April 6: Things spotted/found on a neighborhood walk. The first dandelion of the season, some early spring wildflowers I brought home to press, and a broken piece of a high voltage sign and a raffle ticket I brought home to use in future art.
Until or unless this blog gets overwhelmed the submissions are open and you may submit media via ask. I may change that format in the future to true submissions, we will see how things go! Please view the FAQ below for information on what and how to submit.
To be posted your submission must have:
The name of the book, play, newspaper, etc. where it was written
A clear, legible image (unless the writing was already illegible)
Nice-to-have items in your submission would be
3. Location (country, city, state, province, planet, whatever you want)
4. When you found it/when you bought the thing that was written in
5. An ALT Text that describes what is in the image
FAQ
What counts as a marginal note?
Anything found written, marked, highlighted, or underlined in a printed piece of text. It could be a highlight of a single line, a paragraph argue with the author, or even a doodle.
Can I submit my own marginal notes?
Ideally, you wouldn't but I am not going to stop you (for now). The concept of this blog is to share things we find in books or writing we come across. The beauty of sharing this is to collectively read and enjoy the experiences other people have had with texts.
I found a note written on a gum wrapper/napkin/missing poster, can I submit that?
Sure! That's not the idea of this blog but I think it pushed forward the same sentiment or concept.
I think what I found written in this book might be hate speech or [insert bad thing here] can I still submit it?
Nope! This material adds to the text in a bad way that harms others and will not be published on this blog. If you find a book with a piece of hate speech scrawled inside I suggest donating it to a library or museum that specializes in archiving hate speech or just throwing it away.
I feel relieved and somewhat vindicated in my inability to find this stencil yesterday
Reminds me (yeah the connection is slightly tenuous) of the time I found a distraught mother at a family farm desperately searching for her small child: I asked (being helpful) “What is he wearing?” She relied “Camouflage…” and almost laughed through the tears (we found him too, not in the sink)
Anyway, found my camouflage stencil this morning, in the sink
I have problems, ok?
I collected these all in two walks. Two fifteen minute walks, and I have.. Three rocks, three sticks, three leaves, seven feathers, a weird red string that is soft, a flat Home Depot pencil, and a washer. I don’t even remeber picking up the washer.
I've always been drawn to lost things and empty places. Things like buttons, or feathers, or acorns. Lost things. Found things. Places that are old, or abandoned, reclaimed by nature. Houses, and churches, and barns. Places that still hold the memory of their past, even if it's forgotten to those who now pass through it. They feel significant to me. Like I'm bearing witness to something, even if I don't know what it is.
Maybe it's a childhood of traveling to places like these, seeing old bath houses, and farmsteads. Summers looking across a field at the ruins of something, but not being allowed to investigate. Maybe it's because we always put lost gloves and mittens at eye height, in tress and on fences, in hopes of someone finding it. I don't know, but I think it's important, even if only to me.
February 25: Things found on a walk through my neighborhood: buds on a magnolia tree, and some stuff I brought home for future collages - a photo of some random teenagers, and a scrap of paper with tax information on it. (Not like, personal information, just info about taxes.)
A report just came out from a Palestinian hostage saying he was strapped with bombs and sent into a Hamas tunnel, with Israel prepared to blow the tunnel up with his body if fighters were found inside and yet people are still making the “Hamas uses human shields” arguments that have been confirmed to be a myth with no supporting evidence