Happy Winter Time

Christmas collage on an envelope sent by Laura (the UK).

And one of the first holidays postmarks from the USA:

Letter to the Future City Librarian

«One very hot Saturday afternoon in April 1940, sitting alone in her office, Althea Warren* typed a letter addressed to "The City Librarian of Los Angeles on December 7, 1972" that she wanted opened by the future city librarian on what would be the hundredth anniversary of the library. She thought it would be interesting to leave a message, like a time capsule, for her sucessor. "You may be amused to know my troubles an hopes in your office thirty-two years ago," she began. "Thirty-two-year-old troubles are almost sure to be amusing." Warren mentioned that if by chance she were still alive when the letter was opened, she would be eighty-five years old, which at that time must have seemed nearly immortal. She wrote about how difficult it had been for her to inherit the library from the venerable Everett Perry, and how she felt like a "soft and shaking poplar tree" compared to Perry's "hard, primeval oak." She wrote about the contrast between the 1920s, when the library budget was lavish, and the cold shock of the stock market crash, when she was forced to cut salaries of library workers three times and could barely afford to order new books. The letter is by turns jolly and aching, full of the sober realization that because of her constrained budget, she was doomed to disappoint both her staff and the public. The public got less from the library that they wanted, and her staff was more aggrieved that she wished. She rued that she spent so much of her time on small matters—deciding whether to buy a new thermostat for the furnace in the San Pedro branch, finding money in the budget to buy paper towels for the washrooms—when what she hopes was to create a utopia of libraries across the city, staffed by librarians who were satisfied and proud.

  The letter was also optimistic. It was clear that Warren believed the library would endure. She signed off, "My heart is with your work and you!" The letter sat in the office of the city librarian until its designated date, when it was opened and read by Wyman Jones.»

Susan Orlean, The Library Book

*City librarian of the Los Angeles (California) Public Library from 1933 to 1947

Cross Writing

This postcard sent by Laura (the UK), features a letter sent from Anne Brontë to her friend Ellen Nussey on 5 April 2849.

If you look closely, you will appreciate that it is a crossed letter: a letter which contains two separate sets of writing, one written over the other at right angles. This kind of writing was used in the 19th century to save on expensive postage charges, as well as to save paper. 

Austen's Letter to Her Sister

How cool is to write a letter on a (big) postcard? Laura (the UK) sent me this one, and I enjoyed the front as well as the back. And also that delightful calligraphy!

This is the text on the edited letter on the postcard (you can read here the complete letter):

No. 13 – Queen's Square – Friday May 17th

My dearest Cassandra,

Well, here we are at Bath; we got here about one o'clock, and have been arrived just long enough to go over the house, fix on our rooms, and be very well pleased with the whole of it and our first view of Bath has been just as gloomy as it was last November twelvemonth. – We stopped in Paragon as we came along, but as it was too wet and dirty for us to get out, and at the bottom of Kingsdown Hill we met a gentleman in a buggy, who on minute examination, turned out to be Dr. Hall – and Dr. Hall in such very deep mourning that either his Mother, his Wife, or himself must be dead. – We are exceedingly pleased with the House; the rooms are quite as large as we expected. Mrs. Bromley is a fat woman in mourning, and a little black kitten runs about the staircase. – I have the outward and larger apartment, as I ought to have; which is quite as large as our bedroom at home, and my Mother's is not materially less. – The Beds are both as large as any at Steventon; and I have a very nice chest of Drawers and a closet full of shelves –. I hope it will be a tolerable afternoon; when first we came, all the Umbrellas were up, but now the Pavements are getting very white again. – My Mother does not seem at all the worse for her journey, nor are any of us I hope, tho’ Edw. seemed rather fagged last night, and not very brisk this morning, but I trust the bustle of sending for Tea, Coffee, and Sugar, &c., and going out to taste a cheese himself, will do him good. –

There was a very long list of Arrivals here, in the Newspaper yesterday, so that we need not immediately dread absolute Solitude – and there is a Public Breakfast in Sydney Gardens every morning, so that we shall not be wholly starved. – I like our situation very much – – it is far more cheerful than Paragon, and the prospect from the Drawingroom window, at which I now write, is rather picturesque, as it commands a prospective view of the left side of Brock Street, broken by three Lombardy Poplars in the Garden of the last house in Queen's Parade. –

Jane

A great deal of Love from everybody.

Miss Austen,

Steventon,

Overton,

Hants.

Lights Out

Lately, eclipse-related mail has become a thing. Before 8 April, I got a letter on this map from Bryon (the USA). 

