PHILATELY07

I am a retired M.D. living in Watertown, Massachusetts, very close to Cambridge and Boston. I am in Harvard Square frequently, one of my favorite places in the world, ever since I was a Harvard freshman in 1958-1959. I usually make a beeline to the Harvard Book Store to browse the new books, and get local postcards.
My life-long hobbies are stamp collecting and everything having to do with airplanes and aviation. I am a bit of a "cat whisperer" and now we have two female rescue cats with beautiful black fur. Pearl is a sweetheart (always lived in homes) and Velma would be one, but she is very wary because of her learned successful survival techniques during her first year of life, when she lived on the streets of Brooklyn. She's easing up little by little.
My Postcrossing name comes from the fact that I started collecting stamps when I was seven years old (1948), when a neighbor gave me an envelope full of worldwide stamps. I was soon enthralled by stamp collecting. I enjoy mailing out postcards, notes, and packages with both vintage and modern US stamps. I think of the creativity that has gone into these tiny works of art and design.
All my life I have been interested in different countries and different ways of life, and especially languages. From 1964-1965, on a Fulbright grant, I lived in Brussels and did a study of child development in what was then Fort Archambault, Chad, now Sarh. So, when someone I met at a friend's 75th birthday party in 2015 told me about Postcrossing, I joined that very day.
I have been retired for 9 years after about 50 years in practice, mostly in psychiatry. I have spent many enjoyable hours teaching medical students in the USA, Austria (Innsbruck, Salzburg and Vienna) and Germany (Munich and Berlin), especially about how to be an effective and empathic interviewer.
One of the gratifying aspects of this marvelous peace-promoting hobby is the possibility of "private swaps" which are very much like "pen pal" relationships of the pre-email era. Some last for a few emails and some indefinitely.
I am grateful to the Postcrossing staff who run a user-friendly and attractive web site. It is through Postcrossing that we all receive what the Belgian-American poet, May Sarton (1912-1995), called in her book "At Seventy": "rumors of the human ocean", referring to the postcards and letters she received after she had moved to rural Maine.
April 3rd, 2024: I have as of today sent more than 7000 postcards and have received almost as many over the last nine years. So I have had contacts with 14,000 Postcrossers since joining Postcrossing in April of 2015. If I have put "one atom of peace" out into this turbulent world through Postcrossing postcards and emails, I am pleased. All best wishes, Daniel