Postcrossing Blog

Every so often, we do a little spotlight about a Postcrossing member, and this time we reached out to EvanescentHour, who lives in Illinois, USA. Without further ado, here are her answers to our questions!

How did you get started sending postcards? What is your earliest memory of them?

I actually didn’t get into postcarding until 2021. So my earliest memory is still fairly recent. My first postcarding experience was driving around with my mother, trying to find a good place that sells postcards. For some reason, I remember that I was reading 'Small Favors' by Erin A Craig in the check out line.

How did you come across Postcrossing? What got you hooked?

In 2020 I started getting super into travel and learning about countries outside of my own. I liked researching places that I wanted to travel too, like The Netherlands and Norway. While doing this research I remembered that when I was around six or seven years old I had a penpal from Ireland. I thought that I would get back into the penpaling hobby but, unfortunately, the phone number that my grandma had called to get me set up with a penpal is now defunct. So I started searching for other websites and services that help set people up with penpals. That’s how I came across Postcrossing. It wasn’t penpaling so I was a bit skeptical at first, but I love collecting things so I thought that I would give it a go.

What got me hooked was the community. I love seeing other people’s handwriting, how they use stickers and washi tape, and how they structure sentences. I enjoy going to the forums and talking to users there as well.

What’s one way that postcards have changed your life for the better?

Postcards have been super important to me. 2020–2022 had been very rough years for me and sending postcards helped brighten my day a little bit. They were something to make me smile when I felt like I didn’t have many other reasons to do so. They also helped me connect with my mother and grandmother.

Have you met any other members in real life?

I have! I went to a postcarding meetup with my mother and grandmother. It was an amazing experience, lots of friendly people and we had a nice lunch in this local cafe. The atmosphere was very relaxed and quaint and everyone seemed to connect right away. I also found out that I had met one of the people there BEFORE the actual meetup; we had talked to each other at an Eivør concert about two months prior to the Postcrossing meetup.

Have you been surprised by any place that you have received a postcard from or sent a postcard to?

My favorite Postcrossing coincidence is that I was browsing for users from the Bahamas to request a direct swap from and the profile that I clicked on, ended up being the user whose address I pulled!

I was also surprised to have gotten one from Guam.

Show and tell us about your favorite received postcard to date, and what makes it special.

My favorite post card that I have received is the Blue Man Group postcard from this photo of my collection. I don’t have a close up picture of it but it has a special place in my heart because my mom surprised me with it one day. She knew that I was getting super into the hobby and when she visited Chicago she sent it back to me as a little memento. My mother has very recently passed away and so it’s nice to have this small piece of her with me.

As for postcards that I got from Postcrossing there are two that I really love and can’t choose between; there is this bat maxicard. I adore bats, they are my favorite animals and this is the first maxicard I’ve received. It’s also pretty new!

I also really love this one. Bellatrix is one of my all time favorite characters so it was super cool to get a postcard with her on it!

What is it your favorite part of the Postcrossing process?

I think that my favorite part of the process is actually walking to the mailbox! Both to send postcards and to check to see if I received any. I especially love doing so in the springtime when I can get a whiff of the lilacs and wet grass.

Do you have any other interesting hobbies or collections?

I like to say that I collect collections because I have so many from rocks to fandom merch. But my favorite collection is my CD and Vinyl collection. I have over 500 CD’s (my goal is to get 1000 of them). I have CD’s across almost all genres, my favorites are Symphonic Metal and Folk Metal.

My favorite hobbies aside from postcarding are creative writing and scrapbooking. Writing in particular; I have been making up fantasy stories since I could pick up a pencil. I love writing horror and fantasy the most and hope to be a published author one day. For now I share my stories with the world through fanfiction and have made a lot of friends that way.

Is there anything else that you are passionate about?

Music and nature are my passions. I also have an interest in bats, the goth subculture, storms, Dutch culture, and Swedish culture. I have autism so I get super super invested in all of these topics.

Music and the goth subculture are probably the two things that I am most invested in. I have a goal to discover and listen to one band from every country in every continent. So far I have listened to one band in every country in Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America and one band in every US state. I am working on discovering one band from each Oceanic country.