On 18 April (only ten days after the total eclipse!), a couple of pieces of mail arrived, postmarked on the very eclipse day:

This postcard from Phillip shows the successive phases of an eclipse on the Sun (taken from Larousse Encyclopedia of Astronomy by Lucien Rudaux and G. de Vaucouleurs, 1962). But the clever thing here is how the stamps are lined up on the envelope: the Moon pass in front of the Sun, eclipsing it. An unbeatable way of sending a real eclipse by snail mail!

The eclipse stamp was issued on 2017,  and it uses thermochromic ink. I took a picture to show how it works. You can see it on this post.

The eclipse path of 2017 was quite different from the 2024 path!

Bryon, Canada, sent this postcard that arrived also on 18 April:

On the back, the stamps include superb images of northern lights and the Milky Way. And also the stamp issued by Canada Post on March 2024, which celebrates the total eclipse:

Printed with a special spot-gloss varnish that glows when exposed to black light, it shows the eclipse set against a darkened sky. A thin silver line depicts its path across Canada, and a collage along the bottom of the stamp highlights some of the landscapes over which it passes – including Ontario’s Niagara Falls and Spillars Cove in Newfoundland and Labrador.

I love that the postcard was postmarked in Bonavista, meaning, literally 'Good view'.

Fire Truck Letter

I participated last month in the new edition of Snail Mail My Email. I received the following e-mail to be transformed in a letter:

Dear Edison,

We cannot believe how fast you have grown in the past year and a half. We love how joyful, curious, and loving you are. Your laughs and hugs make our days, and we love your snuggles. We also love that you love trucks.

Love,

Mommy and Daddy

I was asked to include a truck, especially a fire truck. Here you have the front and back of my letter. Please, be indulgent... This is the first fire truck I have drawn in my life!

I hope Edison got it, and it liked the truck. Maybe he cannot read yet, but I like his parents wrote the word "love" so many times.

Two simple But Favourite Stamps

Universities

More postcards for my Universities album...

University of Illinois Walking Past Foellinger (USA)

Freiburg im Breisgau. Haupteingang der Universität (Germany)

King's College, Cambridge (UK)

Sent by Mary (the USA), Heiner (Germany) and Laura (the UK)

Time Travelling?

 

I got this letter from the USA on 8th April 2021.

Orange Mail

Barbara McClintock (1902-1992), cytogeneticist
Illustration by Rachel Ignotofsky

Letter sent by Phillip (the USA).

"Expect a most agreeable letter,
for not being overburdened
by subject -having nothing 
at all to say- there shall be
no check to my genius from
beginning to end."
Jane Austen
letter from 21 January 1801

Postcard sent by Laura (the UK).

I Am an Airmail Envelope

This fun envelope sent by John (the UK) made me smile last week, and I hope the postal workers too:

Hi there,

I'm an airmail envelope. It's quite a fun life. You get to travel on planes -and those fast food tracks are really cool. I may even get to watch a movie. What I don't understand is how I can arrive before I left. I've been told it's not time travel, it's something to do with things called 'time zones'. Today I'll be put in a postbox in        and the kind people in the sorting office will send me all the way to SPAIN. When I get there I'll be sent to                  (        ). Then a postie will deliver me to                so that Eva        can read me. Thank you everyone involved. Stay Safe.

Nice Stationery

Different sheets of stationery on letters from the UK I got in June.

I wonder why Hello Kitty have to different vintage phones, one yellow and another one red (?!).

Do you use this kind of stationery? Which one do you prefer?

Sad

This was a nice and sad letter to get one month ago. The envelope was illustrated by Marita Albers. It contained the last of Nat Quintos Uhing's beautiful letters (a printed reproduction of a painted and handwritten letter), written just before she passed away. I had not the good fortune to meet her in person.

Women on Stamps | L for Labé

Louise Labé (c.1524-c.1566) was a feminist French poet. Her works, published in 1555, consist mainly of elegies and love sonnets written between 1545 and 1555.

From a letter she wrote:

The time having come, Mademoiselle, when the stern laws of men no longer bar women from devoting themselves to the sciences and disciplines, it seems to me that those who are able ought to employ this honorable liberty, which our sex formerly desired so much, in studying these things and show men the wrong they have done us in depriving us of the benefit and the honor which might have come to us. (...) And in addition to the recognition that our sex will gain by this, we will have furnished the public with a reason for men to devote more study and labor to the humanities lest they might be ashamed to see us surpass them when they have always pretended to be superior in nearly everything.

The stamp was issued on 22 May 2016, 450 years after her death.

