Postcard #212: Brethren

Text: 

Hello fellow RN. Operating room RN here. As much as I would like to dive into a tirade about covid/vaccination/layoffs/redeployment etc etc….I do not know how welcome it would be. So, I discovered post crossing on the trip to Spain when I was meeting up  at meetups and couchsurfing.com meets... And somebody told me about it when They learned I was buying and sending "weird" postcards. I get a lot of cards at antique shops, estate sales, eBay  (buying "lots" +400 cards). I really only want odd/weird ones. Estate sales are pretty good. You mentioned you were from Pennsylvania. I hope you like the card. I have family out in Murrysville PA. I worked at a summer camp out in Fort Hill PA. Anyway. Stay safe. -TM

Sent via postcrossing to bjw1220. She is a nurse. I kept myself from gushing and I guess I kept my conversation more grounded...

Postcard #210: Mandate

Original Text:

Monday  April 29th 1974. 

Postmark: US postal service Florida 327 may 2nd 1974 p.m.

STAMP: blue 10 cents United States We Hold These Truths Jefferson stamp

Original Text: 

Hi (?)

On our way to Key West. Then we'll go to DD Thursday. Having a great time seeing many interesting sights.  Saw this tree.

Helen.

Text:

 October 1st is the 1st day of administrative leave for the unvaccinated staff at the hospital I work. It's unpaid. This is the 1st time I've ever witnessed a mass layoff. My feelings about it have changed numerous times in the past few months. I can distill them in a few different ways. I wish they would just get the vaccine. I am so tapped out of sympathy/empathy nowadays.  Yet I work with a lot of nurses. Last estimate there were about 12 staff members leaving.  If a few of them I'm close to… one of them I consider a very good friend.  Which then in turn makes me wonder… am I a good friend? I don't know anymore.

SENT Via Postcrossing to Flocke2010. Who wanted touristy cards. One weird touristy card...coming right up! So yeah. Nearly 800 people kindasortof lost their jobs this week at the hospital system that I work. I could fill a dozen postcards with different types of feelings that I have about this whole thing.

Postcard #200: GME Thingamajig...

Jan 24, 2021

US-7292676

CUTTY SARK

Nobody ever asks for ad cards. Here is one of mine I am not sure how long I have had it.  It's copywritten 1999.   It's Sunday, I have to go to work tomorrow like most people. I kind of want to call in sick for stupid reasons...I invested money in GameStop over the past few weeks. It's rumored that it is going to be hit by a major short squeeze over the coming days/weeks. I am existing in a state of nil-loss right now. Like Schrödinger's cat. The money is sort of down now. I have not lost anything. I don't know if it will make money and with work...I will not be able to check my phone for updates. I will have to work in a state where I could have made money or lost much of it.  I don't think I wanted to make dumb levels of money.  I heard that investors were betting on the failure of GameStop and that feels like a shitty thing to do.  I heard of an opportunity to catch a bunch of wealthy people doing something dumb with a lot of money and I wanted to be apart of history.  Fucking money-making assholes making stupid levels of money....while I work taking care of people with covid?  Seriously.  WTF? Then trying to bankrupt a videogame store that I am fond of? - TM.

I should probably start by saying my first ever disclaimer:  I AM NOT SOMEONE YOU SHOULD TAKE INVESTMENT ADVICE FROM...I am an amateur investor and I mess around with some extra money I make with extra shifts.  I think the stock market is a big gamble and I am investing in companies I believe in...That being said...

Sent via postcrossing to alexaufdembetzenberg.  He wanted an AD card.  I don't much care for scots whisky.  I even stuck a little sticker on it too.  He wrote back...kinda weird reply:

Alexander wrote you a message:

“Cheers for your card. That GameStop thingmajig didn't end too well, did it? Best Wishes and Stay Healthy!”

Which just sort of feels like a weird reply.  Like...people playing long stocks on GME have already lost?  Maybe Alexander works in finance?  Maybe he is a short-seller? Maybe he hates GameStop?  I don't think the GameStop thingAmajig has ended yet.  Until they pry the stock out of my cold fucking dead diamond hands, right?  I like the stock.  I like the message it sends.  I like GameStop.  And I fucking hate corporate greed. 

