Is there anyone who doesn't like mail? I mean good mail, not just random advertising (some of which can be fun) or endless credit card offers (which never are.) Like everyone else who came of age before the spread of email and the internets, mail was for me growing up meant one of the main ways of entrance into subcultures. Freaky catalogs with pages of pins for sale, fanzines, play-by-mail games (all the way back to correspondence chess)-this kind of mail was for you in a very specific kind of way. And that's not to mention letters of all kinds, infrequent (in my experience) though they might have been (I must confess to a preference for writing by keyboard myself, but we are talking about receiving mail here.) So you can imagine my approval at reading these words:
Writing and sending letters was a huge part of our upbringing. We sent letters to our grandparents and cousins who live around the Northeast. Whenever we went on vacation, we would send postcards to people back home. So the idea kind of stems from loving mail, the kind you find in your mailbox, and the very personal relationship that mail affords.
They come from Tess Knoebel, co-creator with her sister Anna Knoebel, of Abe's Penny, "a micro-magazine." From their website:
Volume 1.3 (May) will feature photographs by Peter Bernard Killeen and a story by Eric Ledgin, inspired by Peter's images.
I've just received the third installment of the Killeen/Ledgin series, which has amused my co-workers for the past few weeks. The laconic style of Killeen's unpopulated scenes of obscure buildings and infrastructure are matched by the Ledgin's quietly hilarious story of mayhem. The Knoebel's cite the penny press as their inspiration, which also seems apt--this is a micro-magazine, a witty image and text feuilleton delivered via postcard, not mail art as its purists would have it. It's certainly restored some of the delight of checking the mail--at least until next week's final installment.
Also: Abe's Penny on Newsgrist.
