A Few Facts About Greeting Cards — From All Of Us At NPR With Father's Day this weekend, many Americans are bound to make last-minute trips to find that perfect humorous card for good ol' Dad. Not my roommate. She has a stockpile of greeting cards that she buys not for a specific occasion, not to send to a particular person. She purchases cards just because. Or maybe you buy cards like my mother. "Remind me to get a card for Aunt Tracy," she'd say as we strolled into the mall when I was a kid. Then she would spend what felt like hours perusing the shelves, looking for a card with the perfect touch of corny. But whatever your card-choosing strategy, here are five things you may not have known about greeting cards. 1. Americans buy a ton of greeting cards While greeting card sales have gradually declined since the advent of e-cards and other digital modes of communication, Americans still buy about 6.5 billion cards each year. The most popular card-giving occasions are for birthdays and Christmas, according to the Greeting Card Association. Women buy 80 percent of all greeting cards. 2. Pets' names often appear on cards You've probably received many cards with messages like this: Happy birthday! Love, Mark, Joan, Bobby, Susie and Taffy. Many people view their pets as if they were part of the family, so it makes sense they would include pet names on cards. An American Animal Hospital Association survey found that 70 percent of people include their pet's name on greeting cards. 3. The name "Hallmark" was inspired by goldsmiths The ancient Chinese would send cards to celebrate the New Year, as did the Egyptians, who would mark papyrus scrolls with messages. In Europe, people began giving handmade paper cards for Valentine's Day around the early 1400s. But cards really took off in the 1850s as the printing press made card production quicker and cheaper. And that little company called Hallmark? The Hall Brothers card company was founded in 1910 by Joyce Clyde Hall and his brother in Kansas City, Mo. They crafted picture postcards for about five years until sales declined, and they began making greeting cards in response to people's desire for more private communication. The word "hallmark" was used by goldsmiths to describe a "mark of quality." It fit perfectly, and the company name was changed in 1928. Hallmark was also the first to display cards on shelves standing up. Before that they were placed in drawers. 4. The Louie Awards recognize the best cards annually The International Greeting Cards Award Competition, or the Louies, have recognized the best cards each year since 1988. The Louies are named after Louis Prang, a German immigrant who is credited with producing one of the first lines of Christmas cards in the U.S., in 1875. Submissions to the Louies are blind-judged on originality, impact, design excellence, sendability and value, and winners are announced in May during the National Stationery Show (yes, that's a thing) in New York City. The Card of the Year in 2014 featured a picture of a dog with a red velvet cupcake wrapper in its mouth. 5. Millennials reject greeting card technology Millennials are also eschewing e-cards and seeking a feeling of nostalgia in card-giving. As a result, fancy, often pricey cards from sites such as Etsy are gaining popularity, perhaps in response to digital communication exhaustion. Older generations, however, seem content to send e-cards. Or if you're like my roommate, you love a spontaneous trip to Papyrus. http://www.npr.org/2015/06/19/415801900/a-few-facts-about-greeting-cards-from-all-of-us-at-npr Samantha Raphelson

Mille Baiseurs xoxoxo - postcards from the 1920's

I'm currently cleaning up an "antique" image for a birthday card I'm going to make for my Etsy Shop "The Reimagined Past."

It's a wonderful old french Birthday card.

 

 While looking on the internet to make sure "bonne fete" also means Happy Birthday in french, I sidetracked and found an interesting website, called "Mille Baiseurs" - referencing the note written on the Birthday card.
https://millebaisers.wordpress.com/

It literally translates as "a thousand kisses", but is a traditional way to sign a letter "Lots of love" or "XOXO" in French.

It also refers to a particular genre of postcard - French (usually) postcards from the 1920's, usually of a romantic nature, but they can also be found for a  variety of other occasions - New Year's, Christmas, Easter and "come hither" looks! Today they look (in my opinion) pretty kitschy, but they are fun!!

