Some QWERTYFEST MKE 2024 updates:

* We launched a crowdsource fundraiser for this year's QWERTYFEST MKE. We have ambitious fundraising goals because there's big plans we want to make happen. We have some great perks (QF tickets, shirts, QWERTY Quarterly subscriptions, etc.) and every little bit helps and is appreciated: www.indiegogo.com/projects/qwertyfest-mke-2024/x/14628551

* We're thrilled to be working with DarkFusion Systems (pictured above) to create the DarkFusion Systems Gaming Lounge at QWERTYFEST MKE's opening night party on Friday, June 21. This local keyboard company is exactly the type of innovation we love to celebrate. QWERTY Quarterly co-editor Molly Snyder caught up with their team and wrote an article for our new QQ #4 ("Shift into Spring") which you can also read at OnMilwaukee here: DarkFusion Systems make keyboards of the future (onmilwaukee.com)

* Our opening night party also features our first Quick Brown Fox Typing Contest. Want to enter? Email us at: [email protected] 
​

By Tea Krulos
 
Professor Jason Puskar of University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee has been a great friend of QWERTYFEST MKE and QWERTY Quarterly. He gave a presentation at last year's QF on the history of the QWERTY keyboard and Christopher Latham Sholes, the Milwaukeean who configured it. In our last issue of QQ (#2), Puskar analyzed a letter typed by Sholes in 1869 on a typewriter prototype and he’s been helpful in brainstorming and making connections.

We’re thrilled to talk with Puskar about his new book, The Switch: An On and Off History of Digital Humans. This fascinating book delves into technology from telegraphs to touchscreens– technology we don’t really think much about, but that we use constantly in everyday life.
 
QQ: What started you on the path of researching switches and buttons?

I think it was probably having kids, and watching their strange attraction to switches and buttons. They would have murdered each other to be the first one to push the elevator button, but when you think about it, just pushing a button or flipping a switch is not really a very interesting activity. It’s undramatic, and the same thing happens every time. But it was clear that it meant something important to kids, and I wondered if it meant something important to adults too. And I think it does.

When a child pushes the button to summon an elevator, it’s true that not much happens right away, but they understand that after a few seconds they have somehow summoned a magic room that can transport them to completely different places. Now that’s something! And if you think about children and what they can do—well, they can’t do much. They can’t drive, cook, they’re uncoordinated, their drawings basically all suck (let’s be real here), and the few things they can do well, like destroy stuff, we forbid them to do. And anything they try to do takes huge effort too, so it’s all very hard work for them, with very low returns. Then suddenly here’s this magic room that they can summon instantly, with no effort, and transport the whole family elsewhere! What kid wouldn’t want to experience that little jolt of mastery and power? And in the long run, I eventually thought, what adult wouldn’t want that too.
 
QQ: The QWERTY layout happened so long ago-- why do we continue to use it in this digital age?

It’s like the four-foot tall front wheel on a tall Victorian bike, except that in this case we’re still using it. There are undoubtedly better ways, but even though we figured that out with bicycles we never quite did with keyboards. There’s always a temptation to talk about keyboards in utilitarian terms, as if we had no choice to use the most efficient option. But why should that be the case? We don’t do that with fashion, after all. Why do men wear neck ties? It makes no sense from any practical perspective, but we do it because our fathers did it, and their fathers did it, and their fathers did it. It became part of our culture, so we keep transmitting it forward. Or women’s high heels are another example. This is the worst possible shoe a person could imagine, but for some reason we decided we liked them, so we keep using them. Or wine glasses with tall stems. We’d be much better off without them! I think QWERTY is really part of this world of aesthetic expression, and not really a utilitarian machine destined to find its most efficient form. I love the irony that aesthetic forms are the most changeable of all—they never have to be any particular way—but like ties or wine glasses, somehow the non-utilitarian nature of the form is exactly what ensures that it stays.

QQ: Other than the QWERTY, what have you found to be some major milestone key, lever, switch developments?

It’s hard to identify a first switch, but the Morse telegraph key is close. But even before that there were two really crucial sources that are something like the great, great, great (and so on) grandparents of all of our switches: gun triggers and musical keys. Gun triggers—and crossbow triggers even before that—are also binary, in that they release stored energy in an all-or-nothing way, all at once, and with the touch of a finger. Early organ keys dating back to classical Greece are similar: they retrieve a pre-programmed musical note from the full array of possible pitches, instantly and with no groping for precisely the right pitch.