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For the current round of Sunday Stamps A-Z I am showing stamps dedicated to women. You can see here all the Women on Stamps featured on this blog.

Go to Sunday Stamps to enjoy more L-stamps.

The Mail Monsters Project | 1

The Mail Monsters live on Letters*

The Mail Monsters Project started with a letter that I sent to some of my friends. The letter included an envelope drawn by me, to be sent back. And two questions:

• Do you believe in Mail Monsters? Why?
• Describe, create, draw... a Mail Moster.

More or less, the letters read as the following:

Dear _______,

After more than 30 years sending and receiving mail, I have learnt a great deal about how the postal systems work (and, sometimes, don’t work). They never cease surprising me. Recently, I came to discover that the Mail Monsters exist. And I have started a postal (Of course!) project about.

This is an invitation to collaborate in my research (let's say so) about the mail monsters world. I'm trying to get all my penfriends involved, so I hope you feel like playing with me. What do you have to do?
· Stick the due postage to Morocco on the mail monster envelope. (And a mail label?)
· Add your name and address on the back.
· If you have the time/feel inspired: do the task(s) I suggest on the white cards. No problem if you can't.
· Feel free to add/comment/ask whatever.
· Send it back to me before _______.

I hope you enjoy this project as much as I do. And, who knows? Maybe another mail monster will appear in your mailbox…

All the best,

Mail Adventures

Even if, eventually, less letters than intended were sent (life happens!), all the contributions I received were really wonderful. Thanks to those who sent them, and sorry for the delay: I am going to upload them here, little by little.

_______

* I sent some envelopes to myself, as a test.

Dear Tia

Phillip has a mail art project called poems found in morrow. He sent out postcards reproducing pages of HM Hoover's post-apocalyptic young adult novel Treasures of Morrow, and ask to delete text in any way, to create a found poem.

Last time I did. But on this page, what I found was a letter instead...

Tia,

Work harder. Perhaps another thing surprise you. Simon have a good house. Rabbit's lucky. Max always had that. You can study. You are smarter than any one else.

Mother

(As it seemed a reply, I decided to imagine the letter that Tia had previously sent to his mum, and write part of it on the postcard.)

Some Cancellations Are Just Awful

Dear Royal Mail, 

Why can you always do this?

Yours Sincerely,

Mail Adventures

#AtoZChallenge | O is for Obverse

This is the front the postcard I got!

Bientôt le retour. Meilleurs amitiés

['I will come back soon. Best wishes']

This is the obverse (the front and illustrated side) of a postcard sent sent by Phillip (the USA).

Should I add it to the lighthouses album? Because it is a reproduction of the reverse of a postcard that used to feature a lighthouse. I would have liked to see it, too!

Anyway, it is something nice and strange at the same time, to read these personal messages, somehow banal, written so many years ago. On this postcard, arrived with the one above, the original message was dated in 1911:

Versailles, le 5 - 2- 11
En ce moment je suis débordé de travail ce qui m'oblige a rester enfermé le dimanche, d'ailleurs, comme il faut mauvais temps, cela m'est égal. Je suis en bonne santé. Embrassez toute la famille de ma part; je vous embrasse de tout cœur

['Right now I am overwhelmed with work, which obliges me to stay locked up on Sunday. However, as the weather is bad, it does not matter to me. I am in good health. Embrace the whole family on my behalf; I embrace you with all my heart']

I wonder if some of the postcards I have sent will finish in a flea-market. Or maybe they had, already. How would you feel about that?

Postal Collections (2/2)

And more postal collections, but today about what you sent by post.

Like a fascinating (I do not find another word) collection of security envelopes, curated by Bethany Johnson.

The Office of Johnny Cash, c.1960

And, if you need some inspiration in order to design your own writing paper, just take a look to Letterheady: "an online homage to offline correspondence; specifically letters. However, here at Letterheady we don’t care about the letter’s content. Just its design.", by Shaun Usher.

Bill Watterson, 1991

Do you know more interesting online postal collections?

You Did Not Take the Trouble

This letter was supposed to have been sent from the UK, but not through Royal Mail. It looks like one of that commercial letters that someone sends to the post company for they to print (Deutsche Post. But the French language on the envelope is a bit confusing). It was neatly printed on a boring white DIN A4 paper, and it did not bear any real signature.

But there is a thing I found funny. The letter starts:

Dear Eva, 

Thank you for sending us your letter. We're glad you took the trouble to send it, stamp and all. [...]

Well, all I can say is... you didn't take the trouble to stick any stamp!