LOST MAIL ART

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Comment by Keith S. Chambers on June 21, 2014 at 5:21am

Yes, the folks at my local post office — The Holiday Station, so named because it was founded to service the tourist population from nearby Disneyland — have gotten to know my face very well. I'm the guy who shows up with the weird mail. They are a good and helpful group.

Yes, I believe that the trouble starts once mail reaches the regional sorting facility in neighboring Santa Ana, CA. That's where the mechanical eyes work and drink oil on their breaks.

Comment by Valentine Mark Herman on June 21, 2014 at 4:57am

Keith, thanks, & OK, I won't get you started.

"Support your local post office"? I do, and it's really sympathetic. It's gotten so used to me by now that sometimes when it has a weird piece of mail (not usually mail art) to deliver in the village and can't work out the right address, the postie will bring it along to me and ask, "Is this for you?" If I reply "No", he's disappointed -- and then the post office has to work out what it's going to do with it.

My local post office is good. Problems arise one step up the post office food chain at the sub-regional (I suppose) sorting & distribution office. It is there that the Undelivered Dead & Brainless  manage to magnificently screw things up.

Comment by Valentine Mark Herman on June 20, 2014 at 12:35pm

Dean, mermaids only laugh when you tickle them. What you have to do is find out where to tickle them...

Comment by Valentine Mark Herman on June 20, 2014 at 12:34pm

In the 1980s I was told a story about the Italian postal service -- which was terrible (the postal service, not the story). Mail used to be stored undelivered in wagons at  variou stations. When all the wagons were filled up, they were emptied, the mail burned, and the process of filling them up with undelivered mail started again. And so ad infinitum.

I don't know if this is true or not, but....

Comment by Dean aka Artist in Seine on June 20, 2014 at 8:06am

WOW Val & Keith are really "en forme" this morning.  I'm on a quest to find out the sound of a mermaid laughing.  My day is cut out for me!

Comment by Keith S. Chambers on June 20, 2014 at 7:08am

Val, regarding the simplified brain of postal sorting machines . . .

Machines like sans serif type at 14 points or larger.

Throw in some hand-drawn script and the smoke starts to bellow from the works. Add-in an illustration, rubber stamps, a splash of trash and there you go . . . diverted to the dead letter department . . .don't even get me started on envelopes [or postcards] with something other than four corners.

Somewhere all that mail art is sitting in a corner, in a bin waiting for funding to hire some hands [connected to a human with at least one functioning eyeball and half a brain] to sort through it all. Or perhaps it has just been jettisoned to outer space.

Support your local post office, they're our last hope.

Comment by Valentine Mark Herman on June 20, 2014 at 5:01am

Lost Mail Art Hypothesis #1;

-- the more elaborate is the front of an envelope, especially the address, of a piece of Mail Art, the greater the chances are that it will go missing, as post office automatic sorting machines can't normally handle elaborate art-work

Comment by Valentine Mark Herman on June 20, 2014 at 4:58am

Lost Mail Art Hypothesis #2;

-- the more things that are stuck on the outside of a piece of Mail Art, the greater the chances are that it will go missing, as post office automatic sorting machines can't process stuck on bits n pieces.

Comment by Valentine Mark Herman on June 20, 2014 at 4:56am

Lost Mail Art Hypothesis #3;

 -- the more bizarre (you can define that yourself) a piece of Mail Art, the greater the chances are that it will go missing.

Comment by Dean aka Artist in Seine on June 19, 2014 at 10:43pm

I sent this to Bethany Schackow (USA) on 19 December 2011.  She had an Eiffel Tower as a profile photo and that inspired me.  OK, it was a little on the large side; 390cm x 260cm (15in x 10.5in)

It is actually the cover of a City of Paris chocolate box.  The Mayor of Paris gives old people a box of chocolate around Christmas time.  This is so that they will vote for him/her in the next election.  In other countries this might be considered a bribe, but not here.  It's just normal that old people should have chocolates before Christmas.

     The funny part of this story is that Bethany Schackow has also disappeared from the IUOMA website.  Maybe I should be a Magician?

And don't worry, I have another City of Paris chocolate box and I'm going to give it another try.  But who knows where it will appear?  If it does arrive!

PS I'm not one of the old people who gets one of these boxes.  I just know old people who do not like chocolate.

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