Postcard Club February 2026
- Feb 17
- 3 min read
In February, members received a winter scene postcard from the Wissahickon Valley Park in Philadelphia. Premium members received a typed letter and photo collage in addition to their postcard. You can find both below. If this is something you'd like to receive in your mailbox, you can sign up here! <3 I won't be sharing every month's letter, but wanted to give you an idea of what you're signing up for.
Happy February, postcard friends! The heavy snowfall from January is still on the ground. There’s still land untouched, the soft animals not yet able to break through. Footprints made weeks ago, frozen in time, and I use them to cross the street. The city has done an incredibly poor job at clearing the snow, with bike lanes and crosswalks and bus stops turned to mountainous terrain. But we keep moving, keep climbing, the world is still turning.
I have two fun projects in the works. I am currently working on a photo zine, highlighting the pictures taken and lessons received last year. I’ve enjoyed going through my gallery of over 400 scans, picking and choosing what I think is worthy to be included. What do I want to remember from last year? What story do I want to tell and where do I begin? I could start from the beginning, that April on a FujiFilm disposable, or I could group the pictures by color, theme, or feeling. Do the rolls need to be seen together, as a thread? Or can I break them up, cut the negatives from their sleeves and glue them together to build a new roll? This exercise, much like scrapbooking, is giving me the opportunity to build the stories I want to remember.
I’ve been meticulous about memory collecting for as long as I can remember. I was always the one with a camera in her hand, writing long letters to friends to memorialize the moments shared, editing videos from my camcorder so I can create the memory reel I want playing in my head when I think back to those times. I have an inkling that this deep desire to document comes from moving so much when I was younger. I had an awareness at a young age that all moments were fleeting, and even the tangibility of a home or a country could be ripped from me at any time. I’m still building my narrative, still writing my life story.
The second project is a community zine. This winter was memorable, with Philadelphia seeing its highest snowfall in ten years and record breaking low temperatures, and I watched through my Instagram feed as my community experienced and captured this. I saw people sledding down the Philadelphia Art Museum steps, the Broad Street Boys blasting Olivia Dean as they made donuts in the snow, the chairs in parking spaces of people who spent hours digging out their cars. I hope, with enough submissions, this zine will be a way for me to connect with photographers in Philly, and create something that feels like a collective memory.
This month’s postcard was taken in the Wissahickon Valley Park, a day after the first snowfall in January. I took myself out for a walk, Bon Iver singing through my headphones that “January ain’t the whole world,” and enjoyed my world encased in snow. It would have been a pretty shot regardless, but with the pup in the water, the entire scene silent except for the soft ripples in the water, make it one of my favorites.
Sending lots of light and love, and the hope of Spring just around the corner.
Love,
Claire
In addition to this month's postcard and letter, I included a digital collage I made with one of my photos and a poem that I've been returning to lately during this winter season. While I'm not a religious person, I keep folding the words in my mind:
You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
...
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
This winter has felt long and dark, and I wonder where the limit of my longing sits. What does it look like when I get there? I imagine that when I arrive, I will just keep going. It reminds me of a line from Bon Iver's song Short Story:
Oh, the vibrance
Sun in my eyes (It gets brighter)
'Til you can no longer see (And you're not lonely)
And you are no longer growing (To face up)
That January ain't the whole world
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