Issue 17, containing: Historical Ephemera, Mysterious Sound Stings, Holiday Cards, A Short List of Things, Letters, Commonplaces, &c.

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SOME EDITORIAL NOTES

Happy hollies, jolly joyeux noel, and many merry returns (though hopefully not of gifts). It is New Year’s Eve, and I am watching German science fiction — Dark, on Netflix, for those interested. 

I don’t have anything particularly wise to say about either German science fiction or the new year; but I do have quite a lot of little leftover essay prompts in my phone’s Notes folder, and so I will, with malice aforethought, attempt to get through them all in one huge burst.

It will not be pretty. But that’s 2020 in a nutshell.

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HISTORICAL EPHEMERA

I had always assumed that stamps had to be placed in the upper right-hand corner of a letter because of the machine readers. And that is, to be fair, accurate. But what I discovered, back when I was sending strange packages through the mail (as one does), was that the placement of stamps on letters used to have secret meanings.

Early readers of this magazine may recall that I collect postcards. Unfortunately, none of my pieces are as old as the Victorian period — most of mine are from the turn of the century, 1900 to 1920 or so. The fad was over by then, I think. 

I’m not a philatelist, really, though I have a fascination with stamps. But this… I could see myself getting interested in collecting these. They’re another aspect to the stories these letter-writers let people see, when they sent postcards out into the world.

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MYSTERIOUS SOUND STINGS

You know the ones: They appear in horror movies, or thrillers, or games that want to let you know that Something Creepy Is Happening. Aside from 80s music — of which I am entirely appreciative — the majority of the other music in Dark seems to be stings. A kid steals a lighter and then reads a missing child report — sting. Another kid is drawing a dead bird — sting. View of the forest — sting.

Why are these effective? I couldn’t say. Probably having to do with neurology and monkey brain reactions to things. I love them, though — they’re a very clear indication of a genre at work. The levers that an author or creative team can use to manipulate an audience.

Get enough levers, clacking in tandem with each other, and you get a successful piece of art. If any of them are out of sync, or missing… I was going to say it was like a clock missing a cog, but that’s not quite right. In my head, it’s more like the bobbins used to construct lace.

For me, part of enjoying art is not just seeing the finished project, but finding all the bobbins that went into creating it.

Which is all a lot of verbiage to say: I’m having a nice time watching this German show.

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HOLIDAY CARDS

There’s some sort of gentle guitar music playing somewhere in the apartment building. Outside, people are shooting very large, very illegal fireworks.

Some years ago, when I was considerably more married, I would spend most of December writing out holiday cards. Other people did as well, though maybe it was just my social group at the time. Or– maybe it wasn’t just them. There was more holiday mail in the past, I think. I remember that people used to send out weird e-cards, too, and I miss that a bit. They were bright impermanent pieces of flotsam, frequently musical, often tacky. But people sent cards, one way or another, and it was nice.

This year seems to have brought a resurgence of cards (the paper ones, at least). My door is currently peppered with mail I’ve taped up, cheerful reminders that there is a world outside my own. I’m always a little surprised when I see that my instincts are mirrored by others — I wanted to send out mail, and so, it seemed, did others. We’re all of us, I think, looking for ways to connect.

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A NOTE TO GENTLE READERS

I didn’t mean to, but evidently I’ve stumbled onto a theme in this issue as well.

As of the writing of this very paragraph, it is seven minutes to the new year. I’m at home, watching old German shows, and contemplating my elbows. What did you do, Readers? How have you marked the old from the new?

Five minutes, now. It won’t change anything, but then again, there is always the hope that it might.

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A SHORT LIST OF THINGS THAT I DID NOT WRITE ABOUT IN 2020

• parlor gardens
• quitting Twitter for a week
• canoeing on a cold morning, on a warm lake, with the water lilies
• ethical robotics, and strange questions
• drive-in horror movies
• recently read works
• what do words really do? art demarcates space, and music demarcates time, and footprints in stone are kinetic fossils

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LETTERS

From the Magazine, to the Readers, “Happy New Year”:

The time is now 12:02 AM. The year is 2021. The fireworks rage outside, and everyone is honking their horns.

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COMMONPLACES

From stuffedgrapeleaves’s tumblr:

postcards say IM HERE. IM HERE AND I LOVE YOU. IN THIS SPACE AND TIME  AND WHEREVER AND WHENEVER YOU ARE. THERE IS A SPACE BETWEEN THOSE SPACES  THAT CONNECTS US AND ITS FULL OF LOVE. I’LL MEET YOU THERE.

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ANNOUNCEMENTS

Welcome, and hello, and may the year be better than it was.

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If you would like to write a letter to be produced/answered in the magazine, please email me at minor.hours.magazine@gmail.com with the subject line:

Letter to the Magazine: [subject of letter as you would like to see it printed]

If you wish the letter to be anonymous or under a nom de plume, please state so in the body of the email; similarly, if you’d rather not be printed at all, please also state so in the body of the email. It will otherwise be assumed that mail sent to that address is intended for print.

Alternately, commenting on this post will get you a similar result, with much less fuss.

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-Until next week, be safe.