September 2005:

We found the water by accident. It flowed sweetly through the high desert, over pieces of quartz and our toes.

January 2006: Begin the story in a bar.

This postcard included an excerpt from Umberto Eco's book Focoult's Pendulum.

Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra. Then it suddenly flips over, pinning you underneath. At night the ice weasels come.

--Matt Groening

June 2006:

This postcard combined with July 2006 is titled Meet Me at the Jetty. It culminated in a group of 15 postcard recipients meeting at the Spiral Jetty in the Great Salt Lake.

December 2006:

This postcard included an excerpt from Wallace Stegner's The Spectator Bird.

Homesickness is a great teacher. It taught me, during an endless rainy fall, that I came from the arid lands, and liked where I came from. I was used to a dry clarity and sharpness in the air. I was used to the horizons that either lifted into jagged ranges or rimmed the geometrical circle of the flat world. I was used to seeing a long way. I was used to earth colors -tan, rusty red, toned white- and the endless green of Iowa offended me. I was used to a sun that came up over mountains and went down behind other mountains. I missed the color and smell of sage-brush, and the sight of bare ground.

January 2007:

This postcard included an excerpt from A Confederacy of Dunces.

February 2007:

This postcard was delivered in a red envelope with this Bon Jovi lyric: "Shot through the heart and you're to blame. You give love a bad name." It functions as a "pop-up" card.

Dad makes this every year, and Grandmother's lettuce plate is always reserved for it. I'm not sure why Dad feels the need to make the red jello star with pineapple -nobody eats it though we all anticipate it. But it occurs to me that it is a precisely calculated feet of engineering -the gelification point where the star holds its shape but still slides from the mold in one single wobbly masterpiece, plus the melting point must be considered.