Probably the best reason to sort my postcards is I get to look at them again, and be reminded of the sender and the places depicted, and whatever was going on when that person thought of me for a moment, took the time to write something down, and entrust the object to a worldwide system that moves such objects from one place to another. That can be a lot to pleasantly unpack. I don’t know why people have mostly given up on postcards (except for the price, see below).

The cards Ed sent were particularly varied in all those regards. Just leafing through the stack, I find cards from Alaska – a lot of those – Hawaii, American Samoa and other parts of the United States and the Pacific, Canada, Iceland, the UK, various other European countries, Jordan, Turkey, Mongolia, South Korea, parts of Africa and so on.

Also the British Antarctic Territory, where he went in ’07 to be pecked at by a penguin. The postcard itself isn’t that great – an unimaginative picture of the cruise ship and some penguins, and probably the only one available to him – but the stamp is the real treasure, along with the postmark.

I like these Jordanian stamps too, found on a 2003 card depicting Petra.

From Iceland in 2002, before everyone and his moose discovered the place (not that that would keep me away). Ed and Lynn were early adopters when it came to visiting Iceland.

Better than any of the stamps is a domestic postmark from 2010. One I’ve noted before.

From the incredibly remote Pribilof Islands for only 28 cents (and why is it 53 cents only 14 years later? Explain that one, Mr. Joy).

“One card depicts Saint Paul Island, one of the group, and the other card sports Wrangell, which is on the mainland,” I wrote at the time. “Both postmarks depict Saint Paul Island, home of Aleuts, seals and sea birds.”