Here are the postcards!

I’ve been collecting postcards since 2008. Since then, I’ve sent and received over 1800 postcards from all over the US and dozens of countries. I respond to every postcard I receive, so I’m always open for private swaps.

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My origin story: Back when I was a young boy, I got the idea to write a letter to several world leaders, but I only ever ended up writing the US president and the Queen of England. I was so tickled to receive responses from President Bush and then Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II! Well, they weren’t directly from the world leaders, but rather from their staff members. President Bush sent me an autographed photograph (which I lost later in a show-and-tell accident).

One of the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting sent me a very detailed letter, typed on Buckingham Palace stationery, answering all of my questions about the Queen’s horses and her corgis and her favorite foods. I marveled at the strangely-sized paper, the texture of the embossed coat of arms centered at the top of the page, and the stamps on the envelope. A real person had spent time reading my letter, responding to it, folding it and placing it in an envelope, and then more real human beings had taken the time and effort to transport it from London to some mail distribution center, to an airport in England, to an airport in the US, and back through the various USPS chains until it arrived in a plastic mailbox at the foot of my driveway in southeast Michigan.

I’m still fascinated by this process today, and all for less than the price of some chocolate! So I maintain correspondence with about a dozen penpals across the world, and send and receive postcards. At last count, I have a little under 2,000 postcards that I’ve received. Keep scrolling to see the most recent postcards that have arrived in my mailbox.

Kristopher Geda 9/29/21 Kristopher Geda 9/29/21

the Windy City (Chicago)

This postcard arrived from my niece Alyssa who celebrated her birthday with my sister-in-law in Chicago, one of my absolute favorite American cities! She even took the train to arrive there, which is a page out of my own book. I love the Chicago skyline, Navy Pier, and Michigan Avenue, all things that they visited.

Kristopher Geda 9/28/21 Kristopher Geda 9/28/21

la cathédrale Saint-Étienne (France)

Voici une carte de mon ami à lettres Dominique, qui vient de passer le weekend à Metz, où il a également visité cette cathédrale, qui a la plus grande surface vitrée d’Europe! Je n’ai jamais visité Metz, mais j’éspere pouvoir le visiter dans mon prochaine séjour en France.
J’écris ça avec toutes les carte postales que je reçois, mais c’est vrai. Je ne sais pas comment je vais y arriver, mais une fois riche comme un fou, j’y serais!

Kristopher Geda 9/27/21 Kristopher Geda 9/27/21

falling in love with home (Indiana)

These three postcards arrived all on the same day from my penpal Nozomi, with whom I’ve been exchanging postcards for the better part of a decade. She moved to Indiana about that many years ago for work and has since really made a home of it, as she writes on the back of the Home Sweet Home card: “Home is where you can make it”! Her positivity and can-do attitude are among the many reasons I am pleased and lucky to call her a friend.

She also has excellent taste in postcards, as you can see.

Kristopher Geda 9/26/21 Kristopher Geda 9/26/21

love from Austria

These beautiful postcards from my penpal Janie one her trip to Austria to visit her family. The pastry postcard is chosen appropriately and on it she writes that her favorite is the apricot dumplings. Despite my lack of love for apricots, I remember really loving them too on my one trip to Austria (Salzburg, instead of Linz) years ago.

The art postcard is similarly perfect and the translation on the front and back (not pictured) is helpfully provided by my talented niece Caitlyn:

Linz is Scandalous It’s clear: Art in a public space like this installation has often provoked this. But that shouldn’t hinder anyone from being happy with their own taste. Just for yourself. Or with whomever it may be. Because: Linz is Linz.

Kristopher Geda 9/25/21 Kristopher Geda 9/25/21

Neuschwanstein (Germany)

I regularly send birthday postcards to my friends and their children where applicable. But I rarely receive responses from the children. This beautiful postcard is one such exception! Erin is not yet four but she sent this beautiful postcard from a recent trip she took. She writes (in handwriting suspiciously similar to that of her mother! ha ha):
*Dearest Kristopher and Andy,*
*I really wanted to see a castle to my mum and dad took me here. Summer holidays in Bavaria are not so bad!*
*Lots of love,*
*Erin xxx*
This postcard absolutely warms my heart, because I too love castles and who doesn’t love this one!?

Kristopher Geda 9/24/21 Kristopher Geda 9/24/21

in memory of Mélanie

This Tuesday, I received the news that my penpal and dear friend Mélanie had passed away earlier this month. Andy and I were both heart-broken to receive this news; although we’d only spend a few days with her, she left a big impression on us with her smile and laugh and gentle wisdom. I first received a postcard from her in August 2010 thanks to the luck of the draw that is Postcrossing. She had seen in my profile a desire for LGBTQ+ themed cards and sent me one from the Cabaret Mado, and that sparked a long correspondence. We bonded over our shared love of postcards and snail mail, over her love of Monarch butterflies and the delicate milkweed plant that nourishes them on their journey from Canada to Mexico. I was entranced with her career as a sign language interpreter, learning for the first real time about la Langue de Signes Québécoise.

In March 2015, Andy and I traveled first to Montréal where she lived and then to Toronto where I was attending a professional conference. Our first idea was to meet for a coffee or lunch, but we got along like a house on fire and ended up spending several days together. Mélanie invited us to go ice fishing, which was one of the coldest times of my life, but I was kept warm by her laugh and the hilarity that we enjoyed, both of us too icked out to bait the hook with a bucket of near-ice-cold minnows and forcing Andy to do it instead. We caught nothing that day but the flames of a friendship that would endure years and international borders.

In July 2017, she and her friend Isabelle visited us in San Francisco. We had a deliriously great time, showing them around the city and taking them on a trip to California’s wine country. I will always remember her delight in seeing the California poppy growing on the side of the road and in the parks. She secretly collected seeds to take home and diligently sowed them in her balcony garden the following spring, taking with her a memory of California.

My final chance to see her was in June 2018 when my father and I met for a week’s visit in Montréal. We saw Mélanie for dinner, which was all we had planned, but she accompanied us on our trip to wine country, in Quebec’s Cantons de l’Est. She was such an incredible sport with our wandering the backroads of Quebec’s wine country and stopping at strange restaurants and stores looking for postcards and other ephemera.

I had known a bit about her struggle with breast cancer, but she didn’t talk about it much. Instead, she sent me packets of postcards she had found from thriftstores. She wrote notes on the backs of each one — on post-it notes, so they could be resent! — telling me why she’d chosen each of them. We exchanged letters and postcards, messages, and videos. We exchanged our friendship and our love.

Mélanie Roy, age 47, left behind a bereft family and scores of friends, collaborators, and colleagues. Andy and I are very lucky to have counted ourselves among their number. We miss her dearly, already. I know I will think of her every time I see the orange and black flashes of a Monarch butterfly or the dancing orange petals of a California poppy. Above, I’ve uploaded nearly every postcard she addressed to me over the eleven years I knew her.

Merci infiniement, Mélanie, pour ton amitié, ton amour, et ton ésprit inoubliable.

Kristopher Geda 9/20/21 Kristopher Geda 9/20/21