Valentine Mark Herman's Comments

hola

gracias por tu envio, puedes verlo en

 

Collages

 

Saludos

Samuel

Got mail!!!! Thank you! Merry Christmas!

Yes I would like a Darlington Fc piece of mail art some time--I always root for the underdog. I sent you something (not a sports team) a while back too; hopefully you receive it soon. cheers

I've been looking at your recently-posted collection for the past two days--what a funky odyssey through the depths of your head! Terrific work all around. I also looked at your assemblage work--really like the Darlington FC:-) Cheers

I need to think through the "nominal leader" thing because I'm currently behind on everything. Let's talk about it again after this weekend. Are you on facebook?

Love the photos you posted-the collages are excellent. thanks for posting. And silver is definately your color

Valentine, what a pleasure to peruse these new images. a glorious slew!

best,

ejva

Got your commie art today. I shall now battle you with some Capitalist art!

The envelope from the big and little cats from your household to mine has arrived. It's beautiful and Josefina seemed to like it, too. When I showed it to her, she started sniffing it oh so carefully.

 

Thanks so much!

Hi Valentine - your REAL mean card is now upon my REAL wall!

Val!  I love the Postal lesson I found in my mail today- the engraved stamps are beautiful.  And the Yankee mail carrier on the front?  Very dashing- even for a Northerner.  Plus- I never think of your envelopes as empty- they are full of that clear French air.  SNIFFFFF....

good.  that seems to have woked.

 

 

so ....

anything you want to send for the art wallet would be well recieved.  havnt done much with this idea recently.

 

the stamps you saw on my album page were by mark valentine who lives near leeds.  strange coincidence of names there..

 

it would be good to meet up on one of your visits to york.  i live in an attic within sight and sound of the station so easy to gind.

 

cheers

i have tried seven times now to send a reply to your messages but the send button dosnt seem to work for me!! b**!^** tchnology.

will this work i wonder........

I finally posted your two cards- Thank you mucho!  Now I get the Humphrey Bogart comment!  Must remember to play more recorders this year- since I don't smoke.

YES! Have a Happy New Year....I'm out-of-here ;-)

...see you next year!

3rd part..grrrr.

Another example. It costs, say, €1 for me to buy a litre of milk at the local store. If I wanted to get my milk from a specific cow and have it bottled/packaged especially for me, it would be very expensive. But I don't: I buy 'universal' milk at a 'universal' price from a non-specific cow.

Stamps are like milk from the local store -- one price fits all even though it makes no difference if my letter is sent to the next village or the other side of the country. If the price of stamps was truly distance related, the economics of the mail would be very different...but the universal obligation negates this.

The State will not whither away, in spite of Marx and Engels' arguments. There will always be a State, and there will always be some form of postal service as part of this. If some national postal services whither away and become FedEx-type sevices, then there will be an even stronger need for the UPU (or a similiar body, but what's wrong with the one that we have got?) to perform the vital, postal, international function of moving letters, packages,postcards, etc from country A to country B.

Sorry that was so long! The End. Val

2nd part:

But some countries will choose not to go this route -- and remember that in many countries there is still not free and open communication, rather state censorship of as many forms of communication as possible (hence their problems of controlling the Internet). In this context it is seen vital to a state's interest to control not only what is said, written, broadcast, etc but also even what is thought, and what is sent by the post.

For an example, we need to look no further than the problems we have in sending Mail Art to China.

The cost of a single item of post is also important. I can afford to send 30 or so items of Mail Art a week because I benefit from the what I suspect are heavily subsidised and cross-subsidised rates of the French postal system (which is linked to banking, freight, and many other things). If I had to pay a realistic commercial rate, the price would be much, much higher, and I would be priced out of the system. 'Divided' in another way, no less.

Val, is this it? About the next generation? It is already "buried" as it was in the blog by DeVillo Sloan"Received: Mail Art Generation, from Ruud Janssen..." (you have it in your upper section on your "page"...it is GOOOOD! Happy New Year! oops in several doses, as I am told i cannot exceed 200 chararcters ;-0

here is a copy:

Bifidus and Katerina debate the future of postal services. Let me make a small contribution.

I think that as long as there is a 'Digital Divide' -- in which some people are on line, and others are not -- there will always be a postal service of some sort. Even when everyone is on-line (what a horrible thought!) and everything is digitised (even more horrible!) there will still be a societal need to transport goods (as opposed to services) from A to B.

We are the privileged, rich ones, part of the electronic First and second Worlds. But there are billions of our fellow human beings who do not have access to all the technology that we have, and most likely have never made a phone call or seen a computer in their life. In terms of (societal) evolution, they are today where our Western societies were, say, 150 years ago -- dependant on much simpler technologies to meet basic everyday requirements.

The future of the postal service can be looked at in two ways.

Nationally, it seems increasingly less likely that it will remain as part of a nation state's 'core business', and will be privatised. As a result of this, the universal postal obligation (mail delivered anywhere within a territory at a uniform price) is likely to be sacrificed  at the altar of Mammon.

Internationally, this will not happen in all countries -- most likely only in the richer ones that seek to become even richer. UPS, FedEx etc can take over the postal services in these countries, and co-operate amongst themselves along the lines of the original Universal Postal Union....

Hi Valentine!

Thank you very much your mail!

Cauli