The pop-up letter shop

This is the best idea I've heard of in a long time. In Seattle, USA, a woman named Rachel Weil has launched a snail-mail truck, known as The Letter Farmer. Like a food truck, you know, but serving up food for the soul (awwwww).

She has fitted out a beautiful, red truck with all kinds of carefully selected stationery supplies - pens, paper, cards, stamps, even sealing wax, and hits the road every day. Wherever she stops, she sets up some tables and chairs outside, provides free postcards (and postage!), and invites people to start writing. She keeps a stack of prompts - people to write to and things to write - for those who are stuck.

When they're done, folks can even pop their missives into the post box attached to her truck.

Rachel says, "Sharing the narrative of our life through pen and paper as they meet and the nuances of our handwriting, paper selection and an envelope is addressed, stamped and mailed is priceless and timeless. Letters can be reread over and over, giving us the opportunity to have voices of our past speak again. Holding and touching something that someone who is either no longer with us or geographically far away is a way that we can feel physical connection with that person."

Can you imagine how fantastic this would be in your city, turning up at parks and carnivals and open spaces? How perfectly would it fit in at a food-truck festival! The Letter Farmer would be my dream business, except that I never have managed to master the art of hook turns in Melbourne. Maybe Australia Post could launch a fleet of these mobile shops, and bring their business to the people...

Here's an article about The Letter Farmer in the Seattle Times

Image credit: all photographs are from The Letter Farmer website

Things left unsaid

This is the truth about what really happened that weekend. I have loved you for years. A secret. I have to know why you did that. I’m your biggest fan. There’s a question I’ve always wanted to ask you. I’m sorry.

Is there something unsaid lingering in your life, that is eating away at you? Is there someone out there who you wish you could tell, or ask, that one thing? But you can’t find them, or you don’t have the courage... you don’t know how they’d react?

Me too.

This blog post is a story about six degrees of separation, which seems to happen to most of us at some time or another, but it is also about snail-mail (so hooray!), and there's a way for you to find some personal resolution on those unspoken words, too. So really, there's something in this blog post for all of us. Read on, comrades!

About six months ago, I received in the mail a little book of short stories, from my dear friend Sonya. (Once, Sonya and I and my dog Oliver squeezed into a tiny, tin-pot rental car and drove across the United States from New York to Florida, into New Orleans, up to Oklahoma, and then all the way to LA along Route 66. I have been lucky to travel to a lot of wonderful places in the world, but that was the best journey I ever had). The book she sent me, Portable Curiosities, had been written by another of Sonya's friends, Julie Koh. It was full of stories that were magical and whimsical and disturbing and challenging in all the right ways. "This writer is my kind of person," I thought to myself.

Then earlier this month, Julie put out a call for participants in a fabulous new snail-mail project, planned for ABC Radio. I might not have heard about it, except that my sister-in-law, who also works for ABC Radio, did hear about it. So she sent a message to Julie, telling her about me, and Julie sent her back a photograph of my book, Airmail. Turns out Sonya had been busy sending books between us! And then my sister-in-law sent a screen-shot of part of the conversation to me, also alerting me to the aforementioned fabulous snail-mail project.

And so everything came full circle, and yesterday I reached out to Julie at last, because I think the universe was saying, "Do it!"

Onwards to the bit where you come in.

You're wondering what the fabulous new snail-mail project is, aren't you. Well, it's called Expressive Post, and here's what it's all about in Julie's words:

Have you always wanted to write a letter to a particular someone but haven’t, for whatever reason?

Is there something you want to tell another person but it’s a delicate topic, and you’re not sure how they’ll react? A topic so delicate that only a letter will do?

I’m testing a potential new show for ABC Radio National that needs letters like these.

To participate, all you have to do is:

1. Write that special letter and post it to the address below.

2. Include your name and contact details.*

As part of the test run, I’ll select the most compelling letters. Then I’ll track down the intended recipient for each letter and deliver it to them. They’ll read the letter for the first time on the show.

The address to write to, and all the other details (including the fact that you can remain anonymous if you prefer it) are on Julie's website, right here. But be quick: this is a trial program and will only go ahead if there are enough good letters and connections to make.

The deadline for the first round of letters is next Friday, 4 November, so if you want to write, especially if your letter is coming from outside of Australia, maybe drop her an email just to let her know it's on its way.

I am going to try to find the words to reach out to my best friend from high school. For years I felt like I had failed her, but I also loved her dearly, and I've wanted to reach out for a long time. I've tried in the past to reach out to her, but with no success. I don't know if she didn't want to hear from me, or if my overtures were never delivered, but they've only met with silence.

Maybe this is my chance to say, at last, "I know I failed you. I tried to be a good friend, and I did love you, but I didn't understand."

How about you? What have you left unsaid? Will you take this opportunity to find the words?

Checking in: quitting Facebook, one year on

Nope, still not missing it. In case you were wondering.

If you're new around here, here are my reasons for quitting Facebook (and Twitter, and LinkedIn), and here are some lessons I learned a month in.

One thing I feared I'd miss on leaving Facebook was the occasional clever content. Events, ideas and happenings that people posted online, that I wanted in my world.

But thankfully, friendships can exist outside of social media. Who knew!?

Back in my Facebook days, if a friend saw something that they thought I'd like, they'd tag me in the comments to let me know. "@naomibulger," they'd type, and then move on.

These days, my friends write me letters, they send me texts, they send emails. They write, "Hi how are you? I saw this on FB and thought of you. Let's catch up soon!"

And I write back. "Oh wow that's interesting, thanks for thinking of me. I'm well, how are you guys? Coffee next week?"

It's so much more personal. Quality over quantity, that old chestnut. I feel so much more connected without Facebook than I ever did with it.

And better still: my friends know me and care about me, so the stories they share are actually stories that I want to read. Stories about extraordinary kindnesses, inspiring creativity, and new snail-mail projects.

Not once has anybody written to me, "Hi how are you? This grandmother looks 20 years younger, without surgery!" Or, "Hi how are you? I saw this article about Brangelina's divorce and thought of you." Or, "Hi how are you? They told this woman she couldn't breastfeed in public and you'll never believe what she did next!"

Turns out, my friends know me even better than a piece of software. Who knew?

Keep on making bread, my friends. Keep on writing letters, brewing tea, tending plants. You don't have to quit Facebook, but do make time in your life for slow things, for tactile things, for real things. Fresh air. They will feel like fresh air.

Into the woods

Little Scout was nervous at first, stepping gingerly through the underbrush on the way to the trees, holding tightly to my hand, and Ralph's. "I am afraid of the sticks," she said, "afraid that they might hurt me." Once inside the pine-forest, she kept calling Ralph back. "Stay close little man! You might get lost!" Every step further into the forest added another layer of fear. She was positive we would all get lost. That there were monsters. Badgers (thank you, Peter Rabbit). A gruffalo.

And then Ralph found the first pine-cone. It was all broken and rotting on the under-side, so we threw it back, but it was enough. They raced around the clearing where we stood, Scout no longer afraid, leaping over the once-deadly sticks to find the best and most beautiful pine-cones. Ralph lead us further into the forest. "I am the exhibition leader!" he announced proudly. He meant expedition leader. "Ralph is a very good brother," Scout said, and I agreed. "Lead on, Ralph," I said, following him dutifully.

Above our heads and outside of the forest, a great wind was roaring. We saw it in the swaying canopy above us, heard it in the creaks and moans of the trees around us, and had felt it, before we stepped inside the trees, in the slap of dust and hair stinging our cheeks. But in here, everything felt calm. It was our own woody, pine-scented bubble.

We drank tea from enamel mugs, watched a kangaroo hop lazily past us and disappear over a hill. We raced one another in and out of rows of pine-trees, followed winding paths, scrambled up and down and over mossy logs and (unintentionally) through muddy puddles, and altogether had a wonderful time.

Even the mosquitoes that showed up for our picnic lunch couldn't dampen our mood. "It's a mozzie hunt!" the children shouted, slapping themselves wildly, and mostly ineffectually.

Then, "Time to find more pine-cones," declared the expedition leader, but what he was really saying was, "Let the wild rumpus start!" So we packed up our picnic things and scrambled through the forest once more.

Snail-mail: outgoing lately

I've been quiet on here but loud on life lately. Thanks for sticking around! The photo at the top of this page is of a stack of antique (100 years old or more) birthday-themed postcards I sent out to folks on Instagram, to help celebrate my own birthday last week. Here's some of the other mail I've posted during the past couple of weeks...

∧∧ This great big stack of letters and aerogrammes

∧∧ Putting Australia Post's flower stamps into a vase

∧∧ I was painting King Kong mail and my daughter begged me, "Make him gold?" So.

