Postcard feature: Pile of pandas

Things have been a bit rough around here lately, but what could be more cheering than a pile of pandas?  This postcard was returned to us in February.  Sometimes it takes a while for us to feature something!  But it's perfect, because finding it today made me smile, and I needed to smile.

This card was left behind in the Coeur d'Alene, Idaho library in January.

As always, thank you to the discoverer for returning this pile of pandas to us and adding some fun comments any parent will understand:

You are not lost, Little Postcard, you are found. Please support your local library  Don't walk in barefeet where LEGOS are present.  Chou and shalom
Oh, the LEGOS I have stepped on with five boys in the house!

Postcard feature: Velocity

I admit it.  I can quote line after line after line of Monty Python's _The Search for the Holy Grail._ So can my kids.  It's the only Monty Python movie I've seen, and if I could, I'd delete one entire scene from it.  I'm pretty straight arrow and I prefer my movies clean.  But oh...the rest is so funny.

I was tickled to get this Python-inspired postcard back with more Monty on the reverse side!

The finder--who signed it "With Warm Regards, The Northwest Library"--pasted to the back the lyrics to The Galaxy Song.  Since my Monty fanhood is of a very limited sort (one movie, seriously; I don't trust him not to be way too irreverent and crass for my tastes, so I haven't explored him further), I had never heard this song.

Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving 
And revolving at 900 miles an hour. 
It's orbiting at 19 miles a second, so it's reckoned, 
The sun that is the source of all our power. 
Now the sun, and you and me, and all the stars that we can see, 
Are moving at a million miles a day, 
In the outer spiral arm, at 40,000 miles an hour, 
Of a galaxy we call the Milky Way. 
 
Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars; 
It's a hundred thousand light-years side to side; 
It bulges in the middle sixteen thousand light-years thick, 
But out by us it's just three thousand light-years wide. 
We're thirty thousand light-years from Galactic Central Point, 
We go 'round every two hundred million years; 
And our galaxy itself is one of millions of billions 
In this amazing and expanding universe. 
 
Our universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding, 
In all of the directions it can whiz; 
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know, 
Twelve million miles a minute and that's the fastest speed there is. 
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure, 
How amazingly unlikely is your birth; 
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere out in space, 
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth! 

Thanks to the finder for taking the time!  Anna and I looked up 

The Galaxy Song on YouTube.  (Warning:  Preview before watching 
with children; there's an animation in the middle that parents will 
want to be aware of.)

Postcard feature: Penguin

This is wonderful!

Jonno made this little penguin postcard and we planted it in Portland in April.  It was discovered by a children's drama class, who all added a bit to the front of the card before sending it back!  How fun is this?

Their letter reads:

Hello, friend!  Our drama class at Northwest Children's Theatre found your postcard while reading the book Mr. Tiger Goes Wild.  We play games, eat snack, and act out stories in class.  What do you like to do when it's sunny outside?

(heart)
Jayden, Iddo, Fia, Adele, Ruby, Maddy and Carrie

Well, young thespians (that's a fancy word for actors!)--we love sunny days!  We love to swim.  The boys are in swimming lessons.  They are twins and are seven years old.  We also like picnics, bike rides, camping, fishing, and playing with our bunnies.  We have popsicles every day, and most days we eat lunch at the park.

We liked hearing about your drama class!  It sounds like fun.  When I was young I had a book called The Old Man and the Tiger that was written like the script of a play. I used to like to read it and do all the voices and actions by myself.  Anna, Jesse, and Jonno have performed with Missoula Children's Theater.  Acting is fun!

Thank you for returning our penguin to us, and for collaborating on the art with Jonno!  Did you know that's what you were doing when you added your drawing to the front?  It's a really, really big word that means making something together!  We love what you helped Jonno make!

Postcard feature: The Best Day!

