From the Hilltop Howlers Blog:

You know us, we don't start a conversation without having some sort of action to go with it. So to that end, we want to bring attention to our Sister City Commission proposal, and help enrich the city at the same time. Our plan is this: a postcard exchange.

How we envision it is that we would encourage folks from Montgomery to send postcards to one fixed place in Pietrasanta/other cities, and they would do the same in return (we are calling our spot Location X for now). On our end we'd display the postcards we receive at public facing space in Location X, so that anyone could come by and see them. Hopefully our Sister City would be able to do the same. The goal will be to focus on postcards that showcase our respective local art and artists, but any sort of postcard that highlights the two cities would be fair game. This could be a one off sort of thing, or something ongoing, depending on what works best for them (we are open to either). 

We plan to raise the money to buy the postage for anyone who sends them from our end (it's currently 1.45 per postcard stamp). Our initial goal is to start with 100 stamps, so we need to raise at least a 145 dollars for this project. All postcards that are ready to be mailed to our Sister City would be dropped off at Location X, and each week we would stop by, gather them up, stamp them, and then drop them off at the post office. In theory, our Sister City would at the same time be mailing postcards to Location X, who would be gathering them up and displaying them in such a way that people could come see them. Would they be put in a nice binder on a plinth for people to thumb through? Maybe placed in the window? Perhaps arranged on a large bulletin board? The options are varied, and would be worked out with Location X.

We would also love to look into organizing some postcard swaps between school children between the cities. So if we get enough donations of postcards/stamps we will look into coordinating that as well. So if you are a teacher that would be interested in helping with something like that, please reach out.

How can you help? In one of several ways!

1. Donate money, or international postcard stamps. Just let us know you want your monetary donation to be set aside for stamps.

2. Are you a potential Location X? Reach out to us! We'd love to hear your proposal on how you would like to display them at your location. We might look into doing multiple Location X's, for each connection we develop, so we are potentially open to multiple would be Location X's.

3. Donate Montgomery themed postcards, or postcards made by local artists.

4. Get your postcards ready for mailing, and plan to participate! 

Let us know what you think!