Postcrossing Blog

Kristin (aka Volvomom) is a schoolteacher in Massachussetts, USA who shares Postcrossing with her sixth graders. Here is what she had to say to our spotlight questions:

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

I found out about Postcrossing in the US magazine ReadyMade. I was hooked from the start! As a child I started off with pen pals, which evolved into hosting foreign exchange students. My family has hosted from France, Bulgaria, Russia, and Norway, to name a few. Postcrossing seemed like yet another way to make the world smaller.

Do you have any other interesting hobbies?

My main hobby is my eleven year old twin sons. They are the light of my life! Each card I send has two smiles, which represent my sons.
Of course, my username indicated my other hobby – Volvo cars. I’m passionate about Volvos. I currently am on Volvo #5. It’s at 131,000 miles, but I swear it will hit one million miles someday!

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

I have to give a big shout out to the staff at the Chelmsford Post Office. They’re great with the volume of mail I receive! I also have to thank my dad and mom, who pick up my mail when I’m not home!

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

I have two postcards that are my favorites, out of so many, it was hard to choose.

The first is from user Thaddee_Calisson. It’s a vintage Volvo ad. I have this card framed and hanging in my home. It’s classic – in French and a Volvo. What more could I ask for?

The second card is an official from Anna in Sweden. What’s unique about this card is it was part of three cards. The other two cards went as officials to other users – one in China and one in Finland. I loved that I was part of a world puzzle!

What is it your favorite part of the Postcrossing process?

I love meeting people from all parts of the globe and hearing their unique stories. Each time I receive a postcard I am reminded of the human experience.

Is there anything that you are passionate about?

I am passionate about education. I am a Spanish teacher to middle school students. Next year I will be teaching a World Cultures class once a week, so if there are any other teachers in the Postcrossing world who would be interested in working with me on this project, please let me know! I strive to teach my students tolerance and understanding, as it is a necessity in today’s world. Postcrossing is helping me do that with them. Thank you for that opportunity!

Most people know the name of Charles Lindbergh. He was a great American aviator, most famous for being the first pilot to complete a solo non-stop transatlantic flight, from New York to Paris, in May 1927.

But did you know that before his transatlantic adventures, Mr. Lindbergh was also a U.S. Air Mail pioneer (and later one of its advocates)?

As a child, Charles Lindbergh had always been interested in the mechanics of cars and motorbikes, and so it came as no surprise that when the time came, he chose to enrol in University as a mechanical engineering student. A couple of years later though, he found his true passion for aeronautics, dropped out and re-enrolled in a flying school in Nebraska. He spent a few years studying, doing air tricks & acrobatics across the country, testing planes and finally training with the American Army Air Service. At 23, he was a already veteran flier, but since the army didn’t need pilots at the time, he was looking for a job elsewhere…

Meanwhile, the US government had been running some experimental air mail routes between different cities for almost 8 years. The results were good, but the government had no intentions of continuing expanding the Air Mail Service on its own… and so in 1925, the Kelly Air Mail Act was passed by congress, which allowed the private sector to bid on specific airmail feeder routes to the main transcontinental system.

And thus in October that year Charles Lindbergh was hired by the Robertson Aircraft Corporation to be the chief pilot on a Contract Air Mail route between St. Louis and Chicago, with 2 stops in Springfield and Peoria.
He started flying a modified war surplus de Havilland DH-4 biplane after swearing the Oath of Mail Messengers, which had to be changed to note him as a pilot instead of a mail messenger – you can see it here.

Lindbergh did well as an airmail pilot, achieving a remarkable 99% delivery efficiency even in the harsh conditions of the time (which included no proper equipment or landing facilities).

Twice during his work he lost control of the plane due to bad weather or faulty equipment and had to jump out of it, landing by parachute on nearby fields. On both occasions, his first priority upon landing was to locate the wreckage of the planes and secure the mail – like a good mail carrier would!

He continued to be a chief pilot on this Air Mail route until February 1927, when he decided to take part on the race for the first non-stop flight from New York to Paris… Well, we all know how he did on that adventure! :)

And although Charles Lindbergh never returned to the Air Mail career after winning the Orteig Prize, he kept on promoting the Air Mail services, by doing speeches on their behalf and carrying souvenir mail covers from international flights in his plane, the Spirit of St. Louis.

Credits: All photos by the San Diego Air and Space Museum Archives collection on Flickr. Read more about Charles Lindbergh on his wikipedia page and on charleslindbergh.com.

In the 1830s, the United Kingdom and the United States started carrying mail bags by train on their normal routes. Then, some years later, George B. Armstrong, assistant postmaster at Chicago, came up with the idea of sorting the mail on the train, while en route to its destination, to save time. The Railway Post Office (or RPO) was born!

A Railway Post Office looked like a normal train car on the outside, but had a unique interior design, with movable cast-iron fixtures that held the mail bags for sorting. These could also be folded if space was needed, as the train wagons tended to get very crowded! They also had their own cancellation stamps used only on board, and a special hook to snatch a bag of mail on the towns where the train didn’t stop. You can a demonstration of its use here.