In January, when we traveled to Coeur d'Alene to visit our second-eldest son, Brett (husband and dad) even joined in the postcard project!  This was his first postcard, which was returned to us in June after being hidden in the library in Spokane, WA.  Even though our visit to North Idaho was in winter, it had us both feeling nostalgic for the ten years we lived up there near the lakes and mountains. Hayden Lake is where our third son learned to fish, something he loves.

An older man used to sit on the dock at Hayden Lake, fishing.  Kids would often scramble his way and ask questions, the way kids can--"What are you doing?  What's in this box?  How many fish have you caught?"  The man was gruff and short with them, clearly annoyed at the interruptions.

One day a kid carrying a tackle box and fishing rod sat down about ten feet away from the man, who gave him a sideways scowl.  The boy looked back calmly, saying nothing.  The man returned to fishing and the boy watched his every move for the next three or four hours.

The next day, the boy came again, sat down at a distance, and watched.  The man glanced his way with a stern look and the boy looked back, clear-eyed, but said nothing.  He just observed in silence for the next few hours.

This went on for nearly a week. After about the fifth day, the man turned to the boy and said, "Come here."  The boy stood with a measured calm that belied his eagerness, picked up his tackle box and went to where the man sat fishing.  "Sit down," the man said. "Do you like to fish?"

That boy was Nate, and he was eight years old.  The man spent the next couple of weeks teaching him the water--what fish lived in it, how to work it, what bait and lure to use for which species of fish.

Nate and Brett have spent a lot of hours fishing.  Anna and I enjoy fishing too.  Jesse, I think, will be a good fisherman one day if he gets the chance; Jonno is less interested.  Braden doesn't care for it, and Seth (our eldest) doesn't mind it but doesn't really go out of his way to fish.  But Nate was born for it.

The finders are named Becky and Cole.  They wrote:

I found this in a Spokane library book & it kicked around in my kitchen after the book went back.  I work as a courier at Spokane's blood bank & my husband is a semi-retired wheat farmer.  We play Cowboy swing music with our friends & are looking forward to full retirement in a year.  Have a great day.  Becky & Cole

Thanks, Becky, for returning the postcard!  Here's to passions--whether art, reading, fishing, growing things, or swing music!

Postcard feature: Owl against the sun at dawn

Jesse was very particular about the name of this postcard!  This one returns to us from Portland (we seem to be in a wave of Portland postcards).  We've actually had it for a while, but summer started with a bang here with business trips, a family reunion, a wedding, and some unexpected revelations. Life can be crazy, can't it?

The finder has written:  Very Very COOL artwork.  Found in a book @ Central Library Downtown PDX

Peace!

Much peace to you, kind finder, and thanks for returning Jesse's postcard!

Postcard feature: Dog and bird

Another postcard from Portland! This one is one of Jonno's creations. He got an animal drawing book from his grandparents, and his drawings of dogs will never be the same...

The finder appears to be about the same age as my boys (by his handwriting), and has written:

this was fun
__________

Clark

Thank you, Clark, for sending Jonno's puppy and bird back to us!

Postcard feature: Zentangle

The first time I heard the word "Zentangle," I quickly went to a search engine to look it up.  At the time, the only site returned was the official Zentangle site, where vagueness reigned and solid information was hard to come by.  The originators of the word were, at that time, very tight and close with the thing they were marketing (even more than now, so I was surprised when I eventually learned that it was in essence a codified version of the kind of mind-unbending meditative doodles that covered the high-school notebooks of many of my classmates--especially artsy kids with lots of stress.

I play with repetitive doodling now and then, but not as meditation, as it doesn't work that way for me.  But it's fun!  This postcard was returned while I was on a trip to Denver.

 
The finder wrote:  "Hello!  I just checked out your site & enjoyed reading about your experiences with Portland & the Central Library.  This postcard was sent in a bok to the Gresham library, where I work.  My co-workers thought this was a great idea.  Love the art. I enjoy doing zentangle, too. :) "

Thank you, kind finder!  I loved visiting Portland.  Such great transit and food and neighborhoods.  And Powell's!  And the food carts! And the dragon boats!  And some little sandwich shop down on the waterfront near the uni, with ice cream in the same space.  A girl there made me her two favorite sandwiches, each on a different day, and both were delicious.  I love going into little local eateries and asking the server to bring me their favorite thing from the menu.

