Christmas postcard #5: "Dear Girlie"

This postcard was published by the Golden Rule Printing Company of Albion, Michigan, and it features a hefty block of prose by Henry van Dyke Jr. (1852-1933). Van Dyke was born in Pennsylvania and served simultaneously as the U.S. ambassador to both the Netherlands and Luxembourg for a stint in the 1910s. He was also an author, minister and educator and has been remembered for his Christmas-themed writings.

This card was postmarked on December 30, 1920, and was mailed to Miss Winnifred Stewart of Cresson, Pennsylvania¹, in care of the Mountain Merchantile Company. A few words are lost because of the postcard's missing corner, but here's the message, as best I can reckon:

Dear Girlie,
— I want to thank you for the beautiful gift & the beautiful love back of it. Conditions were such this year that I could not prepare for Xmas without over work and worry, so left my friends under ... impression (perhaps) that I did [not?] care for them. But I did. [Missing words] Your god mother.

This is added across the top of the card:

Tell me all about your children. What are they like, and what do you do for them?

Footnote
1. Cresson is located in Cambria County and is not to be confused with Cressona, in Schuylkill County, eastern Pennsylvania. About a decade ago, in the midst of a side business selling used books on Amazon and at a local antiques mall, Joan and I traveled to Cressona and filled most of a U-Haul with used books that another online seller was selling for a super-cheap price. All those books sat in boxes in our garage for months, as we methodically worked through posting them for sale. I think the folks in Cressona probably knew what was coming better than we did, because the online book-selling business was crashing to a halt, in terms of profitability, thanks to the flood of penny books from bulk sellers. It was an interesting time. Joan details some of it in this 2013 post on Man vs. Debt.

Christmas postcard #4: Bertha writes to Levi

This beautifully decorated "A merry Christmas" postcard (which was made in Germany) was written upon and addressed, but there's no stamp or postmark. Perhaps it was hand-delivered or mailed into an envelope. It was addressed to Mr. Levi S. Moyer in Fredericksburg, Lebanon County, Pennsylvania.

Levi S. Moyer is not that rare of a name in Pennsylvania history. And that makes it harder to pinpoint which one this is referring to. There is a Levi S. Moyer who is mentioned extensively in 1905's History of Bucks County, Pennsylvania (Volume III). But I don't think that's the one we're looking for.

The best guess is probably the Levi S. Moyer who lived from 1872 to 1950 and is buried in Cedar Hill Cemetery in Fredericksburg. He was the vice president of First National Bank of Fredericksburg when he died and, according to his obituary in the March 14, 1950, edition of the Lebanon Daily News, "he was a retired farmer and insurance broker and was widely known throughout the northern tier of the county." He was also affiliated with the Sons of America camp and the Odd Fellows lodge of Fredericksburg.

This is the message from the back of this Christmas postcard:

"Hello. I wish you and all the family the most loving and sincere wishes. Hoping Santa will find you and bring you many good things. Good-bye.
From Miss Bertha Krissinger, Fredericksburg, Pa."

Bertha A. Krissinger Donmoyer lived in Lebanon County from 1907 to 1959. So that means this card, with its nice handwriting, was probably written around 1925 or thereafter.

Christmas postcard #3: Holiday grippe and croup

The postmark is obscured on this "A Merry Christmas" postcard, but I think it's safe to say it was mailed about a century ago. The card was published by the Midland Publishing Company, which was only in operation from 1912 to 1914, according to MetroPostcard.com. As that website further notes, most of the Midland cards were printed by the Gold Medal Art Company, whose distinctive owl logo appears on the back.

From the portion of the postmark that's legible, we know that it was mailed in Chicago, Illinois, on Dec. 23. It was sent to Mr. and Mrs. Jay Follet of Corry, Pennsylvania. This is the cursive message:

Dec 22nd
Dear Matie [sp?]
I wish you all a Merry Xmas.
Baby Helen & I have both been sick a week up in bed with grippe, she first with croup & still so hoarse. Hope you are all well with love to all.
Cousin Mary

Grippe is a word that's not used much these days. It essentially means flu/influenza, though I reckon it was probably applied to a wider range of respiratory issues. So it was a bummer of a Christmas holiday for Mary and Helen, which I feel retroactively sad about.

Christmas postcard #2: Things that would hinder

This postcard appears to have stayed within Greene County, New York, in December 1908. It was postmarked in Oak Hill, a hamlet near the small town of Durham. And it was delivered to Julia Hallenbeck of North Hill, a hamlet near Greenville. (Hamlets are essentially unincorporated communities.)

The cursive message was short and to the point:

"Julia,
We will come new years unless sickness or death hinders.
Lucy"

There's a tiny "LL" written on the front of the card, so perhaps those are Lucy's first and last initials.