  

 

 

 

 - first three photos were found on the Mille Baiseurs webpage -

Jack Fogarty and John MacDonald served with the Army’s 98th Evacuation Hospital in World War II’s Pacific Theater from 1944 to 1945, where they spent “many an hour sitting around in a jungle clearing,” according to Fogarty, who is now 92 and living in Teaneck, New Jersey. The two soldiers developed a tight friendship as they worked and relaxed together.

While stationed in the Pacific Theater in the 1940s, Jack Fogarty wrote letters to his best friend’s wife in Queens, NY, and illustrated the envelopes. All photos courtesy of the National Postal Museum

Fogarty became close friends, too, with John’s wife, Mary MacDonald, who remained home in Queens, New York. Fogarty had met her before he and John shipped out, and he struck up a correspondence with her that lasted until he and John returned home. An amateur artist, Fogarty illustrated his envelopes to show Mary daily life around the camp—jungle hikes, beach swims, evenings in tents under gaslight.
“My drawings were an expression of love for the MacDonalds,” says Fogarty. “I loved them and they loved me in the best of terms.”
The letters sealed a lifelong friendship between Fogarty and the MacDonald family. Mary MacDonald died in 2003; her husband in 2007.
Meg MacDonald, one of the couple’s four daughters, recently donated 33 illustrated envelopes, eight letters and a watercolor made by Fogarty to the National Postal Museum, which is currently exhibiting them online.

Many of Fogarty’s illustrations depict daily life around the evacuation hospital.

We spoke with Fogarty recently about his time in the War, his art and his enduring friendship. An excerpt of our conversation follows.

When did you first meet Mary?
I met Mary in 1943 when John and I were stationed in an evacuation hospital in the Yuma, Arizona desert. She came to visit John in the first few months we were there. All the soldiers went into town whenever we had time off, so I bumped into John with Mary in town one day. John introduced us and that began our friendship. I started corresponding with her after we went overseas, and she was very loyal, a very good friend. Since I was so close with her husband, she liked hearing about my relationship with him and our time in the service.
What made you decide to illustrate the envelopes you sent her?
I’ve always drawn—all my life I’ve had a talent to paint. I had another dear friend from high school, a cartoonist, and he and I exchanged letters when we both joined the service. He would illustrate his envelopes, so I would do the same. That started it. Then when I was in the South Pacific Islands in World War II, John started a weekly bulletin just for the 217 men in the evacuation hospital. He did the editorials, and I did the artwork on a mimeograph machine. That got me doing more illustrations, so I started drawing on the envelopes to Mary.

 

Tell us about the illustrations.
They illustrated what was happening at the time. They showed the places we were at, the fantasies we had. They were an outlet, and I had the talent to make them. And they meant so much to Mary, because they showed her husband’s life while they were separated, and she loved him so much. It’s funny, too, because a lot of the drawings would be considered chauvinistic now—you know, jokes about women and so forth.
What was your relationship like with the MacDonalds back then?
It’s difficult to describe, because it’s such an important part of my life. It’s a love relationship. John and Mary were just wonderful, wonderful people. They were friends, and friendship is very important to me. We had the same values, as far as our faith and our family. And John was a mentor to me. I’m a little slow in my growing up, shall we say—I’m still a little naïve. John was a married man, and worldly. He had been a reporter before he joined the service. We would just discuss everything, discuss all the topics that young men would discuss at the time. It was an exchange of values and thoughts and experiences.

A few years ago, Meg MacDonald told you she had found your letters and illustrations among Mary’s things. What was it like to be reunited with them?

I was completely flabbergasted that Mary kept them. But I was flattered. It was a very warm feeling to know that Mary had kept them all these years. It’s strange reading the letters now, looking back on the past. It happened, and yet it’s incredible that it did happen.

Many young people who see your illustrations online will never have known a world without e-mail. What do you hope younger viewers take away from your letters?

My niece is a teacher, and a while ago she has a fellow teacher who invited me in to talk about World War II. I brought souvenirs from the war, my patch, and cap, and pictures, and things from Japan. It was the most rewarding experience. The children were so attentive and interested. They have no idea of the world as I knew it, and yet they were so excited to realize a world they didn’t know. They were learning about something other than Lady Gaga or all these things they need to have today, iPads and so forth. I hope these letters do the same for others.

