Found Magazine

Modern art museums have the BEST gift stores

At the gift store Dia:Beacon in Beacon, NY, I found this magazine.  (Warning: some contents are R-rated for profanity.)  I bought it for my cousin Paula, a fellow writer and also an artist, to thank her for the boot drawings she did for Delaney Collins' site.  But I haven't sent to to her yet, because I have to read it first. 

This is the greatest idea for a magazine ever.  The editors publish notes, weird business cards, letters, photos, etc. that people have found and sent in.  They might be found on the street, inside a library book, in a prison cell (the editors donate free subscriptions to any convicts who request one), anywhere.  If I was still in school, I'd be sending in stuff by the carloads, because classrooms and school halls are great places to find discarded scraps.

(A digression: I know people text a lot now, but I hope and believe there still a lot of note writers out there.  My friends and I were big note writers in high school, and in college, my friend Marty and I wrote notes to each other in astronomy class every day.  In fact, I even got a pen that lit up at the end, so I could write in the dark.  I wish I'd kept some of the notes.  They'd be fun to read now.)

I think I find the magazine so appealing because as a writer, I'm curious about the story behind the note or photo.  Any one of the items in the magazine could be a starting point for a fictional story.  They had six issues at the store, and I randomly picked issue #4, but now I wish I had bought all of them.  I may have to subscribe. 

Meanwhile, at the rate I'm getting through it, it's probably going to end up being a Christmas present for Paula, and forget the thank you...