Today in Pen Pal, Em receives her first letter from Kaya

[asakiyume]

In her diary, Em writes

I got a letter! I got a letter today—it was in with a doctor bill and ads, a letter for me! And it came from a different country. The stamp has a picture of flowers and mountains.

Let's take a moment to appreciate airmail envelopes and lovely stamps:

airmail envelope

Source: here

datura on a stamp from Laos

Source: here

Indonesian stamp showing Tengger, site of four volcanoes

Source: here

And thinking of small post offices, and PO boxes . . .

postboxes in Maryland Maine [thanks for the correction, seaivy!]

Source: Going Postal blog

. . . took me to the Going Postal blog, described as "A photo journal of post offices and places." The blogger travels across America, documenting post offices large and small. Post offices are a little like libraries--special, wonderful places, so important for communities.

Comments

[duccio.livejournal.com]

That volcano stamp! And that post office in Maryland... the postmaster there surely knows everybody in town. There's one like that in Port Costa on the Sacramento River, across from Vallejo.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Oh, if you get a chance, I'd love to see that one in Port Costa.

[gracegiver]

What a neat website. I admire the photograher's project and am a bit jealous.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

It is definitely an excellent project and site!

[stormdog.livejournal.com]

Me too, on both counts.

[queenoftheskies.livejournal.com]

I love stamps from other countries. Those are lovely.

What a neat website! Thank you for sharing the link.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Me too, but then, I like US stamps, too. I buy commemoratives just so I can have the pleasure of looking at them when I'm paying bills.

[yamamanama.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's the last thing I'd expect on a Laotian stamp.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

The absolute last? Laster than a "we love Kissinger" stamp? Is it because Laos is very anti drugs or something?

[yamamanama.livejournal.com]

"We Love Kissinger" stamps are completely unthinkable.

Laos is a bit execution-happy when it comes to drug offenses.

[sovay]

Today in Pen Pal, Em receives her first letter from Kaya

Yay!

I like all of these images.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I'm very glad :-)

[ashlyme.livejournal.com]

Love that datura stamp. I used to collect them (stamps, not daturas). Little windows on the world.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Absolutely!

I never did collect them, but I enjoy them very much, and there have been some series of US stamps I've really loved. They did a series of clouds, some years back, that I liked so much I made little window frames around one of each stamp, so you could look out at all the different cloudscapes.

[c-maxx.livejournal.com]

Agree, Post Offices are a national resource. I uaw USPS as much as I can, and it's twice as fast as UPS for small-to-moderate size items. And I don't have to drive half way across town if they don't leave the item at my door...

People who chronically complain about the USPS should get a sock (the rolled up kind, not a fist).

[amaebi.livejournal.com]

The USPS performs marvels of connectivity at low cost and with very little error.

I strongly suspect the anti-USPS folks of objecting to a connected nation.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I think you may be right . . .

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Hee, I like your clarification there at the end :-)

Yes, I use USPS in preference to FedEx for fast single-day delivery when I need to for work: it's less expensive.

[stormdog.livejournal.com]

That really sounds like my kind of photography project. Nifty!

I just love the post office I'm often near in Evanston, near Chicago, with it's vaguely Soviet-nationalist statuary on the south exterior wall. There are so many neat post offices out there! I'll have to go look through those photos.

[stormdog.livejournal.com]

And you know, on the topic of airmail letters and interesting stamps: I once bought, on Ebay, a medal given to the people who worked on cleaning up after the Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine. I was just fascinated by the envelope it came in that was made out of some kind of plastic-like food container. I think it had tomato sauce in it once. It was turned inside out and folded and stapled into an envelope, and it had airmail stamps on it. I kind of wish I'd kept it, though it also still had questionable bits of what might have once been tomato sauce in it, which is why I didn't.

tomato sauce

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Wow, that really is an *actual* slice--or not slice, but smear--of the sender's daily life.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

One of the post offices featured on this blog had really excellent architectural details that I think of as Art Deco, though I'm not sure if that's accurate, and that same post office had a massiveness and stateliness that seemed sort of Soviet-heroic, too.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Delightful images--and what a cool website!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Glad you enjoyed, and yes, very cool!

[barry-king.livejournal.com]

By coincidence, this is where I left off reading the book last night!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I like coincidences like that. I started reading Love in a Time of Cholera (or maybe it's Love in THE Time of Cholera--I can never remember without checking, even though I'm *reading* the damn thing) the day after Pentecost, and the narrative starts on Pentecost. It would have been an even better coincidence if I started it on Pentecost.

Also, I'm very gratified that you're reading it.

[amaebi.livejournal.com]

Next time I head up to Fort Collins I need to take a picture of the Masonville post office for you.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I look forward to it!

[mnfaure.livejournal.com]

That post office photo makes me sad that I never took a picture of the small town office where my grandma lives; it was abandoned in favor of a soulless prefabricated building.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

That *is* sad :-(

Could you--hypothetically; I know you don't actually have time IRL--sketch it?

[w. lotus (from livejournal.com)]

I miss air mail envelopes and fancy stamps.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I love how tiny things like stamps can make something more fancy, more of a present.

[seaivy.livejournal.com]

that's not a Maryland post office
that's Maine
the abbreviation for Maryland is MD and our zip codes start with 21
the sign posted has an abbreviation of ME and the zip starts with 0

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Eeep! Thank you for the correction--I'll fix that right away. And that makes sense: the guy was traveling in Maine at the time, and it would have been weird to have a Maryland post office in the middle of travels in Maine.

[davesmusictank.livejournal.com]

What a wonderful site. Our local post office doubles up as a chemist and community centre.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Oh wonderful--I'd love to see pictures!

[davesmusictank.livejournal.com]

Will do, but having problem uploading pics to LJ at the moment.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I'll keep my eye out. LJ is sometimes cranky.