So guns and organs—these are the violent father and artsy mother of many of the switches we know today. And you can still see the family resemblance. In photography, we press a shutter button and “shoot” a photograph, or “trigger” a flash, and many early cameras were shaped like guns. The first wireless TV remote control was shaped like a pistol, and you had to aim and fire it at the set. The organ, on the other hand, influenced the keyboards we use today, and in fact most nineteenth-century writing machines before the Type-Writer had some sort of musical keyboard for an interface. As for other milestones, electrification allowed for huge leaps in automation and ease of operation. So did the virtual buttons that started appearing on Graphical User Interfaces in the 1980s and 1990s. But mostly what impresses me is the wide range of applications of switches throughout the twentieth century, especially.
 
QQ: We think of technology development as being good, but did you encounter cases where that might be questionable?

A lot of it is really regrettable, actually. This book is not a love story for the switch, I’m sorry to say, though switching does have many beneficial functions too. On balance, though, I think switches fuel fantasies of mastery and domination in the people who use them, because they start to take for granted the apparent extent of their own power. I also think they’re hyper-individualizing, in that they make it seem like action is less an interactive process involving lots of different people and things, and more like a single result coupled to a single person who compels it. So in that way, switches are ideological or political, because they shape our consciousness of how people are, and how they should be. They’re little engines of individualist doctrine, by helping us take our apparent but not actual independence for granted. After all, we’re dependent on switches to feel independent a lot of the time.

QQ: Can you tell us a takeaway you hope people get from the book?

Our technologies act back upon us, shaping our conceptions of ourselves so profoundly that they even help define what it means to be human. For example, I wear glasses, have a mouth full of dental fillings, and a knee held together by titanium screws. Without these mechanical aids, I couldn’t read, wouldn’t have many teeth for chewing, and would struggle to get around on my own two feet. But with them, I feel great, and as long as I forget that I’m dependent on these mechanical helpers I feel really independent, strong, and capable. My point is that switches do something similar for us, but even more invisibly than the prosthetics that make me into an able-bodied human. They’re like mirrors that reflect back an image of ourselves at twice our actual size. So even though we think switches just sit there passively, waiting for our touch, they’re always acting back upon us too.
 
The Switch: An On and Off History of Digital Humans was published in November 2023 by University of Minnesota Press, www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/the-switch

The article appeared in QWERTY Quarterly #3. Check out our QQ #4 release party: 

By Rita Mae Moore, illustration by Alicia Krupsky

There is a sharp stab to the underside of your foot as you step away from your bed. The fog of sleep is still heavy, but you wince involuntarily, a sharp hiss through gritted teeth as the pain forces you to stumble to the side. You look down, blinking to clear your tired vision, searching for whatever item attacked you.
 
It’s a typewriter key.
 
Strange, you think, bending to pick it up. As you’re turning it over in your hands, you wonder, do I even own a typewriter? The key is smooth from years of use on one side, with some still sharp prongs on the other. Lucky you, it was sharp side up. At least your foot isn’t bleeding.
 
 Letter “i,” you note, and slide the key into your pajama pants pocket, moving gingerly to the kitchen. The curiosity about the key fades as a need for coffee arises. You’re powerless against the siren call.
 
It’s a warm morning already, promising a steamy early autumn day. Soon, the scent of the roasted beans is curling into your nose as the machine sizzles. You reach for your favorite mug, the image worn down from years of washing it in the dishwasher even though it plainly says not to on the bottom. The handle fits into your hand like an old friend, glaze completely worn off where your thumb rests towards your face, you peer inside.
 
 As you remove it from the shelf, something clinks from inside the mug. Tilting it, you see another typewriter key. Face up, letter “h.”
 
 You’re almost positive you don’t have a typewriter, not even in the boxes in your garage that follow you every time you move and never get unpacked. Do you know anyone with a typewriter? You’re not sure. And it doesn’t matter anyways, because you haven’t had a visitor in weeks.
 
 You dump the key out onto your counter, and drop the key from your pocket alongside it. Giving the mug a quick rinse, you fill it with coffee, craving the clarity it brings now more than ever.
 
This is strange, right, you think, looking around as though someone might validate the increasing unease you’re feeling. You live alone. No one is there to offer you a reassuring pat on the shoulder, or an explanation, or anything.
 
Silence is your answer, of course.
 