* * *
Bonus Christmas memory: Easton's Peace Candle, more than 100 feet tall, has gone up almost every Christmas season in the eastern Pennsylvania city since 1951. According to Wikipedia, "it has been said to be the largest non-wax Christmas candle in the country. Although conceived with the hopes of restoring Easton's pre-20th century reputation for elaborate Christmas decorations, city officials also believed a candle would serve as a symbol of peace for all religions and denominations. (But) some have criticized the Peace Candle, calling it a symbol of the over-commercialization of Christmas, and condemning the fact that it covers a war monument."

I asked Dad, who was a kid growing up in Easton in the 1950s, for his memories and he wrote: "We would drive to the downtown circle to see it and all the light at the downtown department stores. There was a Woolworth's five-and-dime store there."

Hunter Kahn [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Christmas postcard #1: A message from Stiles, Pa.

I have a fresh set of old postcards to help count down the days until Christmas 2019. When browsing, I was looking for ones with interesting messages on the back; tiny little stories from the past. I wasn't particular about what was on the front. So a lot of those will be generic or even dull, even for being a century old.

Up first is this Merry Christmas postcard published by H.I. Robbins of Boston. According to MetroPostcard.com, Robbins was "a publisher and printer of New England view-cards and holiday cards in tinted halftone" from 1907 to 1912.

This card was postmarked on December 2, 1907, in Stiles, Pennsylvania, and mailed to Mrs. Jacob Reinert in Fredericksville, Pennsylvania.

Here's what I think the cursive message on the back states:

"we will come up to your place on Monday the 9. we will go to Rumigs on the 7. he will fetch us at the station, Tell Mr. and Mrs. Webb to come home too.
Estella Swavely"

Postcards were the emails or text messages of the day, announcing holiday travel itineraries, so that people could make their plans. Of course, it could get trickier if you had to change the itinerary.

* * *
Bonus Christmas memory: On the "Williamsport & Lycoming County, PA Past, Present, & Future," someone posted a picture of the Christmas tree at the old Sylvania plant in Montoursville. I remember seeing the tall tree at Sylvania, where Dad worked for a time, as a kid. I asked him about it and he added this holiday memory: "The Montoursville Jaycees has Santa Claus on Main Street in [an] RV. Spent many a night with kids telling me their wish list. Montoursville was small town America with a great spirit."

Here's a Williamsport Sun-Gazette slideshow from the tree's 70th anniversary lighting in 2017.

1897 black rainbow in Idaho: What does it mean??

A funny little news article — complete with a tommy-knockers reference — from the May 6, 1894, edition of The Salt Lake Herald in Utah. The moon is not mentioned, but you would have to think this was some kind of moonbow.

1,000th Postcrossing arrival

I signed up as a member of Postcrossing, the online postcard exchange, seven years ago this month, and I've been an enthusiast supporter of the hobby over the years. (Click on the Postcrossing label at the bottom of this post to see all the great stuff.)

I recently received my 1,000th Postcrossing card. It's from Kamila, a 28-year-old woman in the Czech Republic who is a wife, mother and fan of frogs. On a partly sunny day in November, she wrote:

"Hi, I'm sending you a postcard with a little mole. I try to pick each postcard with my heart. Mole is the most popular Czech fairy tale in the Czech Rep. Drawn by Z. Miler, often plays on television in the evening so-called bedtime story. This postcard is old when the Czech Rep. was USSR. Donver [sic; she means Dover] looks like beatiful [sic] place, I always like to see photos of the town where I send the postcard. Thank you for traveling around the world with postcards! We have a lot of traditions in South Moravia, folk costumes (kroj) are worn here, unfortunately, I cannot fit everything on a postcard. If you want to know more, just write me a message. I would like to answer. Have a nice day! (Prěji hezy den!) Kamila"

Mole, according to Wikipedia, "is an animated character in a series of cartoons created by Czech animator Zdeněk Miler. The premiere of the first short film with Mole took place at the Venice Film Festival in 1957. ... Krtek was first seen in 1956 in Prague, when Miler wanted to create a children's cartoon about how flax is processed. He wanted a strong Disney influence to the cartoon by choosing an animal for the leading role, and decided to pick a mole after stumbling over a molehill during a walk."

Watching films: "Already getting lost, forever, in the calm night..."

Movies are ephemeral, too.

The Library of Congress claims 75% of the films from the silent era are gone forever.

According to Martin Scorsese's Film Foundation, half of all American films made before 1950 and more than 90% of movies made before 1929 are also gone.

A fire at Universal Studios in 2008 destroyed 40,000 to 50,000 archived digital video and film copies.