A Memorial Day Memory: Love From the Pacific Theater

A 92-year-old WWII vet who recently donated his wartime letters to the National Postal Museum reflects on a friendship that lasted a lifetime

By Paul Bisceglio

smithsonian.com May 24, 2013

 

 

The Renaissance of Stationery

The write stuff: The renaissance of stationery

DESPITE the digital age, stationery is once again flying off the shelves in the UK. Ruby Millington looks at why the pen is mightier that the email...

By Ruby Millington

PUBLISHED Sun, May 10, 2015

On Valentine’s Day a few years ago my friend Sally received a card. She was pretty sure it was from the man she’d been dating for six months or so but she couldn’t be certain because, she realised, in all that time she’d never actually seen his handwriting.

Their communication had all been technological and, she now reflected, less than romantic on account of that. Instead of a bundle of love letters, she had nothing but an intangible collection of texts on her iPhone and a few (entirely lower case) emails. By sending the Valentine card the boyfriend confirmed how remiss he’d been.

Mind you, Sally wasn’t quite Virginia Woolf herself. Searching for writing implements at home she found just a stubby pencil that had fallen into her pocket on a trip to Ikea. “The only thing I actually write by hand now is my shopping list,” she lamented. “When I had to write a really long list at Christmas I practically got RSI from the strain of it.”

Sally resolved to re-engage with the joys of putting pen to paper instead of fingers to keypad. And she’s not alone. It’s a welcome irony of the digital age that as technology advances many seem to be reverting to more old-fashioned methods of communication and record-keeping.

We’re rediscovering the joys of stationery in particular – simple paper and writing products we can touch and smell and keep.

Shopping for stationery is a relatively guilt-free retail therapy.

 

This renaissance made the UK stationery and drawing materials market worth almost £430m in 2012 alone. It’s why in 2011 John Lewis reported a 177 per cent rise in sales of premium stationery, why business is booming at Ryman and Paperchase, why Liberty of London opened a dedicated stationery department with packets of pencils apparently flying off the shelves at £16.95 for six.

It’s also why Smythson has reported annual profits of almost £2.5 million. Even costing £200 a pop, that adds up to an awful lot of calf leather-bound Portobello diaries they’re selling.

The reason? Perhaps it’s relatively guilt-free retail therapy we get from buying things that are actually useful. Perhaps it’s the primitive sensory pleasure induced by choosing and using beautiful things. Or maybe it’s more the potential that new stationery seems to hold – the new Moleskine notebook, which promises to inspire the great novel within us, the empty box files that we tell ourselves will turn us into an organisational genius, the deckle-edged writing paper that will make our letters read more like poetry.

The power we invest in these creative tools can border on the superstitious. “For some reason, I much prefer writing with a black pen than a blue one, and in a perfect world I’d always use ‘narrow feint’ writing paper,” says JK Rowling.

And let’s face it, it seems to work for her.

Perhaps it’s also the fact that so much of our personal history is evident in our stationery. My father died 10 years ago but I still feel moved when I see his address book – the leather cover, pages filled with his backward-slanting italics and crossings out where friends predeceased him.

My introduction to correspondence was the thank-you letter. These were written on my mum’s watermarked Azure Basildon Bond. This came in A5 pads with a ruled sheet to place beneath each page as a guideline. The spacing of the lines was mercifully wide so it was easy to cover a couple of pages which, once folded into their matching envelopes, made a satisfyingly thick missive.

My career as a writer continued when I secured a couple of pen friends via the ads in magazines such as Jackie. Both of my pen friends lived within driving distance, but that wasn’t the point. I’d discovered a range of stationery called Hunkydory with paper in a mouthwatering range of suitably 70s colours – tangerine, crème de menthe, banana yellow – so vibrant that its brightness made up for what I wrote.

I remember the stationery at school better than most of what I learnt there. The shelves in the art room filled with sugar paper that set one’s teeth on edge and which we cut using the enormous guillotine. The ink station where the girls who used proper Parker fountain (as opposed to Paper Mate cartridge) pens filled them up with Quink.

Thirty years on I still receive Christmas cards from a particularly classy school friend, who still uses the latter. Her envelopes are immediately recognisable and it’s become a Christmas highlight when “Emma’s card” arrives. Which is what it’s all about, isn’t it? Being tweeted is never going to make us feel like a million dollars.

We’re unlikely ever to flick back through the pages of our online iCalendars and reminisce about years gone by. So maybe it’s time to invest in that personalised writing set. Smythson here I come.

interesting stuff found on different branches in a family tree

Everybody’s Doing What? The Turkey Trot!: Irving Berlin’s Song and Latest Dance Craze Too Much For Newport News.: Blog post from Out of the Box: Notes from the Archives at the Library of Virginia

There might be something waiting for you at Japan’s Missing Post Office   

      

Many countries’ postal systems have a type of “dead letter office” which handles mail that has been inappropriately addressed and could not be sent. In most cases, if the sender cannot be found the messages are destroyed in order to maintain privacy.
The Missing Post Office, on the other hand, welcomes unaddressed post cards and keeps them for eternity if need be until they end up with the rightful owner even if they aren’t alive. The unusual post office opened on the island of Awashima on 5 October and welcome all to come and read their discarded messages of humanity.

■ A work of art
The Missing Post Office was created by artist Saya Kubota as a part of the Setouchi Art Festival around the Islands of the Seto Inland Sea in Kagawa Prefecture. It’s actually a renovated post office which closed down in 1991.

Much of the office remains intact aside from the addition of some art pieces and changes to the sign. The standard 〒 symbol which identifies post offices was stylized into a wavy version symbolizing the ocean which carries messages in a bottle – a central theme to the Missing Post Office. The symbol can be seen all around the place including the uniforms of its staff.

■ Meet the staff
Director – Katsuhisa Nakata

Mr. Nakata was the director of the Awashima Post Office for 45 years until retiring. After serving his community for most of his life he was asked to return as acting director of the Missing Post Office, a post which he accepted with pride.
Clerk – Saya Kubota

The creator of the Missing Post Office, Ms. Kubota wanted a place where human thoughts and emotions could accumulate like flotsam on a beach. Only instead of tossing a message in a bottle and possibly losing it to the depths of the ocean (an act which she compares to posting on the internet), the Missing Post Office will protect it and allow it to be found by its rightful owner and anyone else who needs to share that same feeling.
■ Inside the office



The main piece of the Missing Post Office is the Drifting P.O. Box. Tin boxes are suspended on standing piano wire all atop a revolving wooden table. Visitors are encouraged to reach into a box and pull out a message. The messages are anonymous but 100% real. They might be written to deceased relatives, unborn children, or even a traffic light. Whatever people were motivated to write down or needed to get off their chest can be found in these boxes.
The following are some sample messages from the Drifting P.O. Box:

“Mother,
When you died last summer I didn’t cry. When you were alive it was like we only said horrible and spiteful things to each other… If we met now I think we still would… But a year has passed and I have only loving memories from childhood left.
I have when we made pudding together.
I have when we read books.
I have when you bought me my piano. That was the happiest.”
_________________________________________________________________
“To my future grandchild,
When will you arrive? The sooner the better, come on and be born! I can’t wait to finally do for you everything I couldn’t do for my own kids.”
_________________________________________________________________
“Actually, I was hoping to do the folk dance at school with you. My heart was pounding with excitement as our turn together was coming around soon but… just before it happened, the song cut off.
Since then several autumns have gone by. What might have happened to you by now?”

