"When you play in a band so much of your life, your future, your rock 'n roll dreams are tied up in the whims and decisions of others, and sometimes when you are walking along Nicholson Street during a break from pumping out life-changing jams in the rehearsal room so you can eat a falafel your legs start to move in synch together and you walk along Nicholson Stree like you are The Ramones walking along Nicholson Street" - A found note from Luke lamenting the missed opportunity for an upcoming gig and reprinted in Found Magazine No. 6.

My father used to rescue me from Saturday morning cartoons each week to take me out dumpster diving in the industrial park near our home in suburban St. Louis.

He is a hobbyist woodworker and has always been good with his hands. Give him a piece of wood, he'll find the life it it was meant to live. Give him a window, he'll build a room to suit it. These particular talents got sucked down the drain of the gene pool that became his only son.

Most of the stuff in the enormous trash bins behind the manufacturing plants contained just that. With perseverance, every once in a while we'd return home with discarded, but operational, windows, chairs, or a stack of wood he would add to the ever-growing supply in his workshop.

Some days, I would wait in the car and watch, a few times he let me climb in with him, but my main duty was making sure whatever he pulled from the bins made it safely to the ground.

I always thought it was a bit odd, but at least I got to get out of the house early on a Saturday morning, and then there was the anticipation of possibility - the chance that we might make a big find.

When I happened on www.foundmagazine.com a few years ago, I instantly understood my father a bit better. Found editors collect cast-off letters, notes, pictures, receipts and a variety of other objects for the both the website and their print publication.

In the last issue (No. 5), the magazine featured letters to and from a former FBI agent. The guy had personal letters, some of them reprimands for losing his gun, from J. Edgar Hoover.

The current issue (on stands now), features faxes from homeowners seeking mercy, or a hand up, from lenders as they struggle to make ends meet during the current financial crisis. Enthralling, and sometimes heart-wrenching, stuff.

There's far too much in a single issue to sufficiently recap, but it's got it all: mystery, suspense, intrigue, joy, sorrow, melancholy, vulgarity, depression and triumph - every word a tiny slice of everyday poetry.

To that end, Found Magazine is the greatest Dumpster-diving trip ever realized.

Found Magazine is available, semi-locally, at Reading Frenzy in Portland or through the magazine website.