They've got mail (Week 7)
"Please Mr. Postman, look and see. Is there a letter in your bag for me?"
The thrill of getting a letter in your mailbox was well understood by the Marvels when they wrote Please Mr. Postman in 1961. The Beatles loved it so much, they performed it regularly in The Cavern in the early 60s. More than a decade later, the Carpenters turned it into a #1 hit. But enough already with the music history.
The point is, in this day of impersonal emails (which include the equally impersonal ecards) and 140-character tweets, people still experience a jolt of joy when they open a mailbox to discover something from a real live person inside. That's the feeling I was going for in my lucky seventh week of Goodness.
Since it was Family Day week, I decided on a family-themed course of action. Every day, I would create an entirely fresh postcard using all the digital tools at my disposal, and send a card to a different family member. That would have mail zipping across Canada, and filling mailboxes from Vancouver to Toronto and Edmonton in between.
The journey began at a website for Avery Canada, which is well-known in the paper/card/label business. I chose their postcard template, which sets you up for printing double-sided cards by simply dropping a photo into the template and adding a few words front and back. One neat touch is that I could personalize the cards with a date, and could literally go from snapping a pic to date-stamped postcard in the mailbox in about 30 minutes.
On the first day, I made a card for my mum in Edmonton. On it, I put a picture of her grandson that had actually been taken on Family Day, at Fisgard Lighthouse in Victoria. To me, that trumps a standard bouquet of flowers by a factor of about 10. Over the following days, I sent more pictures of our local surroundings to my sisters who are also in Edmonton. Toward the end of the week, I got a bit more creative by doing a little extra photo work and sending some words of inspiration to our daughter Holly at the University of Toronto.
In the not-too-distant future, my little exercise might seem truly quaint. With the cost of mailing each postcard at one fat dollar, it certainly isn't an economically sound idea. Throw in the fact that Canada Post continues to stumble along toward total obscurity, and the whole idea may one day be just the stuff of time capsules.
Still, who doesn't love opening that mailbox and seeing a real live letter or postcard inside? Let's try to keep on being human for as long as possible.
NEXT WEEK: No coffee!
The thrill of getting a letter in your mailbox was well understood by the Marvels when they wrote Please Mr. Postman in 1961. The Beatles loved it so much, they performed it regularly in The Cavern in the early 60s. More than a decade later, the Carpenters turned it into a #1 hit. But enough already with the music history.
The point is, in this day of impersonal emails (which include the equally impersonal ecards) and 140-character tweets, people still experience a jolt of joy when they open a mailbox to discover something from a real live person inside. That's the feeling I was going for in my lucky seventh week of Goodness.
Since it was Family Day week, I decided on a family-themed course of action. Every day, I would create an entirely fresh postcard using all the digital tools at my disposal, and send a card to a different family member. That would have mail zipping across Canada, and filling mailboxes from Vancouver to Toronto and Edmonton in between.
The journey began at a website for Avery Canada, which is well-known in the paper/card/label business. I chose their postcard template, which sets you up for printing double-sided cards by simply dropping a photo into the template and adding a few words front and back. One neat touch is that I could personalize the cards with a date, and could literally go from snapping a pic to date-stamped postcard in the mailbox in about 30 minutes.
In the not-too-distant future, my little exercise might seem truly quaint. With the cost of mailing each postcard at one fat dollar, it certainly isn't an economically sound idea. Throw in the fact that Canada Post continues to stumble along toward total obscurity, and the whole idea may one day be just the stuff of time capsules.
Still, who doesn't love opening that mailbox and seeing a real live letter or postcard inside? Let's try to keep on being human for as long as possible.
NEXT WEEK: No coffee!
That's a good-looking postcard! Is that a professional model?
ReplyDeleteAs you are well aware from having birthed, housed, clothed and fed that "model" for 21 years, he is certainly not professional. I will grant you good-looking, though!
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