Saturday Snapshot: Black Out Poetry

Today I am sharing a Saturday Snapshot inspired by the Poetry Month Blog Tour hosted by Savvy Verse & Wit. The Saturday Snapshot is a fun meme hosted by Alyce at At Home with Books. (basic rule: pictures must be your own and suitable for general viewing.)

I posted a photo last week, and though I don't usually participate each time, I had a lot of fun trying out a new poetic technique this week that I wanted to share.

I've been following along with the daily poetry posts in the Blog Tour, and a few days ago, The Picky Girl shared a very fun event that her university writing centre held in celebration of Poetry Month: a Blackout Poetry Party! 

What is blackout poetry? Popularized by artist Austin Kleon, it is a technique which takes an existing text -- a newspaper, magazine, book page, etc. -- and removes words, via Sharpie, to create a poem. I thought that I'd give this a try, and since I had a bunch of magazines to go through before adding them to the recycling pile it was a perfect opportunity.

It took quite a bit longer than I thought it would, as I was looking for something that caught my poetic fancy. Finally, Martha Stewart Living came through with a gardening article! Here is my very brief Black Out Poem.

This process was a lot of fun, making me look at things a little differently. I'm going to try to create a few more. Odd side note: black Sharpie on shiny magazine pages smells an awful lot like nail polish!

Saturday Snapshot: Playing School

This week I'm once again joining in on Alyce's great meme, Saturday Snapshot. Alyce from At Home with Books hosts this one, and the rules are simple:

Photos can be old or new, and be of any subject as long as they are clean and appropriate for all eyes to see. How much detail you give in the caption is entirely up to you. Please don't post random photos that you find online.

This week I thought I'd share some pretty funny items I uncovered recently, some memorabilia from childhood. My younger sister and I used to play an elaborate game of "school" together -- we created class lists of 20-30 names each for our numerous classes, we made up teacher I.D. cards for what I now realize would be a huge staff (using Sears catalogues and local flyers to cut out faces for each I.D., and creating addresses and birthdates, setting our school in the fictional city of Cannada), we even typed out correspondence with parents and the school board on wee slips of paper. Some of these are great examples of an early customer service ethic....or not....

We were really into our St. Lawrence School activities. My sister (now the Trekking Teacher) was always a classroom teacher, while I preferred to be an administrator, sending out letters, drawing up curriculum and so on. Kind of funny how we both turned out! I don't quite remember how old we were when we stopped playing this (early teens I think), but I clearly still have some of the materials from those days, and finding them brought back some very amusing recollections. Hope you enjoy them too.

Here is the staff! All nicely named and photographed...almost

Lauralee Pix (of "Charolotte" Road) was my sister's alterego. You can see she chose one face and stuck with it! Poor Francine Waite. That was me, and I went through facial changes regularly. I'm kind of sad that when we stopped playing this game I was between faces. Now I will never be immortalized in 80's catalogue style :( Although I did somehow have a presentiment that I'd move to Montreal...

Do these guys look familiar? A rose by any other name...

Some very polite notes to various parents. I don't know where we came
up with this stuff! I'm particularly fond of the missive to Mrs. Googliment.
(click to embiggen)

Saturday Snapshot: Letter Month Finale!

All of this last month (February) I've been participating in Letter Month. This is something I only discovered in January, so it was my first time joining in, which I did immediately upon finding it -- as I am already a big lover of stationery, postal mail and all its ephemera. I enjoy writing 'old-fashioned' snail mail, and thought this would be a good spark to set me off, catching up with the people I used to send mail to fairly regularly.

It was a very fun month, even if I didn't make it to a letter a day. I wrote many more than I would have otherwise, and still have a couple in the works to finish this weekend... I can't stop! :) It also fit perfectly with my own Postal Reading Challenge, as part of that is a challenge to write more letters in 2013.

I also came across this educational project, a Canadian geography lesson via snail mail, just a few days ago, just in time to send a postcard before the end of the month...but the teacher is still looking for postcards from anyone in Canada, so if you want to help out  there is still plenty of time!

