Stationery, Not Stagnant ~ University Stationery

First Emerson assignment

Just had an amazing and typical experience at University Stationary with my heroes, Gail and Barry Seidman. They just helped us find and install a part for an Automatic Numbering Machine. We had looked on line for replacement pad and ink and we saved money and our sanity by checking in at University, before we ordered. The part was a 3/4″ X 1/8″ inch felt pad. Online it cost $7.95 plus shipping. At University, it cost $2.95. Barry helped me install it and Gail made a copy of the directions for my machine which I had long lost, from a newly boxed version of my gunked up model.

This is something that big box stores would like to emulate but cannot fully pull off. They will have many excellent employees, who give their heart and soul to their work but corporations are organized to value and reward profits. their corporate masters worship the “bottom line” and never care about the product/s the way people like Gail and Barry and their staff do. Small stores value their customers and often really love and always understand the needs of the people in the the field they service. I looked at Yelp for contact info on University and found this story. I smiled because I could so easily imagine the entire story unfolding….

” Before a lunchtime meeting, I realized that the zipper of my suit pants were mad at me and would only stay up for about 2 minutes before drooping inevitably down. I walked down the street hunched into my jacket trying to mentally engineer a solution until I bumped into University Stationery. I walked in and asked, really begged, for A safety pin – no not a box, but I will buy a box if I need to, all I need is one…
Surprisingly they didn’t sell safety pins or were out of them. As a very nice older lady rooted through her desk drawers for one, she told me the story of how one day a poor young man had walked into the store asking also for a safety pin, because he needed them to hold his pants up. She chuckled at this story, but in the midst of telling it, had miraculously dug out not one, but two safety pins (just in case). I thanked her profusely and triumphantly safety-pinned my pants together.”
 
Loving paper and pens as I do, it was pure fun to spend a few hours shooting stationary objects while listening to Gail talk about "life, the universe and everything". I spent a few hour on a Saturday AM with Gail talking about her work as I shot the way the stacks of merchandise created patterns and I am afraid I was thinking about "paintings" and not film. Considering my turgid filming and editing, Gail's lively personality has a lot of dead weight to carry in this project - but she is up to the task. Prepared as an assignment for Digital Media Production at Emerson College, OCTOBER 2010



Music: "Stand By Me" Ben E. King Playing for Change
http://www.playingforchange.org/

Several years ago, a small group of filmmakers set out with a dream to make a documentary film about street musicians from around the world. That dream has grown not only into a reality, but into a global sensation called Playing For Change, and has touched the lives of millions of people.

While traveling to around the world to film and record these musicians, the crew became intimately involved with the music and people of each community they visited.

Many of these people lived very modestly in communities with limited resources; nevertheless, they were full of generosity, warmth, and above all they were connected to each other by a common thread: music.