America “Un-tied”

One/Typesetting in Seattle

During the late 1970s, I worked as a typesetter at Art Type, a small graphic art agency in Pioneer Square, downtown Seattle. We were a small outfit, five women employees and two women owners, who offered a progressive workplace.

My new husband and I had been English majors, and we were a couple of years out of college. We’d lived in Greensboro, North Carolina for our first year of marriage, and I’d learned to typeset there, realizing that my B.A. in English didn’t translate into a job. Years later, after completing graduate degrees, I’d become an English professor, but, at this point, I had little idea of where my life was headed.

After Greensboro, on a whim, my husband and I decided to try living in Seattle, where we thought life might prove more interesting. We were Boomers, enjoying a youthful optimism—fortunate to be in our 20s at a time when the nation, recovering from Watergate, seemed full of promise, light, and disco.

I identified as a feminist and retained my maiden name after marriage; I’d participated in civil rights marches, anti-war protests, and the burgeoning environmental and feminist movements of the early 1970s in New York City. Although there was still much work to do, I felt convinced that Black Power, flower power, the environmental and feminist movements had materialized enough of the nation’s dreams so that social progress seemed inevitable.

Soon after arriving in Seattle, I landed my typesetting position. And in that first week of employment, the agency received a large job that was to define my short employment before graduate school—the typesetting of the nation’s Congressional Records, straight from Washington, D.C.