His reply... It soooooort of reads like: gloating? But being married to someone for all intents and purposes is from Europe.  I know I am sometimes too sensitive to subtle things from non-americans.  Like getting a False-Positive uhh Negative?  I want to say something is getting lost in translation.  

Postcrossing says of the 111 cards I have received...19 of them are from Germans.  So if I have three piles of postcards that I can say are positive, neutral, or negative... I think am going to file this one under a negative experience. So of all my negative experiences, I have had through Postcrossing of which I count 3.  Two of them are German.  I just need a few more data points.  

I need to start filing my positive experiences.  Maybe that is what I am going to do from now.  I am going to start favoriting cards based on the experience I had in receiving or sending them not based on if I like the postcard image they sent.  It will make my wall a bit confusing.  Oh well.

Let me close by saying if you are reading this and do not want to get involved in the stock market or anything...go here...and become a proplayer.  Stick your finger in some hedge-funders eye.

Postcard #198: "It's All Your Fault"

 The front reads "IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT."

Text:

I've only given about 100 vaccines and for the & most part those I've vaccinated are pretty excited about it. I have had conversations with people reluctant with getting it though. I think part of the problem is the foundation for explaining the vaccine to people. Too many people liken this vaccine to something out of a horror movie or apocalypse movie instead of its true genre relation. That of science fiction, this vaccine is an incredible feat of Science. A virus, our bodies have not really combated before... getting tagged" by a protein taught to our immune system... so that our body can identify the interlopers. It is something out of god damned Star Trek and it's fucking amazing and should be respected and admired. Not likened to walking dead. T.M.

US-1289849

This was sent via Postcrossing to afcbird1.  I've had this card for a while.  It was one of my personal favorites.  The look on her face is just awesome.  Like "you're goddamned right it's all my fault!" And I guess I wanted to make sure it would go to someone who would appreciate it.  But doing that is hard.  Assuming appreciation.  She gave off a progressive vibe and wanted COVID cards.  I did not even think such a thing existed.  She has not logged on in 4 days.  So right now in my head... it exists in a quantum state that she liked it AND thought it was just another card she got from Postcrossing.  And if you are reading this...don't act like you don't get card that you are completely unimpressed with.  Eh.  I need sleep.  Or coffee.  

Postcard #192: "essential"

 

Postcard flavor text:

HOWARD HUGHES SPRUCE GOOSE gathers  speed prior to take-off November 2, 1947. The giant aircraft is now on display in its new dome in the Port of Long Beach, California.

ID: US-7153947

"essential" www.minormumbles.com

I am considered an essential worker (nurse). I never have used that word to describe myself. Essential. It's a dumb word that means I have to work, and others can't regardless if they can / should/ or not.  I am happy/proud as it is a nice distraction from the insanity of national politics and dissociative delusions of certain political party whims.  Opinions carry more weight than science somehow. Oregon has some of the most restrictive social distancing laws, we have some of the Lowest death/incidence rates of Covid... But people are still dying here. People are being hospitalized in intensive care regularly. So then a disconnect somewhere. Pretending "this will never happen to me" feeling.  When I drive home I see plenty of people at bars together without masks so god knows how many people are at home "pretending" together.

I had to trim this card to get it in the envelope. Sorry.

Sent via postcrossing to Lario.  They wanted postcards of fighter places.  I feel like I had postcards of stealth fighters or at least a blackbird.  But I am in the midst of reorganizing my cards.  Only now do I regret starting this task because now I can not find anything.  I need to take all my cards and throw them into three piles.  

1. Postcards that might actually see the inside of a mailbox.  

2) Interesting Postcards that are too damaged to mail unless given some TLC.  

3) Postcards that need to see the inside of a wastebasket.  

So I sent a spruce goose postcard...I think this is the second one this season.  Hughes failed attempt at a wooden bomber because of the availability of wood over metal.  

