sending summer postcards

yea :) -> the thing i was thinking further was
how to make changes/modifications to them.
I still have a bunch of cards from Venice... never
sent out similar to what [m] was mentioning.

I wonder what can be modified on the cover/back
or how is it sent - digital-mail... to complete the puzzle... ?


posted by [j] at 08:31

postcards
good point [m].
Maybe we, as tourists, should send postcards to ourselves. What would you write? Something you want to remember?
The Toronto card [j] showed me was taken from quite high up, so from that picture (I think) it would be hard to give instructions to your home as [j] did with the Helsinki card.
I also have a collection of unused postcards. I had really old-looking cards from New York from the mid-1980s - they really looked old-fashioned. I have enjoyed using them for various occasions since. Like yours, [m], this collection came to be by chance.

postcards/emotional
You receive a postcard: it is a concrete(ish) link to the sender. It is also a direct link to the place where it was sent from / written in. Again it makes the place more real - that is emphasised if you know the sender. It also is contact from a friend in a, usually, distant place.
As [d] said: it leaves a lot to fill in - so postcards are a bit like puzzles. You piece together information.

postcards/summer 2001
Will we experiment by sending some postcards from summer travels?
[j] could send notes back to FIN from his Toronto-journey... I'll send cards from my summer travels...
posted by [jm.] at 06:46

postcards.

i have become an unwilling collector of postcards. it all started a few years ago with me buying some postcards while on vacation and never sending them. on subsequent vacations i have done the same, so now i got a couple dozen postcards from where i've been.

i do not totaly agree with jm saying that postcards are generic. for example, for me, the postcard of helsinki is very generic. i have not been there, i do not recognize any of the buildings, thus for me it doesn't have any importance. for jm the toronto postcard was equally devoid of emotion. this is, i belive, because postcards are more important to the sender, than to the receiver : it is the sender who has an emotional link to the places depicted on the postcard, not the receiver, who probably has never been to these places. this is why my 'collection' is probably more important to me, than it could've ever been to the people receiving them, had i ever sent them.

i will scan them and put them up one of these days, so we can all see them.
posted by [m] at 14:46

For me postcards are emotional.

For me postcards are a condensed package of thoughts and feeling. Thus the result above. I find they inspire much more confidence into keeping as mental bookmarks of a feeling, thought or idea. It is the symbolic value - and the emotional content that makes this simple piece of paper so important. It's brief text on one side leaves a lot to fill in; mentally. Limited in space - and in amount of information that can be sent. Same goes for SMS - you can only send 150 - 250 characters at one time.
posted by [d] at 13:51

postcards w/ messages
My idea about writing your surroundings came, in part, from the fact that a postcard as such communicates very little of the place you're visiting. Pictures on postcard tend to be very impersonal. That, I guess, is one thing that makes them interesting: they try to create a generic Helsinki, Toronto, Athens or whatever city. That's why the sender should write something meaningful. In my example a personal account of the city.

Of course if this thought is taken further we'd have to write the most intimate messages on postcards.

The funny thing with postcards is that they're treated like letters in that you're not supposed to read someone else's card, although the tempation is there as the card is open and not closed - letters are usually shielded by the envelope.

[j]'s postcard is nice. It has a link to his life. The other day he showed this card and a Toronto-card (I didn't even peek on the other side).
It says something about Helsinki that you can actually say something concrete with it, as in follow this path and that's where I live. Toronto was a flash of light and skyscrapers. Very generic. "This is the skyscraper district," [j] said. "Is that the lake," I asked. Of course it was just one card representing a whole city.
posted by [jm.] at 10:38

directions to jere's place
follow the park up to the market (orange tents)
keep walking towards the red church.
I live just behind there.
come visit anytime :)



posted by [j] at 10:32

Humans are curious. Are they ?
posted by [d] at 00:00