The goth subculture has also been very important to me. For the longest time I had trouble making friends because I never really tried to 'mask’ my autism. The goth scene in itself is a subversion to societal norms and so I, already more of an outcast so to speak, found a home in that scene. I love the fashion and the music. I love the aesthetics. And I found that after putting on the corset and the choker, my confidence skyrocketed. I started making more friends both fellow goths and outsiders who were curious about why I dress the way I do.

Some months ago, we received a message from Janna (aka revode) who told us about her visit to a wonderful postcard exhibition at the Porter County Museum in Indiana! Sadly, we couldn’t go there ourselves… but the cheeky Little Mail Carriers were happy to jump in and volunteer for a guided tour. 😍 Here is the report from their latest adventure!

Hello everyone! We have arrived at the Porter County Museum in Valparaiso, Indiana! We heard that the PoCo Muse has an exhibit with hundreds of postcards on display until January 7, 2024 so we decided to come check it out!

The Porter County Museum was founded in 1916 and has over 20,000 objects in their collection related to the history and culture of Porter County, Indiana. With so many objects in the collection they rotate through what is on display frequently in order to tell as many stories as possible. When we visited, the Robert Cain Gallery was featuring art from the museum’s collection, the Eunice Slagle Gallery had the exhibit “Connections: Take a Closer Look”, and the Montague/Urshel Gallery featured (the exhibit that we traveled here for) “Ever Yours: Postcards from the Golden Age”.

Before searching out the postcards, we explored the Robert Cain Gallery, admiring the work of many Porter County artists who worked to capture scenes from the area. The art in the Cain Gallery rotates out every three months, so that there are always new things to see.

Walking through the museum to get to the postcards, we had to journey through the “Connections” exhibit where seemingly different objects from the museum’s collection are paired together with a variety of connections between them. This concept allows for a wide range of objects to be on display. Did you know that there has been a Popcorn Festival in Valparaiso every September since 1979?

One of the first objects we came across in “Connections” was just our size! It is a scale model of the Maxwell/Remster Dairy Barn which was made by John Remster Sr. for his son John Remster Jr. in the 1950s. The barn can be opened up and played with and has been played with by every generation of the Remster family since its creation! Unfortunately, the barn it is modeled after no longer exists, though the milk house that was connected still stands.

These two pieces are connected by being not the final product. The linocut block (right) shows the artist, Hazel Hannell’s home that was in Furnessville, IN. No prints made from this block are known to exist, though you never know what might be in someone’s attic. The “Brenda Starr Reporter” comic strip was written and illustrated by Dale Messick who lived in Ogden Dunes, IN and inserted many local and personal references into her strip. The comic is in the final stage when it comes to the artist but not for the reader who ultimately would have seen this in the newspaper.

I swear that dog is watching us… 🤨

Check out this postmark stamp! It is from a town that no longer exists! The Tassinong Post office was founded the year after Porter County was founded in 1836, making it one of the earliest European settlements in the region. By 1884, almost all of the Porter County post offices were receiving their mail by rail, Tassinong was one of two still serviced by horseback. At the turn of the 20th century, when the Kankakee Marsh was being drained, the people of Tassinong refused to allow a proposed rail line to come to their town. The railroad, instead, bypassed the village and promoted a new town called Kouts. In 1903 the Tassinong post office was discontinued with all of the people relocating to somewhere serviced by rail.

Can you imagine checking someone out on this cash register? This is a nickel plate brass National Cash Register manufactured in 1914 sold to Wark’s Hardware in Valparaiso. The register worked perfectly at Wark’s until the early 1990s when someone broke into the store and broke the machine. Mr. Wark was not one to throw things away just because they didn’t work, so he disconnected one of the cash drawers from the machine and then it became a very large cash drawer until the store closed in the early 2000s.

Turns out she WAS watching us! This is Daisy the taxidermied dog and her eyes follow you! She is 90 years young and belonged to Helen Slanger of Portage, IN. She has been in the museum’s collection since the 1970s and has become an unofficial icon of the museum.

