The travelling post office

Night Mail is a 20-minute documentary on postal workers. On a train between England and Scotland, in the 1930s. Don't even pretend you're not rolling your eyes.

Essentially this “documentary” (which is more like a bunch of postal workers reenacting their nightly duties, badly and adorably) follows the mail-express, a fast-moving steam train that used to hurtle every night from London to Scotland (Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen).

Inside the train was a travelling post office. There were no passengers, but 40 postal workers would spend the night on the train, picking up, dropping off and sorting half a million letters.

They wouldn’t stop to make deliveries or pick-ups, instead relying on what seemed to me hilarious systems of dubious reliance.

FOR EXAMPLE... to make pick-ups, mail workers on the ground would attach post-bags to spring hooks and dangle them over the tracks: the impact of the train as it passed would knock them into special holding boxes in the carriages.

There is a cute and crazy moment in the film where they plan a drop-off, which again is basically to dangle the bags (tied on with STRING) outside the moving train, allowing the speed of impact to knock the bags into cages beside the tracks.

One of the postal workers asks “Now?” and the other says, “No, it’s two bridges and 45 beats yet.” And then they literally hang out the train-doors as they go under first one bridge then two, and then start counting the beats: clackety-clack – ONE – clackety-clack – TWO… and when they get to 45, out go the bags and WHACK, they are knocked into the waiting cages.

How’s that for scientific precision!

And yet with this seemingly-crazy system did the travelling post office manage to deliver half a million hand-sorted letters per night, every night, delivering 500 million letters to the people of England and Scotland, each year.

Lordy. With that amount of work, they absolutely deserved their own documentary!

Do you want to watch it? Ok I know. But if you DO, it's here:

What to know about more "movies about mail?" Here's a list I made for myself to watch a while back.

Image credit: this is a vintage image of the mail train in the USA, because I couldn't find a good one to use of the England-Scotland train, and screen grabs from the film weren't great quality. It has no known copyright restrictions, and the Smithsonian Institution Flickr page describes it as "A Railway Post Office clerk is photographed holding a mail pouch and leaning out of a Baltimore & Ohio railroad car next to the car's mail exchange arm, as if waiting to make a mail exchange."

A history of New York

Stunning. Absolutely stunning. I can't stop watching this animation of the development of New York, from the 16th Century to the present. It's what you'll see when you ride the elevators in the new 1 World Trade Center, to the observatory. As you rise through the storeys, New York literally rises from the swamp, and the years and decades scroll with you so that you can keep track of the growth of the city in both time and height. Imagine then reaching the top. The doors open, and you step out into... NOW.

The happiness of the pursuit

"We should concern ourselves not so much with the pursuit of happiness, but with the happiness of the pursuit."

Once upon a time, before there were podcasts, I was going to create a podcast. It was to be an exploration of "how we celebrate." I was going to travel the world, for one year, and observe and take part in celebrations, big and small, personal and public: mardi gras and backyard weddings, New Year's Eve in Times Square and a christening in Addis Ababa.

Back then I worked as a radio reporter, so I did a deal with one of the syndicates we broadcast to. I would pre-record five minutes of "celebration stories" every week, play the recording to them over the phone (yes!), and they would then broadcast them to their 30 or so radio stations around Australia.

I don't think blogs had been invented in those days, and there certainly wasn't any YouTube or social media, so the visual component of my journey was to come later, in what I hoped would be a beautiful and inspirational book.

That would have been a good book, don't you think? How we celebrate.

Anyway the journey didn't happen because a misadventure in renting with flatmates unexpectedly required all my savings (which admittedly was only enough for my flights and not much more), and the whole idea kind of sank. Maybe one day, when the kids are grown up and I'm retired...

I was reminded of this whole non-journey recently when I watched a lovely, thoughtful little comedy called "Hector and the Search for Happiness." Have you seen it?

Essentially, Hector is a psychiatrist who gets fed up listening to and failing to fix his clients' first world problems. Which is kind of a first world problem in itself, really. He can't make them happy. He can't make himself happy, either.

So Hector channels his inner Tin Tin and embarks on a global adventure to find out what makes people happy. To everyone he meets, he asks, "Are you happy? What makes you happy?"

At one point in the story, he is hooked up to a machine that colour-codes the emotions he is experiencing. Yellow for happiness, blue for sadness, and acid-green for fear ("because fear eats away at you"). Something happens (I don't want to give it away) and Hector begins experiencing all of these emotions, and more, at once, and his brain glows like a rainbow. "It's an aurora borealis of the brain!" the observing scientist says.

Hector's emotions, when experienced all together, are beautiful.

How are you, dear friend? Are you happy? What makes you happy?

Images are screen grabs from the movie, taken by me. Here's the official trailer, if you're interested. 

