A Canadian Family

A Festival Of Postcards (5th Ed.) – Quadrupeds

Ed. Evelyn Yvonne Theriault

This 5th edition of A Festival of Postcards is dedicated to Quadrupeds, so whether you’re passionate about postcards or you’re just an animal-lover, you’ve come to the right place as over 30 genealogy, local history and deltiology bloggers from around the world share their serious, humourous and sometimes even bizarre images of man’s best – and not so best – friends! The first section - Postcards in the Past Tense – is the place where we showcase vintage and antique postcards. In this issue we feature the work of 10 new and 21 returning bloggers. The Artful Postcard is where we look at postcards as art – or art that is influenced by postcard and for this issue we have the specially prepared digitally-altered work of two family historians as well as links to the blogs of two professional artists whose work relates to postcards. Our last section is Contemporary Postcards - where we look at modern postcards and celebrate those who are keeping postcards alive in the second millenium.

However, before you move on to the postcards, you’ll want to check out this month’s Feature Article by Miriam Robbins Midkiff – a genealogist by avocation and a family historian with 22 years of research behind her! Miriam blogs at  AnceStories, the Eastern Washington Genealogical Society Blog, and now the Online Historical Directories Website but she’s joining us this month as the woman behind Scanfest, a monthly online activity where genealogists and family historians alike gather together to “ask questions about scanning and preservation, and get the kick in the pants we all need on starting those massive scanning projects that just seem too overwhelming to begin”.

Feature Article

When I first read Miriam Robbins Midkiff’s article – A Beginner’s Guide to Scanning Postcards – I was dismayed. Why? Because I’ve been scanning postcards for awhile now and I was pretty sure I knew what I was doing! Do you feel the same way? Well I suggest you take a peek at what Miriam has to say about the finer points of scanning postcards. Miriam says her article is for beginners – but I think that many of us could benefit from some of her tips on the fine art of scanning postcards for our blogs! I know that my blog will be the better for it – thanks, Miriam!

Postcards In The Past Tense

UK blogger Linda of About Postcards is presenting a Three Little Maids Hand Painted Cat Opera Postcard and she sent me this little message: “Hello Evelyn and greetings from England.  About Postcards is a labour of love that sometimes doesn’t get the time that I’d like it to have. I started the blog to both try and encourage those who were new to the hobby and to help the established collector with postcard information”. I think Linda’s site is a MUST VISIT for everyone, whether postcard collector or family historian, because it’s jam packed with useful articles about postcards in general, but also shows the different categories of postcards that you can collect. It’s a visual smorgasbord!

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Adam Gott of Vintage Postcard Blog is sharing a richly coloured postcard depicting a Cornish Mining Scene of 1890. Adam told me that he “… just started this blog to showcase interesting postcards that I encounter in my collection or on the web. It’s a pretty simple concept – one postcard per day in a variety of subjects” He’s having a Halloween Countdown tso this is the perfect time to drop by his site and check out his collection of Hallowe’en-themed postcards including my personal favourite of a witch and her black cat.

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Do you like bloggers with a wry sense of humour? Then you’’ll certainly want to spend some time at the blog of Alan Burnett – self-described “one-time bus conductor, political apparatchik, lecturer and writer on European affairs”. Alan’s blog is called News From Nowhere and his entry for the Quadrupeds Festival is Never Too Late For Love. which features the postcard: Runaway Wedding at Blacksmith’s Shop: Gretna Green, and some historical background on why some English couples used to go to Scotland to get married. If you’re a geneablogger you may also like to read posts such as his latest – If Music Be The Food Of Love – I Am In Danger Of Getting Obese - for original examples of family history/genealogy posts. I wish I could write like this!

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Karen Hammer of Ancestor Soup presents The Three-Legged Horse of William Lair saying, “Not *exactly* a four-legged animal”. In addition to her personal website, Karen runs four webistes for Genealogy Trails and says that though she’s new to blogging (less than a year) she finds that it “… encourages a bit more creativity than the typical genealogy website allows” and she finds “the format incredibly freeing”. I’m sure that Festival bloggers agree with that sentiment!

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Paul Ricketts presents Camels in the Holy Land at his family history site The sun rides high:Travel Through Time. Here’s an excerpt from Paul’s thoughtful essay on the notion of ” “home” and “place”: “My aim in building this web site is to view genealogy through a geographic lens, building stories of individuals travels to and throughout America. I am hoping that this approach will help broaden other genealogists’ research and make new connections between people and places. By weaving in aspects of my own family’s genealogy, I hope to illuminate how and why people traveled so far to find a house to put their “home” in” (see his About for the rest).

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 Genealogist and family historian Paula Hinkel of  It Just Never Came Up is sharing this funny Danish postcard AGlaedeligt Nytaaris from her family’s personal collection. She describes how this postcard unveiled a family secret. Paula is an active part of the “Californian genealogy scene” as past president of the South California Genealogical Society and co-chair of that Society’s 2010 Jamboree. I’m glad she finally had a moment to join us at the Festival – welcome Paula!

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Like many postcard collectors I also collect other “oddities” such as matchbook covers, old menus etc. If you’re like me you’ll really enjoy Susan E’s eclectic blog This Old Paper: curious things that are flat. This blog covers a wide range of paper ephemera ranging from items like pamphlets and bank savings books to puzzles. I think that as long as something is made out of paper Susan can find a place for it on her blog! For the Quadrupeds Festival she’s sharing (with a wink and a nod) a postcard of Buffalo’s Ellicott Square in 1904. Read more »

October 29, 2009 Posted by Evelyn Yvonne Theriault | . | postcard | 9 Comments