Photos

Canada Post workers may not have a cool slogan like the U.S. Postal Service (“Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night shall stay these couriers from their appointed rounds”), but they have some snappy uniforms, colour coordinated to match their trucks and the mailbox on every corner.

This photo is the first in what I hope will become a series of occasional portraits of people at work. It's also a convenient moment to introduce those of you who aren't familiar with it to mail art.

What is mail art? Just what it seems, but a whole lot more. It's art that is sent by mail. Sometimes it's sent to someone you know, other times the recipient may be random. Sometimes it consists of one original, unique piece, sometimes a flurry of identical, mass-produced postcards. If you're not a mail artist yourself you'll probably be amazed at how much work and creativity people put into it. Take a look:

Mail Art: The Forum provides a good historical introduction, going back to the days of Dada, a general overview, contacts, and just about anything else you can think of.

The Mail Art Postcard Exhibition is just what it sounds like, but it's more impressive than its somewhat uninspired name. This site has some genuinely beautiful pieces of art -- they just happen to be postcards.

Meanwhile, the Poetry Postcard Project is an excellent collection of images and text from an initiative commissioned by, of all things, the Tempe Cultural Services Division. Who knew Arizona was such a cool place? (Note: the images are roll-overs, so if you hover your cursor over the picture, it will flip over so you can see the text on the back).

Slang 101: regarding the photo's title, non-North-Americans might not be familiar with the term "going postal," which began as a reference to postal workers in the United States who seemed for a while to be more prone than other people to killing their co-workers (it turns out not to be true), but by now can mean simply losing your temper.