Goodbye 8036
Throughout her life, my mom has made a lifelong habit of correspondence — thank you notes, birthday cards, holiday cards, messages of sympathy, congratulations, or simply to say "I was thinking of you." I inherited this trait from her. I love sending and receiving mail. I always have stamps on hand and a box of notes ready for any occasion.
I began renting P.O. Box 8036 at Liberty Station in the summer of 1999. It's located in the vestibule of a downtown federal building that opened in 1977, the year I was born. At the time, my band was about to release our first album and we needed a business address to serve our administrative needs. Eventually that band ran its course, as did its predecessor, though we continued to list 8036 on subsequent legal documents. Over time, it became the de facto address for all my various enterprises: the Original Brothers and Sisters of Love, No Bitings Records, Great Lakes Myth Society, Northern Detective, Timothy Monger State Park.
Weeknotes: January 19–23, 2026
Monday, January 19
I dream intensely, though when I wake, I can't remember any details. While the dark recedes, I stand with my coffee at the window, watching a snow squall whip down the street. Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day — no work or school, though I end up devoting time to both.
In the afternoon, I drive into town to buy ink cartridges for my printer. Arctic winds shoulder my little car as I try to stay in my lane amid the blowing snow. Minutes later, sunlight pierces my dirty windshield — it's a day of extremes.
Last Known Address (Liberty Station)
Back in Weeknotes #1, I mentioned a new song I’d written about my post office box in Ann Arbor. It’s called “Last Known Address” and will come out later this year as part of a project of the same name. As rental prices have gone up, I’ve considered abandoning my long-held, but underused mailbox. Now that I’ve sung about it and listed my address in lyric form, I guess I’ll have to keep up the rent. In that same post, I suggested that readers might “lobby for its continued existence” by sending me a hand-written letter or postcard to counterbalance the trickle of catalogs and junk mail I usually receive.