RECEIVED: A Typer-ly Postcard and Commentary

Ever since the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article about my modest typewriter collection came out two weeks ago, I've received a number of inquiries and comments from folks who have wanted to share their typewriter stories.  Some of those will be posted here as I get them written up.  So it looks like "The Wardrobe" will be very typewriter-focused for a while!

I'll start things off with this fun and thoughtful postcard I received once upon a time from my friend Hoja.

 

POSTCARDS FROM THE CAPTAIN: When Evil Attempts Good

As kids, my siblings and I much enjoyed The Rocky & Bullwinkle animated TV series.  One of the segments in the show was the ongoing saga of Dudley Do-Right. 

"Dudley Do-Right is a dim-witted, but conscientious and cheerful Canadian Mountie who is always trying to catch his nemesis Snidely Whiplash, more often succeeding by pure luck than anything else. He romantically pursued Nell Fenwick, the daughter of Inspector Fenwick, the head of the Mountie station." [from the Wikipedia article]

My late brother, The Captain, was inspired by this when he wrote this postcard to me back in 1998.

TRANSCRIPTION

Dear Mom and Dad,

I know you taught me to be evil and mean is the real joy in life but Dudley keeps rescuing Nell from the tracks and I am really getting depressed. I am thinking of giving up evil to open a beauty shop: "Whiplash Eyelash So Fast."  What do you think?  Should I give meanest one more try?

Snidley

(your son)

Postcard #1 of the series

Postcard #2 of the series

Postcard #3 of the series

Postcard #4 of the series

A Poignant Postcard

As part of the non-fiction book I am writing, I've been reading this book by Thomas J. Schlereth. (ISBN-13: 978-0065023695)  I'll be reporting on it here more at length when I've finished it - it's that fascinating! But it is also quite sobering in places.  He writes of the time in America just after the Civil War and before World War I: two wars which decimated whole countries and served as terrible demarcations in terms of what was and what came next.

One thing that was far more commonplace and visible on a daily basis was death.  With the Internet and social media scene we are seeing a kind of resurgence of the willingness to see death and experience it (or at least memorialize it) in a more public fashion. Still, it gave me considerable pause to come across this postcard in one of my favorite antiques shop the other day.

TRANSCRIPTION

Thursday, September 10th, 1908

Dear Cousin Agnes:  With sorrow must say that sister Mary's darling Esther died this morning and will be buried most likely Saturday.  Your cousin

With postal games like Postcrossing, and even my own Fictional Correspondences, the use of postcards in play has been revived.  But it was not always so that a postcard was for fun.  Postage costs and custom in earlier times might mean very serious information traveled by way of a postcard rather than an envelope-enclosed.  Here a family's loss is briefly shared.  

The choice of card is a curious one. It was the ornate image that first caught my eye in the very full box of cards.  How very tender it was to hold in my hand a missive -- 104 years old -- of such personal nature. Requiescat in pace little Esther.

SENT OUT: First Class Hotel

Addendum to this post, which was prescheduled:
The Mars Curiosity Rover landed successfully some 9+ hours ago. 
Here's NASA's animated video that shows what had to happen for it to work . . . . it did!


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I found this postcard in an old moving box.  

Looks to be at least 40 years old, maybe more.  

Perfect for a letter game.

RECEIVED: A Friend of Mr. Crumble Travels

  Image source/credit

I continue to receive anonymous postcards and they continue to amuse and entertain.

SENT & RECEIVED: The Adventures of The Monsters Continue

Image source/credit

Back in April I posted the first postcards from Jackson & Marcus.  

Now, along with colleague Margo, the plot thickens. 

Sent Out

 

Received

SENT OUT: Old Timey Happy Meals

Sent to a friend who is under the weather.  (Used first class stamp as it was an over-sized postcard.  Also used a non-US stamp for added decoration!)

SENT OUT: One Postcard with Four Tales

 Image source/credit

There is no requirement in the writing of a fictional correspondence that a postcard must be only fictional.  The making of these things is entirely a matter of what the author feels like at the moment.  For instance, the postcard below which I recently sent off.

