Thousand Postcard Project: 116-158/1000

Here are some of my recent favourites from the ongoing Thousand Postcard Project. ΔΔ The postcard above just really appealed to me. At the time, I couldn't tell if it was the colours or composition but, later, I realised it was because it reminded me of the badly-drawn book covers on the old Mary Stewart novels I used to read. Mary Stewart was my guilty-pleasure airport-but-not-only-airport author: she wrote romance-thriller novels, often set in 'exotic' locations, with obscure literary references. I devoured them! A lot of the books were written in the 50s, 60s and 70s, so the cover-art involved this kind of upright, amply-bosomed heroine, generally among rocks or ruins or cliffs. 

ΔΔ I think this postcard is one of the best of the lot, because it is so gloriously BAD. Here is what I imagine happened:

The marketing minds behind the Howard Johnson's hotel decided that a postcard was needed in order to draw in more guests. They sent one of their junior staffers out with the company camera and a roll of film, and told him to capture the 'beauty' of the building at night, with the neon sign proudly lit. But the junior staffer forgot to bring the tripod, and when they had the film developed, every photo was blurry. Rather than do it all over again, they just picked the least blurry of the lot and went with it. 

I wrote something along these lines on the back of the postcard before I sent it and, last week, I received a reply in the form of another postcard, depicting... traffic. On the back was written, "I see your blurry hotel photo and I raise you Birmingham's round-about." I will TREASURE that postcard. I'm still giggling. Blurry hotels and round-abouts are why I love this Thousand Postcard Project so much. 

ΔΔ Here is another fabulously ugly postcard. An open quarry. WHYYYYY? Who came up with the idea that THIS was what would draw visitors to their town? 

ΔΔ This beach photo made my 'favourites' list because it doesn't even bother with a location. The caption on the back just says something along the lines of "enjoying the sand and clear water" (I can't remember the exact words). I like to imagine that this beach photo was used to promote at least six or seven locations. You could just pick a State famous for beaches (like Florida or California) and shove these postcards in every tourist stand up and down the coast, for people to send to their friends. 

ΔΔ Badly drawn illustrations are always my favourite. This one in particular because the man in the blue suit and hat at the bottom of the picture is carrying papers. What is written on them?? 

ΔΔ According to the information on the back of this postcard, this was the coastline where the pirate Blackbeard hid treasure. It's not the Cornish coastline I imagine when I think of pirates and smugglers and caves, but maybe I just read too many Famous Five books when I was little. Do you think there could still be treasure buried in all that sand? 

ΔΔ The biggest sponge exchange in the world. Who knew there were sponge exchanges!? I guess I should have known, sponges weren't always the synthetic bouncy things we use in our kitchens today, but still, wow!! 

ΔΔ Remember what I was saying about badly drawn picture? I think this postcard is GREAT because they have taken a weird rock formation and decided it would look more spooky by moonlight, and still managed to do a terrible job. Framed smack in the middle of the picture, with the best fake ghost-story-moon ever, and some pretty flowers all around for a softening effect. If you are going to draw rather than photograph a famous thing, surely you'd take the opportunity to give it a slightly more artistic composition? 

ΔΔ These vineyards were in upstate New York (from memory) and the person I was sending the postcard to just so happened to live in the same State, so I set her the challenge of finding this exact spot and taking a photograph of whatever is there now. 

ΔΔ Another brilliantly boring photograph. Clouds! Dear traveller, unless your friend lives in the desert and it has never rained ever in their whole life, odds are they have clouds at their place, too. Send them a picture of a quarry or a blurry hotel instead! I thought this postcard was so boring, I decided to find pictures in the clouds to liven them up for the recipient. 

Well folks, that's the end of this update. I'm still writing postcards so don't think I've forgotten you if you're still waiting. A thousand postcards is a LOT of postcards to write! And if you're reading this and you're thinking "A crappy vintage postcard is what I really need in my life right now," I'd LOVE to send one to you, too. Go to this page to give me your address, and keep an eye on your letterbox. 

Pie fail

This is an appeal to the people of Florida, to rescue their famous dish from the slander that is about to follow...  

