{"id":11457,"date":"2026-07-21T20:32:35","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T01:32:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/?p=11457"},"modified":"2026-08-02T20:05:29","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T01:05:29","slug":"cherubs-got-mail-old-fashioned-cards-and-packages-not-just-electronic-messages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/07\/cherubs-got-mail-old-fashioned-cards-and-packages-not-just-electronic-messages\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Cherubs got mail\u2019: Old-fashioned cards and packages, not just electronic messages"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">A birthday box lined with popcorn and filled with jewelry, makeup and Swedish candy addressed to Phoebe Measer of Los Angeles arrived on time for a cherub celebrating her 17th birthday 2,000 miles from home.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cI&#8217;m usually with my family on my birthday, so I was a little unsure about how it would be being away from my parents for the first time on my birthday,\u201d Measer said. \u201cIt was such a special birthday.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The packages that line the stage of 217 Fisk Hall in the afternoon are a highlight of many cherubs\u2019 days. Traveling hundreds or thousands of miles away from home can seem scary, but letters, care packages and Amazon boxes help make it a little easier.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">For some cherubs, like Pepper Chai of Alameda, California, the packages made up for airline snafus.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cMy mom had to mail me my toothbrush, my hair dryer, some clothes. It was a bunch of random things,\u201d Chai said. \u201cI got, like, nine packages on the first day, basically.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">But mostly, old-fashioned mail just felt special. Iris Mrosovsky from Queens, New York, received a surprise care package from her grandparents filled with hair clips, perfume, a notebook, a card, body wash, a Hawaiian T-shirt, a pen and a spray hand sanitizer. She received another package with baked goods from her grandparents a few days later.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u00a0\u201cIt was just really nice to get a package from them because I don&#8217;t see them too often,\u201d Mrosovsky said. \u201cI really miss them.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Shona Karp from Pennington, New Jersey, has received four handwritten letters from her parents with updates from home, good luck wishes and a graphic that said: \u201cI\u2019m your biggest fan.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cI love letters, like, that&#8217;s my love language, so receiving handwritten notes is so fun and cute for me,\u201d Karp said. \u201cIt makes me feel like I&#8217;m at home\u2026 It&#8217;s super sweet.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Gmail can\u2019t deliver candy, but the U.S. Postal Service can. Boxes and letters from family and friends helped cherubs feel the love from afar during the four-week program.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":336,"featured_media":11279,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[660],"class_list":["post-11457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus"],"acf":[],"authors":[{"term_id":660,"user_id":336,"is_guest":0,"slug":"mcpadden26","display_name":"McCartie McPadden","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/84341f8238f629e6413f12dfd3860bd06a5a9183944ad29e0926caffaae6a948?s=96&d=mm&r=g","author_category":"","user_url":"","last_name":"McPadden","first_name":"McCartie","job_title":"","description":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/336"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11457"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11457\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12954,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11457\/revisions\/12954"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11457"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=11457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}