The Internet has obviously changed all that, with near instantaneous electronic delivery of messages. It's been a whole new world for decades now.
But despite being someone you can easily reach via Twitter (@jenking), Jennifer King campaigns for the written form of communication from senders all over the world. She has amassed quite a written following and gets mail with foreign postage all the time.
Our relationship began when the common interest in reading and writing obituaries was shared. Ms. King is a retired operating room nurse who segued into a career in of journalism, positive news and obituary writing.
Through Twitter she takes great delight in posting photos and video of the wildlife that manages to live in Australia, indoors and out.
She lives in a suburb of Brisbane on the East Coast, not in the wilds of Western or North Territory, Australia. No Outback living. There is a significant human population around her.
Twitter followers have been treated to I think video of a kangaroo bouncing down her street, snakes in the garden, kitchen, and other parts of the house. Spiders and frogs of course make their surprise wanted and unwanted appearances all over the place.
I've teased her about this to the point that just recently she mailed me a postcard of a photo of three frogs so that I could have the experience of three frogs in my letter box. We've traded Christmas cards once, mine getting to her a few months after I sent it. Australia is really Down Under when it comes to the United States Postal Service. I have no idea when the card left the good old U.S.A., but it was months before it arrived in her mailbox. Her postcard to me, Air Mail, only took two weeks to reach me.
And what a card it is. Aside from the photo of the three frogs on the front, Jen's astounding block print handwriting is revealed. For someone who may not have been a doctor, but still worked in the medical profession, it is a breath of legibility. My print is barely decipherable. The script: fuhgeddaboudit.
Postal service in Australia is in more of a death spiral than it is here. And it is comparatively expensive. The cost of her air mail postcard to the States was $3.50 Aus, converting to $2.35 U.S. My Christmas card to her, first class U.S. Postage, was $1.45 U.S., converting to $2.16 Aus. That's nearly a dollar difference more expensive for Australians to send mail to us than us to them.
Years ago collecting stamps was a pretty active hobby. I myself got started on collecting stamps when my father gave me a small sack of foreign stamps that in the '50s probably cost $1.00. It held stamps from all over the world, still mounted on the square of the envelope they were ripped from. It got me started, eventually building up a U.S. Postage collection that I haven't now looked at in decades, sitting in the garage rafters. By the '70s I had pretty much quit the hobby.
We know there have been many photo and video essays on the wide variety of home mail boxes in use. Ours is a "King of Sweden" model that we have relied on for decades, mounted next to the front door. If it looks new, it is, because we recently replaced it two years ago.
It holds a great deal. When our oldest daughter was getting Vogue, Elle, Vanity Fair and other huge magazines filled with photo shoot ads, they fit completely inside the letter box, staying dry, but straining the bottom with their considerable weight when dropped in the by letter carrier. Once I had to make repairs.
We now have AI computers communicating, so to speak, with humans, sometimes making a bit of vague sense. What has of course changed is the delivery method of the word.
The written word is certainly not going away. Not with Jen around.
http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com
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