While writing my way through a giant stack of vintage postcards for the thousand postcard project, I came across this wonderfully lurid recipe-card from the 1960s or 70s. The children and I decided we had to give it a try before sending it on (it ultimately went to my cousin in the UK - it was 68 of 1000).

After all, I figured, "Orange meringue pie. I like oranges, I like lemon meringue pie, this is going to be delicious!")

Spoiler alert: it wasn't.

Maybe it's my fault. I'm not much of a baker. Or maybe it's the postcard's fault. The instructions were pretty vague and, never having tasted this pie before, I didn't really know what flavours I was supposed to be going for. 

Whoever or whatever is to blame, this pie tasted like orange-flavoured cough-syrup. Only gelatinous. And nuclear reactive in colour. 

So, dear People Of Florida, how is this pie supposed to taste? What did I do wrong? And do you have a better recipe for me to try? 

::               ::               ::               ::

ps. For anyone not from Florida who is brave enough to try this (WHYYYYY???), the ingredients are on the front of the postcard that you see pictured here. The method, printed on the back, was as follows:

Combine orange juice, sections, grated rind, sugar and cornstarch. Cook on low heat until clear. Add a little hot mixture to beaten egg yolks. Return to hot mixture and cook about 5 minutes longer. Remove from heat. Blend in lemon juice, butter or margarine. Pour into baked pie shell. Be sure filling and shell are both hot or both cold. Cover filling with meringue. Bake in 350° oven until lightly browned.

There were no instructions for the pastry or meringue, so you'll just have to wing those bits. Tell me how you go!

Pop-up in Melbourne: free twilight cinema by the bay

Listen up Melbourne friends, there is a pop-up open-air cinema in town for February, and it is FREE. Head down to Docklands on a Friday night this month (every Friday EXCEPT this Friday) to watch some classic 80s movies from the comfort of your own picnic rug.

Have you been to Docklands recently? We wandered down to catch a movie last Friday, and prior to that I had been to Docklands exactly NEVER. It's like a completely different Melbourne down there! Reflections, reflections: all glittering high-rise and glimmering water and shining lights. And so quiet! And so clean!

The park for our movie was fully booked, but there was still loads of space, and we found a parking spot right away. Let me just tell you, you wouldn't get that where I live in the Inner North.

Anyway if you want to catch an old movie at the twilight cinema this month, go here to reserve your space. I think they're playing The Dish, and Back to the Future next. We watched The Wedding Singer, which was even funnier than any past times I'd seen it, mainly because my friend Tonia roared with laughter the whole way through, usually about five seconds before the actual funny bit was due to happen.

Pack a picnic if you think you'll be feeling peckish, but I recommend picking up a box of salumi and formaggio and a coffee granita to wash it down from the super-friendly folks at Saluministi, the Italian street-food spot next door. I will dream about that coffee granita.

Top tips for enjoying the pop-up twilight cinema:

* Bring a picnic rug and some cushions or bean-bags to lean on * There's a lovely, gentle breeze coming off the water, but that can make it a bit chilly. Bring some warm clothes or better still a rug to snuggle down * This is a family-friendly event so you can bring the kids (there's even a playground for the little ones) * There's no alcohol in the park, but there are plenty of bars along the wharf so you can go for a beverage before or after the movie (or both) * And speaking of alcoholic beverages, the park is on the 48 and 11 tram lines, so you can leave the car at home

Full disclosure: this isn't a sponsored post and all opinions are (obviously) my own, but I was invited by the kind people at Victoria Harbour to come along to this movie, and they generously supplied our picnic rug, bean-bags, and the delicious Saluministi fare. We are super grateful, it was all fantastic. Thank you!

Animals in sweaters

I am super tired this morning, and entering the week already exhausted is never fun. I was going to (try to) write you something insightful and meaningful, but my brain just won't cooperate. So instead, I decided to share something altogether lighter: animals in sweaters! 

The chickens, from Cornwall in the UK, are wearing knits to protect them from cold temperatures. They are retired battery hens who, after spending a lifetime in cages, are not able to acclimatise to weather fluctuations. 

