You want mail?

I just read a wonderful blog post called You want mail? by Pamela of the excellent blog Cappucino and art journal. I highly recommend you check it out. She really breaks it down for mail enthusiasts, and burgeoning letter-writers: start writing!

For inspiration, and a bunch of good links, go check out You want mail?

Vintage rhino postcard

I sent this lovely little vintage Current postcard to Lela in Estonia recently. (She blogged about it, too, and took more photos as well.) She and I both have a fondness for animals and fanciful illustration styles. I am a big fan of these vintage Current postcards - they are very sturdy, and take fountain pen ink beautifully. I love the colors in this, too, with the toucan making a splash of brightness against the purplish-grey of the friendly-looking rhino.

If I had a dollar...

... for every time someone addressed something to me as Massive Maven instead of Missive Maven, I would be able to send a lot more international letters and postcards.

Oy.

(For the record, I am not massive... I'm pretty darn average.)

AMAZING writing bat postcard from Carroll!

If you know me at all, you know I absolutely plotzed when I saw this postcard. It came to me in my own Monster postcard swap, and the amazingly talented Carroll. Oh my gravy. A bat, holding a fountain pen and writing a letter to me? Incredible! And what a fine bat it is!

You can't tell from this scan, bit it's like this was a painting painted right on canvas. Carroll worked her magic somehow to make this beautiful yet tough, and it arrived in my mailbox today in absolutely gorgeous, perfect condition.



And here's the back. Of course she used bat postage stamps! She also used a wonderful hand-carved stamp of a skeleton holding an envelope, and I'll wager that is bound to be Carroll's own handiwork. If you've been following my blog for a while, you may have seen some of her hand-carved stamps featured here...



...most touchingly one she carved for me showing my dear cat Memo ("Memo guards the mail") which I received just a few months before he died.

Carroll, you have outdone yourself once again!! What a treat!

The mystery of Miss Millie [now solved, sort of]

Someone signing herself "Miss Millie" sent me a postcard in April. She was one of the good ones who put a return address on her postcard, so I did send her a postcard back in July.

But it was returned to me.

I thought I copied her address exactly, but her handwriting was not the most... direct.

So, if you are Miss Millie in the vicinity of Puyallup, WA (or were in that vicinity in April), do let me know the proper address and I'll try again. Miss Millie was a bit of a mystery even then, because she wrote to me with some sort of familiarity, but I had no idea who she was. Did we exchange on swap-bot? Postcrossing? Sendsomething.net? Another method? Because I really do get a lot of mail, and if we don't write regularly, I am likely to forget. C'est la vie.

I am amused by the "nixie" in the top left corner of the postal label. Is that an official designation for "give up and send back?" Too bad for the nixies...

UPDATE: thanks to a kind and observant reader (thanks, Pen Thief!), I've got an address (though not from Miss Millie herself). I misplaced one letter, which has me somewhat baffled, as I was under the impression - from postal workers - that it gets routed by the zip code, which was correct. Hmm. Anomalies happen. I'll pop it in an envelope and send it off again. I am still not sure where our correspondence began, but that could be due to my own rusty memory and slow response time!

Simpsons postcards

Although I don't have a TV, I am a huge fan of the animated series "The Simpsons." It's a long story, but I find their brand of humor brilliant. So when I stumble across out-of-print Simpsons postcard books, I snatch them up. This postcard of a surfing Bart (doesn't that wave look Japanese?) was US-1097163 sent to the Netherlands.



The next two postcards come from a much older set, circa 1990, when the Simpsons were still quite young as a TV series. It even includes characters who died, like Bleeding Gums Murphy. All those postcards are single-spot mug-shot character studies like this one. This sweet little Maggie card went out as US-881455 to Poland.



And of course the great Homer! He went out as US-952533 to Russia. Favorite snack: pork rinds lite! Ewwww!

Literary postcard swap sent

I sent my postcards for my Literary Postcard swap, and really enjoyed the process.

It helps that I am entirely in love with the "Postcards from Penguin: One Hundred Book Covers in One Box" by Chronicle Books. They take fountain pen ink so nicely, and the designs are wonderful - lots of variety.



The book that I raved about, not coincidentally, involved a tiger: The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht.



Even Soda liked it!

Happy summer reading and writing... I think I'll go write a letter now.

A postal tip on foreign addresses

I recently chatted with a very friendly postal clerk at my favorite post office, and she gave me some great advice about addressing international mail.

I have long known that it's best to put the name of the country LAST, but haven't understood why. Sometimes I'll get an address on Postcrossing where there are numbers listed after the country. I usually figure that the person who lists their address most likely knows best the conventions of addressing mail in their own country, but that is not necessarily the case if sending from the USA.

I recently got a postcrossing card to Russia, and I've altered the info, but let's say the person listed their address as

15 Petroskaya circle
Moskva
RUSSIA
12345

or something like that. My friendly postal clerk pointed out that you always want to list the country last, because American postal scanners will scan mail from the bottom up. If they see a country name first, it's headed for that country. If they see numbers first, they will read it as a zip code. I don't know if I'm explaining this as well as I could, but I think I understand some routing difficulties with international postcards I've sent in the past.

So - if you're in the USA, and you're sending to mail outside the USA - always put the destination country's name last, and on its own line!

And there's your friendly postal tip of the day. I love to learn new postal facts and tips!

UPDATE 8/4/2011: Thanks to blog reader David Harrison for some really excellent tips. Please read the comments for the full dialogue, but at the heart of the matter he recommended FRANK'S COMPULSIVE GUIDE TO POSTAL ADDRESSES, which is really spectacular. Do have a look.