Reach Out & Touch Someone

As mentioned yesterday, my husband and I are building a vintage postcard scrapbook — one postcard at a time. The album covers 100 years from 1860 to 1960 and is far from filled. In the spirit of the season, from now until January, I’ll share cards from my collection.

Postcards are ephemera, that is, they are transitory things.  I love that word ephemera. From the Greek it means lasting a day. To me it evokes those now you see it now you don’t kind of things like crystal-winged mayflies, toadstools in the lawn after it rains, diamond dewdrops on spiderwebs, and sky-spanning rainbows. Postcards are like that. They’re meant to tell someone you’re in their thoughts in that moment. They’re meant to make you smile. They were never meant to keep forever. Yet people kept them as treasures until the day they died. We stumble across them in our travels all the time and that’s the way of things, because as the saying goes, you can’t take it with you.  I keep them as treasures now because to me they’re tokens of love and affection.  The sentiment surrounds them, even if I never knew the people involved. And who doesn’t love love?

Of all the cards we have to date, the brightest boldest images are found on cards from Germany. Postcards were printed across Europe and the US, but the Germans excelled at lithography, in fact, it was a German invention. Their colors were so lively and the images so clever that people tended to keep their ephemera and were hungry for more. Needless to say, WWI brought changes to the postcard industry. After the war, Germany’s devastated print shops never regained their world-class footing. The impact of the war brought changes to other postcard printers as well. There were now shortages of ink. You can tell at a glance what postcard comes from this time. There will be a rather thick colorless border around the picture to save ink. See it in the card above.

Postcards lost some of their popularity when the world moved on. The telephone changed the way people said, I’m thinking of you.

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I’m happy to announce the release of a second collection of holiday short stories written by the Exquisite Quills authors and friends ~

The Exquisite Quills Holiday Anthology Vol 2.

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/498109

Both collections are free in several formats on Smashwords, Barnes&Noble, and quite possibly itunes and Amazon in the future (if we can figure out how to keep them free).

Consider it a gift to our readers. We hope you enjoy.

:)

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Today is guest Author Sabrina York. http://romancebooks4us.blogspot.com/

Romance Books ‘4’ Us ~

Find the dancing Santas. The December contest is on!  Top prize this time is a $100 gift card to Amazon or B&N. Remaining prizes split between two winners.

http://www.romancebooks4us.com

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Love Waits in Unexpected Places – Scorching Samplings of Unusual Love Stories

Find my novels wherever books are sold.

Sample for free!

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