Mail art: in defense of domesticity

This suite of mail-art envelopes was inspired by former blogger Natalie Holbrook's 2015 book, Hey Natalie Jean. In the book, she is unabashedly proud of her role as "Queen of her home," championing the kind of feminist mantra that says feminism is about choice. Natalie has a choice and she chooses to be a homemaker (among other things).

It felt kind of refreshing to read this, because I love looking after my home, too, and I see it as an extension of looking after my family. But always in the back of my mind is a kind of niggling: in doing this, am I turning the feminist cause back fifty years?

Mr B's and my roles in our home are quite traditional. He goes out to work and, because his days are long (generally 14 hours or more) while I work part time and I do that work from home; the housework, cooking and all those other domestic bits and pieces fall to me. For us, the division of labour this way is both practical and financial. It has nothing to do with gender.

But also, I really like it! I love taking care of my home, and it gives me such a sense of calm and contentment when it is tidy. I feel as though caring for my house is also an act of love to my family, giving them somewhere clean and beautiful to live and think and play and grow. Am I a 1950s housewife? Am I setting back the cause? I hope not. This is what Natalie says:

"I make my home somewhere I love to be not to impress others, or live up to some standard or ideal, but out of respect to myself."

You know?

Pruning the Internet

Ms. Shlain: ...I love what you just said about character in terms of the internet evolving, that we proactively can evolve the internet and infuse it with character strengths. That is really a framework to think about a healthy evolution of the internet, instead of throwing your hands up and saying this thing is out of our control, and it’s doing all these things. We — just as we’re raising a child, we need to shepherd this to its maturity, and infuse it with our own sense of character.

Ms. Tippett: Right. You talk about how a child’s brain and our brains are always pruning as we get older, and that what we pay attention to gets stronger, and what you pay attention to less gets pruned out.

Ms. Shlain: Yeah.

Ms. Tippett: And I think you’ve also suggested that, like the human brain, those of us who are adults now have lived through this thing, this phenomenon, landing in the middle of our lives, and in the middle of society, and really turning everything inside out in ways that are still playing out. But you’ve said there’s this possibility that once it has just proliferated, that it might begin to prune. But again, as you’re saying, it’s up to us what direction that takes.

Ms. Shlain: Absolutely. I think that’s incredibly empowering, too, if you think of it that way. And it’s exciting, if you think, wow, we’re at this point in human evolution and our civilization where you have this tool that’s creating a nervous system for the whole world, and we can shape it. And we can prune it. And we can strengthen things that are important, and weaken things that are not as important — or not good for society.

There’s so much — going back to the character, there’s so much science, neuroscience and social science, that’s backing up what we believed to be true. And what was so exciting to me about learning about Seligman and Peterson’s work, that they looked at character, virtues, and strengths all throughout cultures in history.

*                     *                     *

This is part of a conversation between broadcaster and author Krista Tippett, and filmmaker and author Tiffany Shlain, on the On Being podcast in March this year.

I loved how their conversation completely reframed the "digital is awesome" versus "digital is ruining our lives" debate that seems to be going on everywhere right about now.  Shlain is definitely pro-digital: she founded the Webbys (the digital version of the Oscars), for goodness' sake! But she and her family also practice a "tech shabbat," turning off all their devices for one entire day every week.

In this conversation, Shlain and Tippett talk about how the Internet is in its infancy, and about how we are in a position to help it grow in the direction that will turn it into its best self. Parenting. Pruning. And about how empowering that idea can be.

It's an incredibly inspiring and thoughtful conversation. If you feel stuck, like I do, between desire for the connections the Internet brings versus the desire to be more unplugged, I highly recommend a listen!

Anatomy of a pyjama day

Mail-art: late harvest

Do you know that feeling when you think something is getting on top of you, but you don't have the courage to look too closely into it, because it might be even worse than you thought? Yep, that feeling. And then you do look...

Well, I took a deep breath and then took a close look on the weekend, and discovered that I owe more than 65 mail-art letters right now. Ugh. I'm so sorry everyone! I hand-make each piece of mail, including what goes into it, and each letter can take me many, many hours. But I hadn't realised I'd fallen so far behind.

For this reason, I have decided to temporarily disable the form that lets people request this kind of mail, until I've caught up on the letters I already owe.

If you subscribe to this blog and have requested handmade, painted mail from me, I promise you are not forgotten. I appreciate you being so patient with me! And if you're reading this blog and would LIKE mail but haven't requested it yet, I promise to put the form back up just as soon as I've caught up, and I'll let you know in a future blog post.

In the meantime, I thought it was time to share the fruits of my labour (see what I did there?) last week, being these five letters. The friends who requested them did so all the way back in March, which shows you just how behind I am in sending out my mail. I hope they still live in those places (!) and that they like their harvest-themed happy-mail, despite the delay.

Harry Potter

Have a magical Monday!

(Image credit: Dan Stark, licensed for unlimited use under Creative Commons)

54 letters, 22 countries

Estonia  ::  United States of America  ::  Singapore  ::  Scotland  ::  Italy ::  Portugal  ::  Canada  ::  Indonesia  ::  Morocco  ::  United Kingdom  ::  Philippines  ::  Australia  ::  Japan  ::  Germany  ::  Norway  ::  The Netherlands  ::  Arab Republic of Egypt  ::  Mexico  :: Malaysia  ::  Russia  ::  Vietnam  ::  France 

I sent a tiny letter to each of these countries last week. To most, I sent more than one. Each and every envelope was sent with love, and it gave me such happiness to imagine the journeys these simple scraps of paper were about to take.

