When you put up a personal web page, what it all comes down to is this: you're compiling and posting a catalogue of your obsessions. Some obsessions rise up, take over your life, then fade away. Others endure and become part of one's permanent self-image. The following is a snapshot image of the obsessions that define me at this point in time.
My name is Candi Strecker, and I think of myself as a writer, a zine publisher, a collector addicted to the unpredictable things that turn up at thrift stores, estate sales, and rummage sales, and as an observer and cataloguer of oddball popular cultural phenomena. I'm a member of that Lost Generation between the Baby Boom and Generation X, which may or may not explain my fascination with the 1970s. I was born and raised on a gladiolus farm outside a steeltown in northeast Ohio, and after making unproductive use of my time at Kent State University (American Studies with a side order of anthropology) and the University of Michigan (Library Science), I escaped with husband Matt Householder to San Francisco, where through most of the 80s I published zines and puttered around and utterly failed to have anything resembling a career. In 1993 we became the parents of Nicola (as in Tesla) Sage Householder and I elected to stay home with her. To my complete surprise, for the first time in my life, I became productive and self-disciplined enough to do some serious, salable freelance writing in the minutes I snatched from naptimes and evenings.
Now click onward to explore the ways I'm: