After all this site is YYT and while in the past there has been a broad expansion from the original idea – first things that happened on the Avalon, then the Rock, then anything associated with being in Newfoundland – Baltimore is the colony that took remember, then travel in general. Finally the “in general” took over.
I want to be less virtual and more actual.
Although this isn’t GIG, this started when returning to Rio and Niterói , I found terrible postcards. Ignorant of weblogs - in fact ignorant of just about everything, blind carbon copies, cutting and pasting text …- at the end of the day I would head over to the internet café and write the same thing six times to people. A particularly memorable moment was tripping on the power cord and erasing the entry as I was finishing.
The lack of post cards was the final straw added to me trying to get my handwriting under control. Things were no better on the Rock. There were attempts to make snaps without a lab so that I could continue what I try to do below the 49th – even took my mum’s hand me down Toshiba laptop and portable Canon printer that served her well on the world cruises – but the quality was lacking.
Hence YYT.
But I am not there now. Without the constraints of the post card, the entries were mutating to a length that would have made Dickens blush and more time and, while after this stay the finances will take time to recover, I want to reintroduce myself to the USPS and actually make things.
So I am regressing for the next semester at least, more “note taking” so back to the leiquinhas – to break this idea of pretension with larger formats - less digital, and more post cards to restrict the actual verbiage. Only nine people looked in at last check anyway.
I missed talking to Mary at the post office in Pouch Cove and while being a townie I liked the chats when I did post some books and left notes on the backs of envelops.
I found myself taking overly long at the post office in Swift Current and photographing the buildings.
So until I can upload at the Duke with a pint of 1892 – am becoming more nationalistic in my imbibing – this ends.
Well that is the intention.
3 comments:
goodbye dear blog, for now anyway!
since i started selling stuff on amazon, i have come to understand the postoffice relationship. I felt a small thrill as the woman already knew, media mail? yes. yes, thanks. and all the other people in line seemed an interference to some end- and when i don't go, i miss it.
here's to postcards!
i think that my attitude about the post would be different if i lived in larger populations – cannot think of anything more unpleasant than queue-ing up at the main post office in chicago or even dealing with those brain dead slugs at peasant’s pissoir. in baltimore i try to avoid all postal workers preferring to use those nifty machines as the queues remind me of bread lines in the former soviet union – but in pouch cove with mary and maybe one person in front of me – meaning that they would have to be photographed – the same in swift current and in bonne bay and the one here in bristol that i use for postings from the upper midwest, the outing becomes a social event as does the discussion of what is being sent and how they handle it.
it also means that on your end you will not have to constantly check your email i am sure that the post comes only once a day nothing there one can get on with one’s life and you won’t have to plug in anything to see it.
and the stamps are pretty cool.
yyt will be back when i head north (and east) again at the latest.
Clarke, Hope you are well and just checking in to see how you are doing. Mary misses you, as do I...and little motorman does too. Hope you get writing again. Still want to say goodbye properly...
Post a Comment