You backtrack, coffee in hand, to your bedroom, eyes scanning the floor methodically, searching for any more loose pieces. You find none, and you sit on the bed with a sigh. Of course you’re alone and something strange happened. Wasn’t it just last night that you felt a tear slide down from your eye as you laid in bed, a silent herald of your loneliness? Didn’t you end up sobbing into your palms as you ground them into your eyes, pressing to stanch the flow?
 
Didn’t you cry out to your empty room, pleading for someone to see you, to care about you, to fill the aching gap inside you?
 
 You shake your head softly as you sit on the end of the bed, something like shame welling in you even though your outburst the previous night had no audience. A shiver traces across the back of your neck, so cold that you tremble involuntarily, despite the gathering humidity in the early autumn breezes outside your window. It raises the hair along your arms and you inhale sharply, heart pounding for reasons you can’t fully describe.
 
A footstep in the hall. Then two.
 
 A familiar clinking.
 
You jump up and rush to your bedroom door, coffee sloshing carelessly from your mug as you move, and the hallway is just as abandoned as it should be when you reach it. You skid to a stop, thankfully, before you crush your feet into the items placed on the floor, just outside your bedroom door.
 
The smooth sides face you, propped up in the carpet just so. The two typewriter keys, side by side, spelling out the word you anticipated somehow - a greeting and acknowledgement that you aren’t alone, even when you are:
 
Hi.
 
---
Rita Mae Moore is the author of A Voice In-Between. The sequel, A Soul In-Between, is out September 23. Rita also leads haunted history tours for American Ghost Walks in Lake Geneva, WI. 

This story originally appeared in QWERTY Quarterly #2. You can get a subscription here: www.etsy.com/shop/qwertyquarterly


​

By Tea Krulos
 
“WI Words” is a new series in QQ that spotlights writers with Wisconsin ties that have contributed significantly to various fields of writing and publishing.

Since it’s fall time, aka the scary season, we thought we’d start by looking at the life of Robert Bloch (1917-1994), an influential horror writer who spent his formative years living in Milwaukee.
 
Born in Chicago, Robert Bloch and his family moved to Milwaukee when he was 12-years-old, settling into an apartment on the East Side. While on a train ride to Milwaukee, Bloch fostered a true love for a pulp fiction magazine he bought at the station titled Weird Tales. Pulps flourished in the 1920s and 30s and you could find racks filled with titles specializing in western, adventure, war, romance, mystery, and “weird fiction” (as the genres of horror, sci-fi, and fantasy were then called). Weird Tales, originally published 1923-1954, was among the most well known of the weird fiction titles. Bloch would save a quarter (one-fourth of his monthly allowance) so he could buy a copy each month.
 
Bloch’s favorite Weird Tales author was Howard Phillips Lovecraft, now considered to be one of the most influential American horror writers, who inspired future writers like Stephen King. Bloch was so taken with Lovecraft’s stories about the ancient monster Cthulhu and other hideous beings, that he wrote Lovecraft a letter care of Weird Tales, asking where he could find more of his stories. To his surprise, Lovecraft wrote back and offered to send some copies of stories to borrow.

“The notion that a full-fledged adult literary celebrity would make such an offer to a half-fledged teenage entity was as astounding to me as it was commonplace to Lovecraft,” Bloch wrote.
 
Equally as valuable was Lovecraft’s introduction to other members of his correspondents circle, which included several other weird fiction writers like Clark Ashton Smith, Robert Howard (creator of Conan the Barbarian), and many others. Hundreds of stamped envelopes traveled around the country, exchanging critiques, story ideas, and well wishes.
 
Lovecraft encouraged Bloch to take up writing and after a few rejections, Bloch started his long career with a story titled “The Secret of the Tomb,” published in a 1934 issue of Weird Tales. Bloch quickly developed his own style– creepy tales with a macabre sense of humor, and a keen sense of wordplay. He titled one short story “Time Wounds all Heels,” for example.
 
Lovecraft and Bloch’s friendship was so strong that they gave each other the ultimate compliment– killing each other in horror stories. Bloch’s came first and featured a stand-in character for Lovecraft being devoured by a monster in his story “The Shambler from the Stars.” Lovecraft was delighted and retaliated with a story called “The Haunter of the Dark” in which a “Robert Blake” of Milwaukee (with the same street address as Bloch, 620 E. Knapp St.) meets his own gruesome fate.
 
Bloch and another Lovecraft correspondent and Wisconsin writer, August Derleth, had plans to subsidize a trip to bring in Lovecraft for a visit. Derleth was a prolific writer from Sauk City, who wrote in a wide variety of genres, including weird fiction. Lovecraft probably would have crashed on Bloch’s couch on Brady Street (after getting married, Bloch moved to an apartment above the Glorioso’s location at 1018 E. Brady St.) before going to visit Derleth. That trip never happened. On March 15, 1937, the poverty-stricken Lovecraft died of cancer of the small intestine and malnutrition.

