Saturday 25 September 2010

My Snailr Project Postcard has arrived!

Back in August this year, Anna Rickard, who writes a blog as Little.Red.Boat announced she was going to undertake a new project.  She is a British journalist who lives in San Francisco and had always dreamt of seeing more of the States via the medium of the railway.  And she was going to do it properly, a big loop of 7000 miles.

She also had the inspired idea of making it more interesting for herself (as if it wouldn't be interesting enough!) and her valiant readers by sending out real proper postcards to people with observations and comments about her journey written on them, rather than using the more modern and immediate communication channels of email and/or Twitter.  It's all explained properly here.

She asked for people to volunteer to receive the postcards and I immediately stuck my hand up like the big girly swot that I am, going 'ooh, ooh, Miss, choose me, Miss!!'.

I received my postcard this morning!



You can click on the pictures to embiggen them, but I'll tell you what it says.  It's postmarked 'Oakland CA 946' and dated '21 SEP 2010' (shouldn't that be SEP 21 2010?)

On the side with my address there's a very cute little teeny tiny photograph of the Plains and the text reads: "Some times, the Plains look majestic and the skies unending.  Most of the time, however, they were..."

On the side with the map on, around the second photo which has been damaged in transit so it looks like a pillar of ice or very precise tornado, the text continues: "...all much more like this --> Brown on brown on grey.  Grey on grey.  I am over the Plains."

Anna also created a website for the Snailr project which has more photos and snippets of information, including the rail crash.

And this is why blogging and the Internet in general is A Very Good Thing - it creates connections between complete strangers who absolutely get why you're doing something, when everyone else around you thinks you're a looney.

I think the Snailr project is a brilliant idea and I wish I'd thought of it...

1 comment:

peevish said...

So true, Mrs. Jones. Great project, indeed. Happy Postcard Day!