Longing for the Homeland

And how could you not long for a utopian land like this one?

This is my favorite page from one of my all time favorite books, Boring Postcards. It's filled with horrible postcards like this one, the kind you used to get for free at chintzy motels along the interstates of America's heartland. I would write on postcards like this and send them to kids I went to grade school with, bearing messages like "We may never come home." and "We stayed at this motel. Its milk is weird." And I would get home and see them at school before they even got their bent-up postcards in the mail.

My friends who work at the bookstore that I used to addictively go to back home, before I got even more woefully addicted to Amazon, would often know exactly which new arrival on the shelf was going to float my boat. Treasures I never would've found if not for their willingness to keep an eye out for such things. Thank you, Mr. Bill, and Norma, and Tanya. Because of you, I now live in a nice cardboard box. Lined with many books.