■ How to send to the Missing Post Office
If you’d like to send a message to the Missing Post Office, just write it on a post card and send it to the address listed below without including the name of the recipient, your own name or address. Only post cards though. They will not open envelopes since the message is not meant for them.
In the case that your message is too long to fit on a post card, then they encourage you to use several. Whoever it’s meant for should be able to piece it together. Also, in the event that the person who the message is intended for appears at the Missing Post Office, they will be able to leave with it.
Although the Setouchi Art Festival will come to an end on 4 November, it looks as if the Missing Post Office will live on. The 79-year-old Mr. Nakata said he will continue to serve as its acting director.
The autumn is a very nice time to visit the islands of Kagawa Prefecture, and even if conceptual art is not your thing, it’s hard to ignore the raw humanity that can be felt in the Missing Post Office.
Information
Missing Post Office (Hyoryu Yubinkyoku)
〒769-1108
Hyoryu Yubinkyoku Dome
Awashima 1317-2, Takuma Town, Miyoto City, Kagawa Prefecture

http://en.rocketnews24.com/2013/10/22/there-might-be-something-waiting-for-you-at-japans-missing-post-office/

The Postcard Project aka Deltiology

The Postcard Project

 

 

the case for writing letters...at least one

Please Write Some Letters To Your Biographer Before You Go To The Big Archive In The Sky

Posted on January 16, 2015 by chezgigi

I am begging you to write at least one letter before you leave this earthly plane. You may never have written a letter in your life, or at least not since your second grade teacher decided, as a Learning Experience, you should write to your parents, or Santa Claus, or something equally dweeby. With the disappearance of personal letters, a biographer will not be able to write a book about you.
I have been reading biographies, and in each famous person’s case, letters enlighten the biographer, and are carefully preserved in a library somewhere in the midwest as insights into the subject’s life. These letters are saved for scholars and the idle curious who appear to have nothing better to do than read a stranger’s letters, when all they have to do is wait for the book to come out.