The elephants are from a conservation for formerly-abused elephants in Mathura, India, and local villagers knitted these sweaters when they were warned that temperatures were forecast to dip to near-freezing, making the elephants vulnerable. 

The penguins are from an ongoing conservation project on Phillip Island, Australia. For penguins in rehab that have been covered in toxic oil from spills, the sweaters keep them warm and prevent them from trying to clean the oil off with their beaks. 

Every one of these groups of animals was made sick or vulnerable because of something that humans did to them. Thankfully, humans are also mobilising to protect and care for them. I feel better about Monday already. I hope you do, too! 

ps. I'm launching a big giveaway of beautiful things on Instagram today. Pop on over if you'd like to enter! 

Talking trees

Yesterday I listened to this TED Talk by Suzanne Simard that blew my mind. Actually first I listened to Suzanne being interviewed on the TED Radio Hour (here's the transcript), then went across to listen to her whole talk.

It sent me reeling, and I spent the rest of the day thinking about it over and over again, and pondering the implications. 

Suzanne is an ecologist, and a few years ago she made the astonishing, world-changing discovery (which anyone who has read the Narnia books already secretly suspected) that trees in a forest talk with each other - and share with each other, and nurture each other - using a massive subterranean fungal network attached to their roots. 

If one tree comes under attack, from say bugs or something, it can communicate this to the other healthy trees around it and they increase their defence systems in preparation. 

If a tree is in need of more carbon, nutrients or water, it can communicate this to the other trees, and trees that have excess of any of these pass them along, to help the struggling tree survive. 

Bigger, older trees become "mother-trees" and they nurture their "young," the seedlings and saplings in the under-story. They pass along nutrients, carbon and water, and even adjust their own root systems to make room for the younger ones to grow. 

Suzanne did some experiments on this behaviour to find out if the mother-trees recognised their own young, by placing saplings under them that were both from the mother-tree and elsewhere. The mother-tree did recognise its own children, and passed significantly more of all that goodness onto them.

Suzanne even said that when a mother-tree is dying, it passed wisdom on to the younger trees. I wish she had elaborated on that point because I want to know what that wisdom might be. Understandings about the conditions around it, maybe? "The bugs always come in spring, grow more thorns then," or, "Shed your leaves early this year, it's gonna be a cold one." 

When I was growing up, digging away in the garden with my mother, we always understood that trees and plants competed for space, water, and sunlight. What Suzanne has revealed to the world is that, in the forest at least, far from competing, the trees are cooperating, and to an astonishing extent. 

Mind. Blown. 

Image credit: photo by Will Fuller, licensed for unlimited use 

Thousand postcards > 86/1000

The other day as I sat at my desk writing on old postcards (they smelled like old books), Scout sidled up to me. "Postcards, postcards, you are forever writing postcards," she said. Then she and Ralph began rifling through the box, pulling them out one at a time to look at all the pictures. I told them they could choose one each and I'd send them in the post just like all the others, so Scout chose an awful-looking yellow flower that looked like a weed, and Ralph chose a photograph of a replica of the Mayflower. The postcards are all numbered, so they will have 75/1000 and 76/1000 in their possession, once this entire collection goes out. In total I've sent out 86 postcards so far. This is fun! 

Here are some from the most recent collection that I've really been enjoying. The postcards above... I loved that 'bear visiting the picnic' picture, because, what even!? "Hey, tourists, come visit us and wild killer animals will invade your lunch!" Also I wanted to draw your attention to the reverse sides of the postcards with it - I just love the art deco lettering in the one on the top... and the one-cent stamp costs (if only!), including one with the one-cent stamp still on it. 

ΔΔ These ladies! This postcard makes me so happy

ΔΔ It's just funny. A bad drawing of a lonely room that once belonged to someone famous. And funny perspective, like those photographs real-estate agents take to try and make rooms look bigger than they are: why is the chair on the left so small compared to the other one? Is the room 100 metres wide?