To anyone who says snail-mail is dead, just look at that list. Between sunrise and sunset on a single day, 54 people from 22 countries gave me - someone they don't know and have never met - their addresses, so that I could send them a little something in the mail. There would have been more, but I ran out of letters. Why did they do it? Because each of them knows this: a letter in the mail brings joy.

Also - and I can tell you this from personal experience - sending a letter brings joy, too.

Why wait?

First, this memory.

I am seven or eight years old, and my parents' friends Sue and Ian have come to stay. After dinner, we all sit cross-legged on the carpet in the lounge room and sing. Folk music, mostly, from the 60s and 70s, as well as some of their originals. Ian pulls out his guitar, Mum pulls out her flute, everyone sings. Ian is super-cool to me, a bit like Bob Dylan, but Sue’s voice is more like a soprano version of Karen Carpenter: all strong and smooth, with a gently undulating vibrato. As she sings, she bends her head forward and her long blonde hair falls over her shoulder like a single sheet of water. Like an angel.

This is what I think about as I sit on the carpet with them all, listening and admiring and sometimes joining in, and I feel like I have been allowed into something special and mysterious and grown-up. I also think, "I want to be Sue when I grow up.”

They were playing Cat Stevens in my local cafe yesterday morning while I waited for my bagel and coffee. “Too emo” muttered the barista, and switched to something else, but the damage was done. Like osmosis, I had already absorbed the song under my skin and, once there, it made its way into my blood-stream and within a nanosecond had tickled a long-neglected corner of my prefrontal cortex, awakening the memory of this late-night singalong from its decades-long hibernation.

Holding my coffee, I walked back along the footpath in the bitter cold and spitting rain, thinking about friends and music and, because Cat Stevens was still on my mind, I also thought about the Harold & Maude soundtrack. Especially the two songs that Cat Stevens had written just for that movie (this one and this one), which are both about stepping up and being proud of who you are, and embracing your life. Scout loves these songs, and asks to hear them often.

I thought about that scene in which Maude sang “If you want to sing out, sing out” and it made me smile. I started humming to myself as I walked through the rain, which was sweeping sideways by now. My hands were so cold I couldn't feel my fingers around the coffee cup.

I thought, “I want to be Maude when I grow up.”

And just at that moment, in the wind and rain, a woman drove past me on a beat-up old Vespa motor scooter. The woman would have been at least 80 years old, maybe more. She was wearing an ancient helmet that looked like one of those WWII aviator helmets, and was squinting against the icy rain that must surely have been piercing her cheeks like needles. Across her face was spread an enormous smile of pure joy.

And I thought, "Why wait?"

Image credit: Ismael Nieto, licensed for unlimited use under Creative Commons

Tangible texts

Yesterday I brought home a small, fat parcel from the post office. It had Mr B's name on it but upon opening it, he handed it across to me, saying, "This is for you."

He'd ordered for me a stack of late-Victorian postcards, all used and most of them still carrying their stamps. We spent the evening looking over the wonderful illustrations, reading through the spidery, handwritten messages, and marvelling at how far these postcards had travelled in distance and in time. The connections they represented.

"Your cat is OK," one of the writers said, "sleeping every day in the sun." Others spoke of holidays, of family, of the weather ("How do you like this snow and weather we are having? I haven't had a sleigh ride since Christmas...").

But what really struck us was how little was said on several of the postcards.

Sometimes, people simply wanted to say "I'm thinking of you," and a postcard was the best way to say it. Postcards were the late-19th and early-20th Century versions of SMS: simple words that reinforced "You are loved," or maybe, simply, "You are not forgotten."

In the backlash against the cold, digital, instantaneous messaging of today, there is often a whole lot more weight given to those who write a lengthy letter. And I love a good epistolary chat as much as the next person. But sometimes I don't have time to write a long, newsy letter. Sometimes I just want someone I care about to know that they are on my mind and in my heart. Likewise, when the people who love me are busy it is still nice to know they are thinking of me, even if they don't have time to sit down and write five pages about their lives.

I think the fact that I hold these tangible texts in my hands today is a testament to the reality that our words have power. Because a simple "Thinking of you" can mean so much to someone that they hold onto it until they day they die.

∇∇ "From a friend guess who"

∇∇ "All is O.K."

∇∇ "Wish you many Happy Birthdays"

∇∇ "Faithfully"

∇∇ "From your sincere friend"

Yarn blooms

Fleur Lyon of The Folk Maker creates lasting posies out of yarn and found twigs, often with tiny gum-nuts still attached, and they are absolutely beautiful.

I discovered her Instagram feed only yesterday, and now I can't look away. Definitely wish-listing a posy of yarn blooms in neutral tones to sit above my hearth this winter!

All images from Fleur Lyon's Instagram feed, @thefolkmaker

Mini mail-art

Hello, dear friends. This is just a little something I've been working on, to give to the subscribers I write to via this blog: mini mail-art. I've made a series of 12 water-colour botanical stickers that people can use to decorate their next mail; and another 12 "return address" stickers for them to personalise with their own addresses, and then colour if they want to.