Britain in the Sixties: The Other EnglandVintage 1963 Postcard advertising a Penguin series book by Geoffrey Moorehouse. Mailed to me by CamilleReads While I'm certain it's been stated (and possibly overstated) by scores of people in the past, I’ll say it again: the internet is an amazing thing.  It's so ubiquitous at this point, I doubt people even stop to think on it anymore… the overwhelming vastness of it… the equalizing effect on knowledge…. the endless seas information about everything… and now – seamless connections to people from every corner of the world.

My first experience with the internet was through a disk I requested out of the back of a Popular Science magazine.  A pre-teen equipped with the latest 486 Hewlett Packard (thanks Mommie!), I plugged in my phone line, popped in the 3.5 diskette and entered the world of NewYorkOnline.  Almost immediately I was offered the ability to chat with real-life people in New York, and that very minute my first online connection was made – a chocolate cutie from the Bronx.  I say all that to say “Social Media” is far from new, but the opportunities for real connections have never been more abundant.

That lengthy, jumbled collection of thoughts in the first few paragraphs was really just a segway to this: I got a dope postcard in the mail yesterday!  A random offer by an Instagram connection I have, resulted in a real, physical piece of correspondence.  It’s not that serious, I know… but it’s very powerful to me.  How often does anything “real” come from our activities online?  How often can you actually touch something that hands many miles away have touched?  Read thoughts someone actually wrote with ink and pen… in their handwriting and not some pre-selected font on a screen.  I won’t drag this thought out too much, but I will end with this:  SEND ME A POSTCARD.

I’m going to start collecting them, and swapping them, and sending them, and creating them, and sharing them online.  A little creative spark was made with this idea, and I love the idea of connecting with people in a tangible, old school way every now and then.  So I welcome anyone interested to take on this adventure with me.  Send me a vintage, quirky, funny, historical, handmade, home-printed, any kind of POSTCARD, and I’ll send you one back.

I'm not sure what this will become, but I'm excited anyway.

Jerrold Mobley

P.O. Box 43222

Atlanta, Georgia 30336

NOTE: So the dope postcard I received was from this super-cool Librarian name Camille, and it's a vintage 1963 ad for a old Penguin series book called "Britain in the Sixties: The Other England" by Geoffrey Moorehouse.  It's a duotone image with layout by a well-known British graphic artist names Richard Hollis, who's actually still alive and producing great work.