Postcard feature: Owl and moon

Jesse was excited to see his postcard in the mail today! This, he tells me, is a picture of an owl in the moon, which he drew because he loves birds.

Yesterday a nighthawk sat on our new chicken fence for thirty minutes in broad daylight.

Before the moment Anna came in to shout at me in electric whispers that it was there, I had never seen a nighthawk except in the air, at twilight, its white wing-stripes and sharp peent peent peent clearly telling me that's what I was seeing.

They are so much more interesting up close.

People are much more interesting up close! Even a short note like this one lets us feel connected to the person who found the postcard.  The finder said simply, "Very Very Very cool artwork.  Found in a book @ Central Library downtown PDX.  Peace!"

Peace to you, and thank you, finder of Owl and Moon, for sending Jesse's card back to us.

Here's our nighthawk visitor from yesterday morning:

Postcard feature: Farmland

Usually, the postcards that come in the mail are from the last library we visited, so we love it whenever there's a return from a library one or two trips ago!  This one is from our Evanston trip last year.

This simple abstract reflects the colors of farm fields seen from above and the importance of water.  It's raining in our little town today, and the new ditch Brett dug for his mother last night is working well--the orchard is getting all the water it needs.

Rain energizes me.  Thunderstorms are the best!  We're expecting some tomorrow.

The finder of this postcard didn't send us any notes, but we are so happy they played along with us!

Postcard feature: Funky Chicken

There was a farm.

Goats dotted the pasture and chickens came running for the grain my mother-in-law would toss.  My boys loved going there, especially Jesse.  He loved gathering eggs.  Brett and Nate spent a lot of hours helping Grandpa (Brett's Dad) build and rearrange and care for things.

But today, Grandpa needs care and the farm is empty.  It was the impending loss of Saturday mornings with Grandpa that finally turned years of talking about chickens into a backyard full of actual chickens last year.

I drew this little chicken and left it in a book in the library in Hayden, Idaho (where we once lived).  This week, it came back.

The finder wrote:  Hello--
I absolutely LOVE this idea!  It was such a sweet thing to find tucked away in a book.  (The Good Pig).  What a blessing to find something so personal!

_The Good Pig_ is a fun book.  I received my copy from a friend I've been writing to for years.  We had never met at the time (we have now!)  Today, she and I exchange long letters in tiny, pretty notebooks.

My thanks to the finder for returning this postcard!  I hope you enjoyed _The Good Pig_ as much as I did!

Postcard feature: F is for Flight

Jonathan goes by Jonno, and is six-almost-seven.  He loves to excel at things and often tests himself to see if he can do as well as someone else.  On our trip to North Idaho in January, after watching me make several vocabulary postcards, he began producing his own.

I noticed this, because Jesse--also six-almost-seven--usually leads in artsy things.  So I was surprised to see Jonno edge him out on this one.  So surprised, I didn't realize that both boys were making these cards until after I wrote this post; and I've had to come back and correct my misperceptions.

This week brought F is for Flight back in the mail.  F is for Flight is Jesse's postcard.

The little boys are very much into Pokemon, and the fascination shows in the toothed flying creature with which Jesse illustrated his card.  I'm always happy to see their little drawings returned!

This one was lost in the Spokane Main Branch library, and found by someone at the Indian Trail Branch.

Thank you, unnamed discoverer, for returning Jesse's postcard to us!  (And to Jesse, for finding it funny and not upsetting that I confused his work for Jonno's!)

The discoverer wrote a note about finding F is for Fighting:

Hello,

I almost threw this away until I noticed the postcard side.  I at first thought it was just a drawing.  It has taken me  a while to mail it back because we do not have an outgoing mail at the Indian Trail Branch of the Spokane Public Library.  So I took it home to mail.  :)

Library feature: Multnomah Main Library, Portland

Portland is a really fun city to visit. Public transit is easy, the city's very walkable, gardens are everywhere.  There's Powell's City of Books, the weirdest and most wonderful warehouse of words there is.  And there's the Multnomah Public Library, the oldest library system west of the Mississippi.

