Snail Mail My Email + a letter-writing party?

When was the last time you received an email? How did it make you feel?

When was the last time you received a handwritten letter in the mail? How did that make you feel?

Once upon a time, an artist and filmmaker named Ivan Cash took to the streets asking strangers those very questions, and not surprisingly but somewhat touchingly (is “touchingly” a word?), almost everyone said they were indifferent or even overwhelmed by their emails, but that receiving a handwritten letter made them feel warm, special, happy, and like someone had believed they were worth something special.

Five years ago, he started a month-long art project called “snail mail my email,” during which you could send him an email with a message for somebody else, and Ivan and a handful of friends would hand-write your message and post it to the person you had nominated. They were overwhelmed with requests. Far too many to handle. More than 10,000, in fact.

Since then, Snail Mail My Email has evolved into a hugely collaborative and successful annual, week-long community art event, during which hundreds - even thousands - of volunteers from all over the world write and post letters on behalf of others.

This year, I have signed up to be a volunteer letter-writer. Will you join me? Maybe you could make it a fun event with other people who live near you? Here’s what it takes.

* During the week of 9 to 13 November, you and I and all the other volunteers around the world will each be sent up to 15 emails, which we are to then hand-write, and post to the address given. It could be anywhere in the world * We have to write and post the letters during that week * We’re expected to do something a little bit creative with the letters: a doodle, a lipstick kiss, a hint of washi-tape… * We’re also asked to take photos of our letters (minus any identifying details) and share them on social media

What do you think? I’m fairly confident I could write up to 15 letters in five days, especially since I’m just copying out (and making pretty) somebody else’s words.

A lot of volunteers make a bit of an event of it, planning letter-writing parties and such things. If you sign up and you’re in Melbourne, let me know. Maybe we could have a fun, letter-writing party where we all pool our stationery and art supplies, and bring doughnuts and cupcakes and cheese, and talk and laugh and write and craft and make new friends. That sounds pretty good, don’t you think?

There's more information and a straightforward volunteer form on the Snail Mail My Email website.

ps. Here is a little video of the people Ivan approached, asking about email and snail mail. Just note that it was filmed in 2013, so the dates of the campaign are not correct. If you want to take part this year (either to volunteer or to have a letter written), the dates are 9 to 13 November, 2015.

Snail Mail vs. Email from Ivan Cash on Vimeo.

Mail art ("two days later, someone laughs somewhere else in the world")

"I think I became a writer because I used to write letters to my friends, and I used to love writing them. I loved the idea that you can put marks on a page and send it off, and two days later, someone laughs somewhere else in the world." David Nicholls (author & screenwriter)

Guacamole season (and also a recipe)

I have been trying to teach the children about seasons for fruit and vegetables. Late in autumn we had a "goodbye green grapes" party to enjoy the final bunch of the season, which was harder to explain than you might expect due to the plethora of gigantic, California-grown green-grapes that started appearing on grocery-store shelves soon thereafter. We made good use of mandarin season but recently had to say goodbye to them, too, and now we are all eagerly anticipating the arrival of stone-fruit season.

You get my drift.

And then last weekend (or thereabouts), guacamole season started. Big excitement!

Guacamole season goes hand-in-hand with daylight saving and Caprese-salad season and dry-white-wine season and also friends-over-at-dusk season. So even though I'm not famous for loving the warmer weather, I am nevertheless quite the fan of guacamole season.

Guacamole season starts with longer days and bare feet. Soggy bathers, sand inside the house, tasting sunscreen after kissing sweaty lips. Cicadas after dark, mosquitos too, and the hum of the fan in the bedroom. Guacamole is made to share and taste and leave and come back to, and then come back to again. Double-dipping is ok because we are all friends here, family probably or practically, and somehow the guacamole bowl is always empty before the corn chips run out. Some people pair guacamole season with margaritas in glasses with the rims crusted with sugar-salt and I totally get that, but I am too lazy to mix even the simplest of cocktails. White wine or prosecco, straight from the 'fridge and therefore too cold for the purists, suits me. Maybe some homemade lemonade, too.

Would you like to know my guacamole recipe?

A few words before you try this. I have been hunting for the perfect guacamole recipe for a long, long time, and this is the closest I've found to it. Each time I make it it is different, sometimes better than others. But in case you try it and then yell "Naomi, what?!?," here are some things that I look for in what I happen to think makes a good guacamole, and maybe you will agree or maybe you won't.

