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?