Photo By Sean Hughes/photopresse.com

Rich Abrolat takes a closer look at some of the treasures he's found around Cincinnati.

Megan Murphy is Cincinnati's keeper of lost diaries. And if you ever mislaid a to-do list, left a message for the UPS driver on your door or errantly misplaced a note to your friend, Rich Abrolat might have picked it up and kept it. No, they're not stalking you. They're among the many contributors to Found Magazine currently searching neighborhoods near you for perfect gems in the sea of our everyday lives.

What is Found Magazine? In the words of Davy Rothbart, creator and self-proclaimed point guard for Found, "It's a collection of anything that people find, from love letters to birthday cards, kids' homework or doodles on a napkin. They're essentially objects that give a glimpse of others' lives, a sense of their experiences or an idea of what goes on in their minds and hearts." What distinguishes Found from almost any other reading experience is the possibility for readers to interact with the work and actually become part of the project by sending in their finds to the magazine. As Rothbart explains, "The readers really create and produce Found. It's a giant collaborative effort, and I just put it all together."

Since 2001 the Found crew has put together three magazines; they plan a fourth following their 50-state "Slapdance Across America" tour which came through Cincinnati several weeks ago at Shake-It Records. Simon & Schuster released the Found book last year, and their latest enterprise "Dirty Found," exploiting a growing collection of "adult" finds, has just been released, available through foundmagazine.com

Touring the 50 states, Rothbart explains his continual amazement at the people who have collected found objects for years and present their discoveries to him. After the Cincinnati show, UC student Megan Murphy gave him a couple of her diaries, some random notes and a series of photographs. But she had been finding things long before the magazine emerged. Putting together her finds and those of her friends, Murphy has compiled several scrapbooks of found notes, lists and objects. Her first diary surfaced when she was still in high school, discovered at a massive flea market in Utica, Ohio. The diary documented the story of a young teenage girl who, over the course of her diary's year, fell into trouble with drugs and ended up with an unwanted pregnancy. Not a funny thing at all, but a lost and forgotten story.

So why collect these things, especially the heartbreaking finds like a diary full of memories someone might wish to forget? For Murphy, it's a mixture of curiosity and compassion, "Because I am interested in people and all of the things that they do." Finding has turned her into a careful observer of the world around her, intent on getting at the heart of things.

Rothbart reiterates the point. "The found objects," he says, "allow us to see how people from different places are, to see that they feel and experience the same kinds of emotions as us: love, pain, hope and hopelessness. We're surrounded by strangers everyday at school or work or on the bus. Learning about other's experiences of humanity is a powerful thing."

Rich Abrolat of Villa Hills, Ky., has had better luck with the more peculiar and amusing side of the found world. He recalls an episode from his childhood in Marietta, Ohio, when he came across an old Country & Western 45 rpm record in a park, "I Picked a Booger When I Picked You." Years later, on reading a description of Found, he reconnected with his curious childhood impulses. At first he felt certain nothing funny would turn up, but the endless stream of found objects surprised him.

"I pay a lot more attention to my immediate surroundings now, like when I take a walk or run an errand," Abrolat says. A lot of his finds are, admittedly, nonsense: a Post-It note from Nashville states, "Even though you smell like an orc, he still trusts you"; a shopping list that goes out of its way to remind its taskmaster, "NO ice cream"; or a note found next to the police station that warns, "I'll tell the police!"

So where are the best places to find things in Cincinnati? While Murphy and Abrolat argue that purposely looking for objects is nearly hopeless, they suggest some locations serve as better places to start paying attention: the Post Office, copy shops like Kinko's (don't be afraid to peer into the recycling bins), the library and, perhaps reluctantly, the garbage. Schools are always a landmine, says Murphy, who lives in Clifton, near UC and in close proximity to a grade school. "Kids are always writing things and are a little bit careless with what they do with them."

But Abrolat also raises the point that finding is not simply about location, but perception. When taking a walk, he suggests, "Slow down and take a look at that piece of paper on the ground, especially if it has handwriting on it." A good finder considers matters of volume and scale, roughly approximating that nine in 10 objects on the ground are junk, but that one good find makes it all worth it.

Taking up the advice of the Cincinnati finders, I took a walk around my neighborhood in Prospect Hill and Over-the-Rhine when I spotted a real jewel not far from a local high school -- a spelling quiz ripped from a spiral notebook, edges frayed and marked in pencil by a boy named Damien. Twelve words, all but one spelled incorrectly: harves, poarch, orcherd, trator. Hey, spelling is tough. But at least he got one important urban term correct: livestock. ©