On its back is a pleasant note to a very real friend.  She had written me of late, on a very odd stationery; "paper" that was actually made of plastic.  I was replying to thank her for an article she'd sent and to comment on a book she had recommended and that I had finally obtained in hardcover.  

Aside:  It is my belief that good books ought to be read in their finest form which, to me, is a cloth-bound item with exceptionally good quality paper for its pages.  I have used PC Kindle to read and find it unsatisfying mostly because a laptop screen is ill-configured, ergonomically and optically, for recreational reading.  I hope, someday, to try a real Kindle -- or Nook -- and then see what I think of ebookery.*

On the front of the postcard I have taken the opportunity to record four different tales - or implications that might form tales.

Tale 1 (bottom of frame):  Left disconsolate by the herd's rejection of his time-travel roller skates invention, Tycho sought a solitary refuge deep within the forest unaware his future selves hovered nearby. (Thereby disproving the time travel paradox of meeting oneself.)

Tale 2 (top of frame ):  The trees, whose lifespans could be measured in millennia, had heard it all before and felt sympathy for the young therapod.

Tale 3 (left of frame): [The forest was a silent place.]

Tale 4 (right of frame):  [In future eras, the red moss would be used to dye the court robes of royalty.]

*  My day job sees me using a computer quite a bit, however, so leisure reading on a machine does not appeal to me aesthetically.

RECEIVED: Just in from Boston

Somebody out there has one crazy typewriter!

 (Thanks!)

SENT OUT: Time Travelling Brownies

Image credit/source

A very fun aspect of fictional postcards -- and mail art in general -- is recycling any old what not for mailing.  The other day I made us some boxed brownies. The box front was perfect for my nefarious activities!  Just added a few dino stickers and voila!

Fictional Correspondences: Addressing Fictional Postcards for the NonFictional U.S. Mail

Image source/credit

A later post in this series will go into detail on the making of a "really real" looking faux envelope.  But since you want want that imaginary letter to reach its very real recipient, you'll need to take care in how you address the item that the USPS actually sees!

Happily, our friends at the Post Office have published a nicely detailed document about it.

You can find the whole caboodle at this link here.
Here are the basics (below).

What MUST be present is a correct street address, city, state, and zipcode.  The P.O. folks state to use the real name of the recipient. Some postal peeps won't deliver an item if the name of the person who actually lives  at the address is not present.  Then again, we keep getting mail here at our flat addressed to the last 4-5 people who lived here before us!

Fine and dandy - but what if what you are sending is a POSTCARD?  In the olden days, postcard addresses were pretty loose.  Somehow they arrived.

If you live in a small town this might still work, but nowadays it's more likely the postcard will never arrive. You can still play around a bit, though -- within limits. 

(1) Write the letter part to/from the fictional characters 
but address it to the real person. 

(2) Keep the surname of the "real person" in your address, 
but be playful.

 

(3) Use the fictional recipient's name along with c/o (i.e., "in the care of"] the name of the real person.

Then again, you could be bold and daring like my brother The Captain, who changed the name and misspelled the street of this postcard he sent me once.  Somehow it reached our mailbox.

And, of course, be sure you have the correct postage.  Here are the current rates (as of May 2012).

For First Class Letters

• 1 ounce: 45¢
  2 ounces: 65¢
  3 ounces: 85¢
  3.5 ounces: $1.05
• postcard: 32¢ (a non-standard sized postcard will require additional postage)

• square envelope.: add 20¢

 And a little more info, FYI.

 Image source/credit

Next in the Series: So Now You Are an Imaginary Correspondent . . . What's Next? ~ This will be posted on 25 May as I have some other fun stuff to post in the meantime!

______________________________________

Follow the series.