The main branch is in the Pearl district.  The day I visited, I didn't have my camera with me, which is unfortunate because the architecture of this old building is wonderful to look at.  It was built in 1913, I'm told, and has always housed the library.  The main floor features Scagliola faux marble columns, original to the building.  Although Scagliola columns developed as a cheaper alternative to marble inlays, they were still expensive enough in 1913 that only the first floor had them.  In the 1990s renovation of the library, artist Phillip Emmerling carefully handpainted the Scagliola pattern on columns on the second and third floors to match the original columns on the ground floor.  Original pendant light fixtures have been retained in some areas.

The library is punctuated with wonderful art.  Two striking pieces in the children's room are a bronze tree whose trunk is a tangled tapestry of Pacific Northwest nature and Dewey Decimal subjects; and a wood bas relief of Alice in Wonderland that was a WPA project in 1930.

I love that this library houses one of the largest collections of sheet music.  The rare book room is open to the public.  Inside you'll find such things as an original Audubon and illuminated Bibles.

Amazing.

Today's young readers love Junie B Jones or Heloise, but the eccentric kindergartner of my childhood was Ramona Quimby.  And this is what makes the Multnomah Main Branch really cool--Ramona's creator, Beverly Cleary, did an internship here!  The library's children's section is named for her, and the collection includes translations of her books in many languages--even Finnish! Better yet--Ramona's actual neighborhood is nearby.  The library gives out walking-tour maps, so you can walk over and explore all the areas featured in the Ramona The Pest books. How fun is that? You can see where Ramona's galoshes got stuck in the mud or see Westminster Church, where she played a sheep in the Christmas program.  And the Hollywood Branch of the Multnomah County Library is the stand-in for the Glenwood Library, where Beezus checked out _Big Steve_ (and Ramona colored all over it!)

It's been years since I went on an adventure with Ramona.  I might pick up one of her books next time I'm at my own local library!  Meanwhile, I tucked a few postcards into various books in the Multnomah Main Library Beverly Cleary Children's Room as well as the Popular Library Young Adult collection.

Postcard feature: Butterfly

Something happened to this butterfly that, to our knowledge, has never happened before to any of our postcards.

It moved from one library to another!

The library in which is was discovered is one we have not visited (though, looking at pictures online, I plan to when we are in Denver next!)  How it got from the main Denver branch to the Blair-Caldwell African-American Research Library is a mystery, but that's where it was found!

Complete with a nice long note.  

Hello!  This very cool postcard turned up in a young adult novel at the Blair-Caldwell African American Research Library.  We are a small branch of Denver Public Library, located in the historic Five Points neighborhood & founded by former Denver mayor Wellington Webb.  

It was found by Francis, a shelver, who Googled "Lost Postcards" & found your blog.  What a delightful idea!  Francis kept the card safe, broguht it home to write a note, and will mail it "home" tomorrow on his way to work.  Cheers from Denver!  
Francis

Francis!  Thank you so much for returning our postcard--and for being interested enough to look us up!  I had fun reading about the Blair-Caldwell (and Wellington and Wilma Webb, whose names tickle me!)  I have one, possibly two upcoming trips to the Mile-High City, so I may have a chance to see your branch in person.

-mejaka and Anna Falconer

Things we learn

People have been here.

People we don't even know.

We are tickled. Well, I am.  Anna Falconer is at school, the one class she doesn't take online, and while she knows that the returning party of today's postcard Googled the project and found us, she doesn't know that someone else was here in January, and left a comment!  (Why did I assume that I would get some kind of email notice when someone commented?  There's probably a setting I need to turn on for that...)

