallow end of the literary pool in an area known as the independent small and underground press.<\/span><\/strong><\/h4>\n<p>Yazoota worked with me from 1997 until 2020. He started out doing layouts for the old Lummox Journal\u2026a precursor to the LUMMOX Poetry Anthology. He had spent 25 years\u00a0 working for Gats and .44&#8217;s as the Art Director! That&#8217;s where he made his bones. I was fortunate enough to work with him for so many years; together we strove to produce a striking product that satisfied authors as well as readers.<\/p>\n<p>Here at Lummox, the emphasis has always been on \u201cgame\u2019 not \u201cfame\u201d\u2026<em>the Lummox Motto<\/em> is <strong>Ingenium Non Celibritas<\/strong> (literally Game Not Fame). I published some old poets and some new voices, new writers who hadn\u2019t had a chance to strut their stuff in book form yet, or writers who for whatever reason haven\u2019t yet gotten a full collection of their work published. But the challenges of working with poets has worn me down; these are the same challenges that forged my character over the past 25 years. We have a saying: \u201cThe best steel goes through the fire.\u201d Apparently, my steel needs a rest.<\/p>\n<p>Don&#8217;t get me wrong, I am proud of my work and very glad to have met other weirdos from many walks of life (poets, writers, artists, musicians). Some I\u2019ve had the pleasure of getting to know on this strange, ever-evolving journey. I have tried to run Lummox the way I ran my handyman gig (I did that for almost 30 years without too many complaints). However I came to realize that a mere handshake wasn\u2019t enough of a contract in a world gone crazy; that greed was as American as Apple Pie and that seemingly everybody is looking for a way to make \u201creal\u201d money without putting in \u201creal\u201d time.<\/p>\n<p>As I move past this 26th <em>non-<\/em>year (full of schism and deceit, hatred and xenophobia, fear, sickness and death&#8230;.oh so much death), where we act like we are right when we are wrong, and where the corona virus is everywhere and nowhere. Where going for coffee could be playing Covid roulette.\u00a0 I&#8217;ve become tired. I need a break from publishing books, from the hectic pace, from my impossible scheduling. In short, I need a break from doing the Lummox Press tango! I needed a new direction, one where I might be able to help other people with small gifts of \u201cseed\u201d money.<br \/>\nSo, I started the <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lummoxpress.com\/lc\/moon-in-the-bucket-fund\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>MOON IN THE BUCKET FUND.<\/strong><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p>A new chapter begins.<\/p>\n<p>RD Armstrong<br \/>\nLong Beach, CA<\/p>\n<p>See me talk about <a href=\"https:\/\/csulb-my.sharepoint.com\/personal\/rychard_cooper_csulb_edu\/Documents\/Forms\/All.aspx?slrid=eace419e-00a2-5000-04db-84741c09b386&amp;FolderCTID=0x012000AA27BE96E6AD7B46B82795EFD680FDE0&amp;id=%2Fpersonal%2Frychard_cooper_csulb_edu%2FDocuments%2FSteve%2FRain%20Dog%2Emp4&amp;parent=%2Fpersonal%2Frychard_cooper_csulb_edu%2FDocuments%2FSteve\"><strong>Lummox<\/strong><\/a> at a recent event held in Long Beach at Made by Millworks&#8230; courtesy of Steven Deeble.<\/p>\n<p>Read an<a href=\"https:\/\/indd.adobe.com\/view\/2dd81195-119c-4905-82d3-65e2072c3519\"><strong> interview<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0(go to page 62) conducted by Jonathon Murietta for Long Beach 908 (a feel good neighborhood magazine)&#8230;lord knows how I got this lucky, as &#8220;feel good&#8221; and Raindog are not usually associated with each other! And here&#8217;s a follow up <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=GzJG0syoaC8\">video<\/a><\/strong> that the folks from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lb908.com\">www.lb908.com<\/a> shot recently at Portfolio Coffeehouse of our encounter.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lummoxpress.com\/lc\/?s=steve+armstrong&amp;search_id=1&amp;post_type=product\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Click here to see my books<\/a><\/span><br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Feb. 2021 I will turn seventy. My journey began in Indiana. My parents and I came to Cali soon after. I had a very average life as a kid but I began to sense that something was missing, or at least that I was missing something, but it was years before I figured out it was. In my early teens I saw a glimmering of what that \u2018missing thing\u2019 was. I always seemed to be out of step with everyone else. It wasn\u2019t until my junior year in high school that I realized that I was an oddball, an outsider always vying to see what was happening behind the glass, always trying to fit in, or find a niche that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-903","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lummoxpress.com\/lc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lummoxpress.com\/lc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lummoxpress.com\/lc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lummoxpress.com\/lc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lummoxpress.com\/lc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=903"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.lummoxpress.com\/lc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/903\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5134,"href":"https:\/\/www.lummoxpress.com\/lc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/903\/revisions\/5134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lummoxpress.com\/lc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}