Dick Paetzke - Postcards: Little letters from life

Sheer entertainment with wit and wisdom

Postcards: Little Letters from Life by Dick Paetzke warmly depicts the humor and surprising drama of "everyday" events seen with new eyes and a keen appreciation for human foibles and triumphs.
A longtime Seattle advertising writer, Paetzke, turns from selling to telling with an eclectic collection of illustrated essays written from home and abroad with humorous, poignant, piercing, nostalgic or deeply affecting insights into otherwise familiar realities.

"Literal postcards with -Wish you were here- scrawled on the back, can't really describe the wonders of the world," he says. "I don't mean the Taj Mahal or the Pyramids," he says. "Rather the wonders of life itself and its great and small experiences. It's too easy to stumble through life and never really look at them close up. I wrote Postcards to illustrate how ordinary things can matter in an extraordinary way."

A number of the book's 28 "postcard" chapters were written in southern Italy where the author and his wife enjoy a second home on the Adriatic. Lovers of things Italian will relish the book's chapters on art, food, driving, social behavior, cultural practices, and purely Italian mores that can't be found in any tourist guide. That said, Postcards is not a book about Italy, but about life-which happens anywhere.

Paetzke includes chapters that will delight dog owners with the same kind of charm and emotional reward they found in John Grogan's tale, Marley and Me. New grandparents will revel in his experiences with a relationship he never dreamed possible. Readers with a taste for nostalgia will have their memories lovingly stirred by the author's warm remembrances of youth in another time and place. Airline passengers will grin and nod knowingly with his revelations about air travel and modern aircraft. Couples will laugh out loud together at his hilarious look at the eternal differences between the sexes and feel the deep impact of inevitable life changing events.

Postcards: Little Letters from Life is written in a fresh, friendly voice that never becomes pompous, pretentious or saccharine, even though several stories involve strongly emotional and moving events. An anthology of diverse and unrelated experiences rather than a connected narrative, readers can choose from the book's ala carte menu of short chapters in any order and start and stop where they will. It invites enjoying a satisfying chunk at a bus stop, on a plane, or at your desk with the book and an equally tasty sandwich. Readers like the style and format:

"Funny, warm and loving..."

-University teacher, Seattle, Washington

"Deserves a large audience. It's a book of kind and wise observations. Life's stuff that matters."

-Artist and film producer, Anchorage, Alaska

"Made me howl with laughter."

-Business consultant, Milan, Italy

To author Paetzke, both the humor and the relevancy of the stories grow out of "taking the reader through the looking glass where, by looking at others, we can catch a glimpse of ourselves. "He points out that Walt Kelly said it another way in his Foreword to The Pogo Papers: "There is no need to sally forth, for it remains true that those things which make us human are, curiously enough, always close at hand. Resolve than, that on this very ground, with small flags waving and tinny blats on tiny trumpets, we shall meet the enemy, and not only may he be ours, he may be us."