Postcards from Kate is a nonpartisan project that encourages people to write postcards to politicians, journalists, and influencers to encourage positive social change. In this episode, interview the founders of Postcards from Kate, Amelia West and Melissa Smith, about how they got inspired to use postcards by their grandfather, how they find positive stories, and how they rally people to write postcards to people who have made a difference.

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Music in this episode:

Ragtime Dance by Scott Joplin, licensed under a Creative Commons Public Domain Mark 1.0 License. Music sourced from Free Music Archive.

Here’s a Postcardist Master Class.

I was lucky enough to interview Mark Routh, who is a well-known postcard collector in the UK. Mark collects cards and studies the history of postcards. Plus, he’s written a monthly column for more than 25 years in the very highly regarded Picture Postcard Monthly.

You can find Mark’s website here.

Here’s a sequence of what Mark covered in this Postcardist Master Class:

• Victorian era of postcards….very early start of postcard history
• Anything that happened in 1890s on were photographed..photographer would take a photo and less than 24 hours images were printed on postcards
• How often were postcards delivered in early 1900s; it was our mobile phones the time
• Where people bought postcards back in the day
• WWI battle photograph postcards; printing postcards in Germany
• Most common postcards coming from France to England in WWI were of bombed out towns
• The Great War postcards
• Cachets on cards…censor cachets in WWI
• Titanic postcards
• Postcard fairs
• More on the Titanic
• Display boards
• Dr. Who postcards
• Collecting postcards around television
• Even more on Titanic
• Do people insure postcards?
• First and last postcard Mark collected
• Falklands War…Mark wrote a book
• The very first postcard
• How to archive postcards

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Apple Podcasts | Android | Stitcher | TuneIn

Music in this episode:

Ragtime Dance by Scott Joplin, licensed under a Creative Commons Public Domain Mark 1.0 License. Music sourced from Free Music Archive.

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What if you collected postcards the majority of your life, then woke up one morning and decided to give away all those postcards ? One at a time.

That’s what this week’s guest did. Frank Boscoe created an Instagram site where he documents his Great Postcard Giveaway. Frank asks people to DM their address and he sends them a postcard from his collection. Simple as that. One a day until they’re gone.

I became fascinated with Frank’s story as I follwed him on Insta. But when he mentioned he was going to present a PechaKucha talk about his postcard giveaway, I knew I had to hear more.

And am I ever glad I did. You will be, too. Frank is a fascinating guy, and he started out the show with a quiz in the style of Will Shortz that really got me thinking. He also recommends an app — Unfade Pro — that’s taken my postcard photography up a notch. And he created a special version of his PechaKucha talk for Postcardist listeners.

The image above is on of the 20 from Frank’s presentation. When his talk is posted on the PechaKucha site I’ll add the link.

Subscribe:

Apple Podcasts | Android | Stitcher | TuneIn

Music in this episode:

Ragtime Dance by Scott Joplin, licensed under a Creative Commons Public Domain Mark 1.0 License. Music sourced from Free Music Archive.

Solo Acoustic Guitar by Jason Shaw, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License. Music sourced from Free Music Archive.

Audio  in this episode:

Good luck, we’re all counting on you, from the movie Airplane, sourced under YouTube standard license.

Swing and a miss, the call by Harry Kalas calls the Philadelphia Phillies winning the World Series in 1908, sourced under a YouTube standard license. All rights reserved by MLB.