Good morning. This week, a group of Democratic senators held an invite-only Pride event at the Kennedy Center, the Supreme Court upheld South Carolina's ban on Medicaid funds for Planned Parenthood, and Lalo Schifrin, the composer of the Mission: Impossible theme, died at age 93.
Far-flung Postcards
by Hannah Bloch, senior editor on NPR's International Desk
I still have the first postcard I ever received — sent by my grandparents, when I was almost four years old, and showing a picture of the transatlantic ocean liner they were aboard on their way to Europe. “Do you like it?” they asked.
I did and still do. I love sending and receiving postcards, and always have. We live in an era when instantly sharing lots of pictures is the norm — and I like doing that too. But there’s something special about a postcard and the way it delivers bite-sized observations and flying thoughts, anchored by a single image in a rectangular frame.
Jackie Lay/NPR
NPR’s Far-flung Postcards, launched last month by the International Desk and Visuals team, are inspired by this tradition. Every Wednesday, you can look forward to a new postcard featuring a photo (or in special cases, a looping video) and a few lines from journalists on NPR’s International Desk. They're based in 15 countries and led by chief editor Didi Schanche in Washington, D.C., covering the world on all of NPR's platforms — including radio, podcasts, digital and Instagram. These postcards capture moments from the international team’s lives and work around the world, giving you glimpses of places, details and scenes that have delighted, surprised, sparked curiosity or moved them.
So you’ll find, for example, Mexico City-based correspondent Eyder Peralta coming across a busload of dogs being driven home from obedience school in his neighborhood. The rich history of a bullet-riddled Syrian hotel inspired Jane Arraf to send this postcard after she recently revisited it for the first time since being a guest there in the 1990s. And South America correspondent Carrie Kahn shares her newfound obsession with the blue-footed boobies she encountered while on assignment in the Galápagos Islands.
Senior editor Virginia Lozano, on NPR’s Visuals team led by Nicole Werbeck, is responsible for the look and feel of these postcards. She oversees the photo and video elements and works closely with NPR’s senior creative designer Jackie Lay to develop the distinctive design for these pages — an homage to the classic and timeless charm of old-fashioned postcards.
“We wanted the visuals to bring a sense of warmth and playfulness, which Jackie captured beautifully with a design that anyone would be excited to find in their mailbox,” Virginia says. “While I have the honor of collaborating with many talented photojournalists around the world, for this series we invited the correspondents to submit their own images. The goal was to offer one more layer of connection to the voices and stories listeners and readers already know and love from their favorite correspondents.”
We call these mini-dispatches Far-flung Postcards not only because they’re coming from all over the world, but also as a nod to how NPR’s international correspondents are informally known in-house. Years ago, editors on the International Desk referred to our “far-flung correspondents” — and over time, they came to be known as “far-flungs” and eventually, fondly, as the “flungs.”
International correspondent Emily Feng, whose postcard from Taiwan you’ll see when it’s published this Wednesday, tells me: “I’m always sending little snapshots and videos in texts to family and friends, to share a little bit of the wonders (and frustrations) of the reporting process. It feels special to be able to share them with NPR readers, too, now!”
A Far-flung Postcard “allows us to showcase those moments of grace, joy and curiosity that sometimes don’t make it into a news story,” Ukraine bureau chief Joanna Kakissis says. Her postcardon beachgoers craving normalcy amid war in Odesa was published this week. “We are observers not only of the river of news,” Joanna says, “but the life on the riverbanks. These little moments can tell such an intimate story.”
We hope you enjoy these little moments. And we hope the postcards will let you get to know our international team – and the far-flung places they live and work in – a little better.
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A familiar word before H-O-T words
NPR
It's time for the Sunday Puzzle! For today's on-air challenge, NPR Puzzlemaster Will Shortz will provide three words starting with the letters H, O, and T. For each set, you provide a word that can precede each of Shortz’s to complete a compound word or a familiar two-word phrase. Test your skills here. Check this page later to hear the answers, or catch them live on Weekend Edition at 8:41 a.m.
This week's online challenge comes from Andrew Chaikin of San Francisco. Think of a famous movie star. The six-letter first name, when said out loud, sounds like a brand of a certain object. The six-letter last name is someone who uses this object. What movie star is this? Submit your answer here and you could win a chance to play next Sunday's on-air puzzle.
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