New idear: post-class mail!
My latest nightmare looked like this: waking up to no electricity, no cell phone tower, no postal service, no modern convenience, and coming to the sad realization that I had no means of communicating with people who live thousands of miles away. This whole pile of people, including my entire biological family, was lost to me; whether they were living or dead was almost irrelevant.
From the moment I woke my caffeine-hungry brain mined for solutions. (This is, in general, how I roll.) The most obvious solution, and perhaps the easiest to fathom actually working, is a more elaborate version of passing a note across a classroom. Amanda addresses it to Suzie, hands it off to her nearest willing neighbor, who then passes it to the person closest to the addressee. Eventually, Suzie gets the letter. Every once in awhile someone chooses to just read it him or herself and then throw it away, or maybe the teacher grabs it and everyone has detention, or maybe a rogue lightning bolt comes racing through the classroom and clamps down on that specific letter and everyone bursts into flames. BUT: most of the time, it reaches the addressee.
So: in our population of too-many-people separated by a whole lot of miles, would it work?
Experiment time! I need your help. There’s two ways you can participate:
1.) Volunteer yourself to be a recipient of a hand-delivered letter. To participate in this way, please email me your preferred name and address. If you have privacy concerns, perhaps your hip employer wouldn’t mind you using that address, or maybe you can simply have it addressed to “Ray V.” and keep your full name out of it. OR
2.) Volunteer to mail a letter to me, to see if it makes it back to Portland from wherever you are. If you’re not comfortable locating an envelope and printing the instructions on the back, I can mail you a letter addressed to me. There’s something a little funny about that last option, but still…
I’ve got other ideas going through my head to expand the experiment, but these two seem a good place to start. (Examples: if I just drop a pile of letters somewhere, will random citizens feel inclined to pass them on? When addresses don’t exist, is it possible to get a letter to Jim Jones of Cleveland? etc) The back of each letter will have detailed instructions of what each passer is expected to do. Passers will be encouraged to initial the back, or write their name on it, to better determine how many people it takes to get a letter from Portland to X. I’m also setting up a blog for this (which will be posted on the envelope) to encourage people to comment so I can see where some letters “vanish” and how long a delivery takes.
So: anyone interested?
From the moment I woke my caffeine-hungry brain mined for solutions. (This is, in general, how I roll.) The most obvious solution, and perhaps the easiest to fathom actually working, is a more elaborate version of passing a note across a classroom. Amanda addresses it to Suzie, hands it off to her nearest willing neighbor, who then passes it to the person closest to the addressee. Eventually, Suzie gets the letter. Every once in awhile someone chooses to just read it him or herself and then throw it away, or maybe the teacher grabs it and everyone has detention, or maybe a rogue lightning bolt comes racing through the classroom and clamps down on that specific letter and everyone bursts into flames. BUT: most of the time, it reaches the addressee.
So: in our population of too-many-people separated by a whole lot of miles, would it work?
Experiment time! I need your help. There’s two ways you can participate:
1.) Volunteer yourself to be a recipient of a hand-delivered letter. To participate in this way, please email me your preferred name and address. If you have privacy concerns, perhaps your hip employer wouldn’t mind you using that address, or maybe you can simply have it addressed to “Ray V.” and keep your full name out of it. OR
2.) Volunteer to mail a letter to me, to see if it makes it back to Portland from wherever you are. If you’re not comfortable locating an envelope and printing the instructions on the back, I can mail you a letter addressed to me. There’s something a little funny about that last option, but still…
I’ve got other ideas going through my head to expand the experiment, but these two seem a good place to start. (Examples: if I just drop a pile of letters somewhere, will random citizens feel inclined to pass them on? When addresses don’t exist, is it possible to get a letter to Jim Jones of Cleveland? etc) The back of each letter will have detailed instructions of what each passer is expected to do. Passers will be encouraged to initial the back, or write their name on it, to better determine how many people it takes to get a letter from Portland to X. I’m also setting up a blog for this (which will be posted on the envelope) to encourage people to comment so I can see where some letters “vanish” and how long a delivery takes.
So: anyone interested?