Postcard: Emacity

I love words. I had a big vocabulary as a child, and I loved learning new words. I still like coming across a word I don't know, though it doesn't happen often any more.  Or didn't, before the Internet.  Everything's easier to find than it was before the internet.  There have been whole websites devoted to underused words.  Save the Words was my favorite.  I was sad when it closed down.

Emacity is a great word.  I know quite a few people who have this quality.  Often, the emacitous are characterized as women, but the reality is men are just as vulnerable to a fondness for buying things.  They may just buy different things. 

I buy art supplies.  And beautiful paper.  What is your emacitous weakness?

The finder of this postcard writes:

Found! Inside a Nutcracker book at the San Francisco Main Library.  Dec 2017
Thank you, kind finder!  And what serendipity, that a postcard lost in September of 2016 was found in a Nutcracker book and returned to me at Christmastime, 2017!

Postcard: Wonderfulness

This one was very quick!  We were in Sacramento last week--and got our first Sacramento postcard back this week!  

I spent the week exploring solo, mostly (my husband was on business and busy during the day)--but I did have the chance to meet up with a friend I hadn't seen since 2014.  That 2014 meeting was our first, after meeting through the internet and the practice of mail art.  So it seemed wonderfully fitting that among the things we decided to do was to place the handmade cards I'd been creating in the evenings.  (We also went to the Crocker art museum, where I was delighted to find an Art-O-Mat!  After first hearing of them about 15 years ago, I was so excited to actually see one, to put my tokens in one of those refurbished 1970s cigarette machines and go home with tiny little pieces of art!)

This is the first Sacramento card that made it back; there are still 14 hidden somewhere in the library near Old Sac.

What tickled us about this card is that the finder added to the artwork on the front of the card, putting little hearts in each corner and extending the flourishes on the lettering with small dots!  Hm...maybe we should leave space on the front of some of our cards for artwork from the finders!

The finder wrote:
I found this great post card @ the down town Sacramento library.  My little girls go to a tweener book club there the last Thurs. of every month.  Their book selection this month was called Real Friends.  It's a graphic novel that helps tweeners navagate friendships.  Cheers!  Rebecca McDaniel

Boy...I remember those tween years and how fraught friendship was. I watched my own kids (well, four so far, two to go) go through it too, and most of them faced some struggles.  I looked up this book and now I need to see a copy in real life.  Graphic novels are cool--and this one is a memoir, which is even more intriguing. 

Thanks, Rebecca, for the return of our postcard and the book note!

Summer left our part of the world overnight.  Typically there's a good two weeks in which we run the air conditioning during the day and the heater at night and we just try not to think about the cost of cooling and then heating our house every 24 hours.  But this year, the temperatures dropped from the 90s to the 60s between a Monday and a Tuesday.

So when my husband and I visited Sacramento last week, we flew out on a chilly gray morning and arrived into a balmy, sunny midday.  While we were there, a postcard arrived back home with memories of our summer vacation and a warm message from the little family who had discovered it.

The finders wrote:
Our little family of 4 sat down as a family to read library books before bed.  Tonight we chose a "feel good" book called Thanks & Giving.  We opened the book & this card fell into our laps! Thanks for the smiles, joy, & excitement you contributed to our family tonight! 
The Stoddard family, Warrenton, Oregon 9/22/17

Stoddard family, thanks for sending it back!  We loved envisioning the scene you described.  The twins are 8 and they wondered how old your children are.  We also wondered if you might know the Moss family, whom we visited while on vacation! 

So much wonderful wondering! :)

Postcard feature: She sells seashells

Remember this old tongue-twister?  When I first heard it as a child, it defied not only pronunciation, but my sense of logic.  Who would SELL seashells by the seashore, when people could just pick their own up for free?

Since then, I've been to the seashore many times and I've found some lovely shells.  I've also found that people will definitely buy seashells by the seashore, from people who sell them there.

Here's the finder's note:
Found in a book at the Warrenton Community Library in Warrenton, OR! Nettie.

Thanks, Nettie, for sending it back to us!  This is one of my favorites. :)

Postcard feature: Rhodies

Sometimes I do a card that is, frankly, beyond my abilities.  I'm a calligrapher, not a watercolorist, and yet I love watercolor so much that I persist--not in learning watercolor, but in trying to use it with no clue what I'm doing.

So yeah, here is a really terrible watercolor of some rhododendrons, with some pretty lettering so you can tell what they are. :)  Fun fact--I did this lettering with a guerilla travel pen, a Nikko G nib hacked into a cheap fountain pen.  It was awesome to travel and still be able to do some great lettering without carrying a bunch of stuff with me and trying to decide where to put the bottle of ink!

