It takes a minimum of a week to prepare a plate and pull an edition. Maintaining the puckish attitude needed for a whimsical print during the period is sometimes a strain. In fact, at some point during the process, nothing seems funny or whimsical at all. It always happens.

      The job, however, gets done and I’m usually as pleased with the whimsicals as I am with anything I do. True, I haven’t done many since 9/11, but friends keep encouraging me to do more. As one friend said: “We need stuff like this.”

      I think she’s right.