Dear friends...

I am in love with this idea!

Type a message to a friend, family member, pet, politician, or lover, and email it to snailmailmyemail@gmail.com. Then sit back and relax while your email is handwritten, sent out, and delivered to the recipient of your choosing, completely free of charge!

Snail Mail My Email is a month-long (July 15 - August 15), interactive community art project which seeks to both share the warm-fuzzy feeling of receiving a personalized letter as well as inspire people to send their own snail mail. Anyone with internet access can partake by simply sending an email, after which the very same message will be handwritten and physically mailed to the chosen recipient anywhere in the world, completely free of charge.

The 86 Days of Summer

Grand Beach, Manitoba

Some people create New Year's resolutions.

I create a list of...

68 things to do in 86 days of summer!

Here's the approximate breakdown:

10 items are food related
5 are related to exercise and wellness
17 of them are sports/leisure/hobby type activities
7 are literacy related
at least 12 of them involve travel
11 will help me build some mad skills
and 9 of the list items are purely indulgent

I'm sooooo looking forward to summer!

Don't Forget to Vote May 3rd!

Here are some yard signs that can't be torn down or stolen!

If you're a Grand Forks resident and have questions about the library revitalization project and the upcoming vote (on Tuesday) for a 1% sales tax increase to fund it, please check out this blog: Speak Up For Your Library

Books Across America

I'm super excited that our school library will be getting $1000 worth of fun new titles. I applied for an NEA Books Across America grant last November. Prodded into it by our faithful librarian... :) And I got the grant. Yippee. I love celebrating reading with students and this will make it even easier to put books into the hands of kids.

I have ideas. Ideas about teens and reading. Ideas about getting books into the hands of everyone--young and old. Ways to get books visible in the community.

On an errand run today I watched a little girl who used to hang around my apartment building swish by on a metal scooter and I thought about her and books. I wondered if she read much. Wondered if she had books of her own to read. Wondered about this summer when school was out. Wondered if she would hold a book in her hand even once between May and September. I wondered if there were books out there, near the park, on a shelf of some kind, in our neighborhood to borrow without a library card, without having to go to the library across town, if she would read them. If she would be interested. If it would give kids something to do. And then there are bus stops. And wouldn't books go nicely with bus stops? Yes, I have ideas. I love to read. I want to share that.