Hello friends! I hope you are having a splendid November. I have been reliably informed that this year was the 150th anniversary of the post card, so I thought it would be fun to make a quick post of the ones I've received recently. Then, as I struggle to breathe properly thanks to this wretched case of the flu I'm struggling with, I'm going to give you a quick review of the new hard-cover notebooks that Walmart, of all places, has started carrying. Who knew that "wally-world" would jump onto the pen and paper renaissance?
Here's 9 of the nifty postcards I've been sent over the last few months, with the sender's names and addresses omitted for privacy, of course. You know who you are, ha ha. This is just a bit of fun, to show off how fun and versatile a post card can be. Since I took these pictures, I also got a great one from a pen pal in South Dakota, and one from Italy, that I could not lay hands upon when I took these photos. That bugs me to death! I must have (A) left them in my car, (B) lost them to postcard thieves who Maggie couldn't catch in time (she's getting old, you know), or (C) I hallucinated altogether in a Benadryl and cough medicine high. I'm *really* sorry about that; I'll have to remedy that when I locate them/catch the thieves/go into post-flu rehab. I spread these out on my kitchen table and photographed them in no particular order.
We begin with a gruesome, remorseless, man-eating shark, as any good list of warm and friendly post cards should. :-) This one was sent by a dear pen pal in West Virginia, with appropriate postage to match (sorry; I took no photos of the reverse side of any of these.) Did you know that sharks lose their appetite when giving birth, so they won't eat their own young?? If only the office managers at nearly every job I've ever had, ever, were quite so considerate!
This one came from another great pen pal (who, sadly, can't see this blog due to technical difficulties) from Wisconsin, while on vacation in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The excerpt on the back says, "Au Train was one of the first settlements in Alger County, in the heart of the Hiawatha National Forest located in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The Au Train River flows into the south shore of Lake Superior and was used as a logging run well into the 1880s. It is now a favorite spot for swimmers, kayakers, sun bathers, beachcombers, and fishermen." Made me quite jealous to get this one. :-)
This one is also a favorite! It was sent to me from France by a wonderful pen pal who is from Italy, while she spent the summer in Corsica. Translated from French, the excerpt on the back of it says, "South Corsica. The Archipelago of the Sanguinaires paradise of seabirds and dolphins." She was living the dream when she mailed me this. :-)
Remember the terrible, awful, no-good, very-bad day I had at the zoo earlier this year? You can embrace the fullness of my humiliation by clicking here to revisit that dark and disturbing tale. (It should open in a new tab in your browser, if you do.) Well. Same dear pen pal in West Virginia thought that was oh-so-funny that one day, I got this gem in my mailbox. :-) Oh, har har. Most telling in these stark truths about the evils of goats, who are not to be trusted, is the blurb that says "they pee on their own heads to attract females." Take that in any manner you see fit. But, I will say this: I petted that wretched back-shooting highway robber on his wretched head, and might even have said "aw, cute", thus unwittingly rubbing my fingers in goat scalp pee. Goat. Scalp. Pee. Thank you oh so much for that, West Virginia Pen Pal. Ha ha :-)
THIS postcard is flat out awesome. My brother went on vacation in Tombstone, Arizona this past September, and mailed me this from the Tombstone, AZ post office it's own self, and it has a big, bold Tombstone postmark on the back. He bought it at the infamous Bird Cage Saloon, where he also drank a dozen hard-bitten, grizzled cowboy banditos under the table, then had to shoot someone for cheating him at cards...and still had time to mail me this card. And that was probably before breakfast.
This beauty also comes from my awesome pen pal in West Virginia; the 3rd one in this list from her. She is the one who first queued me into the fact that October 1, 2019 was the 150th anniversary of the post card, and put an appropriate New Horizons Probe U.S. postage stamp on the back of it. Again, I won't reveal names & addresses to protect the privacy of my pen pals, but this lady has a knack for sending letters and postcards with superbly appropriate postmarks, postage frankings (the stamps), and themes combined together. I won't give out her name, but you know who you are...and I thank you! :-)
This one is from a pen pal and artist extraordinaire in Fresno, California. She would probably like it known that she would rather live in Toad Suck, Arkansas than Fresno, which I'm told has qualities in common with a demilitarized zone. But I digress. She went on an arts & crafts type road trip in central California this summer, and found this nice card at Harmony Glass Works in a tiny (population 18!) town called Harmony, CA. That sounds like a nice, relaxing road trip to me!
