h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Busy day--didn't even get a look in at that thing I'm working on, but I suppose I can tell about the project and post a link to the blog after I'm done

I've actually talked about it on here a little already, but there's nothing that says I can't again, now that there are even more people reading, is there?

A couple months ago, Faith's class read Flat Stanley--a book in which the main character is flattened by a falling bulletin board and, being a not-dark children's book, survives just fine, thank-you-very-much. In the book, Stanley wants to visit some friends in California (not having read the book myself, I don't know where Stanley lives, nor whether it was he or his friends that moved away) but his family can't afford any conventional form of long-distance transportation, so they mail him. Faith's classmates then made flat people and brought them home to be mailed off. (Originally when I heard about this at Back to School Night, I assumed the flat people were to be versions of the students, and thus I started referring to "Flat Faith" and making plans to tie Flat Faith in with PaperKid and bugging Dmitri about a semi-regular column or something for to be under PaperKid's byline, and was preparing to squeeze around the age limit to do so, since I'm still the one in charge of that account--and then Faith brought home Flat Abby) Since this school project was not to be graded, and was just for fun, I took it and made some modifications (with feedback) to make this into a wonderful experience. You see, we can't always do things Faith's classmates' families can, but a project involving sending something as many places as possible (and getting photos and such)? *This* I could help make awesome! I started a closed Facebook group to exchange addresses (or for people to PM their addresses to me, with permission to give the address to someone to send Flat Abby to them) and to make plans--the only place requests Faith had were Israel, Ireland (her teacher's family is Irish), and Hollywood, but we've plans to try to get Flat Abby onto Hyp's library's Christmas parade float, and to the Inauguration.

Flat Abby was sent on her way to just outside Seattle, Washington in midSeptember, and arrived a couple weeks later. NuclearConfusion sent her on to Lady Pennywhistle in Jerusalem shortly after that. Nuke hasn't had a chance to print out and send his photos yet (one of the changes made was that, instead of sending the photos on with Flat Abby, and thus having the last person in the chain having huge amounts of postage to pay, Flat Abby goes on to the next person in the chain, and the photos and any enclosures people wish to make get mailed to our house), but Faith *did* get a package from Jerusalem this past weekend! Lady P sent Flat Abby on to TRiG, and I've heard that there are some really great photos--including a bunch at an SCA event that Mal took both TRiG and Flat Abby to.

Shortly after the FB group started, and before I learned that the flat person was Flat Abby instead of Flat Faith, several people said there should be a blog. I hemmed and hawed, and 'rich started one up. So far, there's only 1 entry up. I'm working on getting the photos and captions from Lady P up--I suppose I could've just scanned the pages in, but that felt too much like cheating. So I'm fighting with getting text to fit nicely around photos--I'd had the brilliant idea, once I'd done a few insert-photo-then-type deals, that it'd be quicker and simpler to insert the rest of the photos and then go back and type up the text. Let's just say that that may not have been the best idea I've ever had... So, when I finally get the blog updated, I'll post the link

I did not know the origins of the Flat Stanley thing. Here in Cali if a school age kid takes a family trip during the school year, the family is supposed to take a Flat Stanley with them and take pictures of it where ever they go and share them with the class when the student returns. The whole thing is a newer phenomena since I was in school. I'd never heard of it until recently.

It depends on the teacher, as far as how any one class does the Flat Stanley thing. The *official* site is at http://www.flatstanley.com/

Where in Cali are you? I'm up in Crescent City--19 miles from Oregon, on the coast. 6 hours (if you drive fast) north of San Francisco (which from here, is Central, not Northern, California)

I didn't know it had a website! Thanks for educating me. I still really don't understand the Flat Stanley thing. Is it just a US thing or is it international do you know?

I'm in Southern California. Orange County to be specific. Ive never been north of SF. Though I did take the train from SoCal to Seattle once, but I didn't stop anywhere.

You wouldn't've passed through here anyway--no tracks!

The Oregon coast is quite lovely! I went to Cannon Beach with my family once. There are some mountains that are right by the shore, so you can climb them and have a spectacular view of the ocean.

This sounds fabulous, and it reminds me of the film Amelie where her dad's gnomes keep sending him photos from exotic locations!

Deb

I'm planning on recruiting in Ask after the class display at the end of January--though we've got 41 more folks in the mail queue If you're on Facebook yourself, though, go ahead and search for "Flat Faith's World Adventure" and ask to join (maybe send me a message saying who you are on here, or drop your initials in the thread, so I know it's you--I've had one request from someone that hasn't responded to my asking who they are, and so I won't let him in--which is too bad, because he's from one of the continents I *don't* have covered).

Well, less "covered" and more "represented", though the England part of the UK will likely end up pretty covered

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