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Xerography Debt #38

Xerography Debt 35


Available from Microcosm

To order a copy of this issue, please send $4 (order online, or send cash, stamps, money order, or check) to Microcosm Publishing

Cover Art by Bojan (Rigor Mortis) / Botda

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction: Home

Columns
Where Are They Now: TR Miller
Gloomy Sundays: Abby Denson
It Means It's Wank
Living and Publishing with Asperger's
Twenty-Four Hours the Column: Speaking with Mike Diana, Part 1
Ken's Column: Recycling Zines
Basic Stuff You Should Know

Reviews
Anne Thalheimer
D. Blake Werts
Carlos Palacios
David LaBounty
Davida Gypsy Breier
Eric Lyden
Fred Argoff
DJ Frederick
Gavin J. Grant
Joe Biel
Josh Medsker
Julie Dorn
Ken Bausert
Kris Mininger
Liz Mason
Maynard Welstand
Stuart Stratu
Index

Introduction

Sometime in the '90s I opened my first PO Box. It was at a small town post office in northern Maryland. This was during the zine heyday, so the small box was filled with stickered manila envelopes and other oddities on an almost daily basis. One of my all-time favorite pieces of correspondence was from a mail artist in Vermont (Shmuel). It was a paper cut out inserted in a clear plastic bottle and mailed with a few stamps on it. I also once received letter on a piece of pizza box cardboard. I'm pretty sure my mail both irked and amused the postal clerks.

I moved to Baltimore City in 2003 and opened up a PO Box there. The best thing about the box was the zip code - 21212. Sometimes the clerks were very helpful and sometimes they closed the box without warning. There were always lines and the hours were impossible with a regular work schedule. Mail was crammed in the box with an unnecessary level of violence. (Ironically, MRR is rather fragile.). I picked my mail up once a week (at best) and it always felt like an onerous chore.

We moved this summer. When we first looked at the house we drove around the area and one of the first things I noticed was the local post office. It was tiny! I loved it at first sight. I couldn't wait to open a new PO Box there. There were only a couple hundred boxes (if that) and the lobby is open 24-hours a day.

Unlike 21212, they didn't seem to need a blood sacrifice to open a new PO Box. In fact, they listened so intently that they sent all the house mail to the PO Box to make sure they were providing enough privacy. When I went in to straighten that out they recognized me before I said anything. That was after one visit to set up the PO Box. 10 years at 21212 and I still had to show ID.

For some people a local bar is what makes a neighborhood home. For me it is the post office.

PO Box 347, Glen Arm, MD 21057 is home now.


Davida

P.S. Please welcome David LaBounty (THE VELLUM UNDERGROUND and THE FIRST LINE) to XD! Davida


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