NOV 15, 2019 – Yesterday we were drafting this Cardie Newsletter to let you know we have a nice selection of Holiday Cards. Then came the sad news from Santa Clarita …

My first thought was to pray for the families facing this all-too-common horror and loss. Next thought was of a friend’s five-year-old … when I’d asked healthy and happy Veronica recently what she’d done in her kindergarten class that day, she’d said, “We had a practice Code Red,” and went on sipping her soup while I sat dumbstruck.

Listening to a report shortly after this new shooting, I heard a still-shocked Santa Clarita school official cut through her sadness to say, “We need gun control. To everyone who doesn’t think so, just know that it’s only a matter of time that it happens by you.” Her pained and powerful voice reminded me of Cardie Gloria Dougherty who, you may remember the story, after the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting on Valentine’s Day last year, wrote asking us to encourage our Cardies to make their views on gun violence known. “We all need to speak out,” Gloria insisted, and signed her email with, “FYI, Sirhan Sirhan was a neighbor, walking by my front door on his way to kill Robert Kennedy. That was in 1968; I’ve been at this a long time.”

It was Gloria who inspired us to create our Please Listen postcards, which we still supply FREE to everyone who will send them to their elected officials. Thanks to Gloria and the many conscientious, committed Cardies who stepped up and used their voices, 35,000 Please Listen postcards have reached lawmakers nationwide.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have only lovely Holiday Cards on our minds today? But our world — and our Veronicas — call on us to make and send cards for life’s joys And challenges. Your free supply of Please Listen postcards is waiting.

~ jodee stevens
cardthartic founder & chief creative