Sunday, July 19, 2009

Helping PostMuse with the Orphaned Postcard Project

Helping with the Orphaned Postcard Project

PostMuse coordinates a wonderful adventure called the Orphaned Postcard Project. She has collected postcards from all over the world for years, and has a really great database of them all. If you're willing to participate in her project, you find a location on her database from whence you can send one of her postcards. The idea is to get a postmark from the postcard location. She'll mail you the postcards, addressed to her and with postage already on them, and you simply mail them back from the location of the desired postcard. Since she had some orphans from Newport, RI, I said I'd be happy to participate - and got some lovely postcards to mail, seen above. They were all contained in the shown envelope with awesome stamps, along with the "Lethargy Lodge" notecard.

The postcard on the top, a generic Rhode Island postcard from one of the not-so-distant US stamp issues, I forgot to take an individual photo. You get the idea.

Redwood Library and Athenaeum, Newport RI

Here we have the Redwood Library and Athenaeum. Nice statue, eh?
From the Pomegranate Postcard book "For the Love of Libraries":
This is the oldest circulating library in the country that still operates in its original location. It was built in 1748 by Peter Harrison, the architect of Newport's Touro Synagogue, the oldest surviving synagogue in America. Readers may sit in a cozy corner, surrounded by an important collection of portrait paintings, busts, eighteenth-century furniture, and a book collection with major strengths in the arts and humanities, most of which circulates.

Touro Synagogue, Newport RI

Next, the abovementioned Touro Synagogue. This postcard is rather old (50s or 60s?), but Touro still looks pretty much the same today.

I am quite embarrassed to admit that I have been to neither of these grand tourist attractions in my own city. And I'm even Jewish!! One of these days I'll make it to both places...

1983 Olympics airmail postcard

In return for her fun letter in the card with the postcards, I sent PostMuse this 1983 Olympics airmail postcard (presumably for the 1984 olympics).

Have a look at the Orphaned Postcard Project, folks - it's fun to participate, and to top it off, PostMuse is a fine correspondent and will surely send you a passel of interesting postcards if you continue to correspond with her.