Marin/Seascape (Sweden)

This terrific postcard comes from a former client who is now living and studying in Sweden. The image itself is “Marin/Seascape” (1894) by August Strindberg, and I really love the scrubby surf!

He writes that the “summer days, which are all I’ve had so far, reminds me of the chill days in California.” I love the play on words between “chill” as relaxed or cool in temperature!

les espadrilles basques (France)

Voici une carte postale que j’ai reçue par Postcrossing avec la recommendation de lire “L’invention de Paris” par Eric Hazan.

Cassoulet de Gascogne (France)

Cette carte postale est arrivée avec les nouvelles que mon ami Dominique et son BF sont allés manger chez un restaurant, plus ou moins, comment ils avaient fait avant la pandémie. Beaucoups de viticulteurs, petits producteurs, etc. sont venus de toutes les régions françaises. Il semble avoir été un après-midi très agréable.

Voici une recette (écrite en anglais et espagnol au dos) pour le cassoulet, un des plats les plus connus de la France. J’en ai fait déjà une version, mais pas l’authentique qu’on voit ici. Il faudra trouver avant des petits magrets confits…

Death Valley (California)

Do I need to say that Death Valley is in California or is that common knowledge? Nevertheless, I’ve never visited! This comes from a very lovely family of friends who hosted us for a delicious taco dinner last month. I think this was their second-to-last camping trip of the season, so I’m a bit envious of their visit.

I was just remarking to Andy last night about how amazing California is - a state of true extremes! Death Valley is the lowest point in North America (282 feet/86 meters below sea level). Just 84 miles/136 km away is Tumanguya (Mt. Whitney), which is the highest point in the continental US at 14,505 ft/4,421 m! Death Valley is also the site of the highest recorded temperature on earth (134°F/56.7°C on July 10, 1913)! Not very far away is the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest, home to Methuselah, the oldest living non-clonal being on the planet (4,853 years old)! Nearby, you can find groves of the giant redwood, the largest living trees on the planet. These are not that far from the coast redwood, a species that includes the tallest known living tree at 380 ft/115 m (which is taller than the Statue of Liberty, including the base)! What an incredible state I am fortunate to live in!

dhosa making (India)

This postcard arrived so quickly from India (sent on 25 September) and is one of the few I’ve received from that large, very populous country! Some day I’ll travel there to eat all of the delicious food. Until then, there are these fantastic postcards.

Side note: one a scale of one to ten, how much do you think I should get a chef’s toque like this to complement my chef’s coat?

schöne grüsse aus Mannheim (Germany)

I do love a good, long-exposure night shot and this postcard from Postcrossing does not disappoint. Even better are the hand-drawn views of Hamburg Town Hall and Lake Hennessee, which apparently dried up once and allowed the sender to walk on the lakebed!

city planning (Portugal)

This postcard from Postcrossing depicts Park Eduard VII and Liberty Avenue in Lisbon, Portugal. I haven’t visited this country, yet, but it’s very high on my list. Seafood, wine, beautiful art and architecture - what’s not to love?

greetings from China

This week brought a few more Postcrossing cards, this one among them. It’s from a high school student in Fujian who has really beautiful and neat handwriting in both English and Chinese!

Nature of Russia (Oregon)

This striking image comes from my dear friend Linda in Portland who writes “At least the places I’m not going look exotic on the cards!” That’s the kind of intelligence and humor that drew me to her in the first place. I’m so grateful for the great cards and of course her strong friendship. I’m so lucky to count her among the many people who have touched my life and helped me generously and patiently along the way.

Balkan views

My good friends Aleks returned from a visit to Serbia and Montenegro and brought me these beautiful postcards! I’ve long wanted to visit this corner of Europe so this is additional motivation for an upcoming trip!

Metz (France)

Voici une carte postale de mon ami Dominique qui est retourné à Metz pour visiter la ville. J’ai eu un ami à lettres il y a très longtemps qui a été également un assistant de langue anglaise au même temps que moi. Mais il a été placé à Metz, donc j’ai lu assez sur la ville. Néanmoins, Dominique me raconte plein de choses intéréssantes sur la ville et la gare qui est énormement belle.

unknown image from New Jersey

This postcard arrived via Postcrossing. It’s a pretty view and makes me want to know more about it. Unfortunately, nothing beyond the photographer is written on it.

West Lake, Hangzhou (China)

This terrific postcard comes from the famous West Lake in the city of Hangzhou in Zhejiang, China. In fact, I have visited this very site back in December/January 2019/202 when I traveled to Shanghai and Hangzhou. I gave a lecture at Zhejiang University and I truly enjoyed my trip to China. It was beautiful, the food was excellent, and the people were very friendly!

Incredibly, this postcard took 138 days to arrive! I’m not sure where the holdup occurred, but I think part of it may be from our side. The postcard came with a rubber band on it, which is typically how our mail is delivered in bulk when we’ve requested a mail hold from the USPS. It took us some weeks to get all of our mail delivered after our trip in July/August to Seattle, so I wonder if this was found at the bottom of the mail carrier’s bag? Well, that wouldn’t account for the entirety of the hold up, but part of it at least.

quiche lorraine (France)

Voici deux cartes postales qui sont arrivées ensemble, comme un cadeau! En première, une carte postale de Metz, autre ville que je n’ai jamais visitée. Mais la deuxième carte est une recette pour la quiche lorraine, qui est décrit parfaitement par Dominique au dos. Au début, il était un plat aimé par la peuple par sa simplicité et frugalité, mais maintenant il est mangé par tout le pays, surtout en groupe car il est facile à préparer, a découper, et à servir avec une salade. J’en ai mangé avant, et j’ai bien préparé des quiches avant, mais je ne sais pas si j’en ai préparé une comme celle ci. Au dos, la recette en français et en allemand. Je vous réproduis la version française ici:
Recette de la Quiche Lorraine

Préparation: 30 mn. Repos: 3h10. Cuisson: 50 mn.

Pour 4 personnes: 250g de farine, 160 g de beurre, 5 oeufs, 175g de lard de poitrine fumé, 2 dl de crème fraîche, noix de muscade, sel poivre.

1. Préparez d’abord la pâte: mettez la farine en tas sur la planche à pâtisserie. Ajoutez une bonne pincée de sel. Creusez une fontaine, mettez-y un oeuf entier et 140 g de beurre ramolli à température ambiante et divisé en petites noisettes.

2. Travaillez d’abord du bout des doigts puis avec la paume de la main, jusqu’à ce que vous obteniez une pâte souple et homogène. Roulez en boule. Laissez reposer 10 mn.

3. Au bout de ce temps, abaissez la pâte au rouleau et garnissez-en une tourtière préalablement buerrée avec le reste du beurre. Repliez le bord extérieur en cordon, piquez le fond avec les dents d’une fourchette, couvrez avec un torchon et mettez au frais pendant 3 h au moins.

4. Coupez alos le lard en petits bâtonnets et faites-les dorer à la poêle, sans matière grasse.

5. Pendant ce temps, battez les oeufs en omelette dans une terrine, avec la crème fraîche, un peu de sel, beaucoup de poivre et un soupçon de muscade.

6. Disposez les lardons soigneusement égouttés sur le fond de tarte et versez la crème aux oeufs par-dessus, sans déplacer les lardons.

7. Faites cuire 40 à 45 mn à four assez chaud (200C, thermostat 6/7). Démoulez sur un plat rond à la sortie du four et servez.

Et pour le vin: Côtes de Toul, Riesling.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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!?

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.