1. It has to be smooth. None of this lumpy, chunky stuff
2. I'm a bit of a guacamole-purist so this recipe is very simple. No onion or tomato or cheese for me. This ain't a meal, folks, it's a tasty snack
3. No Doritos or other cheesy, processed corn-chips are permitted within a 100 metre radius of guacamole at my house. Get yoself some stock-standard "proper" corn-chips, cheese-free

Naomi's guacamole recipe

Treat this recipe with a fair bit of flexibility. For example I like a decent kick to my guac so I'm generous (ish) with the cayenne pepper and chilli flakes. I also like a lot of lime zing to my guacamole, so I add a lot more lime than others tend to do. Add the lime-juice one lime at a time, to get the taste you like. If like me you love a lot 'o lime, but you find the guac is getting too sloppy, start adding zest instead.

Ok let's go...

Ingredients 4 avocados 2 cloves garlic, minced juice of 1 - 4 limes, to taste 1/2 teaspoon sea-salt 1/2 - 1 teaspoon ground cumin 1/2 - 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper 1 tablespoon chopped fresh coriander (cilantro for my American friends)

Method Scoop all the avocado into a blender, add in the minced garlic, and mix until it's nice and smooth with no big lumps. Now add the juice of one lime, and about half the amounts of the dried spices and fresh coriander, blend to mix them, then taste. Start adding bits and pieces of the rest, plus more lime juice, until you're happy with the flavour.

Serve it with corn chips (the real deal, nothing cheesy), and enjoy!

ps. If you're feeding other people, make the guacamole just before they arrive as the avocado will start to oxidise and turn brown after a little while and you want it to look good as well as taste good!

Fairy snail-mail

Look what arrived in the mail for Scout and Ralph last week! The tiniest envelope you've ever seen, complete with a minuscule stamp (of a snail, because snail-mail, natch), and an adorable wax seal.

Inside was a teeny tiny card, with a letter to the children written inside. The letter was from the Elves and Fairies, who confessed that they had secretly been playing in the children's garden every night, and particularly enjoyed the new cubby house. They hoped that this was ok, and promised to put all the toys back exactly where they had found them so nothing would get lost.

The Elves and Fairies also promised that if the children left them a letter in their toy postbox, they would write back. And would Ralph and Scout like the Elves and Fairies to send them a present? They would be happy to do that, as long as the children understood that the present would have to be very, very small (or else it would be too heavy to post).

This was an adorable little letter, with attention paid even to the tiniest detail. It came in a little glassine envelope (with its own wax seal) alongside a magnifying glass for reading the letter. I ordered it from Leafcutter Designs, and the whole thing cost $US9.75 plus postage, which I think was quite the bargain.

Birthdays

It was my birthday on the weekend. I was up before everyone else, as I often am. I let the cat out, and surveyed the still-dark garden in my socks. I love our garden in the early morning. Beyond the garden walls are the rustlings of pre-dawn morning; birds, stretching and yawning. But inside my little oasis, all is still and silent. The daisies are shut-tight, fast asleep.

My socks left a trail of wet footprints through the playroom as I came back inside, because the grass had been wet from overnight rain and I hadn't noticed. I filled the kettle and flipped it on, then unpacked the dishwasher and tidied the kitchen a bit while I waited for it to boil. Poured a cup of tea and carried it into my office, then sat down to work on my book. After about an hour of typing, I realised my cup of tea was empty and I couldn't think who might have drunk it. I took the empty cup back into the kitchen, flipped the kettle on, and waited for it to boil again. While I was waiting Mr B came downstairs and said "Happy birthday," and that was when I remembered this was a "special day."

Off and on throughout the rest of the day, while Scout made me chocolate birthday cupcakes with florescent pink icing and sprinkles, in her favourite Peppa Pig casings, I got to thinking about birthdays. Here are some of my thoughts.

One. People are worth celebrating. It doesn't have to be a birthday, but birthdays are always a good place to start. There's nothing wrong with choosing a day to make much of someone you love. I feel the same way about supposedly-commercial holidays, like Mother's Day and Father's Day and Valentine's Day: so what if they were created by greeting card companies? It's still a good reminder to celebrate the people we love.

Two. I should feel ok about celebrating myself. I shouldn't feel embarrassed to say "It's my birthday" and let people give me hugs or wish me happy birthday or come over for dinner. That's NICE. Why am I so embarrassed / ashamed about being celebrated? I'm totally up for celebrating YOU, I just feel very awkward when it comes to celebrating me.

Three. After I had Scout, I had an a-ha moment about birthdays. I mean I totally got it, at last. Birthdays are MASSIVE deals for the parents of the birthday boy or girl. As far as Scout was concerned, her first birthday was about seeing people she loved, getting presents, eating chocolate cake, playing with balloons, and singing a strange song. All of those are nice things, I'm sure you'll agree, but not exactly deep. That's all birthdays will ever mean to a lot of us. After all, none of us remembers not existing.

