Viva Snail Mail!

I hope you all have had a wonderful summer and are enjoying its last few weeks with grace and ice cream. I brought a bit of Viva Snail Mail with me on vacation and subjected my friends to the first ever VSM event. Before our trip I asked the people who I vacation with to bring along an address of someone they would like to send a bit of vacation bliss to by post. I explained that I would provide tacky Cape Cod postcards and stamps and after we all wrote cards together, I would take a trip to the post office to mail them. Easy.

After a few days of sun and food and laughter and naps, I set out blankets and pens for some post BBQ, golden hour postcard writing. I think that my friends were humoring me at first. But once they started to write, several people re-connected with a lost sensation. A few friends, who regularly post on Facebook with postcard worthy updates, told me that they could not remember the last time they had written a postcard from their vacation. They liked it. And I did too.

Viva Snail Mail!

So since starting this blog, there has been more activity in my mailbox. Friends and family have sent some very sweet postcards and letters. My mom sent me a letterpress card made in our hometown of Somerville, MA. by Albertine Press. She wrote, “Viva Snail Mail! (I thought I should respond in kind)”.  My dad wrote a multi page letter BY HAND! By the end of page 3 he wrote, “So my dear, the muscle on the underside of my writing forearm is saying hey this is a little, like, tiring.” My friend Hope actually has responded to blog posts with paper mail. But the best mail, by far, was sent by my Grandpa Phil’s widow, Suzanne. 

My Grandpa Sidney Lohman was an avid stamp collector. When he passed away my dad and I weren’t quite sure what to do with his vast collection. One option is to share it with you by regularly posting highlights from Grandpa’s collection on this blog. My dad, Phil Lohman, will serve as contributing stamp curator. In honor of the hometown of Viva Snail Mail! we present to you these Brooklyn Bridge stamps from 1983, commemorating the bridge’s 100th anniversary. 

Note the cartoon character, Mr. Zip, on the right side of the stamp sheet. He was created by the Postal Service in the 1960’s to encourage people to include zip codes on their correspondence. 

Thank you people for all the excellent feedback. Hopefully this blog will inspire us to get back into the habit of sending off paper mail on the regular. A few future posts are about beautiful cards made by artists and crafters, books about correspondence, an interview with a postcard collector, tips on how to get your correspondence gear in order, philatelic (that’s stamps for those of you who didn’t have a stamp collecting grandpa) appreciation, info about the world of mail art, and letter writing. And of course, there will be a steady flow of images.

At some point, around the turn of the 21st century, the steady flow of sent and received postcards and letters to and from friends and family, slowed to a trickle. My dad, who I fondly call the Clipping King, bless his heart, continued to send me paper ephemera of interest. But the other occasional paper mail that I would receive- a postcard from a friend on vacation, a holiday greeting, a thank you note, could not compete with the volume and variety of mail I was sending and receiving on my computer. Email was so easy! So instant! I didn’t even need to find a stamp! 

I may be prone to nostalgia, but I am no Luddite. I love the internet. And email. And Facebook. And my cell phone.

But paper mail- nothing compares to you. We can bring you back. We can make room for you in our electronic lives. Viva Snail Mail!

Tell them Sinead.