Be a Part of NPR's Postal Service Series

NPR is taking submissions to include in their upcoming series on the U.S. Postal Service. Check out this information from their Tumblr on how to enter your postage memories:

Have you ever received a letter or postcard in the mail that you keep close to your heart — a love letter, a postcard from abroad, a note from a dear relative, a reply to fan mail? NPR would like to hear from you.

Please share scans or photos of your postcard (front and back) or letter (and envelope, if you have it) and tell us your story. Upload your images to Flickr and tag them NPRPostal.

We will select some to accompany our upcoming series on the U.S. Postal Service.

Amazing Water Balloon Photographs

Check out these amazing images from London photographer Edward Horsford. By mastering the techniques of high-speed photography, he has been able to capture the moment when a water balloon pops, right before the water falls out of its spherical shape.

The trick, Horsford explains, is timing the flash perfectly. Working alone, he uses a contraption that sets off the camera’s flash when it detects the pop of the balloon. The photographs are taken at night, allowing the flash to illuminate the shots.

Check out this article from NPR for more of these amazing images, and this article provides a more in-depth description of his technical process.

Sw!pe

The thing about museums is that they attract creative people, even for those positions that aren't traditionally seen as creative, such as the security force. In that vein, NPR recently had a story about the brand-new art and literary magazine Sw!pe, the claim to fame of which is that all materials in it were produced by people who are or were security guards at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The named comes from the fact that its contributors have to clock in and out, unlike salaried employees, not, so we think, from any allusion to art theft. And the profession isn't an arbitrary one, either. This passage from the article discusses the kind of osmosis that takes place even unconsciously:

Other guards say it's exhausting to stand for hours, but almost everyone says the museum has influenced them. Barry Steeley pointed to a self-portrait at the exhibition — a greenish tinted work in alkyd and oil that shows the bearded Steeley staring out from in front of a painting of fish — and noted that in many religious paintings there is often a panel behind Mary or Jesus. He said he has spent a lot of time in the medieval section. And looking at his painting, he suddenly noticed, "This is very medieval-like, because the panel is here, and this luminous light is coming from behind, so perhaps it did creep in because I spent so much time in that section."

Truly Public Art

(image from Getty)

Amy Miller, our shop manager, passed along this great article from NPR about "One and Other," a public art project that makes use of an empty plinth in Trafalgar Square. A total of 18,000 people applied and 2,400 were chosen randomly to do whatever they like for an hour each, night and day, for the next 100 days. Results are being streamed live (and not very choppily) at this link, and photos are being uploaded here, including a guy dressed as a panda and taking cell phone calls. Can we get a plinth?