Found Magazine

"Strange, Hilarious and Heartbreaking"

I got an email tonight notifying me that Davy Rothbart, the creator and publisher of Found Magazine is going to be here next month to teach a writing class to benefit 826 Seattle.
How could I not have written about Found before? It's based on a brilliant concept; people send in all kinds of abandoned notes, photos, tickets, lists; your typical garden-variety detritus, and Davy publishes all of it on his website and in his magazine. The people who send the stuff usually have some theory about the meaning of, or the back story behind these scraps. The true nature of each discovery is up in the air and open to speculation. When I first heard about Found several years ago, I set out to make myself hyper-aware of any and all discarded things that might be "Found-worthy". To date I've come up with zip. Seattle doesn't believe in the scribbled note left under the windshield wiper, or the letter from Mom left as a bookmark in a library book. Just as Seattle spits in the face of the common belief that everyone here is a bleeding-heart, granola-chomping, flannel-clad hippie ( and believe me, there is NO shortage of spit here.....eeeuuuwww), the notion that Seattle is held in thrall by the written word seems to die in the streets. I'll keep looking, but in the meantime here's an excerpt from Found.