ΔΔ Every time I look at this I hear music from Elvis movies in my head

ΔΔ Ok now while technically I can blame a respected artist (John Milton) rather than a middle-management postcard maker for the hilarity in this image, seriously, what? The pasty-white guy in Tarzan-style animal skins and a safari hat/ladies' bonnet, doing the Dolly magazine shhh-pose, is supposed to be Comus, the Greek god of revelry, known for his debauchery. You see the humour in this too, right?

ΔΔ Oh the glorious and over-the-top colour in these linen postcards! Recently I read an article about these postcards, which were apparently printed by the millions in America during the depression and war eras. They were created as a kind of panacea to the everyday challenges people were facing, in the same way that the movies of the time were so often full of joy and dancing and lighthearted fun. 

It said, "The America depicted on linen postcards was just about always surreal in color and exaggerated in perspective. It didn’t matter if the subject was a natural wonder, a cityscape at night, the exterior of a hotel, the interior of a restaurant, or a hulking industrial facility. Linen postcards made everything look larger than life."

I have been loving finding them in my box of vintage postcards. The texture is so lovely in the hand, and the colours are truly other-worldly, and so much fun. I totally get it! 

ps. Don't know what this is all about? I'm sending a thousand vintage postcards in one year. If you'd like one and you haven't already signed up, you can ask for one here. 

I like the thought of that

Thank you, anonymous person on Post Secret

Mail-art: picturing kindness

With everything going on in the world towards the end of last year, I got to thinking about kindness, and what it meant. Why did some people seem to have it in spades, while others could act with such coldness, such brutality, that surely all compassion, all empathy, must have been clinically removed from their souls? I find cruelty - not angry passion but callous cruelty - truly incomprehensible. 

In all this thinking, I started to wonder what "kindness" meant to people. Because I'm fairly sure that, aside from genuine psychopaths, the people who I believed were speaking or doing things of utmost horror probably believed that they were actually good people, at least some of the time. They are not all villains, retreating to their lairs and laughing "BWAHAHA" every time they commit an atrocity. Somewhere along the line, these human beings have either justified their actions due to their beliefs, or have become immune to the suffering of others, because the mind is frighteningly good at self preservation (and nobody wants to admit to themselves "I am evil.").

I refuse to believe that that people are black to the core. Small-minded, intolerant, cruel, yes. But maybe not evil through and through? I don't know. I hope not. If you think terrible things cannot be done within the pretext of noble intentions, just ask any religious extremist, ever. 

Where is the kindness in all this? How can a man murder in the morning and let the dog sleep on his lap in the evening? Torture someone one day, and buy his mother fudge the next? Show hatred to an entire race of human beings, but love his children? 

Mail-art isn't going to solve any global or existential problems just yet, but this was all at the front of my mind as I was painting these envelopes, so I decided to follow it through. I did a Google image-search on the word "kindness" to see what other people saw in their minds when they heard that word. These envelopes are my interpretations of some of the images at the top of that search. 

What does kindness look like to you? What would you draw, if you got "kindness" in a game of Pictionary? 

ps. have you heard about my new letter-writing and mail-art e-course?

Over four weeks, I will guide you through multiple methods of making beautiful mail-art and creative, handmade stationery; teach you the art of writing and storytelling; help you forge personal connections in your letters and find pen-pals if you want them; and share time-management tips so even the busiest people can enjoy sending and receiving letters. Register your place or find out more information right here. 

Spiders, bedtime stories, and what's the fuss about Henry Fussy?

We have been reading Charlotte's Web to the children at bedtime. Last night was the final chapter, and the whole book has been every bit as magical and sad and beautiful as I remember from my own childhood.

Scout was enthralled from beginning to end. I wasn't confident of this when we started: books from this era move at a slower pace to those written these days (slower than, for example, Monsters Wear Underpants, a tremendous favourite of Ralph's - thanks Mum), and Scout is only four after all.

But she soaked it all in, even the long passages about the changing of the seasons, the subtle shifts on a farm from one month to another. Even the brutal honesty about life on the land, about how spiders eat, about love and loss. It was precious to see her settle into this slower pace, resting up against my side and dreamily playing with a thread on her pyjamas as she listened, always begging for more when each chapter ended. 

