I’m sorry it’s been so long since I’ve posted…I keep thinking of wonderful things I want to tell you, like how my very excellent husband crafted a one-person puzzle/scavenger hunt for my birthday, and I spent the day wandering through the hidden wonders of downtown San Francisco. Or how jazzed I am to be a part of SFMOMA’s ArtGameLab, through a game I helped craft with my collaborators in the Elsewhere Philatelic Society. Or what a good time I had hanging out with Donovan and Kathy of the Letter Writers Alliance, in Chicago, working on a soon-to-be-announced project I’m pretty sure you’ll love as much as I do.

Oh, I want to tell you about all of that!

But for now, I just want to tell you about this.

If you know me in person, in Real life, you’ll know that round about the time Good Mail Day came out, I was introduced to a very unusual, intriguing, and mysterious concept called the Jejune Institute and a place called Elsewhere. My friend Marissa was visiting from Boston, and we found ourselves (aptly) at The Curiosity Shoppe, where a lovely lass named Aurora asked us if we liked adventure. And then she handed us a post-it note with an address written on it. Marissa has chronicled our adventure in some of her zines and comics, and we did a split zine called Wonder/What I Know Now trying to explain what it was and what it all meant to us.

But this is something else, entirely. This is a documentary, my friends. Last fall, I agreed to talk with a wonderful fellow named Spencer about everything I thought and felt about the Institute and Elsewhere and what it meant to be Nonchalant, and sooner than I expected–ZAP!–the documentary is about to be pre-screened this weekend.

For now, there’s no DVD and no digital access, but I’ll keep you posted. I’m just really excited about this opportunity, this film that might help people understand how much the experience of wandering and finding and having my eyes opened meant to me.

If you are in the Bay Area, please consider coming to the test screening in Oakland, at the historic Grand Lake Theater. Tickets can be procured here. ( <– that link even gets you $5 off and admission to the pre-party at a nearby gallery!)

Today they’ve delighted me with a blog post about their letter wall, the display of every customer letter that’s come to them since they opened in 2009.

Read the full post at Ink Nouveau, and then go get yourself a little something.

(p.s. I’m not affiliated with Goulet Pens, nor did they do anything besides provide an excellent product and excellent service to inspire me to write this post.)

Last year, I offered some high-res scans of early 20th-century Valentines, and those are still available (see the original post here).

This year, I made up some silly little stamp selvage hearts (featuring your friend and mine, Mr. Zip) for the 2nd Snail Mail Social, and thought I’d upload them here for anyone who might want to print his or her own at home. There are 2 options for you–a foldover card, or four A2-size flat cards (4″ x 5.25″) on a single letter-sized sheet. All you need is a printer, some cardstock (or get crazy and print them on cut-down manila folders), and something to cut with!

Fold-Over Hearts (12MB PDF; right-click to download)

A2 size (21MB PDF; right-click to download)

Happy Valentine’s Day–for the Love of Mail!

(Read the full post at Letterology!)
]]> http://goodmailday.com/2012/01/30/love-on-the-run-in-lincoln-via-letterology/feed/ 2 goodmailday http://goodmailday.com/2011/12/28/february-mail-art-show-at-milk-in-sacramento/ http://goodmailday.com/2011/12/28/february-mail-art-show-at-milk-in-sacramento/#comments Wed, 28 Dec 2011 01:57:19 +0000 goodmailday http://goodmailday.wordpress.com/?p=607 ]]> …From Derrick Dodson:

Milk is calling for artists for our February mail art show! No packages will be opened, envelopes unsealed…art must go through the post and be ready for display. Any packaging must be the art itself. Postcards have already started to arrive and we have heard rumors of objects to be sent. Art will be for sale at a 50/50 ratio to artist and gallery. Include your address on the art in order for compensation for sales to be forwarded! Any unsold art will not be sent return post due to the volume of works being received. Artwork needs to be received in the gallery by February 1st. Please mail your awesome art to 212 13th Street, Sacramento, CA 95814.

more about Milk Gallery…

Some of you may know that I already have a number of typewriters, largely due to the largesse of my father, who lives in a small midwestern town and enjoys going to yard sales. While I don’t consider myself a collector by any stretch of the imagination, I do have nearly a dozen typewriters, and though probably none are what most people would call collectible, I like having them around anyway.

But recently, I spotted an IBM Selectric I on eBay. Though the 1961 Selectric possesses none of the collector cachet or rarity of your Olivetti or your fancy-pants index typewriters of yore, it has two things going for it (at least in my mind): it’s fast, and it has typeballs. Yes, that’s right. I said TYPEBALLS.