∧∧ Dear Australia Post: I am probably your biggest fan and definitely one of your biggest customers, but sending parcels overseas is getting ridiculously expensive. Thankfully, pretty stamps for the win. (Personal budget for the loss)

∧∧ Herbal mail-art for an aromatherapist

∧∧ A little bluebird carrying a message to Estonia

∧∧ All those herbs and flowers I've been painting... I thought it was about time to try my hand at some Australian natives

∧∧ This was my attempt at a four-seasons envelope: summer, autumn, winter, spring. Winter was tricky: the white gouache paint I used for the snow-flakes kind of melted into the envelope and turned out more blobby than bright. Onwards and upwards

∧∧ I planted ranunculus corms in my garden in May, and to my delight (and surprise, if I'm honest), they actually grew, and are blooming in abundance

That's all, folks!

Team spirit

There is something about the charisma of the crowd. Something in the roar of a thousand people, a hundred people, even 10 people, if they are like-minded, that is so wonderfully seductive.

In dark moments, this is known as "mob mentality," and it can cause people to do and say terrible things that they might otherwise not even consider doing or saying.

But the collective excitement of a crowd can be a beautiful thing to experience, especially in something that is usually as innocent, as positive even, as the watching of a game.

I was brought up in a decidedly non-sport-watching, non-sport-supporting family. Until I married Mr B, I'd never so much as seen an AFL game played. But I married into a family that had been supporting the one team for four generations. Four generations! And I couldn't help but be drawn into the romance of their loyalty. Year after year, week after week, they would take the back-then three hour drive to Melbourne, and sit outside in the cold and rain to watch their team... lose.

Their team made it to the Grand Final back in the 1960s, but then they lost again. That was almost a very good day for Mr B's father. For the rest of his life, he said, "I will live to see them make it to another Grand Final." But his team's losses outlived him.

And still Mr B and his family supported their team. Year after year, week after week.

So when I married Mr B and we moved to Melbourne, I took up supporting that team, for him. And against all expectations, I found I enjoyed it. I couldn't help admiring the surprising athleticism, the strange rules (apparently based on Gaelic football), and most of all, the historic and unbending joy of just about everyone in Melbourne when it comes to this game. Crowd charisma.

On the weekend, against all possible odds, our team made it to the Grand Final again, at last. Friends gathered at our house to watch it with us, the children decorated the house with streamers and balloons and chalk messages, and I made the best kind of the worst kind of junk food: hot dogs and party pies and french fries and cup cakes.

I cheered myself hoarse with the rest of them, swept up in the excitement of cheering on a team that had waited more than sixty years for a win.

Oh, and they won!

Mail art - prehistoric post

We cut our way through a tangle of vines, each one thicker than a man's arm. Heat prickled our skin. The air was humid, tropical, and thick with floral perfume: something like frangipani, with a less-pleasant undertone of... what was that? Sulphur?

When at last we pushed aside the final curtain of vines, we could barely believe the evidence of our eyes. A volcano, forcing its way up out of the ocean, and, around it, a flock of pterodactyls carrying mail bags.

We had discovered it at last: the lost island of the Prehistoric Post Offie.

Eccentric escape

You can move away, you can run away even, but, 90 percent of the time, your quirks and fears and troubles stow away with you. I know this because I have moved a lot, and sometimes a long way.

This is the underlying theme of a new TV show called The Durrells. Thankfully, the quirks, fears and troubles that follow the Durrell family from Bournemouth in the UK to the Greek island of Corfu are also frequently adorable, affectionate, and genuinely funny.

Oh my gosh, I am so in love with this eccentric family of misfits and, in particular, with their mother Louisa, who is most often at her wits' end but is also my hero.

The series is inspired by the trilogy of books by Gerald Durrell. Remember My Family and Other Animals? My father gave me this book when I was a child, telling me how much he had loved it when he was a child. So now I can't think about the book without thinking about my father, which makes it doubly joyful to revisit the hapless Durrells in their warm and sunlit world.

In fact I never want to leave that world. A fruitless wish, since there are only six episodes to a season, but thankfully I hear a second season is already in the making.

And in the meantime, since summer is only just around the corner here in Australia, I am going to take a leaf out of the Durrells' book and eat lunch in the ocean, to keep cool. Tablecloth included. It looks kind of perfect, don't you think?

ps. more of my favourite TV shows here and here

The Postman's Knock

This made me laugh this morning. I think I need to watch this movie!

Also, a question: does anyone know the origins of the "Postman's Knock" game? I know it started in England at least 100 years ago, but I'm trying to find a rough date and not having any luck...

UPDATE: Apparently the trailer above can't be seen on some browsers. Sorry! If you're having trouble, here is a direct link to watch it (it's Spike Milligan in The Postman's Knock, 1962).

