Art of the Postcard

Some of you may have heard about the global call for postcards by the Postmaster in Cornelius, Oregon.  Cornelius is a small town in western Oregon, surrounded by farmland. The countryside is really beautiful, but it seems that there are no postcards of Cornelius, at least not yet.

Kerry, the Postmaster, put out this call for postcards from all over the world. In return, he offered to reciprocate with a postcard from Cornelius once they made one and had it printed. He expected to get 40 or 50 cards. Instead he got about 500, and they are now on display in the post office. We decided to take a drive out there and see it for ourselves. What an incredible variety of postcards, many beautiful ones, some funny ones, and mailed from all over the world. It really makes you smile.

I am delighted that a Postmaster would have the initiative and the imagination to undertake something like this. I have never seen anything like it in a post office and I have to wonder why. Post offices are usually cold and impersonal places (the decor, though not necessarily the staff), but yet they are also central hubs of the community. They just don't act like it.

I can't think of a more effective way to stimulate interest in sending mail. And yet it's ironic that this event was largely publicized through social media and online venues, the very things that threaten the existence of real mail. It's sort of like promoting reading with television ads. Anyway, it worked.

Here are a few more pictures of  the display, including my favorite card with a stenciled likeness of Elvis (the other side was equally beautiful.)

And here's the Postmaster himself. What a great guy! You can find out more about the history of this project by clicking on The Art of the Postcard.

A Tribute to Our Favorite Mailman

I have never mentioned why I host this postcard blog. I love postcards and I've been collecting them for a long time, but this blog also helps to preserve and honor the memory of John Korinek, a man who delivered mail, collected all things beautiful, and was well loved by friends and family. He died on this day last year, and he is greatly missed. Many of the postcards I post were once his. He would be pleased to know that people are looking at them and enjoying them. I made the postcard below...just one, and sent it off to Kerry, the Postmaster in Cornelius, Oregon, who is doing a special Art of the Postcard exhibition at the Cornelius post office. John would have liked that a lot (except for having his picture on  a card!)

Whenever John called our house, he would always say, "This is John, the mailman." Sometimes we would remind him that he had retired several decades ago, but it didn't matter. Mailman had become part of his identity, for better or worse.

John had a studied appreciation for craftsmanship, beauty, and history. In the 1960s, when old buildings, including churches, were being demolished as part of urban renewal, John would do whatever he could to salvage the precious works of devoted craftsmen. When he asked the crew what they planned to do with the stained glass windows, more often than not the answer was, "If you can get them out before we start demolition in the morning, they're yours." Sometimes he would work through the night to salvage windows, as he did at the First Baptist Church of Binghamton (shown below) when it was demolished (postcard image courtesy of www.CardCow.com)

John also believed that any job, no matter how small, deserved to be done well. We miss his warm heart, and we will forever appreciate his strong principles and sense of honor.