Secrets Secrets Are So Fun

When I was in college, I ran away for a summer.  Well, I didn't technically run away, but I did escape to the muggy, tornado-stricken climes of Omaha, Nebraska to share a tiny bedroom with my best friend in her on-campus apartment.  It was quite the adventure.  However, this post is not about me, nor the first tornado I ever had to sit through in a real live basement, nor any of my other tall tales from Omaha.  It is about a book I discovered while living with my girlfriend that summer that changed my life: 

PostSecret: Extraordinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives by Frank Warren

If you haven't heard of the world of PostSecret, I think you will find it fascinating!  People anonymously send their secrets on the backs of postcards to Frank Warren, the founder of PostSecret.  The criteria for sending a secret are simple: it must be true and you can never have told it to another human being.  Frank (as the public usually refers to Mr. Warren) calls it "an ongoing community art project," and posts newly delivered secrets every Sunday on the PostSecret website.  Every week Frank posts about 30 never-before-seen secrets.  But if you are a book lover, his posts can't beat the hard copies he has published of selected secrets, which you can find here, in our catalog.
 
When I read my first PostSecret book in that tiny apartment bedroom, I sped through it like it was a suspense-thriller.  As soon as I finished, I went back through and lingered over my favorites.  When I was through poring over the art others had created to set their secrets free, it got me thinking about my own secrets.  A day or two later, I set to work turning one into a postcard to send to Frank.  It was beautiful!  I addressed the back, carefully applied the postage stamp, and walked across campus to the mail box.  I put my other letters down the chute, and paused.  I wasn't ready to let go of this powerful declaration my secret had become, so I tucked it back into my bag.  I never sent my secret.  Instead, it hangs on a wall in my bedroom as encouragement for my soul. 

Thinking about and expressing our secrets can be such freeing acts.  When we no longer have to hold inside something so huge, when we can share it with another person, it loses its power over us.  Or if it is a positive secret, as mine was, expressing it can unleash its potential.  Another huge aspect of the PostSecret concept is that seeing others' secrets can set us free or encourage just as much as acknowledging our own secrets does.  We may realize that the secrets we thought we bore alone belong to others as well, and the feelings of shame and isolation that secrets so often wield over us diminish.  It is worth noting that perhaps all of these benefits occur less so when our sharing is anonymous rather than face-to-face with loved ones, but sharing at all is a great start.  On the lighter side, not all secrets are dark and life-changing.  Sometimes they are just plain ridiculous, and that only adds to the addiction.  There's something at PostSecret for all of us. 

Check it out and let us know what you think!  Or if you are already familiar with PostSecret, how has it impacted you?  Have you sent in a secret?  Has another person's secret affected your life?

The Small Delights of Handwritten Correspondence

"When you open your mailbox and there is an envelope inside, there's an immediate thrill of discovery. Then during the walk back home, the curiosity begins. 'What is inside?' Then you get to open it and read it and that is its own pleasure. If the letter is handwritten, often a person's state of mind shows in the tumble of letters or the crossed-out words. You can include artefacts. For instance, I can send a fabric swatch of the dress I'm working on which communicates so much more than even a photograph."
~Mary Robinette Kowal

I don't know about you, but I head to the mailbox every day with a heart full of optimism.  Usually I only get bills or circulars, unless I've ordered something, but just now & then there will be a postcard or a greeting card.  I love to get postcards (I am a member of Postcrossing, so if I'm lucky I'll find a random card from somewhere around the world), but sometimes I miss getting a letter.  I used to have correspondents.  We used to send each other multiple-page letters in funky decorated envelopes. One friend, out of the blue, sent me a hard-carved spoon with his note. In this age of of Facebook & Twitter, that never happens.  I'm tired of 140 characters & status updates.  I want my snail mail back!

With that in mind, I'm delighted to see not one, not two, but three attempts to "revive the lost art of letter-writing".  They are:

• Letters in the Mail: The online magazine The Rumpus is offering a print subscription!  "It’s called Letters in the Mail. Almost every week you’ll receive a letter, in the mail. Letter writers will include Dave Eggers, Tao Lin, Stephen Elliott, Janet Fitch, Nick Flynn, Margaret Cho, Cheryl Strayed, Marc Maron, Elissa Schappel, Wendy MacNaughton, Emily Gould, and Jonathan Ames. Think of it as the letters you used to get from your creative friends, before this whole internet/email thing. Most of the letters will include return addresses (at the author’s discretion) in case you want to write the author back.And it’s only $5 a month, cheap."

• The Month of Letters Challenge: “I have a simple challenge for you. In the month of February, mail at least one item through the post every day it runs. Write a postcard, a letter, send a picture, or a cutting from a newspaper, or a fabric swatch. Write back to everyone who writes to you. This can count as one of your mailed items. All you are committing to is to mail 24 items. Why 24? There are four Sundays and one US holiday. In fact, you might send more than 24 items. You might develop a correspondence that extends beyond the month. You might enjoy going to the mail box again.”

• The Handwritten Project: "Here's how it works. I will write to anyone who wants to hear from me. It may be a postcard, a short note, or even a long-winded letter, but it will most certainly be in my own fair hand. The recipient does not have to write back but is more than welcome to do so. Simple. I mentioned this on Twitter as the old year came to a close and quickly collected over 60 addresses from people who wanted to be involved. Naturally, I would like to extend this offer to the fine people who actually bother to visit my blog. If you want something in the post from me then drop me a line and I will get something out to you just as soon as I can."