After journeying through ‘Connections’, we finally made it to “Ever Yours: Postcards from the Golden Age” — the exhibition we had been looking for! I don’t think that that postcard will fit in a regular mail slot…

Did you know that the first postcard was created in 1869!?

The PoCo Muse has over 2000 postcards in their collection. How did they narrow it down to the couple hundred on display? The wall of postcards that are behind us here were all received by one man, John Griffin, from Valparaiso, IN!

Did you know that approximately 1 billion penny postcards were sent every year between 1907 and 1915?

All of these flip books have both sides of a historic postcard with transcriptions! This one is a real photo postcard showing Lila and Thaddeus Whitlock posing with their dog Maxie. Lila sent this to her daughter Olive who was studying Nursing in Iowa in 1912. It is nice to see that people have felt conflicted about their selfies from the beginning; “I was so engaged in trying to keep Maxie still, I forgot to look pleasant.”

The exhibit makes the comparison of postcards to social media of today. The message is public since there is no envelope, the amount of text is limited to the space available on the card, and it is accompanied by an image which might be compared to today’s use of memes. Just like social media today there was pushback to the use of postcards with detractors saying that postcards symbolize “the triumph of the commonplace.”

This binder of postcards shows an individual’s collection of historic postcards that they loaned for the exhibit. In the early 20th century it was common to invite guests over and flip through your postcard collection. Similar to showing friends vacation photos.

After reading all of those postcards it was nice to color some for ourselves. Plus once we are done coloring the booklet, it can be turned into a postcard — just tape it shut and add a stamp on the back! On the wall above, the many postcards sent to the museum are on display, which helps to show that postcards are still thriving today! Hurray! 🎉

Thank you to the wonderful team at the Porter County Museum, and especially Visitor Experience Manager Quinn, for opening their arms to the Little Mail Carriers and showing them around. If you’re in the area, the exhibition will be there until January 7th, so don’t miss it!

The little ones are back on their envelope and on their way to their next adventure… who knows where they’ll pop up!

Sue (aka Suegathman) has been a guest on the Postcardist podcast, and a huge fan of postcards and correspondence all her life. We thought it’d be great to invite her to chat a bit on our blog about her love of postcards and of Postcrossing, and get a glimpse into her postcard-related interests! She agreed, and we hope you’ll be fascinated by her stories below.

How did you come across Postcrossing? What got you hooked?

In 2007, I spent lots of time on a message board (remember those?) for another interest of mine, and one of the members had the Postcrossing URL in her signature line. I’ve always been fascinated with anything to do with mail, and I clicked on the link and was intrigued. I signed up right away and sent my first five cards – which were immediately returned to me by the postman, because I put my return address in the corner and the scanning machine routed them back to me. I was mortified and almost gave up – luckily I decided to give it another try! I was on the lookout for a new hobby which wouldn’t take up a lot of time, since I had just returned to work full-time after many years raising kids. While I no longer had free time during the day to sew or read, I still wanted to do something that was fun and provided a little escape from reality. I also had a big stash of blank postcards I’d collected over the years. It seemed like a match made in heaven – which, in fact, it turned out to be.

Show and tell us about your favorite received postcard to date, and what makes it special.

It’s hard to narrow it down, since I have so many great cards to choose from. I really love old propaganda and advertising cards. They say so much to me about a culture and its values. When I received this card several years ago, I put it up on a bulletin board in my kitchen and invited everyone who came over to make up a caption for it, since it’s in another alphabet. The answers were hilarious! I also immediately fell in love with this card and put it on my bulletin board at work – which is a little cheeky since I work for the government. I share the responsibility for training our young interns, and I love seeing if any of them recognize these famous faces.

How did you get started sending postcards? What is your earliest memory of them?

When my sister and I were small, my parents would often take trips during the summers while our grandparents came to our house to watch us. They always sent us postcards from their trips, usually standard viewcards showing famous attractions they visited. Our entire extended family liked to send postcards – lately I’ve enjoyed sorting through batches of old cards which my grandparents and great-grandparents exchanged with my parents.

What’s one way that postcards have changed your life for the better?

