I got a Greetings from Karen Commins postcard in the mail and I was fascinated. Here was a new take on postcards: a voiceover artist who uses postcards to market her services. And I was lucky enough to have a conversation about that. But it didn’t end there. Karen, first and foremost, is a storyteller. And what great stories. You can hear about how she:

• Named a helicopter her class bought with S&H Green Stamps for the local police department
• Had her first stint on TV — in 5th grade — after writing a winning essay
• Contacted the biggest name in voiceover work when she was getting started…and Frank Muller wrote back with advice
• Used Barry Manilow’s birthday as a postcard marketing event
• Recommends using a return address on postcards
• Answers the question if Nellie Bly sent postcards in her race around the world that started in 1889
• Offers a free audio book about Nellie Bly to the first five Postcardist listeners who write here at karen@karencommins.com
• Sent me down a rabbit hole for stereo viewer cards…yikes!

Thanks so much for being on the Postcardist podcast, Karen!

Postcardist has been out of the studio lately. In this episode, I interview my friend Jessica Mand — writer, photographer, and itinerant traveler. We do this interview in two locations — at a French brasserie to start, with all the clanking plates and music playing in the background; then we transition a couple days later to a bench outside a coffee shop. Both places had lots of noise, but Jess makes it worthwhile in her descriptions of Iceland, her discovery of the prettiest postcard in Hawaii, and  she keeps us guessing about the best restaurant on Nantucket.

This show is once again in the style of two friends chatting about postcards. Here is a photo of the postcard from Hawaii that Jess talks about in the show:

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We all like getting postcards. And the Kimpton Hotel Palomar has made it easy for guests to write and send postcards from their hotel. In this episode, I interview Jessica Bishop, PR Director for Kimpton Hotels and Restaurants in the Northeast, at the Palomar in Philadelphia. Jessica talks about the idea for the postcard writing station, how much the guests have enjoyed the human connection of writing a postcard, and tells about her own fascination with handwritten mail.

Check out these really great custom postcards Jessica talks about in the podcast. (And for those of you who listened to the show, there’s a little prize inside. Kinda like Cracker Jack…only better.)

At the end of the show, I ask for a little help with an idea I have about postcards and how we could help people. I’d really like to hear from you. And if you’d like to be part of our working group, please let me know.

The creativity of the bistro culture worked in 1920s Paris, and it works in present day in Philadelphia. Postcardist host Frank Roche is joined at Parc Bistro by filmmaker Justine Burt. They talk about the hand-drawn postcard Justine creates while they’re eating dinner, how to send chain postcards, and offer observations about a guy who rides by on a bicycle with a ferret on his back.

Justine talks about this doodle postcard in the episode.