“Not mail” box helps Boston woman connect with neighbors and “look into the hearts and souls of strangers”
A woman is giving her neighbors in Boston a chance to connect with others through a "not mail" box outside of her home.
By Mike Sullivan
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BOSTON (WBZ) — A woman is giving her neighbors in Boston a chance to connect with others through a “not mail” box outside of her home.
Jean Powers said she got the idea during the pandemic “as a way to just kind of connect with strangers.” She invites people to drop a note on anything in the box on Adamson Street in Brighton.
People are asked to share their “thoughts, opinions, poetry, secrets and lies.”
Some of the responses are silly. Others have written her poems or even confessed secrets.
“This neighborhood has too many rats, they intimidate and beat up our cats, they give me anxiety, and cause impropriety, but when run over, make artistic splats,” Powers said, as she read from one of the notes she received.
She wasn’t expecting people to get so personal.
“I didn’t quite expect the really heartfelt notes,” said Powers. “Sometimes I’ll try to figure it out, I’ll be like well, ‘Can I match the note to the person?’ And then I never can. Like, the human heart is just such a mystery,” she said. “I get to look into the hearts and souls of strangers.”
In return, Powers gets to feel human connection in a world growing distant.
“I’ll be reading it and holding them in my heart and thinking about them,” she said.
“What sort of person would go through the trouble of writing this beautiful poem and doing this gorgeous watercolor only to leave it in the ‘not mail’ box of a total stranger without knowing whatever’s going to happen to it? Like, what a gorgeous humanity we are.”
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