This hobby, and our wonderful Postcrossing community, have carried me through many different phases of life. When I first signed up, I was newly back to work after raising kids, had just moved to California and was trying to figure out what my adult life would look like. During the 15.5 years since then, I’ve been surrounded by postcards as my marriage ended, I took care of my ailing parents, I lost my job, went back to school and started a new career, the kids grew up and left home (and came back again), I met and married my new husband, got through Covid isolation, changed careers again… whatever I’m doing, postcards are there with me. This hobby is the one constant as my life has moved in different directions!

Show us your mailbox, your mailman/mailwoman, your postoffice or the place where you post or keep your postcards!

Have you been surprised by any place that you have received a postcard from or sent a postcard to?

Two cards are extra-special to me because they came from people I know in “real life, ” who I didn’t know were Postcrossers! A friend I’ve known for more than 20 years sent me this card, featuring a couple of photos of us together over the years. And the husband of my mom’s oldest friend sent me a card not too long ago. These were both big surprises (and cool cards in their own right, too). It’s also been interesting, since I’ve been participating in the project for a while, to see which countries are most active. When I first started, most of my cards seemed to go to Finland. Later, there was a full year in which I hardly sent any cards anywhere but Russia. During Covid, so many countries stopped exchanging mail with the US. Lately, the US has gotten more active, so the majority of my cards go there or to Germany.

Have you met any other members in real life?

Yes – we’re lucky to have a really great local group in San Diego which gets together twice a year for official meetups, plus many of us have become friends in “real life” and do other things together. Some of our local Postcrossers are my close friends, and they’ve introduced me to other hobbies I really enjoy. A Postcrosser even got me my first job after graduation!

Is there anything else that you are passionate about?

Other than postcards, food is my greatest obsession! One of the things that makes me happiest is cooking for a crowd of people, and I love hosting holiday meal and having friends over for dinner (and board games or cards). I volunteer with Lasagna Love, which matches up volunteer cooks with families and individuals in need of a home-cooked meal. Except for a few breaks for travel or health issues, I’ve been making and delivering a lasagna or two every week for the last 2 1/2 years, which is a lot of fun – I’ve gotten really efficient at it!

I met Eric (aka eta55) last year, when we were both invited to talk about Postcrossing for the Transatlantic Educator Dialogue podcast. During our conversation, he struck me as a really interesting person, so I wanted to bring him to the blog for a spotlight interview. Enjoy!

How did you get started sending postcards? What is your earliest memory of them?

I have always been interested in correspondence. My uncle served in the Marines, and he used to send me letters from when he was deployed overseas. I thought it was amazing to get a letter from a foreign country when I was a little kid! I really never knew very much about postcards though. I knew they existed, but never really sent or received any until I joined Postcrossing.

How did you come across Postcrossing? What got you hooked?

I read a news article about it somewhere, but I don’t remember the source. That was in the fall of 2017. I then encountered a teacher during a holiday gathering who was using it in her classroom to get her students engaged with other cultures. Our encounter inspired me to pursue it further, and I joined Postcrossing in January of 2018 and have been enjoying it ever since.

Show us your mailbox, your mailman/mailwoman, your postoffice or the place where you post or keep your postcards!

Here is a photo of my mailbox:

It is out here in the real world, hungry for postcards!

The post office I use most frequently is a nondescript little shop front in a small strip mall on the way to work. Not particularly photogenic, many post offices in America are not, sadly. It has a postmaster and one clerk. The bulk of the cards I have sent have gone from there, so it has been instrumental in my involvement with Postcrossing. The postmaster got covid in December 2021 and was in and out of the hospital (very dedicated woman, she kept returning to work too soon and they had to call an ambulance for her twice!). She was a long termer, and was struggling throughout January 2022. I reached out on the Postcrossing forums and asked for postcards to be sent to the postoffice for when she returned to work and welcome her back. She got over thirty well-wishing cards from all over the world, and the next time I came in she told all of the customers they just had to wait, and went through each card with me in tears. Another story of Postcrossing and the power of loving gifts to strangers. I am pleased to report that she is doing much better now, back to her old self, and hand cancelling all of my postcards with glee every time I drop by!