I’m sorry. They’re rightly called elements, and with the simple flick and click of a lever, the typist can switch typefaces like that. From Courier to Letter Gothic to Adjutant to Sunshine Script in seconds. Keep your script manuals! One typewriter to RULE THEM ALL!

I bid on the Selectric, and I bid on a couple of element lots, and I won the elements. Then I won the typewriter. I kept a photo of the typewriter in my pocket and looked at it from time to time–I was that smitten. I showed it to people: “And it’s RED“, I bragged. I couldn’t wait until it arrived. One day, the doorbell rang, and I ran outside in my socks to find the UPS driver holding a huge box, wearing a pained expression. “Is it heavy?” I asked. “Forty-eight pounds,” he said, and handed it over.

I was excited for about ten minutes, until I pried open the (smashed-looking) package and untaped the (rather meager) bubble wrap. The paper bale was broken off on one side. That wasn’t good, but I could probably fix that. Oh. Some of the keys were loose. Broken, in fact. I didn’t think I could fix that part. I checked a Fran Fixes It! YouTube video and learned how to take the body apart so I could further evaluate the damage. Some portions of the mechanism were clearly not in the right place, jammed into the machinery. Little bits of important-looking things were scattered in the bottom of the body. This was bad.

I did some Yelp research and discovered that there are two popular typewriter repair shops not too far from me. I chose the one that listed as being recommended by Tom Hanks (what would you have done?) and called them up. “Do you repair IBM Selectrics?” “Of course we do,” said the deep-voiced man on the telephone. “I’ll be over soon,” I promised.

The box of elements (which had arrived before the broken typewriter had) mocked me from across the room.

On a sunny, sunny day, I drove my broken beauty and my heavy heart over the bridge to Berkeley and met the proprietors of California Typewriter. As I staggered in the door with my unwieldy box, a gentleman emerged from the back, took one look at my heavy load, and said “looks like you’ve got a Selectric there.”

This was Herb Permillion, who runs the shop with his daughter, Carmen. He (a man of few words) and she (a chattier type) allowed me to lurk around the shop and take photos. They told me about some of their customers–filmmakers, television propmasters, Danielle Steele (that lady gets around–E&M Office Machine also claims to have serviced the many hardworking Olympia manuals she uses to write her many novels), and yes, Tom Hanks. They also spent some time examining my Selectric. Despite the doleful utterances that came from Herb’s lips, as he tutted and hummed as he noted the troubles of my typewriter (“looks like this got dropped,” he said, sadly), the final one was the one I wanted to hear: “I think we can fix this.”

And fix it, they did…for almost exactly the amount I paid to purchase and ship the beast. Thankfully, the seller had refunded my money in full, after some emailing of super-annotated damage photographs and a few calls to the UPS claims department. All’s well that ends well, especially when it concerns a red typewriter.  Right?

I’ll leave you with some gems from the California Typewriter shop. Links to some cool articles, too.

–Carolee (psst: now you know why I’ve been posting so many typewriter photos on the GMD tumblr! They’re the happy by-product of research!)

Meet the Last Generation of Typewriter Repairmen

Typewriter Service around-the-world!

The Cambridge Typewriter Blog, Life in a Typewriter Shop

The new year is nearly upon us, and as I prune and tidy the comments on this blog (did you know that I am protecting you against spam and people who only want to sell you things? happy holidays…), I’ve been noticing that more than a few people are having trouble with the old Call for Correspondents post. Some people have moved. Other people find the visual jumble of greetings, thanks, and commentary make it difficult to find WHO wants to write, and what their interests are.

Now, I think it’s great that people are chatting in the comments. It makes me feel warm and fuzzy whenever I log in and see people saying I got your mail! It was beautiful! and Look for something special from me! and I was having a hard time and your letter really made my day.

But I can also see the point of streamlining.

So, let’s clean the slate and start over again. I’ll leave comments to the old post open, and people can chatter there all they want. Maybe I’ll re-name the link “mail art chatter” or the like. THIS post is for those of you who are still taking new correspondents, or who have just found this blog for the first time.

Want a pen friend, mail artist buddy, or correspondent? Comment below!

You must include your address, your interests and a brief description either about you, or about the sort of mail you’d like to receive (for example, some people prefer long letters, while others are happier making and receiving mail art postcards). I know that a number of people prefer not to leave their mailing addresses here, and that’s fine (although I think it’s limiting). While I moderate the comments to remove things that look like spam, I can make no guarantee as to the quality of those who read or write here.

PLEASE NOTE: I’ll be moderating the comments to include ONLY your correspondence “ads”.  Chat away all you want–just over on the other thread!  (Don’t be cross if I delete your responses to others’ posts–we want to keep this comment thread as tidy and easy-to-read as possible!)

Happy 2012–Carolee