After Lovecraft’s death, Derleth began his own publishing imprint– Arkham House, with the initial goal being to publish a collection of Lovecraft’s work for the first time. Arkham House went on to publish works by many other notable authors, including the first book by sci-fi legend Ray Bradbury as well as Bloch’s first book– a collection of stories titled The Opener of the Way (1945).

When Bloch’s wife became ill in the mid-1950s, they moved to Weyaweuga, WI to be closer to her family. It was there, inspired by the horrific case of murderer and grave robber Ed Gein, that Bloch wrote his best known work– Psycho. Published in 1959, Bloch’s agent soon got a blind offer from someone representing an unknown director who wanted to adapt the book to film. After negotiations, Bloch and his agent were paid $9,000 for the movie rights to Psycho. As Bloch soon read in the newspaper, the director turned out to be master of suspense Alfred Hitchcock, and his 1960 adaptation is one of his most well-known works.
 
Bloch had proven himself and he moved his family to Hollywood to pursue new opportunities, finding good gigs writing scripts for movies and TV shows like Star Trek, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and Night Gallery. He continued to write short stories and novels (he wrote over 30). One of his last works before his death in 1994 was his autobiography, Once Around the Bloch: An Unauthorized Autobiography, which shows his morbid humor and details several chapters of his life in Milwaukee.

This article originally appeared in QWERTY Quarterly #2. You buy single copies or a subscription here: www.etsy.com/shop/qwertyquarterly

The fall issue of QWERTY Quarterly debuted last night at a party at the newly opened Mitchell Street Arts (MiSA). People enjoyed our array of typewriters, readings from QQ (which features poetry, fiction, articles, columns, fun pages, and art), drinks from the Space Bar, a presentation on QWERTYFEST MKE 2024 preliminary plans, QWERTY cupcakes, and the debut of our fortune vending QWERTY Word Machine. Here's a few pictures.

We've scanned and posted our crossword puzzle (by QQ co-editor Tea Krulos) so you can print it off and test your quirky Milwaukee knowledge. Stuck? You can find the answer key HERE. 

You can also read two articles: "When Milwaukee was the Silicon Valley for typewriters and more" by Ed Makowski and "Women's complicated relationship with the typewriter is not black-and-white" by QQ co-editor Molly Snyder at OnMIlwaukee.com.

We're hard at work on the QWERTY Quarterly fall issue, out September 1st. More info on our release party, featuring QWERTYFEST news, readings, DJs, drinks (and cupcakes!) and art HERE. More info on subscribing to QQ HERE. 

One aspect that was created during the development of QWERTYFEST MKE was our quarterly publication, QWERTY Quarterly. The goal was to create something that would share news about the fest, but also showcase work-- articles, poetry, fiction, columns, and art by local talent involved with the fest. 

We're working on our fall issue and are celebrating with a release party Friday, Sept. 1 at Mitchell Street Arts, a new non-profit venue officially opening next month in August. 

This is a fantastic new space for Milwaukee-- it features a stage area, workshop room, cafe, artist-in-residence studios, and a makerspace. QF co-organizer Molly Snyder wrote about the recently announced artists-in-residents here:: onmilwaukee.com/articles/mitchell-street-arts

The space's official opening is August 18. More info on that and other upcoming events here: www.mitchellstreet.org/events

One reason we chose this venue for the zine release is because it will be one of the venues part of QWERTYFEST MKE 2024 (June 21-23). 

At our September 1 party (6-9pm, FREE event) we'll be giving a short presentation on QWERTYFEST plans, readings from QWERTY Quarterly (available for $5, along with other merch), and DJs Katie Rose and Christopher Brooks. 

You'll be able to type, too! Bring your own or take one of ours for a spin. We're encouraging people to type ideas to place in a suggestion box for next year's fest, thank you notes to QWERTY Quarterly subscribers, or whatever you want-- start the great American novel or a love letter or a haiku. We hope to see you there! (FB event page here for updates: www.facebook.com/events/1323770665234902)

P.S. Our goal is to get QWERTY Quarterly subscribers in all 50 states.
We got 6 so far: WI, IL OH, CA, OR, MA. Subscriptions can be ordered via Etsy here:  www.etsy.com/shop/qwertyquarterly