Licking Envelopes

Hello World!

It's Phoebe sitting in the Heritage Program office on this windy friday afternoon. The reason why I'm writing is a little bit selfish today... I'm using it as an excuse to hide from the massive to-do list that's hanging on our wall. I'm also using it to complain a little bit. In this case, complaining has lead me to a momentous realization. There is a large part of the Heritage Program that many of you probably don't know about, and that most people in this office try to avoid-- licking envelopes. I'm not joking. Envelopes are one of our connections to all of the incredible artists that we bring in to the festivals. Today, I was the lucky one who was pinned with the task of stuffing all of the envelopes with application letters for the Celebraciones de la Gente festival that happens in the end of October. Let's just say that the copy room and I need some time apart after this endeavor. To make the job a little bit easier, I chose some vibrant paper colors and tried humming some songs to myself. Still, it was a daunting task. There were about 200 envelopes that had to be stuffed, and one only one person to do it. I spent some quality time (about 2 hours) next to the copy machine, folding fluorescent pink and yellow paper, decorating my hands with paper cuts, stuffing and addressing envelopes. To make it all a little more agonizing, I found out after I parched my tongue licking envelopes that I didn't have to-- apparently there's a machine for that (why should I be surprised?).
I'm not just writing to complain... I'm writing because the monotonous task of folding mountains of paper for hours made me realize how lucky I am to do work that is so far from that. I realized that, despite how busy these days are, I'm lucky that I get to spend them learning about the beautiful Native American cultures of the southwest and talking to artists and having my eyes widened due to some of the things I read. I realized that, in this life, you have to lick your share of envelopes to understand the richness of the world around you.

Hope you all have paper-cut free weekends,
love,
Phoebe.

p.s.: ANNE FIGURED IT OUT!