(vintage gingham trench, vintage headscarf, zara pants, spring boots)
There was a man by the name of Harold C. Funk that lived in my neighborhood and every Sunday Mr. Funk would distribute and litter the streets with letters.
These letters weren't,"Hi, how are you? I'm having a yard sale' or 'Lost Cat' letters, these particular letters would be addressed Dear Head of Nation, and then proceed to go into dizzying tirades about topics ranging from cannibalism, acid rain, Second Cup, the RCMP and so on.
The only parallel the letters had was the same raving tone and unpunctuated rhetoric about the detrimental state of our world.
As bizarre as the letters were, maybe Mr. Funk unintentionally made a good point with his mass-community declaration.
Maybe he was trying to say that sometimes you just need the people that LIVE near you to know more about you that just your name; or as the man who wears leather pants all year round or as the girl with teacups in her window.
You need these people to know what you are thinking, what you are working on while you are in your home.... that is next to their home.
Maybe you need them to know that where you live is affecting your life, and if you are affected by where you live, well then the people that live around you must be feeling something too.
As my dear friend Jesse put it so simply a few years back when he was doing a *photographic study of the habits of nearby residents, "these are our neighbors and they live next to us every day." No truer words spoken.
Over the past year, the letters have stopped and Harold C. Funk has retired from his typewriter, but I've wondered where our neighborhood's dearly missed propaganda peddler is up to now. Who knows? But a man with convictions so strong wouldn't just pack up and go...maybe there will be a return of Harold C. Funk one day....until then I leave you with one of the best "Dear Neighbors" letters, other than Mr. Funk's, that I have ever come across. Enjoy!