Love

love has no gender

love has no race

love has no disability

love has no age

love has no religion

love has no labels

This video from Love Has No Labels has been doing the rounds of social media lately. Have you seen it? Just from watching, I feel so GOOD about the world. Like there is hope for us. Have a great weekend! Try to hug somebody.

(ps. If you can't see the video embedded below, watch it here)

Fred & Lorraine

This love story made me cry a little bit. In a good way.

When 96-year-old Fred’s wife of 75 years, Lorraine, passed away, he sat in his front room and started to hum a tune, then he wrote down some words for her. “Oh Sweet Lorraine,” he called his song, and he said “it just fit her.”

He saw an ad for an online singer-songwriter contest and thought “why not, I’ll just send it in.” But Fred didn’t post his song online, he posted it old-school, in a manila envelope, to the studio. And he wrote a letter explaining the song, adding “I can’t sing. It would scare people HA HA.”

The studio was so touched by Fred’s story and his love for Lorraine, that they produced the song for him. Here's a little video about that process. And LOOK at Fred's face when the song starts!

(ps. There's something going on with the video I've embedded. If you can't see it just below this text, you can watch Fred's story here)

A Letter From Fred from Green Shoe Studio on Vimeo.

This, but also that

Ugh. We have been sick all weekend. First it was Ralph, who went to bed just fine on Wednesday night and within four hours had produced enough mucus to fill a swimming pool. By Thursday night Scout had joined that club, and managed to sneeze INTO my mouth not once but twice while I was rubbing Vaporub onto her chest. And lo and behold, by Friday night I was sporting a tell-tale sore throat…

We are all feeling sniffly and foggy-headed and sorry for ourselves, bunkering down with copious quantities of berries and freshly-squeezed orange juice, and garlic-y foodstuffs. The house looks like a bomb hit it, the floors and all visible surfaces thick with toys, tissues and craft supplies: fallout from a weekend spent with two children sick enough to need to stay home but well enough to need constant entertaining. I could tidy up at night, but I’m too busy lying on the couch and moaning and sipping lemon-honey tea.

Also, I’ve been watching some of the movies on the Snail Mail Movie Club list. Here’s an update so far:

The Postman Why do people keep paying Kevin Costner to make movies?!?, BUT, I kind of like the premise that in times of war or oppression, communication becomes a powerful weapon

The Shop Around the Corner Sweet and I loved how closely You’ve Got Mail referenced it in both style and substance, BUT I could have wished for more of the actual pen-pal correspondence - I think they did that better in You’ve Got Mail

Letters to Juliet Super cheesy and WHAT were they thinking with the utterly cardboard romantic-interest guy (I can’t even remember his name - the blonde one), BUT a completely beautiful (and real-life) practice of writing letters about love to Juliet Capulet, AND Vanessa Redgrave - I want to be her, at any age!

84 Charing Cross Road Followed the book quite closely and just made me happy really, BUT occasionally a weird thing would happen where sometimes the actors, while reading their letters out loud, would look straight at the camera

Still to watch:

* Il Postino * We’ve Got Christmas Mail * The Night Mail * In the Good Old Summertime * PS I Love You * Message in a Bottle * Air Mail * Poste Restante

What am I missing? Any other movies about snail mail? And have you seen any of these? What did you think?

And how are you? How are your loved-ones? Hopefully sore-throat and mucus free!

Image credit: horses (totally unrelated to this post but I liked them) by Bethany Legg, licensed under Creative Commons

Love letters

Earlier this week when I posted about the Snail Mail Movie Club, a number of people gave me some wonderful recommendations for snail-mail-themed movies to watch. One of them was Letters to Juliet, which I duly watched on iTunes a couple of nights ago.

Have you seen it? The premise is that people write letters to Juliet Capulet (of Romeo and Juliet fame), mostly about their love-lives, and leave them on a wall opposite the balcony in Verona where once the original Juliet sighed and pondered “What’s in a name?” (It doesn’t seem to matter to them that Juliet is a purely fictional character.)

So far, it’s just a kind of sweet “passing through” tradition, like leaving a padlock on the Pont des Arts in Paris. But the best part of THIS story is that a group of women who call themselves the “Secretaries of Juliet” hand-write answers to each and every letter.

After I finished watching the movie I looked this tradition up and, with a lovely sense of “rightness” in the world, I found out it was true!

Apparently it all started more than 100 years ago, when visitors began to leave notes at Juliet’s supposed tomb. But the tradition really found its feet in 1937, when the then-custodian of Juliet’s tomb, Ettore Solimani, began replying to the notes, simply styling himself “Juliet’s Secretary.”

In the letters, which came from all over the world but were predominantly from adolescent American girls, people told Juliet their hopes and dreams. They shared their stories. They asked for her advice, they asked for her help.

“Help me! Save me!” one Italian woman wrote to Juliet, after her husband had left her. "I feel suspended on a precipice. I am afraid of going mad.”

