Ever wondered how ships receive their mail? Sure, they can get it in ports, but some actually receive mail as they are underway!
The J. W. Wescott company has been in service since 1874, making deliveries to cargo ships that are passing through the Great Lakes, 24 hours a day.
It’s a challenging and unique system, which you can see on the video below:
Remember the World’s smallest postal service we wrote about two years ago? They make tiny customisable letters that you can send to your loved ones, and which look like this:
Cute, right? It’s impossible not to smile when you get one of these in the mail! :)
Lea Redmond, the Postmistress of the Word’s Smallest Post Service, has recently teamed up with Chronicle Books to make a do-it-yourself kit that allows anyone to do those amazing tiny letters and packages at home!
The World’s Smallest Post Service kit comes with paper, pen, minuscule stamps, stickers, packing material and even a little magnifying glass, so that you can write and send your own tiny letters and parcels.
The kit is available at Amazon.com.
This week’s spotlight interviewee is lapoussine35, from France! Erin has 2 daughters, is a tea and chocolate addict, and loves to read in her bathtub on rainy days. :) Here is what she had to say:
Like many other people here, I came to Postcrossing via penpalling. A friend mentioned Postcrossing to me in a letter and several weeks later, I decided to try it out myself. I love writing and receiving mail but, with two little girls, I find it hard to write long letters anymore. Postcrossing lets me reach out to the world and other people through a wonderful mix of words and pictures.
You could also look at it as armchair travel at its best!
Traveling, science fiction and reading are definite stock answers and truths for me. In addition, I enjoying cross-stitching and making things with my hands. I recently cross-stitched an official card here to a postcrosser who mentioned liking handmade cards (/postcards/FR-144488). It’s my second one and I’m already working on another to send as a RAS.
I’ve also started running again and am dreaming of doing a half-marathon this fall. We’ll see…
This is our local post office, conveniently located next to the bakery! Since I started postcrossing, I go there regularly to mail my cards and buy stamps. I’m very lucky to have several great postal workers—they go out of their way to show me the latest stamps, always have a smile and even play with my girls sometimes.
I had the worst time trying to pick out only a couple of cards for this interview. Normally I store my cards in boxes and photo albums so that I can easily flip through them and enjoy looking at them. I decided to start pulling out potential cards to highlight here and gave up when my bed started to be completely covered (and my daughters showed up to look through too)!
Not a postcard at all but one of the “unsung” heroes of Postcrossing—a stamp! I’m not a serious stamp collector but I do love neat stamps on my cards and this is one of my all-time favorites. I even received a 3D hologram stamp on an official card from Finland once on an official card!
Postcrossing has brought smiles not only to me but to my entire family! Ticker from Australia sent this great RAS card to my daughter Laura. She wouldn’t put it down for days! (below on the left)
Another RAS but from my friend evitayueh this time. Evita knows about my fascination for Japan and sent me this great spring greeting to brighten my day; needless to say, she succeeded! (above on the right)
I love the excitement of choosing the perfect card and stamp for people. Since I started postcrossing, I’ve gotten to know the local post office staff rather well and they are very good about showing me the neatest new stamps. I think I get as much, if not more pleasure, out of sending than receiving. I’ve gotten to know several great people here through both the Main Site and the Forum and sending RAS cards is a great way to turn a dreary day into a better one. (Receiving them is also a wonderful part of postcrossing and proof of the community we’re building here.)
I’m passionate about languages and living abroad. I believe that everyone should take the chance to live abroad at least once in their life. The saying goes that “travel broadens the mind” but living in a different country does so even more by forcing you to reconsider all the little assumptions that you didn’t even know you had! I’m a strong advocate of programs like ERASMUS in the European Union or US-style Junior Year Abroad programs. I was lucky enough to study in Switzerland as part of my education and I treasure that time.
Language acquisition is also a bonus and I find it fascinating how it unlocks your brain from even the earliest of ages. It’s also interesting to look at how the connotations of different words change in different languages. I often ask postcrossers to write a few words or a favourite quote in their language on my cards. The combination of a foreign language, education and living abroad is a real gift!
On the recent post about airmail fashion, postcrosser Suzan (aka Silencio, from Denmark) wrote a comment to let us know about her airmail labels collection and blog.
Suzan has been collecting these often overlooked labels and stickers for over 2 years, assembling a very respectable and intriguing assortment! Here are some of our favorites:
Her impressive collection includes some vintage gems like these old Swiss labels and these Dutch ones, which are irresistible! Thank you for sharing your collection with us, Suzan!
Got an interesting mail-related collection? Tell us about it in the comments! :)
This week’s spotlight interview comes from marja2006, from Finland! She and her daughter are avid postcrossers, and even her son contributes to the collection! Here is what she had to say:
I saw a short story about Postcrossing in the newspaper – I googled to find the link to the pages. This happened in 2006. I have always loved to receive postcards. When travelling was not so easy, people used to send much more cards – now when people travel a lot, there are not so many who would send a postcard from their holiday – even if you asked them to! For a lazy traveller this is also a great way to see the world – you can see places you would probably never visit, and a postcard can show you the familiar places in a way you would never see them if you were there yourself as the weather and the lights vary a lot.
It took about a year before I had enough of courage to go to the forum and join the tags and Round Robins, but then I was hooked with tags and swaps…
I don’t have too much time for hobbies, but taking photos is one of them. I used to play piano when I was young, just for own fun. My daughter takes me to concerts every now and then (or is it the other way around?) – and tries to keep me up with what’s popular.
My mail comes to postbox, which is in the postoffice next to the railway station. In this picture the postoffice is in the left, with the orange and blue colours of the Finnish Post.
Here’s a closer look at the postoffice from outside, with new postboxes for priority mail (the blue boxes) and economy mail (the orange boxes):
I also take my cards mostly to the ladies in my postoffice for cancellation. Here’s a picture of one of the lovely ladies at my postoffice taking care of my mail:
and here’s how it looks inside my postoffice:
There are so many postcards which are special and there are so many new lovely cards coming every week, but here are some of them:
This card I received from my forum friend mlysao from Tahiti – she had it made as a maxicard for me with the special cancellation of the solar eclipse – it really warms my heart to think it arrived from the other side of the world as a RAS:
Another RAS card which made me very happy, a card from Shanghai meet-up in 2008, sent by Linying and signed among others by Paulo and Ana, the founders of Postcrossing:
And I am not wondering at all that Paulo and Ana ended up in Slovenia when I look at this beautiful postcard, one of my all time favourites, which I received in my biggest swap ever:
Card from Greenland with ID GL-8 was a nice surprise at the time there were not many active users and also cards from Uruguay, UY-32 and UY-45 were nice surprises – neither of them was sent by a local user! Both of them came from a user with Finnish background! :D And I felt really lucky when I received a card from Tuvalu – TV-222 – which was sent to celebrate the Earth Day.
Only my own daughter – she had a long break with it, but now as Finland was approaching the id FI-1000000, I got her writing some cards, too, as we read a comment of my postcrossing friend’s daughter of teamwork in Facebook.
I am also very happy of the fact that my younger son sends postcards when going on holidays – not only to me but others as well! And he also buys cards for my collection!
