Wil Maring is living the life I’m talking about in my blog series: you don’t have to choose between art and music. This bluegrass / country / folk singer-songwriter’s lived, toured, and had horses in Europe and Asia. As I’m about to demonstrate, she actively creates art and music concurrently. all. the. time.

I first noticed Wil on Facebook selling “Keeper of the Farm” t-shirts she’d designed herself. I found her stash of original paintings, prints, t-shirts, greeting cards on Facebook, and CDs (with or without her partner, Robert Bowlin) in her online store.

In the spring of 2024, she created “Cicadapockalypse” shirts, commemorating the confluence of two broods of cicadas with a total eclipse. Mr. Bowlin, as she calls him, captured the artist at work in a Facebook video. My bucket list includes playing scrabble with her mom.

What I enjoy most in reading Wil’s posts is the color of her everyday life mixed in with the thread of needing printer paper. Here, I’ve had to narrow the focus a bit.

The saga of the Office Supply Franchise (henceforth referred to as OSF) started several years ago with some coupons:

November 1, 2016

I did something impulsive and daring yesterday. I collected up all my OSF rewards coupons, and also some coupons that had been thrown in the trash at the OSF store and it all amounted to about $77. So I ordered me a new art printer. It will arrive today.

But I really got sucked into the Facebook drama when Wil was told that the card stock she uses to print greeting cards would be discontinued.

October 18, 2023

I just got off the phone with a fellow in another country, who is trying his darndest to help me order several boxes of this OSF inkjet greeting card paper, the same stuff that I’ve been buying off the shelves for a decade. He is now the second person to tell me that my paper is being discontinued and I can’t order it online. It’s very mysterious, though, that I have been able to buy it in the OSF stores across the country. I might have to get in the van and do a “OSF tour.”

Wil included a call-to-action with a description of the paper she buys: Does your local Office Supply Franchise stock this paper? Many people checked and responded with locations where the paper could be found, or couldn’t.

October 29, 2023

I am really frustrated with the evident discontinuation of my OSF greeting card paper that I’ve been using for years. I found one box of it over in Cape Girardeau, and so we made ourselves an excuse to drive all the way over there to get it and also check for the cheapest possible television. So we drove all that way, crossed the mighty Mississippi, and hunted for the cheapest possible TV and greeting card paper, and a better Asian Buffet. We found all of it in Cape Girardeau, Misery. Unfortunately, the TV was an open box discounted one. When we got home, everything was not there. No feet, no remote, no way to play along with this TV. Ugh.  Now we have to go back over there. I believe this entire incident was foreshadowed by the blank fortune I got in my fortune cookie.

But now today is another day, still gray, still rainy, still cold, but my friend gave me breakfast in bed and I’m not even sick!  Carpe diem!

Later, we learned that Wil’s social media Call-to-Action was coming through:

November 14, 2023

Oh my! What a glorious day! There is hardly a breeze and the sun is warm, and I’m sitting on the back steps, burning some punky old redbud and maple stumps in a big pile. I hear the freight train down at the bottom of the hill, rumbling through town, but up here on Wil’s Daffodil Hill, it’s a pleasant calming low noise.

We have three shows coming up this weekend and maybe some folks will want some art there. My greatest concern was that I couldn’t find enough OSF greeting card paper to fill the orders, but a friend traveling cross-country to come home for Thanksgiving is going to stop at numerous OSF stores between, California and Illinois and pick up up to five boxes. Yay!

In case you thought I was joking about Wil Maring living the life, here are the words of a touring musician and artist (and seeker of discontinued paper stock):

November 17, 2023

Hey, that was some fun last night, playing a show at Jane‘s Hideaway in Nashville. It was nice to hear Mr. Bowlin jamming old country with his son on the second set and at the very end I came up and played, and then Mike Bub joined us, along with a talented harmonica player, named Thor, and it was a big jamarama.

Today is upward and onward to Maryville, Tennessee to play a full house concert in a cabin in the woods. I’m also gonna try to hit some OSF stores there and back, and try to get some of that OSF brand 75 count greeting card paper in the red and white box.

November 20, 2023

Well this is how a house concert oughta be. Our friend RuthAnn put on a helluva-one last night. Almost 50 folks together in a big homey space, lots of good food, plenty of drinks, my mom and her Filipino Leche Flan, laughing, dancing, and singalonging. Y’all are good singers. I was glad that my back, that was about to go out, didn’t. I was able to make it through the whole thing. And friends even bought me OSF greeting card print paper and empty Amazon prime bubble mailers. I’m rich.

December 9, 2023

So this is funny, I download a coupon on my phone at the OSF for $30 off any purchase over $100. When I went up to the cashier to pay, he scanned the coupon off the phone, and then told me I couldn’t use it because it said it was for use on a future purchase. I told him now is the future. He got a puzzled look, “now is the future,” from when I downloaded this coupon. So this counts as a future purchase. He had to call his manager, and suggested that he could deduct $10 from each of my three boxes of greeting card paper and call it a “done deal.” And then he flexibly helped me out. Because you know why? The future is now.

But now comes the diabolical plot twist:

December 11, 2023

Grrr. This is crazy. After three months of not having my card paper, and a little snarky OSF girl telling me that “we are done“ which is snark for “don’t ask me about paper anymore,” and me having just found three boxes in Hendersonville, Tennessee an hour before a deadly tornado hit, and a friend of mine, driving from California to Illinois and collecting Card paper at every OSF where he could find it, I see here at my home OSF store suddenly they have four boxes, after I don’t need it anymore, and couldn’t afford it even if I did need it. Maybe it’s not discontinued after all. Maybe me buying so many boxes has made them reconsider.

Trust that Wil has enough paper. I think these beautiful artisan all-purpose holiday cards are the joy we all need right now. Will has put a lot of effort into finding the most reasonable price of $7.00 each plus shipping. You can see a variety of winter and holiday-themed designs here.

Learn more about Wil Maring by visiting her blog here. Her voice is soothing, soft like pandesal, so get some music, too. ‘Tis the season for stocking stuffers. You deserve a stocking. Sign up for the newsletter, and be sure follow her on Facebook. See you there!

Also, I can’t get enough of this song:

 

debora Ewing writes, paints, and screams at the stars because the world is still screwed up. She improves what she can with music collaboration, peer-review at Consilience Poetry Journal, or designing books for Igneus Press. Follow @DebsValidation on X and Instagram. Read her self-distractions at FolkWorks.org and JerryJazzMusician.com.