Now that I know that two actual strangers have read at least bits of this blog, I have to apologize. I am old.  I began typing on a Royal upright (Anna has an identical typewriter in her room, a gift to her from her dad and me some Christmases ago.)  I took typing--typing, not keyboarding--as a high school sophomore, at the same age Anna is now. I learned touch typing, and I am very fast.  So yes...except for a few times in this very paragraph which has my attention hyperfocused on it, I follow an old rule that came before computers. It was a rule used only in typing, where not only was the type monospaced (each letter taking up the same space regardless of the letter's width), but the space bar produced a space of consistent width.  This meant that there could be some wide spacing within a word (such as between an i and an l, both very narrow letters--a word like "still" would have a lot of white space in it).  So two spaces after a period (making one longer space) helped the readability of sentences laid down in monotype.  

Printers, meanwhile, used both monospaced and proportional typestyles, and had spaces of varying widths with which to work.  They had many more options for spacing, even when working with monospaced typestyles, including putting thin spaces between letters within a word, or putting a thick space at the end of a sentence.  Their type was adjustable and their projects usually done in multiples, so they could print one page and make adjustments before rolling off the next 3000.  They set up a LOT of printed work, and so got a feel for which kind of spacing would be needed where. And proportional type never needed special spacing at the end of a sentence. One common space, just one, after a period.  That was the standard--and a professional knew when to deviate from that standard for readability, and exactly how.

Typewriters, though!  A person with absolutely no experience in typestyles would sit down at that machine and type off their final draft in one go.  In monotype.  With only one space width available.A typed page didn't have the finesse of a printed page.  It was course, graceless, and could be hard to read. It became the convention and the standard, with typewriters, to wrap up a sentence with punctuation and two spaces.

Then came the word processor, and very quickly those printing-industry outsiders, regular unskilled people, could use proportional type and varied spacing.  It makes sense that the rule codified by typesetters would migrate to computer-based word processing, because they had the same options.

Unfortunately, there was an entire generation or two who got caught between.  The two-space rule had been drilled into us.  The one-space rule was something we had never heard of (not being insiders of the printing industry).  And very often, no one explained to us WHY the two-space rule made no sense in computer word processing, or publishing, or blogging.

I do know.  I know that my double spaces can sometimes make for a ragged looking left edge.  I know that they drive some of the Born Digital generations a little buggy.  But at my age, making the switch is hard.  Really hard.  I've been touch-typing by the same rules since before some of you were alive.  It's a very, very ingrained habit.  And I'm at an age where the changing of habits doesn't come easy.

So thank you for being compassionate and tolerant and forgiving me my double spaces.

Postcard Feature: Bird with Mohawk

The little boys at our house are six years old, seven next month.  They get very excited to help with the Postcards.  At six, they're the same age Anna was when this project began, though their artistic sensibilities differ from hers by a large margin.

This postcard is Jonno's work.  A bird and tree--not such different subject matter as some of Anna's first cards.  But Anna's birds never had such angry faces or such aggressive postures (nor, for that matter, do Jesse's).  And the mohawk?  Well, that's unique to Jonno, too.

This postcard was "lost" in the Spokane, Washington library in January of this year. It returned to us this week.

Dear Bailey, thank you for sending our little bird back to us!  I cannot quite read your age, but you might be interested to know that the creator of this postcard was six years old at the time he made it.  

Postcard feature: Slubberdegullion

SLUBBERDEGULLION.

Isn't that just the juiciest word ever?  I'll let you look it up.  You may find that someone you know comes quickly to mind.  Or maybe not, if you're so lucky as to have no slubberdegullions in your life.

I started a series of cards I think of as my vocabulary lessons.  I love doing the big letters which calligraphers call initiums and printers call drop caps.  And I love finding obscure, delicious, wonderful, nearly-forgotten words to resurrect from their dusty graves.

Dear Haylie, 8 yrs:  Oh, I do believe you can.  I have very strong thoughts about heaven.

Thank you for sending this card back to us.  I wish you every beautiful thing, including long rides horseback with your Mom through the most beautiful heavenly landscapes.  But not too soon.  Because earth life is wonderful too, and there is so much to learn.