But for me, Scout's first birthday was a phenomenal marker of an event (her birth!) that was long-anticipated, extremely hard-won (they don't call it "labour" for nothing), and resulted me creating, growing, nurturing and pushing into the world an actual human being who wasn't there before, and now is, and thinks and laughs and cries and creates and loves. I did that and I'm doing that and that, my friends, is PROFOUND.

So the next time someone glibly says "Oh, the first birthday is more about the parents than the child," so what? Hell yeah it is! Let them celebrate, let them go ridiculously, ostentatiously over the top if they want to. Because for the parents, that first birthday marks the remembrance and the continuance of unfathomable mysteries. Life where there wasn't life. Love that you didn't know you had in you. That birthday and every birthday to follow it marks a turning-point in the life's journey of the parents, after which nothing will ever be the same again.

This weekend, and every year on my birthday and on Scout's birthday and on Ralph's birthday, I think about my mother.

Rainy day patchwork postcards

A little while back I painted a series of five geometric water-colour paintings. They are patchworks of triangles, really. For me, they are interpretations of what it is like to look through thick, antique diamond-paned glass windows, while it is raining.

Recently I had them printed as postcards, so that I could have something colourful and pretty to hand if I wanted to send someone a quick note, and so that I would be able to include the set of five with other gifts when I'm writing to people through this blog.

20 ways to find creative inspiration when you're ready to give up

Sometimes the ideas flow easily, and creativity is pure joy. Other times, finding your creative path is like wading through syrup (only not sweet, either). Don't give up! Here are 20 ways I use to cut through, depending on what I'm going through and what I need. Maybe one or two of them will work for you, too.

Good luck! Naomi xo

ps. It's probably best NOT to approach these with whatever is stumping you front-of-mind. Try not to be strategic. Give your brain a little holiday, and let it just follow what ever paths these activities take it. You might find an unexpected solution to your problem and, if not, at least you will return to it refreshed, having seen and/or done something different and uplifting.

* Take a walk while listening to music * Work in your garden, or pot some indoor plants *  Keep an “ideas journal.” One that makes it easy for you to write AND draw * This is a silly and fun ideas generator that sometimes actually works * Look through old reference picture-books (like old encyclopaedias) * Join the adult colouring trend * Shake things up. Do something out of your comfort zone * Learn a new skill. This will teach you how to make anything * Browse through second-hand shops and markets * Meditate for five minutes a day. Here’s how * Go to a cafe by yourself. Listen to other conversations. Write 200 words of anything at all in your notebook * Listen to some TED talks * Take your camera for a walk. Notice things differently through the lens * Turn off all your electronics. Be completely present in the moment * Turn your electronics back on. Allow yourself to get lost in Pinterest and Instagram: follow anything that takes your fancy * Explore this list of tools for creating ideas * Keep a dream journal and write down your dreams the moment you wake up * Follow the Swiss Miss blog to see what other creatives are doing * Read more books * Visit an art gallery

Mysterious letters

The “mysterious letters” project is as quirky as it is lovely, and probably impossible, but nevertheless delightful.

Artists and writers Lenka Clayton and Michael Crowe have set themselves the task of writing a letter to every household in the world.

Yes, EVERY household.

Don’t think too hard about it, because once you do you’ll be running statistics in your head: population numbers versus the time you estimate it takes them to learn a name and address, write a letter, scan it, stick it in an envelope, put a stamp on it, and post it. Proving Lenka and Michael can complete this job is like proving Father Christmas is real. Stop trying and just believe.

They are working towards their goal one town at a time, delivering the letters en masse on one day. As they arrive, the letters create confusion, consternation and a lot of joy in the residents, first as they read their letters, and then once they begin to discover that all their neighbours received mysterious letters from strangers that day as well.

When they dropped the letters on an unsuspecting little town in Ireland, it caused such a stir that the BBC picked up the story.

So far, they have dropped letters on towns in France, Germany, Switzerland, Ireland and the USA. All of the letters are scanned before they are sent, and you can read them on the Mysterious Letters blog.

Sugar free?

I have been trying to give my body a break from sugar. I like sugar a lot more than is strictly good for me, and also, it’s pretty hard to insist that my children have a healthy diet if I don’t model said diet myself.

On Friday I made this sugar-free take on lemon meringue pie from the I Quite Sugar for Life cookbook. It was surprisingly tasty, and I impressed myself with how good (I thought) it looked. Emboldened, I also made a peppermint slice from the same cookbook. It was awful.

Do you have any tips? What are your favourite sugar-free recipes for sweet-toothed folks?

7 messages in bottles

I’ve been reading about messages in bottles. It’s research for my book, and it has been a lot of fun. Fascinating, creative, poignant, sometimes heartwarming, messages, cast adrift* in the hope that someone, somewhere, will find them. Here are seven of my favourites. (There are loads more, but you’ll have to read about them in the book, wink wink).