Big thanks to the Moss family for hiding these cards for us!  I'm pretty sure the Moss family hid them.  Didn't I give them to the Mosses for hiding?  (I'm pretty sure we hid some in Astoria but the Mosses hid the ones in Warrenton...)

Wow, it's been a long time since June when we were at the Coast....At any rate, we did have some wonderful times with my friend Heather and her family of Mosses. :)

The finder's note says:

Greetings!  This turned up in the Warrenton Community Library some time in July.  Great idea! N L Calog.

Thanks for sending this one back to us!

Postcard feature: Doodles

 Another postcard from The Dalles!  This one was Jesse's artwork and he was tickled to get it back.  It was found by a member of the staff, whose note gave us a little more explanation as to the origin of the name "The Dalles."

The note says:
Hello from the staff of The Dalles Public Library!  We have enjoyed learning about your library project and are keeping any [sic] eye on your blog to see if any more postcards show up!

"The Dalles" is named for the rapids/rock carved by the river.  

--Corinne

Thanks so much, Corinne!  And thanks for sending Jesse's postcard to us!

Postcard: Dragons

Our first postcard from The Dalles came back today!  The artwork is by Jesse. This time the boys really wanted to try doing the entire postcard on their own, including the address.  They're at a point where that bit could go either way--clear and readable, or utterly confusing (we just got Jesse's letter to his San Antonio cousin returned last week because the poor postie couldn't read the zip code, and neither could I!)

But this postcard came back to us just fine, and it had a fun little note on the back.

The note says:  Hello!  I am from a small town called the Dalles.  The Dalles is in Oregon.  I think this postcard idea is a good one, so you can learn about others.  

Sincerely,
Milo [redacted]
age 12

Milo, thanks for returning our card!  I've removed your surname for safety.  In case you don't know, "redacted" is a legal word that means "this part was removed for security reasons."  

We love your name.  It's the name of a character from a favorite movie (Atlantis!), and also of a little black dog we had once.

And you're right--we learn neat things about other people doing this project!  Thanks for writing to us!

Postcard: Pine needles

Sometimes the cards we get back return to us with fun notes or comments...and sometimes they just return.  We're happy either way, though we love the notes.

In early May, I went with my mother-in-law to San Antonio so she could cuddle her 52nd grandbaby, a little boy born after three adorable little girls.  I had such fun making postcards with my little nieces Lily and Sadie!  I left the postcards with them to hide in their own library the next time they went, and I'm super excited for their pretty drawings to make their way back to me (and then back to them!).  It could happen any day now, because yesterday we got the first return from San Antonio: one of mine.

Library feature: The Dalles Public Library

One thing we want to do here (but have been terrible about) is keep a better record of the libraries we've visited.  From my first visit to the Twin Falls Public Library with its cement lions guarding the door, I've loved these places.  Of course, there's the books.  But there's so much history and creativity and culture in the development of American libraries, and every library has its quirks, eccentricities, and little-known secrets...

Like The Dalles.  (The Dalles itself just begs to be researched.  How many cities are there that begin with a definite article? And what are dalles, anyway?)  We stopped at The Dalles Public Library on the way home from a trip to the Oregon Coast, and learned some neat things about it.

First--it has some fun artwork:

Bears on a log.  More on these later, but aren't they adorable?

This appealed to my calligrapher's heart.

A puffin.

 The bear sculpture outdoors sits in the middle of a big deck shaded by a London sycamore tree that was planted in about 1870.

Once, the bears were stolen.  I can only imagine how the librarians and patrons felt to see them gone. What a loss.  And then, just as suddenly--they were returned.  The whole thing remains a mystery.

Like many across the country, The Dalles Public Library is a Carnegie library.  And like many Carnegie libraries, it has outgrown its original building.

The original Carnegie building.

The current building.

Spacious first floor, with more around the mezzanine upstairs.

One of this library's biggest claims to fame is that it's at the end of the Overland Trail and is a repository for many local genealogical records.  Genealogists come for pilgrimages here, to pore over old documents.

There's also a geocache hidden here.  As in--IN the library!  (Note to self:  Find that handheld GPS or buy another one!  The boys are the perfect age for geocaching.)

Another fun thing we loved--the library has "check-out sketchbooks!"  Blank bound books are among the holdings here. Patrons can check one out, look at drawings by patrons who have checked them out previously, then add a sketch or three, and return them.  Annually the library has judges look through the sketchbooks and award prizes, and there are plans to make a book featuring the winning sketches.

How absolutely cool is that?  

Postcard feature: Brick Path

This postcard is from the June 2012 Helena series.  If you've ever been to Helena, Montana, you may recognize the brick pattern!  I love that part of town.