VHS tapes begin to have significant data loss after about 25 years. Manufacturers of Blu-ray discs say they might last for 150 years. A long time, certainly, but not nearly forever.

Will Earthlings in the year 2500 be able to watch performances by Ingrid Bergman, Bruce Lee and Tom Hanks? Movies directed by Scorsese and Spike Lee? Star Wars? Marvel films? In those aforementioned cases, the best guess might be "probably," because they're among the most famous of our cinema stars and creations. But it's possible that, while some of those famous works might still exist, 99% of everything else will be gone within a few centuries. Perhaps it's even likely that will be the case. Perhaps it's likely that they won't even realize what is lost.

Indeed, everything's ephemeral. Even the couple of million years that Mount Rushmore will endure are just a blink of an eye compared to the age of the universe. But here in 2019, we have the unprecedented luxury of being able to enjoy history's great works — art, architecture, literature, music and, yes, film. Movies go back about 130 years, and there are historical films of paramount importance from its first three decades, such as 1903's The Great Train Robbery. But it's arguably only been about 100 years since "cinema as art" existed. (There's plenty of debate and subjectivity over what qualifies as an influential artistic film; in my view, 1920's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and 1925's Battleship Potemkin were among the early important ones.)

It's important for us to experience works of art, to witness the vast expanse of what can spring from the human mind and heart. That's why plays and novels from centuries ago are still in print. It's why we have myriad museums showcasing everything from Van Gogh to Vivian Maier to video games; and symphony orchestras that perform works by long-dead composers. It's why the secret removal and protection of artwork from the Louvre in Paris during World War II mattered. Our great art has immense value to human civilization.

All of this is my longwinded way of saying that I've started making a more concerted effort to watch (and rewatch) more of the world's great films. I was a movie viewer on a mission in November, and it was immensely rewarding, as I found time for:

• Tokyo Story (Yasujirō Ozu, 1953)
• Wild Strawberries (Ingmar Bergman, 1957)
• Good Morning (Yasujirō Ozu, 1959)
• Il Posto (Ermanno Olmi, 1961)
• Last Year at Marienbad (Alain Resnais, 1961)
• The Spirit of the Beehive (Víctor Erice, 1973)
• Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979)

These are all Great Films™. About family and relationships. Life and death. First loves and fleeting love. Loneliness. Time and memory. Philosophy and religion. Youth and old age. And farting.

Others have penned brilliant reviews, essays and insights about these films, so I won't attempt to do that here. You can seek out their words, but it's all the better if you so do after seeing the films. I give them all the highest recommendation. And yes, as you might have guessed, none of them is in English. All of them are subtitled, in case you don't speak Japanese, Swedish, Italian, French, Spanish or Russian. Please don't let those subtitles be an obstacle. You'll get the hang of it after a few minutes — promise. The reward is well worth the effort by the viewer.

If you're looking for a way to dip your toe into films with subtitles, I would happily suggest Good Morning. That's the one with the farting. It's a 94-minute rare comedy from Ozu. Part of the plot involves two young brothers who go on "strike" until their family buys a television, but that's just one of the storylines of this sweet, accessible film. If you watch it and don't like it, I'll mail you a vintage postcard. How's that for a Papergreat guarantee? If flatulence jokes aren't your thing, though, the other starter film I'd recommend is the 93-minute Il Posto, a bittersweet tale of a young man's entry into the corporate workplace.

Some of the other films I watched in November require a bit more attention and patience, especially Stalker and Last Year at Marienbad. All of these films have superb writing, acting, directing and cinematography. They are works of art that will stay with you. And I hope they remain within our civilization for many more years.

* * *
I also watched a pair of notable documentaries in November: Orson Welles' F for Fake (1973) and Grey Gardens (1975), which had a quartet of directors led by Albert and David Maysles. Both are worthwhile and also problematic. F for Fake is unlike anything I've seen; it's been termed a docudrama, a film essay and a free-form documentary. Because there's really no way to label it. It's an Orson Welles creation, right down to its excesses and overindulgences. I would say the less you know about it going in, the better; but it does help to have some basic familiarity with Howard Hughes and Clifford Irving, as audiences in the 1970s would have.

Grey Gardens is considered an essential entry in the history of documentaries. But it's also hard not to cringe at the exploitative nature of the directors' constant push of the camera into the collapsed lives of high society recluses Big Edie and Little Edie in East Hampton, New York. If you watch the Criterion Blu-ray edition, be sure to stay through the credits to hear the recording of a surprising phone conversation.

I'm hoping to sit down for some more Great Films this month. Some will be first watches and others will be rewatches. And I know I'll be revisting some of these November movies, too. Because art in any form requires an investment of time and consideration by the viewer to bloom to its full potential.

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The Spirit of the Beehive (1973)