Juliet, through Solimani replied, “Men have moments when they are unable to control themselves… Have faith… The day of humiliation will come for the intruder, and your husband will come back to you.” I hope everything worked out for her, whether he returned or not.

(That exchange came from a 2006 article in the New York Times, taken in turn from the book Letters to Juliet by Lise and Ceil Friedman, which I’ve ordered online but not yet read).

I love Solimani’s extravagant eccentricity in taking on the role of Juliet’s Secretary, a title he held for 20 years until he retired in the late 1950s. Stories tell that he created a series of rituals for visitors to the tomb, inviting them to make wishes that he promised would come true, and training turtle doves to alight on female visitors.

These days, the Secretaries of Juliet are a team of letter-writers, volunteers engaged by the City of Verona, called the Club di Giulietta. They answer all the letters, in every language, contracting translators if necessary. If you want to, you can even volunteer as a secretary yourself!

If a self-funded trip to Verona is a bit beyond the budget right now, you might still want to share your stories and dreams with Juliet, or seek her advice, at any time.

"Who knows if Juliet can really solve the problems in the matter of love, if she can make a dream come true or give hope to lovelorns… Sure is that this phenomenon has taken on global dimensions and has become part of the collective imagination,” her Secretaries say.

If you’d like to write to Juliet, simply addressing your letter to “Juliet in Verona” will be enough, but her formal address is:

Giulietta Capulet Club di Giulietta Via Galilei, 3 Verona Italy

The snail-mail movie club

Shall we start a club, of sorts? A movie club for people who love snail mail? And, related: do you want to be in my next book?

Let me explain.

I’m writing a book about snail mail. One that celebrates snail mail in the modern age, and has a lot of fun with all the ways you can write and create and send snail mail, to brighten others’ days, not to mention your own. Since I’ve been researching this book, I’ve also got to thinking about snail mail in popular culture, like books and TV and movies, and that’s where you come in.

I’ve made a list of all the movies I can think of that celebrate snail mail. Perhaps you know some others? What I’d love is for you to watch one or more of these movies, or one you know about that I haven’t shared here, and send me your impressions, either in the comments or privately via email (nabulger at gmail dot com) by the end of this month (February 2015).

If this was a proper club, we’d watch one movie a month together, or something along those lines. But at that rate, my book wouldn’t get written until about 2018! So instead, just pick one or as many movies as you’d like to watch this month, and go for it!

It doesn’t have to be a full review. You might just want to send a couple of words. Or one sentence. How the movie makes you feel about snail mail, something that surprised you, something that inspired you, something that made you go WHAAAAAT?! Pretty much anything!

Hopefully I’ll have enough movie responses to be able to share little comments and quotes when I talk about all the snail mail movies in my book. I’ll use your first and last name unless you’d rather be anonymous (just let me know and I’ll make a name up), and if you have a blog you’d like me to share I’m happy to do that too.

What do you think? Will you watch a movie (or two) with me? Maybe you could have a snail-mail movie night with friends, while writing and decorating letters (Valentine’s Day is coming up - does Grandma deserve a love letter?).

Meanwhile, I’d really appreciate it if you could share this post around your social media and other networks, so that as many people as possible might be able to be part of this.

Yours sincerely,

Naomi xo

The movies: 

(Top row) 84 Charing Cross Road // Message in a Bottle // Night Mail // We’ve Got Christmas Mail (Bottom row) Air Mail // Poste Restante // The Postman // The Shop Around the Corner

ps. I actually haven’t seen any of these myself, so if you’re in the same boat we’ll be watching along together for the first time. Some of them look really bad, don’t you think? But that’s half the fun. The two I’m looking forward to the most are the The Shop Around the Corner and 84 Charing Cross Road (brilliant book!)

ps2. Here’s where you’ll find some of my old snail mail and mail-art posts

ps3. My last book, called “Airmail,” is a novella about two strangers who are connected by letters and stories. You can find out more about it here

Hope

"Out of the darkness, only light can come"

Making me happy today: the wonderful, dreamlike, ever-so-Aussie, inside-the-pop-up-book stop-motion illustrations by Snip Green of "Spring to Come" by the John Butler Trio.

John Butler Trio - Spring To Come from Dropbear on Vimeo.

Seasons pass

As I write this, Mr B, Emily and I are sitting on couches in our lounge room re-watching Notting Hill and dreaming about moving to London. This is one of Mr B's favourite movies, but I am ambivalent. It's Hugh Grant at his floppy, bumbling best and a fantastically quirky supporting cast, but I never could buy into the Julia Roberts character and how they fell in love. She is such an awful character! Anyway, if you have somehow missed seeing this movie during the past 15 years, it's worth a gander for the hilarity and love and community of the sweet little friendship group, and, Oh! London! What a city, huh?

Anyway, there is a "time passing" scene in the movie and I think it's one of the best I've ever seen so I thought I'd share it with you. Look out for all the tiny details that indicate change and stability co-existing.