Stop just a minute

This is all happening too fast.

It's not just the growing, it's the developing, the knowing, the maturing. "Stop growing up, start growing down," I tell them, and they roar with laughter. "Again?" requests Ralph, "Will you tell me to grow down?" ("Grow down," I obligingly order him. "NO!" he yells in evident delight).

Ralph started toilet-training on the weekend. I have always said this wasn't the kind of parenting blog that would share the details of my children's challenges, and I'm not about to change that now, so I'll spare you the details of that particular story (although you can ask me in private if you want to: there is much hilarity for people who can appreciate or relate to that sort of thing). But I didn't need Ralph to keep reminding me "I'm a big boy now!" to reinforce the significance of this time. Nappies = babies. Undies = big kids. Once my last baby is out of nappies, that tender, sweet, all-encompassing stage in my life is gone forever.

Oh, it's such a boring cliché, I am bored even as I write it and you are probably yawning, if you're still here at all. Alert the media: Mother Mourns Passing of Time.

Each little milestone, announced with such pride.

Scout: "Mummy, watch me. I can skip!"

Ralph: "Mummy look at me standing on one leg!"

Scout: "Is this how I write my name Mummy? I am very good at this."

Ralph: "Don't help. I can brush my own teeth."

And Scout (beaming with pride): "Maman, comment ça va?" ("Je vais bien, merci," I reply.) Scout (nodding her head approvingly, like a wise old lady): "Ah, bon."

Here is another cliché that is true: every age is the most wonderful and the best.

Whether they are cloud-gazing or deciphering words, practising new skills or teaching one another, seeing the world through their eyes is a great privilege, a front row seat to the theatre of life as it unfolds, all over again. Just like it was for me when I was their age, I imagine, but I was too busy doing the growing to pay attention to the sheer wonder of it all.

Last night I lay them on the carpet side by side after their bath, to get them dressed. They turned to face each other, giggling and playing, each one using the other one's hand as a pillow, feigning sleep, cuddling, kissing.

Suddenly it all hit me.

I stopped trying (and failing) to get them dressed, and started paying attention, proper attention, to the moment. "Look at them!" I wanted to open a window and shout to the whole world. Why couldn't everyone else see what I was seeing, the absolute miracle of these two human beings?

(A mother's ego that everyone must naturally find her children as fascinating as she does.) (Nobody does.) (Plebs).

Time stopped and it didn't matter any more how big they were getting or how small they still were, the new skills they had mastered or their adorable mistakes, it was just them. These two amazing individuals, and their love for each other. Such a love that I have never seen between two people for each other. Ever.

Later, we three snuggled together and read stories. I read to them from Amazing Babes, a book that celebrates women of courage, of conviction, of creativity, and of compassion. We had conversations about women's rights and war crimes, about equal opportunities, about the law. It wasn't easy to explain these things in ways that a four-year-old and a two-year-old could understand, but I loved them for trying. Those little furrowed brows: concentrating, questioning.

Small fingers tracing over the dark skin of Mum Shirl. All the questions! About prisons and prisoners, about Indigenous people in prison, about the whole history of colonialisation. Those big grey eyes looking up at me, round as little stars. "What did the people from England do to them that was naughty?" I took a deep breath. "Well, they took away their homes, and they hurt them. They tried to be the bosses of them, and they were cruel to them."

Those eyes again. "Why?" Oh sure, let's just solve the entire problem of racism during a cosy bedtime-story chat. "Because they were different," I said at last. "They looked different, and believed different things, and spoke a different language, and lived a different way. Because they were different, the people from England though they were better than them."

Scout stroked the dark-skinned face of Mum Shirl again. "Shohana has dark skin like this," she said, thoughtfully, "and Bella," naming her best friend. I pressed the advantage. "Do you think any of our friends are better than others, because of the way they look or what they believe?" She shook her head solemnly. I could tell she still didn't understand: racism wasn't just wrong, it was genuinely incomprehensible.

"Vaishali looks like that," Ralph piped up all of a sudden. "Yeah and Rajetha!" Scout returned. "It is a little bit like Yulia," Ralph continued (he pronounced it "Loolia," be still my heart). They started naming everyone they knew and loved with skin that was any colour other than their own: friends and teachers from India, Iran, Pakistan, Singapore, Indonesia, China, Peru.

Last night I talked politics and race and feminism and creative expression with my two kind and compassionate children. Yes, they are growing up, and it is an honour to witness the growing.

Permit me a proud-Mama moment, cliché or not.