Boiled peanuts taste like home. Photo by Allison Stein 2015

Today South Carolina moved the Confederate battle flag from the Statehouse grounds and to the nearby Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum. I’ve remained silent on this subject, until now. Although I am a girl who was raised in the South, a descendent of Confederate soldiers, and a lapsed member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the Confederate battle flag does NOT represent me, my supposed heritage, nor even the South of my childhood.…

Notebook binding. Photo by Allison Stein 2014

A few weeks ago, I mentioned my notebooks and sketchbooks. I also keep a calendar-style scrapbook, using a 9” x 12” wirebound mixed media Strathmore Visual Journal as the substrate. Each two-page spread covers a single month. I glue in decorative paper, photographs, ticket stubs, and ephemera I’ve found along the way. By the end of 2013, my scrapbook documented two years of my life. It had grown fatter than its spiral binding could accommodate,…