"I mean, what's trash to a lot of people? To me, it's really wonderful and beautiful stuff," says Davy Rothbart, creator and publisher of FOUND magazine. Based on the premise that one man's trash is another fellow's treasure, FOUND is a collection of discarded and forgotten scraps of paper that contain humorous, witty, and heartbreaking glimpses into the lives of the unsuspecting authors. "Each one contains a little treasure," Rothbart says, like a shopping list for "beer, meat, dog food and baloney," or a letter for Mario that starts, "I fucking hate you" and ends with, "P.S., Page me later."

The first issue was assembled by hand at a copy shop. The contents -- crudely Xeroxed cocktail napkins, shopping lists, and homework assignments -- come from a variety of sources: friends and strangers who feed Rothbart's habit, as well his own gleanings. Some submissions are long, like an entire Hawaiian travel log, but the publisher prefers snappier haiku-like pieces. The only requirement is that it reveals something about the person who wrote it.

"One of the cool things about finding stuff is that you're holding the same piece of paper, you're connected to the person who wrote that," says Rothbart, a Chicago resident who only recently transformed his childhood hobby of collecting discarded stuff into a consuming passion. Seeking to spread the word, he's touring the country and visited the White Electric Coffee shop on the evening of Monday, November 5.

The Providence stop included a presentation of found objects and the dramatic reading of a four-page play (of which Rothbart's younger brother found pages 1, 2, and 4). A handful of attendees were eager to share their own discoveries and laugh out loud at Rothbart's energetic and engaging production. "People really responded to this, and it's rare that you do something people really get excited about," he says.

FOUND can be found at the White Electric or Armageddon Books on Broadway, Atlas Books on Meeting Street, the College Hill Bookstore, or check it out at www.foundmagazine.com.

Ian Donnis can be reached at idonnis[a]phx.com.

Issue Date: November 9 - 15, 2001