However, here's something I did not even remotely pick up on when I read this book as a child: Henry Fussy. How did I not notice Fern's complete desertion of her best friends, for a boy called Henry Fussy? I'm guessing I must have been so caught up in Wilbur's and Charlotte's stories that I failed to notice that Fern was having a story of her own, a coming-of-age journey that took her away from the barn and onto a Ferris Wheel instead. 

And I get it. Fern wouldn't be the first person to neglect her friends for a crush, and she won't be the last. But...

Fern happens to be the only human on the entire planet with access to the MAGICAL WORLD OF TALKING ANIMALS. 

Nope, not enough. Henry Fussy is over there.

Well how about this: Wilbur, who she claimed to love "more than anything else in the whole world" is going to be KILLED BY FERN'S UNCLE, unless Charlotte's plan to save him works.

Henry Fussy paid for her ticket on the Ferris Wheel, so she didn't have to spend her own money.

We learn Charlotte is dying. She is also about to become a mother, but will not live to see her sweet babies. 

Fern says this has been the best day of her life. 

THE PLAN WORKED! Wilbur is getting a special medal, Fern's Uncle has never been happier, Wilbur's life has been saved. The entire family goes crazy with pride and excitement.

Fern wants money so she can pay for Henry Fussy's ticket on the Ferris Wheel. 

And can I finally please point out, Fern is EIGHT. Girl, we need to talk. 

After we finished reading Charlotte's Web last night, we talked a little bit about friendship and love and death, and it was a little bit sad but a lot beautiful. I kissed the children, turned out the light, and went downstairs to make my dinner alone as Mr B was working late. Then about half an hour before my bedtime, he came home. 

Pale, shaking, and giggling in a high-pitched, slightly hysterical way (you know, like Floki from Vikings, if you happen to watch that show). Turned out just as he was parking the car, a giant huntsman spider the size of his palm had scuttled across the windscreen of the car.

Then it disappeared. Somewhere in the dark. On the car. Waiting. 

Now I happen to think Mr B is all man, but that spider knew better, and it reduced him to the state of a terrified little old lady. Me too, when he told me about it later. Oh man, I was terrified just from the telling.

Just as Mr B was about to venture out of the car into the dark, where the spider waited unseen - literally a nanosecond before Mr B opened the car door - the spider appeared again, millimetres from his face, crawling down the outside of the car window. Slowly. Big, hairy underbelly and powerful legs moving across the glass and across Mr B's petrified face. If he'd opened that door even one second earlier, the spider would have landed on his head. 

He scrambled over to the passenger seat and climbed out that door, ran back around to the driver side and whacked the spider away (don't hate - neither of us could have got back inside that car otherwise), and came inside to giggle hysterically in the lounge room. Then he went back outside again to check whether or not he'd left the headlights on in all the shock. 

When at last he came back inside for good and sat down, we both started laughing, because from time to time we like to dream about moving to the country: a tree-change and a slower pace of life. And then a spider crawls across the windscreen of our car and we remember that we are literally the worst people in the world to ever attempt life in the country. Completely pathetic. Nature wimps. 

But in our defence, "That was no Charlotte," Mr B said. 

New crush: Botanical Threads

The next time you make guacamole, don't throw away the avocado seeds. 

Instead, leave the stones to dry on the window-sill, then heat them in a pan for up to three days, eventually extracting a colour that looks deep red. Soak some beautiful fabric in the red liquid, dipping it twice and leaving it for several days each time, adding soya milk to help the colours stick.

At the end of all this, if you're very lucky, your fabric will have turned a beautiful, rosy shade of pink. 

Alternatively, you could skip steps one through five and just buy some of the truly gorgeous organic dyed tea-towels, scarves and other items lovingly made this way by British lass Alicia, the talented gal behind the simple and ethical online shop Botanical Threads.  

Alicia studied fashion design but now works as a gardener, and this shop combines her two passions. Alongside the avocado seeds, she also uses rosemary, nettles, lavender, pomegranate peels and onion skins to create some truly stunning colours and patterns.

I could do with a set of those tea-towels to use as placemats. I think they'd be amazing at our table! What would you choose?