Foldout postcard of Los Angeles in a very different moment

This A. Mitock & Sons folding postcard of Los Angeles, California, was mailed in April 1956 to the Ideal Convalescent Home in Gresham, Oregon. (Which presupposes, I guess, that there's a Non-Ideal Convalescent Home.) It shows the clean, happy and economically vibrant side of Los Angeles seven decades ago. Construction was completed on the iconic Capitol Records Building that very month of April 1956.

Today, Los Angeles is having a very different moment. The Associated Press reports:

LOS ANGELES (AP) — U.S. immigration authorities extended their activity in the Los Angeles area Saturday in the wake of protests at a federal detention facility and a police response that included tear gas, flash-bangs and the arrest of a union leader.
Border Patrol personnel in riot gear and gas masks stood guard outside an industrial park in the city of Paramount, deploying tear gas as bystanders and protesters gathered on medians and across the street, some jeering at authorities while recording the events on smartphones.
“ICE out of Paramount. We see you for what you are,” a woman said through a megaphone. “You are not welcome here.”
One handheld sign said, “No Human Being is Illegal.”
The boulevard was closed to traffic as Border Patrol officers circulated through the area. ICE representatives did not respond immediately to email inquiries about weekend enforcement activities.
The immigration arrests in Los Angeles came as President Donald Trump and his administration push to fulfill promises of mass deportations across the country.

It's a harrowing, heartbreaking contrast to this 1956 postcard highlighting Wilshire Boulevard, MacArthur Park, Miracle Mile, the original Brown Derby restaurant, pedestrians gaily going about their day and "Olvera Street operated by Mexicans in their colorful native costumes."

"Will You Buy My Story?"

My San Tan Valley hairstylist told me today that she has seen Wicked: Part I more than 60 times, which is amazing on many levels, but mostly because it only premiered less than seven months ago. Even as a movie lover, I cannot think of a movie I've seen even 20 times, let alone 60. 

We continued to talk about musicals as my head got buzzed, and that gives me a nice opening for today's ephemera. One of the first musicals I remember seeing is The Fabulous Fable Factory in the 1980s. But the crazy part is that I don't remember when or where. It was either fourth, fifth, sixth or seventh grade, and I went to four different schools in three different states over those four grades, so I can't nail down for sure when I saw it.

I know that it was a bus field trip, possibly to a local college. I don't know if was a full class trip or just the extracurricular chorus I was part of (in which case it was Montoursville, in fifth or sixth grade).

And the only part of the musical I remember is the extremely catchy Thomas Tierney/Joseph Robinette song "Will You Buy My Story?" That tidbit allowed me determine that it was 1973's The Fabulous Fable Factory and eventually to track down this worn copy of the book and lyrics.

The synopsis from Dramatic Publishing states: "Monroe wanders into a seemingly abandoned factory and accidentally trips a lever which activates the factory 'machinery,' an assembly line of seven actors who create fabulous fables. Then he meets the factory owner, a Mr. Aloysius A. Aesop, who explains that the factory has been idle for over 2,000 years because of a missing part."

According to this book, the one-act musical was first produced by Glassboro Summer Theatre at Playhouse 121 at Glassboro State College (now Rowan University) in southern New Jersey. That's another connection for me. We lived in Clayton, just a few miles from Glassboro, in the late 1970s.

Here are a few images from the book...

Photo postcard from a Ukrainian

This circular postcard is from my Ukrainian pen pal who has been displaced since Russia's invasion of her country in February 2022. She's currently in Germany, but is there under temporary, visa-free EU travel rules, and may soon have to be on the move again. It's nearly impossible for most of us to fathom what she's been through in the past three-plus years, with it being too unsettling for her to permanently return to Dnipro, Ukraine, while regular missile attacks continue. Yet there's not a permanent place for her elsewhere in the world. All of this while trying to juggle working remotely and live her life.

This postcard is a photo she took while on a short stay in the Netherlands. "I still remember that graceful woman on the bicycle," she writes.

In a recent email, she added: "Trump's winery [sic] really REALLY sucks, and I'm so sorry that your profession also implies the involvement in all of those negative news. For Ukraine, it's catastrophic too. Honestly speaking, I've reached the point where I'm tired of all the negative stuff around (including war, loss, uncertainty about the future) to the extent when I just stopped reading news and being engaged in those things."

That's a feeling I suspect many empathize with in these overwhelming times.

Related posts

• October Postcrossing wrapup
• Ukraine correspondences
• Cat postcard & cat tale from a war-weary Ukrainian
• Nifty envelope from Ukraine Postcrossing pen pal
• 1960s pocket travel guide for Kiev
• Modern postcard: The great stairway in Odessa, Ukraine
• I hope Yuriy Sosnitskiy becomes a famous artist [this one breaks my heart now]
• Colorful Postcrossing card and stamps: "Welcome to Ukraine" [which contains links to even older Ukraine posts]

Before "Collector's Luck" heads out the door ...

As part of the Resimplify Me pruning, 1919's Collector's Luck, by Alice Van Leer Carrick (1875-1961) is among the stuff headed out the door tomorrow.

But it's a pretty nifty 106-year-old volume, with a lot of character, so I thought I'd highlight it with some photos for posterity.

The book's subtitle tells you all you need to know about what's inside: "A Repository of Pleasant and Profitable Discourses Descriptive of the Household Furniture of Ornaments of Olden Time."

The book has had numerous homes over the years. A blacked-out bookplate on the inside front cover indicates it was part of the reference library at the Baltimore Museum of Art. 

Many many pages of the book have a performating stamp indicating that it was part of the Enoch Pratt Library in Baltimore. I have no idea why there was a need to damage so many pages in this way. A red stamp on the title page indicates that it was withdrawn from Enoch Pratt at some point.

The last page and the inside back cover feature Enoch Pratt's due-date label and the circulation card pocket. Many people checked this book out, with due-date stamps spanning 1934 to 1938. 

Without further ado, here are some photos...

And here is Mademoiselle Fifi (IceBear), who turned 3 today, along with her sister Pete.