Episode 127: Stephanie Nadeau’s Grade 4 Postcard Project at Labrador Straits Academy
Imagine your Grade 4 social studies teacher comes into class one day with a question: What if we tried to get postcards from all over the world? And then she did. That’s what teacher Stephanie Nadeau did at her Labrador Straits Academy in L’Anse au Loup, which is on the southern tip of Labrador, Canada....
Postcards from Africa
In Africa a thing is true at first light and a lie by noon; and you have no more respect for it than for the lovely, perfect wood-fringed lake you see across the sun-baked salt plain. You have walked across that plain in the morning and you know that no such lake is there. But...
Words Endure
Colors fade, temples crumble,empires fall, but wise words endure. Edward Thorndike Although we often think about postcards having an image on one side and a message side, there is a type of postcard I like very much: the word card. Here’s a set of seven recent incoming cards to demonstrate what I’m talking about. Each...
Postcards in Toasty Tones
I was sorting through my stack of incoming cards today after I finished a podcast interview (I’ll publish that on February 9) and saw this grouping of colors on postcards that made this cold day much brighter. First up is this postcard from Nan featuring a watercolor painting in such warm colors. The painting is...
Big Fun, Best Pie, Bull Shoals
I collect Space Postcards. So, imagine my delight when Trish sent this one-of-a-kind card for my collection. I mean, I certainly don’t have anything like it. It’s big fun in Uranus. But wait, there’s more. This one entertains the secret 12-year-old boy living inside me. Look at the description on the message side of the...
That Time OG and I Ran into David Bowie in Fez
Did I ever tell you about that? Nah, I probably didn’t. So, here goes. Our adventure starts with OG and me as we meandered through the labyrinthine side streets of Fez, Morocco. We had just arrived in town a few days earlier after we spent a year working at an archeological dig at the Capitoline...
Stuck on You
I got this triptych of sticker postcards Magda designed for International Sticker Day This is such a clever concept — leave space for stickering and then add your own stickers in the white space. (Although Maggie’s sticker game is next level and she added stickers all over the cards.). Too cute.. You can see all...
Flaming Flowers that Brightly Blaze
The artist Nikita Regina sent this Vase with Irises (1890) postcard that shows a Vincent van Gogh painting I was lucky enough to see in the Rijksmuseum once upon a starry, starry night. The magical quality of the card and Vincent’s work is beautiful, but Nikita’s needlepoint stamp outshines it all. Flaming flowers that brightly...
Postcards I Love in the Time of Corona
The Covid pandemic makes cholera seem almost quaint, doesn’t it? I wonder if Gabriel García Márquez would rethink Love in the Time of Cholera (El amor en los tiempos del cólera) if he were writing it in 2022. Nah, maybe not. There’s a wordplay in Spanish about the word cólera that has nothing to do...
I Wanna Roar in the Year of the Tiger
Today starts the Year of the Tiger. Louise sent this really nice card with a wish for an auspicious to launch the new year. Thank you, Louise, it has started very well. In a fun little turn, the Google Doodle for today celebrates the Year of the Tiger. I always wanted to have a tiger...
Episode 126: Imbolc Postcards with Orla Hegarty
Orla created Imbolc postcards and set them out last night to catch Brigid’s magic dew on Imbolc Eve. Lucky are we who might benefit from a bit of this fairy dust in the form of a postcard. In this episode of The Postcardist Podcast, Orla Hegarty and I talk about Imbolc; making postcards to honor...
Sometimes You Gotta Say WTF
Do you remember this scene from Risky Business? Back before Tom Cruise was Maverick in Top Gun. Or Tom Cruise the Creepy Scientologist Guy? Sometimes you gotta say what the fuck. Take your chance. Kinda like deciding to take a pause from Instagram to get back to a little more authenticity in writing postcards. To...