Manage with care: the international community that sends pure joy packages through mail | Hobby

AUsralian Anna Ryan-Punch was 15 years old when he received his first friendship book-a hand-made pocket booklet and decorated full of names and addresses of people looking for pen friends. The recipients were invited to add their details to the list, send a letter to other signatories and then transmit the booklet to someone new.

“They have been included in the letters as a side thing,” says Ryan-Punch, now 44 years old. When he was full of potential little friends of Penna, the friend of friendship, hopefully, would return to the person who made it. “I had no one to send them to, but I wrote to people from them and that type of circle.”

It was the beginning of what would become a hobby for life. While the e-mail, social media and instant messages have replaced hand-written letters for the most part, the practice of “exchanging” friendship books, or FBS, not only has persisted but has blossomed in an autonomous subculture, with its vernacular, label, rules and dramas.

Ryan-Punch’s first Penna friends arrived through the now deceased International Youth Service (Iys), a Finnish society formed in 1952 which was described as “dedicated to the promotion of the cause of the penalty pen … because, only having a friend abroad is an education in itself”. Iys has connected the teenagers of the pre-internet generation with other hopeful pen friends of the same age all over the world. The FBS were a Fai -Da -by way to do the same thing and the pen friends who were through the IY were often found recipients of FBS. After a while, many started doing and exchanging FBS with their good.

The FBS are various creations such as the hands that cross, ranging from compact buildings “beautiful and tidy” (n & n) to processed productions elaborate (Deco), allowing each exchange an entire page to express themselves. High quality “FBS (HQS) fall somewhere in the middle. There are mini quizzes (smudges or “small secret machines”) and well -packaged single sheets (jambs) with space only for addresses.

Next to FBS, Swapper also exchange adhesives, labels, stamps, notes and other nick-nacks through the post. Ryan-Punch shares an adhesive bag with the instructions: “Delete all 4 stickers. Put in 8 new ones (there are no small ones) and your label (address). Signature and date. Meetor n. 6 please send home to the owner or any ICR (a signatory that indicated” the Can Return “the elements finished to the manufacturer).” Label bags work similarly, but recipients put their labels and send or make objects for those whose labels eliminate.

Ryan-Punch, a librarian, now writes to about 20 people and exchanges with the same. With so much post coming and out, he had to develop a storage system to keep track of those who exchange what, who sent what when and who replied.

“In general we are all drug addicts: this is a common theme,” he says. It collects Washi ribbon and stickers and uses them to decorate its swaps. “I like craft activity without pressure. It does not really involve the elaboration of texts, so it is a break from reading or writing letters as a leisure activities.”

Charlene, 54 years old, an exchanger who spoke with Guardian Australia but asked that his surname was not published, he obtained his first Penna friends through an announcement in an American crochet magazine when he was 28 years old. Of course smart, when the FB began to accompany the letters of his pen letters, he fell in love with them. They like them more, embellishing them with scrapbooking paper, stickers, washing ribbon, lace, ribbon or anything else that has at hand. “They are basically small art collage books,” he says.

Charlene connects with new swapper on Internet forums and Facebook groups. Rigorous standards attend some of these: one, for example, says that N & NS must not have visible or binding staples on the front coverage and be embellished with multiple decorative elements. LQS, or “low quality” FBS, are seen as lazy. The people who maintain the FB who have not been made by or with them, who steal adhesives, cut the decorations from the labels of other swappers to be used as their barter, or that “send shit” are in the black list.

“The unexpressed rule is that you play at the fair,” says Charlene. “If he says” take two, add five “, take two, add five. Or if you don’t want to take them, add three. There are some people out there they don’t play fairly. But I have always put something inside that I would like to receive.”

Charlene has no idea how many people exchange now. Sometimes, he says, he sends so many FBS and goodies bags simultaneously that the packages weigh up to 5 kg.

In what seems to be the only academic article published on the exchange, the German researcher Anja Löbert says that friendship books are a Take innovation that fans in the 90s. The devotees of the British pop group used FBS to find other global fans with whom they could exchange photos, posters, videos and other memorabilia.

Ryan-Punch, whose early exchange intersected with this Fandom, recalls the illegal trade of Take That Memorabilia-In particular, a photographic development shop in the center of Melbourne who purchased and sold photos of Bootleg fans under the counter. “Did you have to mix and be like,” have you taken those photos? “And they would produce baskets from under the desk to let us pass and buy,” he says.

But while you take that fans have made a prolific use of FBS, they did not invent them. FBS circulated at least already in the 1980s, well before the group’s establishment.

Kate Denton received her first FB at 13 in 1988. He was already writing to 50 people all over the world since a local teenage magazine has published his request for Pen Pals when he was only 11 years old. In these days, he writes only letters to four, but exchanges 35 others all over the world.

“I have always loved writing, playing with a nice document and that kind of things,” says Denton. “I am a craftsman of paper in the heart – I do cards and I do scrapbooking.” Exchange is another way to indulge in those loves, he says. “It’s just something fun to do that makes you smile instead of receiving invoices by mail.”

Is this why the exchange has persisted, even after the Internet has played a fatal bell for so long written by hand?

His persistence also seems at least one generational nostalgia in part. Iys closed in 2008, citing a lack of youthful interest in writing letters, but its influence on previous generations was profound. Few tracks remain online, except for a handful of nostalgic blog posts, but when its archives were sold by a Finnish auction house in 2010, a single lot contained envelopes of 5 million in 7200 boxes, weight of 25,000 kg.

The sale came to the attention of an American philater, who wrote in a breathless circular: “They kept the mail coming! Not only did they keep it, but resolved it by country in boxes. Even better, they kept the covers (envelopes) in the boxes in order of date arriving. And then they marked the boxes with the name of the country and the dates of the covers inside.” The entire ray was purchased by a stamp collector in Africa and many envelopes still present yourself on eBayOften with Australian stamps.

For some swappers, the FBS are still a path to Longhor’s letters. The signatories mark their names and addresses with acronyms such as LLPW (“Pals for long letters”), NSW/NPW (“New Swapper Wanted/New Pen Pals Wanted”), A/A (“Reply to all”). Some add extra clauses: “No prisoner please” is unexpectedly common. Charlene claims to pay with the prisoners in the United States prisons until it turned out that the addresses of Pen Pal were purchased and sold.

The swapper are often shy on what they do for fear of being derisi-denton says that she and her husband of construction of models soon tied to their “unique hobbies” -ma Ryan-Punch happily publishes the photos of her colored mail on social media. “I like to see where they go around the world and how long they take to return. Sometimes, they never come back.”

Hand -written letters still have a unique charm for her, which she hypothesizes is because they narrow her attention and allow thought and reflection in a way that social media and the e -mail do not do it. “It’s like the Journal but better,” he says. “I am really bad to respond to and -mail. There is something in the immediacy that I don’t like. I want to receive a letter and write in about a month.”

He has never worried much about his address that circulates among the strangers by mail. “When I started, we were all in the white pages anyway.”