This postcard came back to us years ago, before we had a blog on which to keep track of our project. The finder wrote us a wonderful note with some great questions.  I'm hopeful that we can get a message to her that will enable her to finally find this blog and get her questions answered!  She wrote:

July 4 2012

Hi, I'm Keely and I'm from Helena, Montana.  I found this lost post card at the Lewis and Clard library in a book called, Child of the Mountains.  Even though I don't know who you are, and probably won't get the answers, I have a few questions for you.  1.  How did you get it to Helena? 
2.  Did you put it in a library book?  3.  Why did you do this?  So those are my questions, even though I don't expect to get any answers.  Sorry it took so long I kinda forgot about it, and is ther more than 1.  
Sincerely, 
Keely M.
[street name]
Helena, Montana.

At the time we got your note, Keely, we had a contact in Helena, a schoolteacher, whom I hoped would be able to help us find you.  But as you know, Helena's a big town, and she didn't know you. However, today I'm going to contact the Lewis and Clark Library.  I'm hopeful that someone there will know who you are and be willing to tell you to come to this blog and get your questions answered.  The answers are:  We often visited Helena for a while because of our husband and Dad's work, so we put the postcard in a library book while we were there.  We got used to calling the project "Lost Postcards" even though technically that's not correct; they're more like left-behind-on-purpose postcards.  We do it because we like art, and postcards, and mail, and libraries, and people. There's more information about that in our first blog post and our blog description. And yes, there were more than one--in fact, we placed 10-20 postcards at a time in the library there several times over a couple of years!

Thanks for the wonderful questions and note!

Postcard feature: Monsters

In packing for a trip to San Antonio, I found a Ziploc bag among my things that had several Lost Postcards in it.  Yeah, I'm disorganized.  But what a fun surprise!  The cards were mostly returns from Helena--the Jan 2012 series, the June 2012 series, and the March 2013 series--with one stray postcard from the Hayden Jan 2012 series. That would have been the same trip--Helena for work, with a side trip to Hayden to see our second eldest son.

There were some fun postcards in this little baggie!  I'll start with this one from 2013:

It's one of mine, inspired by the boys and their favorite movie of the time.  I'm pretty sure this was the trip where I finally caved and bought some movie players for the car at a pawn shop!

The finder said:

Hope you are having a great fall so far-I found this in a library book in Lewis & Clark Library in Helena.  My 4 1/2 year old lvoed the purple monster's feet.  Thanks for sharing the monsters with us!  Susan Murray
P.S. Check out my teen book review blog-- www.youngpeoplesbooks.blogspot.com
Well, how can I resist a 4 1/2-year-old who loves big feet, or a Mama who has a book review blog?  I went to the blog, sent a note, and got an address, and Susan's girls and I exchanged some very fun pictures of monsters! We connected on Facebook and I've enjoyed her girls' antics (and sense of style!) ever since.

Thanks, Susan, for returning our postcard and for the trust!

More from this baggie to come...

mejaka

Postcard feature: Bird and blade

 A postcard came back from Portland this week!  The artwork is Jesse's; to be honest, I'm not sure what it is, but he's in bed already because we had a very long day yesterday when our car broke down on a mountain road in the middle of nowhere.  Between that and Daylight Savings, the boys needed an early night.  But it looks like a bird and blade to me.  (Does it?  Or is my own exhaustion showing?)

This postcard had a most unusual and interesting note.  The finder wrote:

I found this postcard inside a book my teacher gave me to read.  I'm 64 years old.  I have started school from the 1st grade now I'm @ the end of the 3rd grade.  I have dyslexcia I'm improving my reading please respond when you receive this card.  Thanks  Kenda

We will absolutely be responding!  And here, we'd like to say that no matter your age, learning and growing are good things!

(Note:  We scrambled the area with the address!)

Postcard feature: Let it snow!

Another postcard this week! This one came back to us from Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, where we left it over a year ago.  The art is Jonno's, and boy, was he excited to have one of his cards come back today!

We've had a long, snowy winter here, but today was springlike.  I'll just say--"Let it snow!" was great a few months ago, but it's not my sentiments today!

The finder writes:

Put in the Lost & found at C d'A Public Library, Children's Dept!  Let's send this on its journey!  Merry Christmas & Happy 2017!

Thank you, kind finder!

Postcard feature: Tomatoes

 What a surprise to get this postcard back from Helena!  We haven't been to Helena for some time--a couple of years at least!  The corner that would have shown the year is ragged, and on the other side I think there was contact information for the finder on that same corner.  This card was placed before we started keeping track on this blog, too, so there's no URL for the finder to look up.  I do have a Helena contact, though, so we may thank this finder yet!

Especially since this finder was kind enough to add postage.  There's more than enough on it now! The finder wrote:

Heyyy,
I found your postcard in a library book.  I figured you might be missing it so I'm mailing it home to you.