Grimstad, Rennie and their collaborators compiling the book. Images courtesy of Rennie/Grimstad/Primary Information.
Grimstad, Rennie and collaborators during book production. Images courtesy of Rennie/Grimstad/Primary Information.
A page from the New Woman's Survival Catalog detailing a guide to feminist women's health centers in California. Image courtesy Rennie/Grimstad/Primary Information.
Poetry and drawings from the Women's Press Collective, one of the many creative collectives featured in the book. Images courtesy of Rennie/Grimstad/Primary Information.
The book didn’t earn the same breathless accord as the Whole Earth Catalog upon its publication. But it was still recognized as a thorough and important survey of feminist activism, even earning a snitty writeup from the New York Times, accusing it of “an attitude of self‐righteous indignation”—what kind of indignation would be acceptable goes unsaid —and “an overindulgence in paranoia,” which, ditto.Meanwhile, the experience of the road trip permanently altered both women (though Grimstad eventually finished her thesis on Thomas Mann). The two of them moved to Los Angeles to make Chrysalis, a women’s art magazine that they put together with the help of the feminist artist Judy Chicago and other people working out of The Woman’s Building, a radical arts community that existed in a spacious building near downtown Los Angeles until 1991. Chrysalis published between 1977 and 1980; after that, both Rennie and Grimstad devoted their lives to feminist organizing and non-traditional teaching in one form or another, right up until the present day."It was such a shock, someone sending us an email and wanting to republish the catalogue," Grimstad said, of the reprint. In the meantime, they’d been watching a new wave of activism with appreciation."The ecological movement and the crucial aspect of climate change," Rennie said, "there’s a consciousness that reminds me and evokes some of the feelings and experiences we had back in those days."It has to do with the oppressive hierarchies being challenged in so many ways," Grimstad agreed. "The climate activism is so related to that, to try to break the grip of these corporations on things that are not only defining our lives now but the future generations. I see all these causes as linked and energized. But it’s all a sense of empowerment. The fact that women are feeling empowered today is just great."They see social media as a particularly incredible tool. "We could only dream of that,” Grimstad said. "Our book was a tool to connect and have people see we were part of a common universe. And now it’s so entirely different to connect with people globally around values that are important. There’s a dark side, of course, but that’s a price we always pay."But Rennie and Grimstad aren’t overly modest about what they made. They knew, even at the time, how crucial it would be. "I said to her at one point, ‘We’re actually compiling an important historical record," Rennie said. "This is going to be something people go back to. And that’s what’s happening."Correction: Due to a transcription error, an earlier version of this piece mistakenly swapped Rennie and Grimstad's job titles at the time they set off on their journey. We regret the error.The whole production happened in two months in an apartment on Riverside Drive and 106th Street. The bathroom was turned into a darkroom. We rented a machine from IBM that was called a Composer, and a woman named Mark St. Giles typeset the magazine. The two of us, along with Fanette Pollack and Ruth Bayard Smith, did all of the writing and editing. I did a lot of the printing of the photographs; we made screenprints in the bathroom. We typeset it, we made these screenprints, and we pasted it all up on boards. What we put together for the publisher was camera-ready copy. At the end we took it all in a big box to the publishers in a taxi. Then we went to the Russian Tea Room and fell asleep at dinner, we were so exhausted.