The biographer will tell us in the foreword about the hard work that went into the book; that he or she flew to Indiana to search through dusty archives, sneezing all the while, or they tromped across North America searching basements or attics for boxes of letters from the Civil War. Often, the biographer is writing from jail, because they did not have permission to go tromping through people’s basements and attics. The boxes of letters they found are, get this, perfectly preserved.
Before you bring on an asthma attack looking through your attic, you should know your boxes probably do not contain interesting old letters, and are most likely full of rodent droppings and mildewed potholders. But, assuming you actually have a box of wonderfully preserved letters that have survived numerous moves, and rainstorms that flooded the basement, will a biographer be able to decipher the faded, flourished handwriting depicting homey events from the Civil War?
Old letters from a bygone, gentler era, which are beautifully emoted and carefully composed, from people long dead, about battles or day-to-day military life, are gold mines of information. The loved ones at home wanted to know how their dear son was doing in camp. These letters serve to show us that we can still relate to people in other eras:
‘Dearest Loved Ones,’ a letter from a soldier may start, “OMG. Life in camp can be quite entertaining. Today, Cook has told us that weevils were found in the flour, but that they have become delightful crunchy additions to the hardtack. LOL! All of us were ROTFL. General Lee was quite astonished at the sight.” Biographers often spend months trying to decipher what the soldier meant by the strange Civil War initials.
Lucy Maud Montgomery, the author of Anne of Green Gables, wrote dozens of letters to two friends over the years, one of them 74 pages long, full of scrapbook items. Scrapbook items were very important during the Great Letter Writing Era. These items were the digital equivalent of the picture you just posted of your dinner. After delivering Lucy’s letters, Wells Fargo had to retire their ponies, and institute limits on the number of scrapbook items people could send in regular mail. For instance, you could no longer mail your child to its grandparents, at least not without extra postage.
Lucy preserved her letters in boxes pending the day the biographer arrived. She knew that one day someone would want to see her letters. How did her recipients know that these letters would be important later on? Were they just pack rats, and hoped one day to be featured on the show Hoarders? Did Lucy tell them they had better save her letters as she planned to be important someday? And, when she did, did they write her a 74 page letter back telling her what they thought of that?
Letters from Louisa May Alcott’s mother written in the 1800s to other people were considered interesting enough to make a book titled ‘My Heart Is Boundless’, which was probably something she’d written in a letter. When was the last time you wrote a line like that? Was it in an email, explaining why you need an appointment asap with your cardiologist?
Maybe you wrote something similar in the note you left for the UPS driver, telling him where to leave a package. ‘The places you can leave the package are boundless’, you might tell him. ‘Please choose one in this zip code, perhaps even at this address.’ Save this note for posterity, after first removing the UPS driver’s chewed wad of gum, and put it in a box in your attic. Your biographer will appreciate your thoughtfulness in not making him remove the gum. Biographers also tell us that the famous person was compiling their papers to be donated to a library well before they died. They did not start when they were on their deathbeds; no, they began well in advance of the papers being needed. For instance, Julia Child’s husband donated all his papers to an archive in a university library, and yet who thinks of him when they think of Julia Child?
Let that be a lesson to you: You too could be insignificant and un-famous, just as you are right now, and someday someone may want your letters. (Not infamous; that word is reserved for people who do something so naughty, they wouldn’t commit it to paper.) Someone may want your letters just to point out what a horrendous speller you were, but still. They may even want one of your relative’s letters, like Louisa’s mother. I’d advise you to make sure they are not writing negative things about you. Just because you stole your cousin’s doll when you were six, that is no reason to be reviled in history books.
I am constantly battling piles of papers, and frequently dump any number of them into wastebaskets, and feel smug and virtuous when I am done. My recent letters are usually to the CEO at some business whose representative has been really dense or snotty, and I am threatening to take him to court in Las Vegas. These letters revealed my passionate and fair-minded nature, besides also revealing my knowledge of naughty words, but my biographer will never see them, because I threw them away.
None of those papers that I threw away were letters from an articulate and intelligent friend who is on the road to being legendary. Not that I don’t have any of those, it’s just that they don’t write letters. I can scarcely get them to answer emails. Letters have been the subject of our thoughts and songs for many decades. I could compile quite a list of songs with the word ‘letter’ in the title and every one contains references to someone holding a letter, crying over a letter, dreaming over a letter, kissing the signature, saving bundles of letters tied up in ribbons, or tucked under their pillow, perhaps teardrops blurring the the inky words. Do you have bundles of old computers tied up with ribbons and stored in a box in your attic to dream over, so that later, all your emails can be included in a book about your life? And do just a few of these computers in boxes take up space the size of the British Museum?
It is difficult to be romantic and reveal your deepest thoughts and emotions to a person in an email, knowing your heartthrob will share it on social media when the two of you break up. And if someone wants to include them in your biography, they will have to boot up all those computers in dusty attics, presuming you haven’t deleted all your emails. In which case, why are you saving all those faded computers?
There is no need to save all your electronic messages. You’ve probably shared every intimate detail of your life on your ‘wall’. The computer generation doesn’t care about privacy. Privacy has taken its rightful place beside the touch tone telephone and the cassette tape deck as Things That Are Vintage. There will be nothing left to discover about you, much less about a celebrity. We are already subjected 24/7 to their marital disputes, preliminary hearings, and sonograms.
I used to write a letter to my guy every day, as I sat down at my desk before starting work. They weren’t handwritten, which isn’t required for famous person letters, or even for ordinary person letters, but were printed out from the computer. Those letters have disappeared, and my biographer will be the poorer without them.
I wrote and received dozens of letters when I was a girl, up until I was in my early twenties. I have saved some of them, but I threw many away. I would rack my brain trying to find different ways to write letters to my friends when I was in middle and high school. Once I even used toilet paper. It was unused, and was easily flushed so that sensitive information could not be shared.

I am not sure whether I could find my friends now after all these years, so how is a biographer going to find them and tromp through their attics? Whether they have dusty attics or not is an entirely different matter. In Julia’s case, she apparently kept everything. Her biographer found some diaries she’d written as a young woman stored away in the basement. You must begin now to write letters, so that there will be a reason your biographer was arrested for trespassing and is in jail.

http://chezgigi.com/biographer-letters/
 

a few last strange/weird/wonderful Easter Cards

Easter is still a few weeks away, so I have a couple of cards left to share. Quirky, no?