I have mixed feelings about Valentine's Day because I do not recall the story behind St. Valentine's Day. Usually, any story about a saint has something gruesome, so I am not going to do any research. Mostly, I object to being told that there is a specific day to declare love. That's silly. Love should be the focus of every day.
Once again, Leslie has provided us with a very fun design. I like how she tipped the heart. Do you know why she did that? It reflects the overall shape of the art/writing on the picture plane.
Picture plane is the area on which the artwork appears. In drawing it is the paper. In painting it is the canvas and in mail art, it is the envelope. It seems picky to have a formal name for the space in which the art resides. However, those who do not consider the picture plane as the foundation for everything else are missing out on an important block in the foundation - and we all know what happens when we do not have a proper foundation.
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On Thursday, I was proofing posts and I had spelled the *plane/plain* in picture plane with the ai - because I live in the Great Plains - and, to me, plain seemed like the right word for a surface area. But, then I thought of a plane in geometry and realized that I better check - and - whoa - I was so glad I did. Picture plane is the plane-plane. Like an airplane. So why are the Great Plains called Plains? I guess it is because they are so plain (as in Plain Jane) compared to mountains, etc. It would be nice if someone wants to find a source for plain-plane and how the various meanings are assigned to the the two spellings. I would like to submit another spelling - plaine. I say -- combine them so that we do not have to think about it.
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Here is a fun article from the NYTimes. It starts with a post card that appears to have taken almost 100 years to be delivered and eventually gets to the obvious observation: people buy old post cards at flea markets and drop them in the mail. The USPS does not discuss how many pieces of *re-mailed* mail the handle each year.
Link to post card article
Near the end of the above article is a link to an article about a piece of mail that might have been stuck in the bottom of a mail bag for 37 years. It reminded me of the time that I got to tag along on a tour of the post office. It might have been when my brother was a Cub Scout. I recall that my mom pointed to one lonely envelope in the bottom of a big canvas cart and said, "I wonder if that one is going to get lost?" I can see how easy it is to lose mail. And the machines chew up a fair amount of mail. Have I already mentioned that the USPS has employees who spend their entire shift -every dang day- just vacuuming out the shredded paper that collects at the bottom of the machines. That's a lot of shredded mail.
Here is the link to the article about the mail that might have been hiding somewhere within the system for 37 years. There are more links to other articles, too.
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