Wouldn't it be nice if instead of finding wads of chewed gum, crisp wrappers and snotty tissues lying about your neighbourhood you stumbled upon a colourful paper crane with a positive message scrawled on it? Placed there just for you to find it and make you smile?
That's what benevolent stranger Sandy is doing for the towns she visits. Her mission is to make 1000 paper cranes with a different positive word on each of them, in different locations. She was inspired by the true story of Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes by Eleanor Coerr, about a Hiroshima woman who developed leukemia after the bombing and from her nursing home death bed, decided to make 1000 paper cranes. According to Japanese folklore, folding 1000 paper cranes allows the folder one granted wish, and hers was to live. She lived to make 644 cranes. Sadako’s friends and family completed the remaining cranes for her.
Sandy began in her hometown of central New Jersey and has to date 'released' 124 cranes in public places around Philadelphia, Montreal, and Quebec City. She encourages people who find her cranes to re-release them in a dry place so others may enjoy them.
If you're in New Jersey, you may want to keep an eye out!
You can follow Sandy's project at her blog, Sandy and the 1000 cranes.
