Hello Postcarders, Bioregionalists, Poets, et.al,

I am writing you today on behalf of Cascadia 2050 to invite you to participate in a special project honoring the 20th Poetry Postcard Festival. We hope you will be able to start your fest a little early and send us one extra card before the postcard season gets fully underway.

This summer in the Cascadia bioregion promises to be a special one for a few reasons. Of course, it is the 20th Poetry Postcard Festival. In addition, our precious bioregion will play host to several games in the FIFA World Cup, and we will have the eyes of many people from all around the world on us. In thinking about this, Cascadia 2050 decided we wanted to take advantage of this opportunity to show the world how we imagine our home, our bioregion, might look in the year 2050 and beyond.

To that end, Cascadia 2050 invites you to send us poetry postcards that will be collected and displayed on young trees around Rainier Beach and the greater Seattle area in the lead up to and during this summer’s Poetry Postcard Fest and FIFA World Cup. Normally we do not give out prompts, but since this is a special occasion, we felt it appropriate. On these postcards, in your visual art and poetry, please respond to the following question, “How do you envision your home transforming into a garden by the year 2050?” In this way, each postcard tree will be a “scale model” of a more sustainable version of our homes, cities, and bioregions come 2050 and beyond.

As I mentioned, the genesis for this project is in the desire to broaden our shared human imagination of what our homes might look like as gardens by the year 2050. That is to say, more sustainable places that participate in the reciprocal cycles of nature. A well tended and well arranged garden will begin to create its own network of relationships, and we hope to participate in that process. As many indigenous groups on this continent know and teach, if you plant corn, it is very beneficial to also plant beans and squash nearby. The three sisters help each other grow.

This project was inspired, also, by two visionaries of the early 20th century. They almost certainly never knew each other, but they both imagined a world beyond what they saw in front of themselves. The first is Norman Bel Geddes, an inventor, tinkerer, and designer who, for the 1939 New York World’s Fair, was employed by General Motors to create a scale model of an East Coast, USA city that had highways. The exhibit was called “Futurama,” and it had a huge cultural impact. For the first time, many people could imagine a world where a car was not a luxury but an item available to the masses. (Of course, we now see where that has gotten us…ick. But the impact on the cultural imagination was massive!)

The second, and closer to home for us Cascadians, was a Japanese immigrant named Fujitaro Kubota. In 1907, Fujitaro arrived from Japan by way of San Francisco, eventually moving north to Seattle and in the early ’20s founding the Kubota Gardening Company. But he did not want to garden only for others, he also wanted to garden for himself. So in a time when Japanese immigrants were not allowed to own land in Washington State, he managed, with the help of a friend, to secure a plot of land that we know today as the beautiful Kubota Gardens. The thing was, at the time he secured the plot, most other people saw it as a wasteland. Far south of the city; nearly clearcut by the logging industry, with the exception of a few twisted trees unfit for the lumber mill; and left boggy by the creek running through it with no trees to drink up its excess, no one thought land had any use left in it. But Fujitaro saw a garden. And through hard work he made his vision a reality. Then, after he was incarcerated during WW2 and the garden ran wild, he did it again. It was this vision of a garden growing out of what others considered a wasteland that inspired us so deeply, and the incredible dedication and perseverance he displayed in realizing that vision.

By putting your postcards on these young trees around the city (which we hope to plant after they are displayed!), we aim to create a scale model that can have an impact on our shared imagination. And to do accomplish that, we need you to contribute your visions to this project. We will display all cards that we receive by June 8(ish). They will also be collected into a digital booklet. More information, including our address, can be found at this link, as well as here:

Cascadia 2050

4701 SW Admiral Way #186

Seattle, WA 98116

USA

With gratitude for your time and attention,

Cascadia 2050