postcards | Thinking Through My Lens

Do you ever put anything in the actual snail mail? (You know the place: the USPS, the Post Office, that place where you go when someone sends you a package and you get that little sticky paper on your door that you need to go and pick it up. And the hours are very limited and the lines are very long–is it really worth going?)

I do.

Mostly I mail postcards. Mostly when I travel somewhere. Mostly to my grandsons. And to my classroom so my students can see what a postcard is and how fun it is to get one in the mail.

I like to search out postcards when I get someplace. Find a postcard that is interesting in some way. (Or sometimes it is the only one available.). Some places have free postcards. Some places have cool postcards. Palm Springs has these cool mid-century modern-styled postcards. They’re a little more expensive, but fun to send to another adult.

I discovered that I need to write my postcards within about 24 hours of buying them…and then get them in the mail right away. I’ve learned where there are post offices in some pretty out of the way places–and the smaller the town, the more likely the post office is to be on the main road–highly visible. And I actually carry postcard stamps in my backpack so there is no barrier to mailing them.

Whenever my students go somewhere or we have a break from school, I remind them to find a postcard and mail it to the class. I’ve learned that there are parents who are not familiar with postcards and how they work. And that they are parents who are quite creative and help their child create their own postcard rather than purchasing one.

It’s such fun to have a postcard arrive in the mail. In the classroom, the student who wrote the postcard reads it to the class. They we hang it up on the whiteboard. By this point in the year, we have quite a collection growing! We even have some grandparents who have sent postcards to their grandchild and our class. We have them from as close as Encinitas (our own town) and as far away as Thailand, Australia, and England.

My son sends me postcards. He doesn’t live all that far away, but he is an artist and either makes his own postcards with original art or transforms something existing. It’s such fun to get a postcard in the mail.

What’s your relationship with postcards? With snail mail?

It’s CLMOOC time…in fact it’s the break/brake week, meaning that without specific prompts or even general guidelines, I have been thinking about ways to make and connect.

There’s been lots of talk about the postcard project in the CLMOOC community (and by the way, if you haven’t stopped by yet, everyone is invited!) and I’ve been tempted to join the fun to send and receive (through snail mail) postcards to CLMOOC friends. I knew I wanted to incorporate my photography into the process but hadn’t really worked that out yet. And then I saw a post on Teachers Write, a Facebook group focused on getting teachers writing in the summer, where Madelyn Rosenberg offered her version of a quick write called Postcards!

Earlier today I broke down and gave into my impulse to try out Prisma, a photo app that turns your photos into art (some of the effects are really cool!). And then I buckled down and tried on Madelyn Rosenberg’s Postcards quick write strategy. With words and an image, I headed over to Canva to combine the words and images.

On Sunday my husband and I stopped by the beach around 6:30pm for a pre-sunset walk and I was amazed at how many people were in the water…still. I took a photo from above the beach to try to capture the numbers of people in the water.

Combining my words with my photo, here’s my postcard:

And who can resist beautiful, stately palm trees? Of course I have taken many photos of them, so it was fun to transform my photo into something that looks kind of art deco to me (also in Prisma)…here’s my palm tree postcard:

I think the re-imagined photographs and short form writing work well as postcards, so my next step will be to transform these digital postcards into analog postcards to address and slip into the mail…to surprise…someone!