Radio Show brings lots of new members

[Ruud Janssen]

Last night a lot of new members arrived at the IUOMA. Seems a Radio Show drew some attention to the IUOMA.

[andytgeezer]

Good work Karl! What a lovely thing to hear over the airwaves "I'm a member of the International Union of Mailartists"

 

I would have choked on my coffee!

[Ruud Janssen]

Very good PR you made for the IUOMA there. Thank you Karl!

[Karl G. Siewert]

Dang! I knew they'd spell my name wrong. :-)

 

Yes. That was me. I was creeping along in post-snowstorm traffic yesterday and heard this topic, and I knew I had to call in.

 

I think I'm going to send Ms. Daum a postcard care of her newspaper. She wrote an article in defense of snail mail that prompted NPR to bring her on the show.

 

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-daum-postoffic...

[liketelevisionsnow]

Sounds interesting - will have to listen to the archive file!

[andytgeezer]

What a lovely show! Just having a listen to it at work. Wish there were more mail advocates on the radio

[Ruud Janssen]

LISTEN TO THE SHOW:

 

http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&...

[Ruud Janssen]

KELLY: Carl, may I ask how you came to choose this medium, how you found yourself making these collages for postcards?

CARL: Well, I have a friend - who's actually an online friend, who I've never met personally - who's been doing this for years, and he sent me one. I guess I was next on his list. And that kind of sparked it off of for me. I sent one back to him. And I joined a group online called the International Union of Mail Artists. And there's a big social networking component to that, that we, you know, we post pictures of the postcards we received, and things like that. But still, the core of everything is actual physical document.

And part of the excitement of it, part of the joy of it is seeing what happens to it as it goes through the mail, seeing the postmarks and seeing the - you know, I received a piece - one of the first ones I got was this very intricate, computer-drawn geometric design. But it was printed on regular paper, and it had gotten a little bit of water on it. And so, that completely changed the design. It had this - the change in tone, and it's all part of the process. It's all part of the way it works.

[Ruud Janssen]

KELLY: Let me bring a caller into the conversation. This is Carl calling from Tulsa, Oklahoman. Carl, you're on the air. Hi.

CARL (Caller): Hi. I am a member of the International Union of Mail Artists.

KELLY: Ah.

Ms. DAUM: Wow.

CARL: So, we make postcards and other key pieces of mail that are sent through the postal service. I'm a collage artist. I paste things together. And mostly, I just make postcards. But some members make really elaborate packages and things and send them to through mail. And it's something that I just started doing a few months ago and have really - it's really kind of amazing thing for me to do. It's a great outlet for artistic things that I've always played around with and never had an outlet for. And I just love it.

KELLY: Hmm. It's interesting. You mentioned you make artistic postcards. Meghan Daum, does - how does that factor into your concern about mail dropping off? Do people still send postcards?

Ms. DAUM: I hardly ever get them anymore. If it was an artistic postcard - I mean, I just hope that it would stay intact. I think of a collage going through the mail, and I hope that it doesn't get shredded to bits or something like that. But, no, I love this idea.

 

source: http://www.npr.org/2011/02/03/133470773/e-mails-ok-but-nothing-beat...