Menstruation Festival in Germany,
1988. One-sheet announcement in
German with English translation. Possibly a
commercial undertaking (for a dance teacher)"Frauen gemeinsam,"
("Common to women" comic strip), about menstrual
sychronization, Germany, Brigitte magazine,
1992
"Single," (comic strip) the
Netherlands, 31 October 2005, by Hanco Kolk and Peter de Wit "Appears Monthly"
("Verschijnt maandeliks"), newspaper
article about & one-page announcement of
Dutch menstruation exhibit, 1982, with English
translations"Sylvia" (comic strip by Nicole Hollander, U.S.A.), about this museum (5 August 1995)More miscellaneous
 
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Museum of Menstruation and Women's Health home
Former museum - future - visit to the museum comic strip
Catamenia
The newsletter of the Museum of Menstruation (MUM)
Mid 1990s
3 issues, one complete
Below: Complete Fall 1995 issue
| Soon after I opened the museum, in 1994, I decided that publishing a newsletter would give the museum a wider audience.
So I designed one on my blazing Macintosh IIsi–blazing at a sleep-walking 20MHz!–, wrote the text, created most of the illustrations in Photoshop from items in the museum collection, and cranked it out on a cutting-edge printer of the time: 300 dpi! In black and white! Wow!
People–eventually a few hundred would garnish the mailing list– I thought who would be interested received it in envelopes I stamped and stuffed with sheets of paper that ran through photocopiers at the Staples 3/4 of a mile away. And, for two issues, with the generous help of two Baltimore women.
I even made friends with the Staples manager, a woman from Sierra Leone, who wanted copies of ads from the MUM archive. She got them.
As you'll see, gossip as well as history filled the pages.
You'll read in one issue how I struggled to create the museum Web site.
But I stopped these newsletters after I gave birth to this Web site since they duplicated the mission. And I was already overwhelmed with a full-time job, museum visitors on weekends, TV, radio, press inquiries, Catamenia, and the work–and fascination–of being on the World Wide Web.
Exhaustion forced me to close the museum in 1998, two years after I folded this newsletter. Nine months later I barely avoided a heart attack (a stent saved me), I think from stress. I craved rest. Already a lacto-vegetarian, eventually I became an extreme vegan à la Dr. Esselstyn to prolong my life. Seems to work.
I've lost most of the Catamenias, but here are a complete one and two partial issues.
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Below: The first page of the Fall, 1995 issue. Each page of the 8 black-and-white
pages of all the newsletters measures 8 1/2 x 11" (21.6 x 27.9 cm). It's 1/4 of a
folded piece of 17 x 11" (43.2 x 27.9 cm) white paper.
Catamenia means menstruation in medical and scientific circles. And it's the name
of a Finnish band.
|  | Below: Page 2 of the Fall 1995 issue.
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Next pages, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8
Catamenia: Summer 1995 (first 2 pages), Fall 1995 (all 8 pages), Summer 1996 (first 2 pages)
© 2016 Harry Finley. It is illegal to reproduce or distribute any
of the work on this Web site in any manner or medium
without written permission of the author. Please report suspected violations
to hfinley@mum.org
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