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!

I got this beautiful postcard with a tax day poem written on the back. Thanks Corita for taking the VSM challenge and sending some mail to ME! If you’ve sent mail this month, then write a comment and tell us all about it.

My love of snail mail has been influenced by many people but the reverence for postcards comes most directly from my stepfather, Biskit, who turns 56 today, and is the second from the right in the photo above. 

Viva Snail Mail: Biskit, how and when did your love of postcards start?

Biskit: My friend Doug Zwick, before going to college went out to work on a cattle feedlot owned by his uncle in Oklahoma. He would send us back great classic postcards. The first I remember was “Saddling up Big Jack”, a cowboy riding a jackrabbit. And then a “jackalope” card.  We then got into the most mundane we could find as well, Pennsylvania Highway Interchanges and the like. Our group of friends, the Pastafarians, used postcards like a sort of precursor to email to stay in touch, with postcards being short poems as opposed to the prose of letters. I lived in rundown houses at college and would just pin the cards to the walls of my house. Anyone that came in my house would admire them and would of course send me postcards from their travels, whether far away or right nearby.  We also got into making cards from found objects, etc.

VSM: Did you and your friends see your postcard exchanges as a nod to any art movements or were you making it up as you went along?

Biskit: Short answer is no. We were not self-consciously giving a nod to anything, we just thought the cards were funny/interesting. We were both mocking the cards and genuinely appreciating them and then artists and great-grandmothers joined into sending us postcards.

We were definitely influenced right then by the Beat Generation poets we were reading and that not only influenced our writing on the cards, but in a way the visuals on the cards are poetry too. 

Those early exchanges in the 1970’s continued for many years, pretty much until email came along. That’s when Biskit’s postcard commitment dropped off a bit. He still had a huge postcard collection however, and so, due to my inquiries about the origins of his postcard love, Biskit was inspired to re-ignite the flow of postcards amongst his vast network of friends, the Pastafarians. He sent out an email, asking whoever wanted to take part in the Summer of Postcard Love to send him their mailing address. He then sent this mailing list to everyone interested. About 40 people participated and as a result, my husband and son and I received 67 postcards this past summer. 

This idea could be easily adapted by you and your friends. 

Here are some highlights from the Summer of Postcard Love:

Chocolate chip production at Hershey Foods Corporation from Abe.

Homemade card for my son from his aunt Allison. 

 

A few years ago I saw Ramak Fazal’s show at the Storefront for Art and Architecture in Manhattan. In 2006 Fazel, a photographer of Iranian descent who is a US citizen, set out in a van to photograph state capitols and mail himself handmade postcards along the way. He used his childhood stamp collection as collage material for the postcards, sending them general delivery to the next stop on his route.

I went to the show for the postage stamp related artwork but there was so much more to Fazal’s story and experience of making the work, that the documentary film-maker in me was quite fired up by the levels of visual, cultural, and political content. Stamps! Road Trip! Photography! Being mistaken for a terrorist! Well there IS a film about Fazel’s trip, quite beautifully made from still photographs and voice over, which I hope gets expanded into a larger piece. Watch it here.

I finally made it to Dia Beacon to see Zoe Leonard’s exhibition, “You see, I am here after all,” which closed this week. I had wanted to tell you VSM readers about the show so you would take a trip to Dia to see it for yourselves. But in the words of the Steve Miller Band, time keeps on slipping into the future. My bad. 

Leonard’s piece is made up of four thousand vintage postcards of Niagara Falls, hanging on a long white wall in Dia Beacon’s beautiful Riggio Galleries. It is incredible. I walked along the grids and groupings, staring at the various scenes of Niagara, imagining all the visitors over the years who had bought picture postcards and mailed them out to friends and family- proof that they had visited this famous locale. Some people had written messages on the picture side of the postcard, their words and unique handwriting adding to the image. Some of my favorite notes were:

“Write me a letter From Sullie A True Friend.”

“The Sassafras is good to eat. Bought it from an Indian.” 

“In Remembrance of your trip. Edna.” 

I also thought about how all of these cards made their way into Leonard’s collection, which she mostly sourced online. The volume of vintage postcards that exists reflects the last century’s fascination with and ability to reproduce the photographic image. And many of  those postcards have found their way to flea markets and thrift stores, just waiting to be mailed and re-mailed. This past weekend I visited an antique store in New London, CT and sifted through boxes of 50 cent, vintage postcards. I found some good ones to send out. Will my grandchildren willfully sift through vintage digital data, finding kitschy gems to share with their friends or turn into art?

Time to turn on the AC, get out my postcards and pens, park myself on the couch and start writing! Today I am sending out housewarming cards to friends in Philly, Maine, and California. Later I’ll get out my parasol (ok, umbrella) and take a leisurely stroll to the mailbox. 

Postcard postage is 28 cents for a maximum size card of 6 inches long by 4 and 1/4 inches high. For a larger postcard the postage rate is 44 cents. International rates vary so check usps.com for your destination country. I am going to use 2 of these summer bliss stamps from Grandpa’s collection for the next batch of postcards that I send out. In stark visual contrast to this summer scene, you can buy polar bear postcard stamps at usps.com. 

So for those of you who like to cut up your cereal boxes for handmade postcards, buy some stamps and start sending out some of your fabulous collaged creations. For those of you that still have a stash of postcards left over from the good old days, dust ‘em off and send ‘em out. And for those of you that are starting fresh, pick up some corny tourist cards or some lovely black and white photo cards at your local bookstore or cardshop. And get mailing, cross country or crosstown! Imagine how your recipient will feel when they find your handwritten postcard amidst their pile of lousy mail. What a gift. 

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. 

For those of you in the New York City area, there are only a few days left of the “Walker Evans and the Picture Postcard” show at the Met. It closes on Monday the 25th and is definitely worth checking out to see Evans’ vast collection of American landscape postcards and to note how these images informed his work as a photographer.

Main Street Postcards as Muse, a review of the show in the New York Times.