Postcards, Part 1

Over the winter holidays I wrote seventeen of the more than seventy postcards that I'm currently committed to writing. I treated them like purge areas — places to jot down some ideas, explore a short topic, and see if anything sparks more prolonged interest. It is my hope that something in them goes into a longer, more significant piece of writing. In the meantime, I hope they provide you a peek into my writing process while also pointing a flashlight at a few new parts of the world. A few notes:

• About halfway through this process, I realized that I should ask the folks I'm writing these postcards (i.e. paying readers of this newsletter) for topic suggestions! I have not gotten to the submissions which included them, but I'm looking forward to it — and, as always, appreciate your feedback on subjects which deserve more attention.
• A few of the original handwritten postcards also included sketches or drawings, but I've transcribed just their text below. I might do this differently in the future, but for now you'll just have to guess at how much more wonderful they were with the pictures included.
• The text below is literally a transcription of handwritten notes. They were reasonably well-researched but not meticulously fact-checked, so take them as starting points for curiosity rather than definitive accounts.
• Paid readers can find a link to submit their addresses at the bottom of this email.

This issue of Scope of Work is only for paid subscribers like you. Thank you for being part of this process, and for supporting my work. Writing the notes below has felt like an experiment in connection—both with the ideas I’m exploring and with you, the readers who make it possible for me to keep exploring them.

Enjoy — and Happy New Year!

Douglas Fir has been known by at least seven scientific names, including:
- Pinus taxifolia
- Pinus douglasii
- Pseudotsuga douglasii
- Abies mucronata
- Pseudotsuga mucronata
- Pseudotsuga taxifolia
- Pseudotsuga menziesii <- Its current name
Tsuga is the hemlock genus, so Pseudotsuga is "false hemlock." Menziesii refers to Archibvald Menzies, a surgeon & naturalist who sailed on HMS Discovery with George Vancouver.