Postal Crossings

In my immersion in the world of postcards, I stumbled upon a very interesting website: Postal Crossings. In their own words, “send a postcard and receive a postcard back from a random person somewhere in the world!”. For every postcard mailing I sign up to send, a "random person" is then assigned to send a postcard to me.

Notice the number that isn't a zip code next to the "USA" in the postcard above. Each mailing is assigned a number. It is written on all postcards sent, and when I receive a card (this is my first), I enter the card and number into Postal Crossing as "received". There are all sorts of cool metrics and maps, showing where I've sent/received postcards to/from, images of postcards that are flying around the globe, and the number of days it took any given postcard to arrive from one place to another.

The above card was sent to me from Anna in Taiwan of a painting by a Japanese artist, Chinatsu Ban. Underwear and elephants are prevalent in much of her work, and a New York Times review of her work states, "Much of today's art suffers from terminal cuteness, so it is not surprising that Chinatsu Ban, a talented newcomer from Japan, just barely escapes with her life."

Fun to learn about something I knew nothing of, and even better to have it occur in a random way.