Interested?  Need help getting started?  Consider taking a look at letter writing guides or check out collections of correspondence, all available in the ABC Libraries' catalog!  I just read Four Letter Word: Invented Correspondence from the Edge of Modern Romance, which, though fictional, contained some really beautiful love letters.  Other fictional inspiration might be found by revisiting Griffin & Sabine: An Extraordinary Correspondence, or something off our Epistolary Novels booklist.

Adventures in Deltiology

deltiology (ˌdɛltɪˈɒlədʒɪ)
— n, the collection and study of picture postcards
[C20: from Greek deltion, diminutive of deltos a writing tablet + -logy ]
~from Dictionary.com

Every day, I still visit my mailbox when I get home with a sense of hope-even though the bulk of my correspondence is online these days. There's such a thrill in receiving "snail mail", I always think. My father used to write me regularly, & still sends postcards when he travels. Postcards have always been my favorite mail-whenever someone leaves town, I'll be begging them to send me a postcard from wherever their journey takes them.

Since I love mail but rarely find anything in the mailbox but bills & ads, I have joined an online project called Postcrossing. The website explains: "The goal of this project is to allow people to receive postcards from all over the world, for free. Well, almost free! The main idea is that: if you send a postcard, you will receive at least one back from a random Postcrosser from somewhere in the world." How does it work? After you sign up for your (free) account, it works like this:

1.Request an address and a Postcard ID
2.Mail the postcard to that address
3.Receive a postcard from another postcrosser!
4.Register the Postcard ID you have received
5.Go to number 1 to receive more postcards!

Postcrossing boasts 214,501 members in 205 countries; 766 postcards/hour; 6,154,685 postcards received; 207,549 postcards traveling; 33,699,683,074 km traveled! I have had a lot of fun with it over the last couple of years, sending postcards to the Netherlands, Taiwan, Brazil, & Iceland, & receiving cards from Japan, Iran, Thailand, Finland, & Estonia.

If, like me, you love postcards, consider checking out these offerings from the library catalog:

Griffin & Sabine: An Extraordinary Correspondence written and illustrated by Nick Bantock

Frank Warren's Postsecret books (PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a postcard. See more on the website.)

Real Photo Postcards: Unbelievable Images from the Collection of Harvey Tulcenskyedited by Laetitia Wolff

Postcards from the Boys by Ringo Starr

Had a Good Time: Stories from American Postcards by Robert Olen Butler

Delivering Views: Distant Cultures in Early Postcards edited by Christraud M. Geary and Virginia-Lee Webb

A Postcard Memoir by Lawrence Sutin

Border Fury: A Picture Postcard Record of Mexico's Revolution and U.S. War Preparedness, 1910-1917 by Paul J. Vanderwood and Frank N. Samponaro

For children, try a subject search under "Postcards Juvenile".

Poetry in Everyday Life

This is a guest post by Jenn from the Itch to Stitch group.


My sister and I have corresponded by email almost every day since about 1998. That was during the time that my sister, Stevie, was caring for our mother in Stevie's home. A couple of years later Mom moved to assisted living, then to a nursing home, but she was always near my sister's home in North Carolina, and Stevie did most of the caregiving and care management. We spoke every day via computer, though, and she has always said that she felt my support in that way.

Mom died in 2007, but Stevie and I were well in the habit of keeping in touch by then. We are 6 years apart in age, and we'd never been close as children, but we are best friends, now. During Mom's last years and since, we have treasured the time we get together in person. We share interests--dolls, crafts, cooking, family of course--and though we don't see one another as often as we did when Mom was alive, we still correspond almost every day. For years, the subject lines of the letters were simple greetings, or more often, a row of Re:Re:Re:Re and a simple greeting. Then one day, my brilliant sister had a brainstorm. She chose a poem. I don't even remember what the first poem was, but she used the first line for the subject line, and sent me an online link to the whole poem in the body of the letter, with the instruction to use the next line as my return subject line.

We have read a lot of poems together since then. One spring "When April with his showers sweet with fruit/The drought of March [had] pierced unto the root" we got onto Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and went through the Prologue and several pilgrims, right into midsummer. Recently we've had Where the Sidewalk Ends and some Maya Angelou. We take turns, when a poem ends, choosing the next poem. What makes it even better is this: our mom loved poetry. She memorized poems in high school, and would recite them to entertain us at bedtime or while waiting for buses or during any of the times when restless kids need entertainment. So now one of us may start a poem and say, "Do you remember? This was one of Mom's favorites." Stevie doesn't know this, but around Halloween, we will be reading Robert Burns' story poem, "Tam O'Shanter", which is a long, spooky ghost story and Mother loved it!

So that's the story of how my sister and I have shared memories of our mother, and personal poetry favorites and all sorts of other ideas while staying connected and enriching our minds, or something! Now I'll close, and check whether I have email from Stevie yet today. We're about done with a favorite of Mother's and mine, "The Bacchante to her Babe", by Eunice Tietjens, and I can't wait to see what Stevie is going to share with me next.