1. Fictional Correspondences: What are they? Why do one? How to begin.
2. Fictional Correspondences: Creating A Writing Persona
3. Fictional Correspondences: Finding Someone to Write To

4. Fictional Correspondence: Making Your Own Letterhead - Part 1: Design 

5. Fictional Correspondences: Making Your Own Letterhead - Part 2: Implementation

5. Fictional Correspondences: Addressing Fictional Postcards for the NonFictional U.S. Mail (this post)

RECEIVED: When Gravity Runs Amok

Another highly entertaining postcard arrived recently.  Authored via typewriter.  And for a second time, the post cancellation mark (missing in this instance) gives me no help in identifying the author.  Am pretty sure I know, but I like the 2% of it possibly not being that person!

What's also fun is the continuing change of character and locale.  A Fictional Correspondence, such as I have been describing here of late, can be a matter of the same people writing within the same storyline (like this).  Or it can be one-off postcards like this and the last one I received. 

Update: The author of this and the earlier one fell into the aforementioned 2%!  What a hoot!  The person who I thought sent these is going to be mighty puzzled by a recent letter then.  [Raises glass in toast to the author.]

The inspiration for these kinds of postcards came from a column by Anne Herbert titled "The Rising Sun Neighborhood Newsletter" published in The Next Whole Earth Catalog.*  In one portion of the column Herbert describes an old friend and town eccentric Amanda Madison.

"Amanda died in 1969 and was old and everyone loved her.  She started her unusual career by not marrying, which was quite unusual at the time."

Amanda Madison had a friend, 8 year old Lu Ann Sellers.  They had a correspondence going -- written as if they were both going around the world, one from the West and the other from the East.  Sadly, Amanda died before the two of them could complete their journeys. 

Image source/credit

The young Lu Ann was devastated: "I'm only in Bengali!" she wept to friends at Amanda's memorial service, "I never got to tell her how much I liked her card from the organ grinder's convention in Kansas City, KS."  Amanda and Lu Ann apparently never spoke of the correspondence when they saw each other.  Their plan had been to talk all about it when they finished their imaginary expeditions.

Image source/credit

Herbert says that in trying to comfort Lu Ann, an idea was born: "Write about the rest of your trip to me, " she said, and in doing so she, Lu Ann and many others realized that their friend Amanda "could live forever in the mail."   This group of friends shared Amanda's postcards over and over - restamping them, readdressing them.  

But Amanda wrote to others as well.  Herbert reports that "She started writing postcards to everyone, to people she saw everyday, that had nothing to do with anything."

 Image source: National Geographic

"Postcards of Miami Beach written as if she were an antarctic explorer -- Took this in my gear to remind me of warm weather. We'll meet on the beach soon, love.  Progress is good but we had to put down a penguin rebellion last night.  It was rough but we're safe now. Think of you always, Norbert"

This was during the time of the Korean and Vietnam wars and many young men were being drafted.  Some of them from their town stopped by Amanda's house before they left.  She would tell them that if they didn't want to write her about what was really happening, that should write and tell her what they would rather be doing instead.

One soldier wrote her about preparing a gourmet dinner.  Another wrote from Korea, telling her about sitting in front of a fireplace, drinking wine.  Still another wrote of "planning, financing, building, and using the perfect doll house factory." 

Image source/credit

So . . .  you can see that while the content of a fictional correspondence might be lighthearted and entertaining, the souls who write them are very tender, very real, and very human.  We share more than a game when we play a letter game.  As Amanda Madison said,

"Life is alternately boring and horrifying and we are all quite unreasonably lonely and I see no reason to treat dreams as some unmentionable head lice.  We all have them and might as well mail them to each other until we learn how to talk."

* Edited by Stewart Brand. Random House, 1980. ISBN: 0394707761. The Amanda Madison columns may be found on pages 113-121 and 131-135.

_________________________________

Follow the series.

1. Fictional Correspondences: What are they? Why do one? How to begin.
2. Fictional Correspondences: Creating A Writing Persona
3. Fictional Correspondences: Finding Someone to Write To

SENT & RECEIVED: Dino . . . Meet Monster

The old adage Write a letter, get a letter came true for me big time lately. 

I sent off the first postcard below. 

Found the 2nd item in my P.O. box yesterday.  

FUN!!

(The torn corner inspired the whole thing.)

(All the inks on this one are metallic - looks even better than this scan!)

No doubt the tale will continue.