I was talking to a woman from OCAD University in her 20s today about postcards. She says that she hasn’t sent a (print) postcard in at least five years. She said that she she just sends an email or posts a photo to Instagram or Facebook when she’s travelling.
We discussed whether postcards were going to die out. It certainly would seem that way – but I’m here to argue that postcards are the best souvenir from a trip and that we all should keep sending them!
You may think you don’t have time to do a postcard, but below is a postcard I bought and mailed during a short stop on a guided tour of a city in Venezuela. It was a day-trip from a cruise we were on, so there was no free time. But we saw a post office and went to action in just a few minutes and had sent five postcards.
To date, it remains one of the Collection’s very few South American specimens. And what an interesting specimen it is:
Here’s the back side:
Postcard caption:
“Yanomami Indians practicing the “yopo” ritual” [I had no idea what this image referred to but it appears to be a way that indigenous people inhaled a narcotic substance.]
Postcard message:
“Hola from Venezuela! We’re on our whistle stop tour and 20 minutes to go pearl shopping. Instead, you get a postcard. I even missed free rum samples to do this. Ciao”