My grandfather (may he rest in peace) fell in love with a younger woman, back in the late 1940s, early 1950s – while being married and father of four young children. My uncle found out about this only a few years ago – through serendipity he got hold of some 40 passionate love letters, written by my grandfather to this young woman, who was well into her eighties by that time, and still heartbroken. I only learned about this a few days ago. There is something to be said for letters written with pen and paper. Is it likely that fifty, sixty years from now a family secret like this will be revealed, through the unexpected discovery of some cached facebook postings?
If you want to get in touch with people fond of analog letter writing, envelope stuffing and stamp licking go to Make Every Day a Good Mail Day.
Last year Boing Boing featured a book called The Englishman who Posted Himself and Other Curious Objects telling the story of W. Reginald Bray, “a stamp collector who experimented with mailing odd objects … through the Royal Mail. … Perhaps most remarkably, he posted himself, becoming the first man to send a human through the mail in 1900, and then, through registered mail, in 1903.” This idea seems to have caught on in other places, as we can see from this image posted on Flickr by the Smithsonian.
This city letter carrier posed for a humorous photograph with a young boy in his mailbag. After parcel post service was introduced in 1913, at least two children were sent by the service. With stamps attached to their clothing, the children rode with railway and city carriers to their destination. The Postmaster General quickly issued a regulation forbidding the sending of children in the mail after hearing of those examples. Smithsonian Institution on Flickr via Kotke.org
Based on Jeff Brown’s Flat Stanley book illustrated by Tomi Ungerer, Dale Hubert, Grade 3 teacher in London, Ontario began the Flat Stanley Project in 1994. Flat Stanley provides the core for many literacy activities – drawing, writing, taking photos, sending letters and emails, etc. Similar to penpal activities, children send letters and flat visitors based on Flat Stanley or other characters from theTemplate Gallery: “it’s as if the sender and the recipient have a mutual friend, and writing becomes easier and more creative.” In 2010, Darren Haas, developed the Flat Stanley, a free app for the iPhone.
I know, there are too many babies and kittens featured on the internet. But I cannot help posting it, it is just so funny and interesting at the same time, watching those two little people having a conversation. A favourite YouTube video, together with classic “Charlie bit my finger”.
This was the summer reading for toddlers offered in my local store: children’s magazines with “free” toys: mock mp3-Player, iPhone and mobile phone. Selling early literacy clearly is tied to selling media technology. How to work with that once children start school – that is a question teachers will have to be concerned with.
After the success of the first two volumes of Tristram Shandy, Laurence Sterne was commissioned to produce more. The bookseller who had sold copies of Volumes I and II, James Dodsley, published Sterne’s sermons under the title The Sermons of Mr. Yorick in 1760. In January 1761, Volumes III and IV of the novel became available to purchase, so 2011 marks not only the publishing of the volumes but also the 250th anniversary of Sterne’s most remarkable literary stroke of genius – the marbled page contained in Volume III.
If you carefully examine page [ 169 ] in Vol. III in the original edition, four fold marks define the edges of the marbling and also create the surrounding margins. The central section of p.169 was laid upon the marbled mixture in order that a coloured impression could be taken as cleanly as possible. It was left to dry and then reverse-folded so the other side of the paper could also receive a marbled impression. This side of the paper became page [170]. So, the marbled page in every copy of Vol. III (in every edition*) is different – each impression being a unique hand-made image.
In the text opposite on p.168, Sterne tells the reader that the next marbled page is the ‘motly emblem of my work’ – the page communicating visually that his work is endlessly variable, endlessly open to chance. *contemporary editions have printed marbled pages, the majority in black and white, so the whole point of the multi-coloured marbling is rendered meaningless.
word and image 