Sunday, January 4, 2009

Semi-related: two random but connected arrivals


The first comment on my explanatory post was from Boo Cartledge, who referred me to sendsomething.net, a site to which if you post your address, someone might mail you something. Not a week after I signed up, I got this from postmuse, a person smart enough to start mailing people her blank postcard collection one-by-one so she could get them back not so blank. My card depicts the signing of the Declaration of Independence - particularly appropriate since one of my jobs is at the American Philosophical Society not 100 feet from Independence Hall. During the 10 years when Independence Hall was the nation's capitol, the APS hosted Charles Wilson Peale's museum that boasted a menagerie of live animals in the yard, so while the framers were doing important business, every now and then they were interrupted by the roar of a caged mountain lion out back.

Not much later I got this handmade card from commenter Boo herself, who is tearing up her 2003 book Grace: A Memoir and turning it into mail art. The full quote on the card reads "The only way to prevent the agonies human beings inflict on each other, I concluded, is to annihilate the human race." Whoa. It much be cathartic, ripping up this memoir.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Not so much cathartic as just plain fun. That particular quotation out of context is rather bald, but your project seems adventurous to hold it. Glad you're liking sendsomething.net!

Unknown said...

I meant "adventurous enough" to hold it. :)