It's Round Robin time again! This week's challenge, "Mailbox", comes to us from Gattina of KEYHOLE PICTURES. The photo above, a neighbor's birdhouse mailbox, is the only "because it's pretty!" shot you get from me tonight. Time for a brief, illustrated rant, I think, and then to bed!
Regular readers of this blog may recall that I never heard back after submitting my first novel, Heirs of Mâvarin, to a certain major publisher 15 months ago. While it's barely possible that it's still under consideration, the most likely explanation is that the response, whatever it was, was lost in the mail. The publisher's guidelines now say to resubmit after six months rather than try to chase down a wayward submission, but doing so seems like a longshot at this point. I don't blame the publisher, and still hope to place other books with them someday. But Heirs is going off to another publisher, as soon as I overcome my cover letter concerns.
It's just the latest example of important mail of mine disappearing into some vortex of lost words. This is why I try never to mail anything any more. I have no confidence it will reach its destination. In the case of my three chapters and synopsis, it got there, but the reply never found its way to my mailbox. Or maybe it did, only to disappear before we got home that day.
As discouraging that this has been, I've had far worse. Take a look at this scene in front of a local post office. Rather pretty, isn't it? It's peaceful, almost pastoral in a desert-y sort of way. But this pleasant mail drop masks a dreadful, shameful reality. The following story is substantially true, although after all these years I may be a little off on the details.
About ten years ago, maybe a little longer (yes, I've been known to hold a grudge!), Teresa Murray and I used to mail out issues of the Quantum Leap newsletter The Observer from this post office and one other location on the east side of Tucson. In one case we spent at least an hour in the post office lobby attaching assorted stamps to about 150 copies of the issue. We sent them First Class, all over the country, to Canada and overseas.Nothing we mailed that day reached its destination. Ever.
So we went to the expense of reprinting the issue, stuck it in envelopes, addressed them carefully, stamped them First Class and took them to a different post office, the one pictured above.
None of those arrived, either.
For the third try we took them to the main office, Cherrybell Station. Those arrived. You can count on one hand the times I've mailed anything from either of the other two locations in the decade since.
End of rant. Now go take a gander at more mailboxes!
::::Linking List::::
Gattina - POSTED!
Keyhole Pictures
http://gattina-keyholepictures.blogspot.com/
Steven - POSTED!
(sometimes)photoblog
http://sepintx.blogspot.com/
Karen- POSTED!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com/
Marie
Photographs And Memories Too
http://journals.aol.co.uk/mariebm56/PhotographsMemoriestoo
Janet - POSTED!
Fond of Photography
http://fondofphotography.blogspot.com/
Cosette - POSTED!
Birds of Venus
http://birdsofvenus.blogspot.com/
Suzanne R - POSTED!
New Suzanne R's Life
http://newsuzannerslife.blogspot.com/
boliyou - POSTED!
Percolation
http://boliyou.blogspot.com/
Carly - POSTED!
Ellipsis... Suddenly Carly
http://ellipsissuddenlycarly.blogspot.com/
Teena - POSTED!
It's all about me!
http://purple4mee.blogspot.com/
No mailboxes or letters were harmed in the making of this entry, except one piece of junk mail from my congresswoman.
Karen
6 comments:
At least when it came to your newsletter... the third time was the charm!
-Carly :)
wow...that's some seriously bad service! Great pictures, tho!
I must apologize for the inability to participate in the RR lately. I'm not dropping out, I promise! It's just these darned hardware and personal issues. I'll try for next time around.
Great shots, lousy luck with the postal service. It makes you wonder what goes on behind those counters.
Mailboxes of doom! Yeah, I've met some interesting neighbors hand delivering mis-delivered letters. Cool boxes :-)
That's pretty scary, about the newsletters not arriving the first two times, but I get more concerned about ID theft due to people stealing mail from my mailbox -- thus, I take my paid bills in to the post office. So far, they've all gotten to where they were intended to go. Your stories are interesting and your shots of the mailboxes and post office area are nicely done!
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