They became so widespread that in the 1880s, most passenger train routes in the US had their own Railway Post Office, allowing for a very efficient and speedy mail delivery. At the peak of their popularity in the 1940s, RPO’s were in use in over 9000 train routes, covering more than 200,000 route miles. In the next few decades though, the service would slowly decline and be replaced by airmail. The last Railway Post Office, which travelled between New York and Washington D.C., closed in 1977.

Railway Post Offices now live in museums around the world, and on these beautiful pictures by the Smithsonian Institution on Flickr.

Yvonne is a 64 y.o. grandmother in the U.S.A. and goes by FloridaGirl in Postcrossing. She has a soft spot for postcards with maps and nature, as you can easily see in her favourites. Here’s what she has to share with us.

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

I had saw that someone mentioned swapping postcards in another site. I went searching for where a site would be to do that. I found Postcrossing. What got me hooked was not just the official part of Postcrossing but also the Postcrossing forum when I discovered private swaps and saw that there were so many wonderful cards of places I’ve never seen. The people in the forum were so nice and I started to make friends. Also the cards spurred me to research places that were on the cards. I couldn’t just look at a photo and find it interesting, if it wasn’t clear to me what or where it was, I wanted to find out.
I do continue to do the official Postcrossing exchanges.

Do you have any other interesting hobbies?

I love maps, rocks, bookmarks and for years I made quilts but I had to stop quilting. That’s when Postcrossing started. I have maps from many places in the US and some other countries (road maps) and have 5 world Atlases.

I also have a collection of rocks that my parents, other family members or I have found; and, some that I bought, for example, petrified wood from Brasil.

My children have been giving me bookmarks for years, since I read so much. I’ve gotten beautiful bookmarks from other postcrossers.

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

That is me at my mailbox in front of my house.

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

My favorite of the animals are wild cats. This is a great card for the tenderness shown by the lions and the fact that I received it as a get well card from a postcrosser who I’ve gotten to know.

I’ve come to love the beauty of the Julian Alps in Slovenia. This just one that showns how beautiful they are.

The Japanese have a beautiful way of showing off their cherry trees.

This one shows olive trees with wild poppies blooming around them. It is one that I think is especially pretty.

Before joining Postcrossing, Yvonne from Cape Coral, Florida, USA, had never sent or received a postcard. Now, she has over 1400 in her collection.

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

I had heard about Postcrossing from a forum post on Bookcrossing.com. I had visited the front page of the website several times without joining. Since, at the time, I had never sent or received a postcard in my entire life, I wondered who still sent postcards? Apparently the answer is me! I was hooked by about the 15th postcard I ever sent through Postcrossing. Finland, Germany, Brazil, New Zealand, Portugal, and Japan were all very foreign countries to me and I was so excited to be able to exchange postcards with people who lived there. The fact is that 1,400 postcards later, I am still excited to send and receive postcards to and from the common-to-Postcrossing but foreign-to-me countries.

Do you have any other interesting hobbies?

I do enjoy reading quite a bit particularly mystery/thriller type books set in the area where I live. There is a very successful author. Randy Wayne White, that writes specifically about Southwest Florida and many others who set their books in Florida like Tim Dorsey, Carl Hiaasen, Jonathon King, Harlan Coben, Laurence Shames, and James O. Born.

I also enjoy nature photography and concentrate my efforts on the huge variety of birds that call South Florida home either year round, during migration, or during the winter. I also have a weakness for Reality TV shows that involve contests (for example, Survivor, Project Runway, or Top Chef). Here is one of my favorite photos.

After joining Postcrossing I realized that postal stamps and cancellation marks are very unique things. I got my own Mailer’s Postmark Permit so that I can cancel my own mail.

(although I live in they city of Cape Coral, we do not have a Postmaster; as such, my postmark is issued by Fort Myers which is the city that manages our mail)

Lastly, I enjoy volunteering my time. As many of you might already know, I am part of the Postcrossing Team and most of my volunteer hours are dedicated to them. For a local club, I created a website including content and now maintain it. I also record articles for Wikipedia through the Spoken Wikipedia project. I randomly select articles that interest me. The resulting spoken article can be heard online or downloaded.

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

I have a post office box and have never met the person who delivers my mail to it.

My post office from the outside.

I keep my postcards in plastic tubs sorted by country. When I took this picture I only had two tubs … now I have three almost full ones.

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

You can get an idea of the types of postcards that I like in my favorites list but I cannot really pick just one favorite. There have been so many amazingly kind people who have read my profile and have been able to pick the perfect postcard and pair it with beautiful stamps. I do seem to have a preference for handmade or self-made postcards.

If I must pick one to show and tell, then I will pick the one that combined my love of maps (which predates Postcrossing) and self-made postcards (DE-282950). The person who sent me the postcard is a cartographer and she created a postcard out of a map that she had designed!

This next postcard I love because it combined things I love – cats, computers, and humor. It also happens to be the fifth postcard I ever received from Finland (FI-33265).