The year is 1493. On his journey back to Spain after stumbling upon North America, Christopher Columbus is beset by a storm on the North Atlantic and believes his ship, La Niña, will likely be shipwrecked. He writes a desperate note to the Spanish Queen Isabella, telling her of his situation and that new land has been found, and tosses it into the ocean in a bottle.

Columbus survives the storm and returns home a hero, but his message in a bottle is yet to be found.

The year is 1784. Japanese sailor Chunosuke Matsuyama is treasure-hunting in the Pacific Ocean. He and his 43 shipmates are shipwrecked on a coral reef during a storm, and forced to take refuge on a nearby island with very little food or fresh water. Knowing he is likely to die, Matsuyama scratches the story of the shipwreck onto thin pieces of wood from a coconut tree, then casts them adrift in a bottle.

The bottle is found more than 150 years later, in 1935, on the shoreline of Japan.

The year is 1912. Early in the morning of 15 April, the RMS Titanic sinks in the North Atlantic Ocean after colliding with an iceberg on its way to New York. Before he dies, a 19-year-old passenger named Jeremiah Burke scribbles a note, and sets it adrift in a bottle.

“From Titanic. Goodbye all. Burke of Glanmire, Cork.”

One year later, the bottle washes ashore in Dunkettle, Ireland, only a few miles from Burke’s family home.

The year is 1914. WWI private Thomas Hughes writes a message for his wife and tosses it into the English Channel as he leaves to fight in France.

“Dear Wife, I am writing this note on this boat and dropping it into the sea just to see if it will reach you. If it does, sign this envelope on the right hand bottom corner where it says receipt. Put the date and hour of receipt and your name where it says signature and look after it well. Ta ta sweet, for the present. Your Hubby.”

Hughes is killed in battle only two days after releasing his letter. The bottle is found 85 years later, in 1999, in the River Thames, and is delivered to Hughes’ 86-year-old daughter Emily Crowhurst, now living in New Zealand.

The year is 1915. After the British ocean liner RMS Lusitania is torpedoed by a German u-boat during the first World War, one of the 1198 passengers and crew who ultimately perish with the ship hurriedly writes this message, and pushes it into a bottle:

“Still on deck with a few people. The last boats have left. We are sinking fast. Some men near me are praying with a priest. The end is near. Maybe this note will--”

The year is 1985. A man writes a letter, seals it in a bottle, and tosses it off the coast somewhere in Nova Scotia, Canada. The note says:

“Mary, you are a really great person. I hope we can keep in correspondence. I said I would write. Your friend always, Jonathon. Nova Scotia, ‘85.”

The bottle washes up 28 years later on a Croatian beach, but nobody has yet found Jonathon or Mary.

The year is 1990. A message is tossed overboard in a bottle, during a ferry-ride from Hull in England to Belgium:

“Dear finder, my name is Zoe Lemon. Please would you write to me, I would like it a lot. I am 10 years old and I like ballet, playing the flute and the piano. I have a hamster called Sparkle and fish called Speckle.”

In 2013, Zoe’s parents receive a letter at Christmas time, sent from the Netherlands: “Dear Zoe, yesterday on one of my many walks with my wife along the dikes of Oosterschelde looking among the debris thrown by the sea of embankment I found a little plastic bottle containing your message.”

What this research has got me thinking about is that before we had any kind of mobile or satellite technology, which is incredibly recently, there was pretty much no other way to get a message out there from a sinking ship than to trust it to a bottle and the waves and hope for the best.

Those sad and desperate notes, scribbled in literally the last few minutes of people's lives, show just how powerful is the human need to connect, whether it's to reach out to a loved-one, or just to make sure that someone - even a stranger - will know what happened to us. For many of these people, communication was their last deliberate act.

* If you have qualms about the romance of messages in bottles versus the potential environmental damage of tossing something into the ocean, famous Canadian oceanographer Dr Eddy Carmack may be able to put your mind at rest. "Drift bottle science is cheap, fun, and environmentally friendly," he says.

Dr Carmack is the head of the Drift Bottle Project, which launched in 2000 and has so far released more than 6400 bottles, in an important study of ocean surface currents.

Just maybe steer away from the plastic bottles, if you're going to do this. Plastics photodegrade in sunlight, meaning they break down into ever-smaller pieces, and the tiniest pieces release toxins that can poison the entire food chain when they are eaten by marine animals and birds.

On the other hand, glass bottles are relatively benign, says Dr Carmack. "The unfound bottles eventually break down, and become part of the marine environment."

Image credits: Bhavyesh Acharya, licensed for unlimited use under Creative Commons