Show and tell us about your favorite received postcard to date, and what makes it special.

I can’t show you a picture of it, because my favorite postcard is always the next one I will receive! There is hope and love and potential coming to my mailbox, and each card has a unique message, and very often a delightful image. Each one gives me the opportunity to go learn about the person who sent it, and to explore where they live, and learn more about our world. Each one creates a connection, even if only fleeting. Someone sent me a little gift a few days or a few weeks or even a few months ago, and when it comes today, that will be my favorite.

I do have favorite topics. I am always moved when I get a battered, scarred card that has fought its way through to me, often after a very long trip. I recently got a card from a postcrosser in the Bahamas, it had taken over two years to get to me from an island in the ocean about 750 miles away. I messaged the sender since it could no longer be registered, and they were delighted to hear that I had finally got it! Another connection! I always like to get meetup cards, because they mean that a group of postcrossers has actually crossed the gulf between sender and receiver and gathered together to celebrate each other and these connections. I met a group of Irish postcrossers via a couple of virtual meetups and I got a really special card from them recently. A few weeks ago a group of them travelled to Spain to attend a wedding of two of their group! So the Irish meetup card from the wedding in Spain I think really speaks to what I love about this hobby!

This is an impossible question, really, each one is my favorite!

What is it your favorite part of the Postcrossing process?

Hard to pick just one thing. There is the joyful anticipation of walking out to the mail box, for sure. I think what I really like best is the little puzzle of finding a way to spread some joy to a particular stranger. You draw an address, and you have no idea of who it will be or where they will be located. Their bio and their favorites may provide you some ideas. Then you have to find the right card, and the right stamps, and craft a message to create a little package of a present all on a postcard. Sometimes you decorate it. I think another really joyful part of the process is the “hurray” messages. When you find out that little piece of cardboard that you released into the chaotic universe actually made it across oceans and continents and into the hands of another human that you don’t really know, and that they were glad to get it and that it brought a smile to their face! The fact that can actually happen, over and over again, thrills me every time!

Have you been surprised by any place that you have received a postcard from or sent a postcard to?

If I asked you to guess the country I’ve received cards from that has the shortest average travel time, what country would you pick (keep in mind I do receive cards from my home country)? I think most anyone would say in the U.S, you’d receive quickest from the U. S., right? Nope. That average receipt time is 10 days. I got a card from Rwanda (my only one from there) in eight days! Wouldn’t you love to know the story behind that trip? My only other cards (officials) from Africa have come from South Africa, they average 36 days. How did that Rwanda card get here in 8 days? That’s the shortest trip from anywhere I’ve received cards from!

Is there anything else that you are passionate about?

I am passionate about dogs. Of all of the creatures I have interacted with, they are my favorite.

I am passionate about science and the accumulation of knowledge. That is another keystone of the way forward. I am always delighted to gain an understanding of how things work!

I am passionate about the Constitution of the United States of America. It is an imperfect document, to be sure, but I believe it provides a template for the best way forward for humans as a race. Democracy is a messy business, and it is hard and requires dedication. Finding a balance between individual freedom and what is best for the group writ large is always a compromise. We have to continually work at it. I have to say as well that we (Americans) are not always very good at it.

I am passionate about communication. I am fascinated by the ways we go about it and it is utterly astounding to me that we are able to effectively communicate at all. We each experience the universe differently, our senses themselves often differ in capability, and yet we still are able to somehow bridge that gap and share ideas. That is nothing short of amazing. In that vein, I would offer that I am passionate about poetry.

Beethoven. That music speaks to me in my bones.

What excites me? What am I most passionate about?

Margo. My partner, my lover, my friend. Above all Margo.

Do you have any other interesting hobbies or collections?

My wife likes to say that I collect hobbies! In no particular order:

• I am a birdwatcher, so in a sense you could say I collect birds, or at least observations of them.
• As a retired sailor, I love to visit beaches and lighthouses, so I collect those images and experiences.
• I am gradually building a Lego city in my basement; the patterns of pieces and construction techniques intrigue me.
• I collect rocks and tumble them. There is both a tactile and science/knowledge component to that.
• I play chess, and have a small collection of chess sets.
• I have a collection of submarine first day covers, as well as other ship first day covers, mostly sailing ships.
• I have a small collection of fountain pens.