Here's another one from the superb pen pal in Wisconsin, who relaxes in style. She and her dog Neville spent some quality time here. The excerpt on the back reads, "Escanaba, Michigan has a picturesque waterfront and is home to Sand Point Lighthouse, a large yacht harbor, causeway drive to the beach and a spacious park area, providing inviting recreational facilities for residents and visitors."
Last but not least... A POSTCARD FROM HELL! :-) I've got a great pen pal who lives in the Cayman Islands, and she tells me that one of the more curious places on the island is the small town of...Hell. The place even has it's own post office, and tourists love to mail home postcards from there with a "Hell" post mark. It actually says "Greetings from Hell" on the back of this. :-) When British Commissioner Cardinall visited the place 100 years ago or so, he saw the stalagmite type rocks and remarked "this must be what hell looks like"...and the name stuck.
Now, about those notebooks.
I have a frightful weakness for blank notebooks. They accumulate on my bookshelf, waiting for me to find just the right use for them, so they don't feel "wasted" on something silly. Stockpiling blank notebooks is in itself "silly", but we're not here to judge me. :-) When these caught my eye while I was, sadly, inside a walmart a while back (I needed some blank manila folders, and it was late at night) I was curious right away. Walmart apparently has started carrying a brand of notebook called "Exceed"; jumping on the coat tails of the pen & paper revival, if you don't mind me calling it that. They've got them in 2 sizes and 2 paper weights: an A5 and a slightly smaller size that doesn't conform to any standard I'm familiar with, and in a paper weight of 100 gsm and 78 gsm (grams per square meter). The price on these are about $9.96 USD for the A5 one, and $6.96 for the other one. The price varies a bit between the two paper weights, as well.
I finally caved into this appalling addiction and bought one of each of them a while back. For testing purposes, I started with the 78 gsm one to see how it would stand up to fountain pen ink.
The first page gives you a simple space to write your name & address, or other pertinent information. These come in a hard-cover and soft-cover version; I was primarily interested in the hard-cover ones. They come with 2 ribbon page markers, a flat, expandable pocket inside the back cover, and an elastic closure strap.
To give you an idea of the size of this "odd-sized" one, here it is in my Bond Travel Gear journal case, with the A5 notebook it normally has inside it removed and replaced with the Exceed book. It's the same height, but narrow enough that you could put a big pen in there, like my Conklin All American, and still zip it closed.
Just for the sake of comparison, here's the same Bond cover with the original A5 notebook in it. I suppose this narrower size could be useful, in it's way.
It's ruled (a dot-grid is also available) at exactly 6 mm apart. The paper is a bit toothy, but given that these are made in China, I wasn't expecting Tomoe River style awesomeness. You gets what you pays for, and all. And they do NOT lie flat! The binding in the spine seems pretty solid, though. Oh, and if you laugh at my freckled hand with the red hair, a unicorn will die. So, don't.
I wrote the above masterpiece of prose with that Conklin All American "Old Glory" pen, which has a Goulet Pens Medium #6 nib in it (the original nib had "issues") and loaded with Conklin 120th Anniversary Blue ink in it. My cheap digital camera probably failed to do the blue color any justice. But...did it bleed through this 78 gsm paper from China?
...It did not! Here's the back of that same page. I can't even make out much in the way of show-through. Now, given what type of ink you use, or how wet your pen is, that might change.
And if I'd thought to bring the darn book with me in my bag when I took off to work today with my Chromebook, I could tell you how many pages the thing has. A smarter blogger would have done that. This blogger has the miserable, accursed flu, however, and is signing off. Oh, and once I saw this quite satisfactory performance...though I would have enjoyed slightly wider ruling (a personal preference) and a spine that actually lays flat, I was happy with it, and left the 100 gsm A5-sized notebook on the shelf, to make friends with the other lonely blank notebooks piled up alongside it.
I'm going home, and going to bed. I hate being sick.