manders2280

How the Most Remote Community in America Gets Its Mail (Gift Link)
What I Learned from My Mother and the U.S. Postal Service

Updated 29 June 2025

I have a new hobby: making wax seals. I have a dozen brass stamps and some sealing wax and a tiny wax stove that's powered by a tea light. I'm playing with them. It's a nice hobby that doesn't take up much space: it stores compactly and I simply move laptop to clear space to play. You might receive a swap with an inner envelope with a wax seal.

in March I had three weeks away from Minnesota, a trip to Amsterdam and Rome. It's the jubilee year at the Vatican and it was busy but not packed so much that you couldn't see the floor in the Vatican Museum. (I was back home when the pope died.) I went to most of the places I didn't see last year in Amsterdam, and the just-opened and excellent Holocaust Museum. I made return visits to the Van Gogh Museum and the Rijksmuseum to see more. And of course I have a big stack of postcards to share, many non-touristy.

To open my washi-covered envelopes, tamp the contents to one end of the envelope and, at the other end, snip off a bit of a corner, a little triangle. Insert a letter opener or scissors into the gap; and pull across the edge of the envelope, in the same direction as the washi tape. Here's an album of my washi-covered envelopes and some I received.

January 2024 I went to Amsterdam for two weeks. I walked all around the city and took trams and trains, only once getting on the wrong tram. I had a refresher course in European history (it's been a while since 10th grade). I learned why Jews had freedom in Amsterdam in the 17th century, and why Brugge, where I spent a couple of days, is so Catholic. Anne Frank House and the Jewish museum added to what I know about Dutch Jews under Hitler. Rijksmuseum, Van Gogh Museum, the Stedelijk Museum are all wonderful. I need to go back to see the sights I didn't have time to see. I had fresh stroopwafels and will forego cold ones from Trader Joe's. I found the Art Unlimited store and between that and museums, I have 13cm of postcards.

September 2024 I went to Scotland for two weeks. I took a small-group tour and everyone in the group was lovely. We had days and days of rain and lots of rainbows and no one complained. We saw lots of sights, including a drive up the Isle of Mull on a one-lane, two-way road. All the scenery is gorgeous, even in the rain. Living in the flatlands gives me a special appreciation of mountains. Edinburgh is full of witchery shops and no, I did not buy a wand. Ask me about Holyrood Palace.

2023: Southern Africa, Las Vegas to see friends, Israel for a friend's wedding, and New York and New England to see family and friends (I'm from there.)
2022: Northern Italy

I'm a retired software engineer and build websites for nonprofits. I love to cook and bake; my kitchen is my craft room. My favorite season is when sweet corn comes straight from the fields to my pot of boiling water, the end of July and the beginning of August. My husband is a professor of mathematics, still working, so I travel on my own. I take care of our lawn and garden and since it's Minnesota, it thrives with benign neglect.

I swap naked postcards on Postcrossing and blank postcards on Swap-bot. It makes it easy to organize my incoming mail.

I send the blank postcards I receive to family and friends and people on Postcrossing. Please send colorful and cheerful postcards that you'd happily send your family and friends. I appreciate quality over quantity. And I always enjoy a good joke. Weird is fun too.

No, thank you. Sorry, no hearts.
Bent corners, a sure sign a postcard has been through more than a few swaps. Postcards to color, postcards for Christian holidays and legends. Print on demand postcards like Zazzle postcards. Those cheap sepia 32-pcs Vintage Travel Sights Landscape Retro Postcards. Not childish like Distributed by Michael's Inc. designs. Art postcards from museums, not China. Please, no junk.

My favorite kawaii has a face. I love food with faces and anchovies with legs and animals in an unlikely milieu like cat servers at faux Starbucks. I enjoy most characters, especially San-X.

About Japanese kawaii brands: See Pattie's exhaustive list on the KSU group page. Counterfeit sticker flakes are turning up everywhere, from Ali Express and some sellers on Etsy. Sanrio counterfeits are vinyl, oversized, printed in odd colors, and none have a Sanrio copyright date. If it's San-X and largish with thick lines, it's not the real thing. If the price is great, it's probably counterfeit.

No, thanks. Poo and bottoms aren't kawaii to me. 3D stickers from sheets and sticker flakes, especially PVC and puffy. Real photos made cute aren't so cute to me. Unicorns are too sweet for me.

• Chocolate. This is a new allergy and I'm struggling to give it up.
• Christian holidays, including Xmas. I'm Jewish.
• Ephemera, scrapbook paper, die cuts, and the like. I won't use them.
• Extras. I have plenty of kawaii, stickers, and washi tape. The extras I send are more of what the swap is for, e.g., an extra postcard or kawaii sticker flakes. Sometimes I write long chatty notes.
• Food. We keep kosher and we are vegetarians. Most flavored teas aren't kosher.
• Glitter, sequins and other tiny metallic or plastic bits
• Pigs
• Planner items. My iPhone is my calendar.
• Plastic and vinyl stickers. Reuse those bubble mailers!
• Rubber stamps, and clear acrylic ones too
• Tobacco smoke residue aka thirdhand smoke. See also thirdhandsmoke.org.
• trump. What he's doing is awful for my family.
• Unicorns, except the Unicorn Tapestries dating from the late Middle Ages.