Anyhow, I thought I'd share a photo or two of some of the letters I sent during February...these are the ones I remembered to take pics of! I am sharing them as part of the Saturday Snapshot meme hosted by Alyce of At Home with Books. The rules for that?

 To participate in Saturday Snapshot: post a photo that you (or a friend or family member) have taken... Photos can be old or new, and be of any subject as long as they are clean and appropriate for all eyes to see. How much detail you give in the caption is entirely up to you. Please don’t post random photos that you find online.

First, an image of the letter that went the furthest of any, a card to my sister who is teaching in Papua New Guinea this year!

Then, a handful of colourful cards and notes to various other friends -- to make up a total of 8 more items in the mail. The colourful card in front covering up some addresses is one designed by my sister-in-law in the Netherlands, a painter. 

It's been really enjoyable getting back into the correspondence habit and I hope to keep it up, as I was really missing all the fun of picking out nice cards and stamps and sitting down to compose something just for one person :) How about you? Do you still write letters to post through the mail?

Saturday Snapshot: Labyrinth Lines

Saturday Snapshot is a weekly meme hosted by Alyce at At Home With Books. The 'rules' are:

To participate in the Saturday Snapshot meme post a photo that you (or a friend or family member) have taken then leave a direct link to your post in the Mister Linky. Photos can be old or new, and be of any subject as long as they are clean and appropriate for all eyes to see. How much detail you give in the caption is entirely up to you. Please don’t post random photos that you find online.

 This week I am sharing a couple of pictures of the temporary labyrinth I created for a New Year's walk, in our local gallery, Gallery Stratford. New Year's is the perfect time to take some contemplative time for yourself and look at the way your life is going. Luckily for me, our local art gallery is very supportive and I was able to hold a walk in the middle of some gorgeous paintings (by Art Green) which were all about looking more deeply and seeing things you might have missed on first glance. The perfect metaphor for our walk! It was very peaceful and a lovely day.

Saturday Snapshot: Mail Call!

Saturday Snapshot is a weekly meme hosted by Alyce at At Home With Books.

It's always fun to see what people are sharing! Thanks for hosting, Alyce.

This week I am featuring a couple of quick pics of some of my Christmas gifts and their result... I received two beautiful sets of notecards this year, one from my aunt and one from my husband. They both know that I love correspondence and all of its accompanying paraphernalia. 

And in response, of course I had to use some right away, to send thank-you notes and overdue Christmas letters! 

I had fun decorating the envelopes and getting them ready to send off. In the process I also discovered an entire cache of stamps that I'd forgotten I had! All the more writing to do...

What about you? Do you still write snail mail letters? Do you enjoy getting mail? 

If you are an enthusiast, you might also want to consider joining my Postal Reading Challenge that I've started this year. Reading about letters and writing some too, that sounds like a good year to me :)

Saturday Snapshot, December 15, 2012

I haven't shared a Saturday Snapshot for a while, but I always enjoy seeing what everyone is posting -- thanks to Alyce, for hosting this weekly event on her blog At Home With Books.

This week I'm sharing two photos, both in a series called Graffiti Reviews. What is that? It's a spontaneous project that started on Twitter in response to a pompous piece about book blogging and how online reviews are no better than scribblings on a bathroom wall. Really? Well then, let's do it! :) Read all about it in my previous post, and check out the Tumblr site as well if this intrigues you.... then join in on the fun!

Here are two light-hearted bathroom graffiti style posts that I've done so far, tagging two different bathrooms.

Have you ever done anything silly like this? Would you?

Saturday Snapshot: Piper Down!

This is a photo I snapped during my trip back to Montreal a few months ago. Downtown, at Ogilvie's department store, the noon hour is marked by having a piper march out the front door and around the building to re-enter by the side door (which incidentally used to lead directly to their book/stationery department, thus was always my favoured entrance!)

At this particular moment I just happened to be across the street and snapped a quick pic, only realizing later that the window models were also very interested in what was going on. What do you suppose they were thinking?

Is there anything under that kilt?

Thank you Alyce, for hosting this terrific Saturday Snapshot meme @ At Home With Books.