If I had to summarize the nature of my collections/hobbies/interests, I’d have to say that I collect knowledge and experiences, and that I have a fascination with patterns, in many dimensions and modalities.

This is one of those posts in which we’re jealous of the Little Mail Carriers, because they’re doing all the cool things in our bucket list… 🙄

Some time ago, Cathy (aka beesknees) offered to take them on a visit to the Space Center in Houston, and who could refuse an invitation like that?! The little ones couldn’t get on a padded envelope fast enough in their eagerness to get to Texas! I’m sure you’re just as curious as we were to know about their trip, so here they are to tell us about that adventure.

Hello from Houston… or as they say it around here, howdy! 👋 We’re super excited for today’s visit, and to show you all the rockets and cool things happening here at the Space Center.

But first, a bit of explaining. The Space Center Houston is the visiting center of the NASA Johnson Space Center (or JSC for short), where human spaceflight training, research, and flight control are conducted. The JSC was built in 1961, and named after the late US president and Texas native, Lyndon B. Johnson, and has been running for over six decades now. When Neil Armstrong said “Houston, the eagle has landed” in 1969, or when Apollo 13 astronauts famously said "Houston, we have a problem" — this is the Houston they were referring to!

So the Space Center is a bit like a museum to showcase all the history and cool stuff that happened (and is still happening!) at the JSC, and we’re eager to explore everything. Even before you enter the building, there’s neat things to see!

Check out this amazing replica of Space Shuttle Independence, sitting on top of the original Shuttle Carrier Aircraft 905! Because shuttles don’t land in the same place where they take off from, carriers are needed to bring them back. Carriers start out as normal Boeing 747 planes, but they are modified to transport shuttles on top of them. A plane carrying a plane on its back! 🤯

Around the appropriately named “Rocket Park”, you can also see other rockets, like the Mercury-Redstone Launch Vehicle, Little Joe II…

… or Saturn V, a “super heavy-lift launch vehicle” (aka the big part that spews fire and sends things into orbit)! It’s hard to convey how massive this thing is. In fact, it is the tallest, heaviest and most powerful rocket used to send humans into space and was regularly used during the Apollo moon program. It has three parts (or stages) that separate at different times, and although the bits here at the Space Center did not make it into space, they were definitely ready to!

Right, it’s time to go see the exhibitions, learn about the different space missions and meet some astronauts inside.

Here are astronauts Shannon Walker from the USA, and Soichi Noguchi from Japan. They have both been in several missions to space, using different kinds of spacecrafts — including the Dragon 2 capsule for the SpaceX Crew-1 mission. Mr. Noguchi retired this year and is now the honorary director of the CupNoodles Museum. Honestly, we’re a bit jealous of him because how seriously cool is that for a career pivot!

One thing you can explore in the museum are the high-tech spacesuits that several astronauts wore on their missions, and how these have changed over the years. And you can also check out the inside of a command module, which is the control center and living quarters for most of the lunar missions. It looks quite tight for the humans in there, but I think it would be plenty of space for us.

We were especially intrigued by the red planet and the missions that made it there! Feeling the textures of a real Mars rock on our feet was a unique experience. Do you think humans will make it to Mars soon? We hope so… then perhaps we can slip into someone’s pocket, and have an adventure in space!

Because the museum is right in the Johnson Space Center, you can see actual space things happening there — like astronauts training in simulators, or the real Mission Control room monitoring astronauts in the International Space Station. Just… wow!

Before leaving, there was still time to salute Sally Ride, the first American woman in space. USPS has issued a stamp in her honor, and we used it to stamp our little passport. We also added a pressed penny from the Space Center, and browsed the postcards on the gift shop on our way out.

And so our visit has come to its end, and we’re a little sad to go… There’s so much to see and learn here at the Space Center in Houston, and we really hope y’all will be able to visit someday!

Our huge thank you to Cathy for taking the little guys on this grand adventure! I wonder where they will end up next… 🤔