Postcard #190: "Extra Space"

 

Post card flavor text:

11/20/20

THE NATIONAL CHRISTMAS TREE

This spectacular display is presented each year on the Elipse between the White House and the Washington Monument.

Fifty small trees represent the states of the Union. The trees are lighted from the White House by the President in a ceremony officially starting the Christmas season.

POST CARD

The hospital system work for has 5 hospitals attached to it. This week two of these hospitals are parking refrigerated morgue semitruck trailers in their parking lots.

This is to prepare for the next few weeks. We broke 1000 deaths this week. Happy Holidays! What a time to "alive". Happy New Year from Portland Oregon. 

-TM

www.minormumbles.com.

ID: US-7151855

Sent via postcrossing to Macel. I was supposed to mail this...BEFORE thanksgiving.  But Yeah. Life.  The holidays.  Getting Sick.  The sad thing is we are on the verge of breaking 1,500.  In 2020, there were 1,490 Oregonians that died of Covid.  So between thanksgiving and the new year nearly 500 more people died.  What a damn tragedy.  They should be tearing down confederate memorials and erecting memorials to the pointless lives lost to the illness.

Postcard #188: "Typhoid Tommy"

FRONT TEXT: 

When sickness knocks a person out

Then every thing looks blue,

The brightest colors 'neath the sun

All take a darker hue.

But don't you care, the sun still shines,

And with its strengthening rays

You'll soon be back to health, we trust,

And to more joyous days.

Reverse:

HELEN A. CASTERLINE, Publisher

EDEN, N. Y.

Pandemic 2.0. I was redeployed from being an operating room nurse to help staff related Covid 19 items...infections, hotline, training and of Covid vaccines. So on Saturday [this would be Dec 12th?] I started to feel... off. By

that night I was making an appointment for a clinic visit. I had nightmare of being some asymptomatic Typhoid Mary, infecting the entire Employee health department just before vaccine rollout.  I was wearing

mask at home, sleeping and using a bathroom separate from my wife and child.  By Sunday night I had a 103.2 F fever. Coughing Fits. Thick globs of coughed agony brought headaches. Headaches/ fever that felt as though my eyeballs were being cooked in their sockets.  Loss of appetite with insomnia.

And 2 rapid swabs and I PCR test later apparently it was not Covid.  I am not among the chosen few to receive the vaccine. They hope to have all those who handle patients, vaccinated by February. We will see...

www.Minormumbles.com

US-7244881

I sent this card to ojninni who is a wonderful human being who says she will be happy with whatever card I sent and whatever I write.  Blessed are the few!  I sent her this card...which after writing it realized with all the demands that people make no one is going to want an antique card with a poem on the front that essentially amounts to a get well card.  This card was picked up in a recent ebay lot.  I kept the word "Sample" written there in what looks like old black fountain pen.  I kinda liked it.  Especially since it mentions feeling like all you could see was blue.  One time (and I think I wrote a postcard about this) I got so sick with such a high fever that I felt I could only see in blue.  Everything was in blue hues.  I thought I broke myself with how sick I had become.   

So in after game analysis I think I had a combination Tonsilitis and viral bronchitis maybe even bordering on pneumonia.  My tonsils and throat were swollen and sore.  It would explain the fever and difficulty breathing.  I am still coughing occasionally.  Weeks later.  It scared the shit out of me.  I think the fear of it being Covid it worse (stress, cortisol, immune function blunting) This is merely fear based in that I could hurt someone else if I had it and think its a morally justified fear as a parent, nurse, and empathetic human being.  This pandemic has broken me.  

I mailed this card and the next few cards out with my family holiday card.  Which is essentially a Happy new Year card.  So what if its a little late?  I will end up putting a one cent stamp on them even though they are all going to be mailed in an envelope.  I still destroyed them by writing stories directly on them and they are still going to travel.  But there is a reluctance on my end of mailing a card INSIDE an envelope.  Like I am not being true to the reality of my mission or my blog since it will not actually get postmarked.  MY GOD TOM.  FUCKING STOP.  JUST MAIL THE FUCKING CARD ALREADY.