Speaker 1: Oh, hello, old uncle Wally Ward. Here back with another
Speaker 1: episode of ologies. Now this one, well it's something to
Speaker 1: write home about. We're talking deltiology, which is the study
Speaker 1: or just the collection of postcards. Yes, kiddos, there is
Speaker 1: an ology for that. I wanted to know what in
Speaker 1: the fricking frick that was about. So I was outside
Speaker 1: of Detroit shooting the CBS show Innovation Nation at the
Speaker 1: Henry Ford Museum. I was like, hey, hey, you guys
Speaker 1: got any ins with the delteologist And they were like,
Speaker 1: what is that? Is that a word? And I had
Speaker 1: to be like, well, according to some dude named Randall
Speaker 1: Rhodes of Ohio who coined this term in nineteen forty
Speaker 1: five based on the Greek for deltion meaning little tablets, yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a word. And they were like, oh, okay, cool,
Speaker 1: because yeah, we have a museum curator who studies and collects,
Speaker 1: who cherishes and archives and displays postcards. And I was like,
Speaker 1: let's get it on, let's do this. Also, sorry the
Speaker 1: Henry Ford. Sometimes there's swear words in my podcasts. I
Speaker 1: think I kept them to them and amum, I'm just
Speaker 1: me being me, but I'm pretty sure it's pretty clean.
Speaker 1: But before we get into what is, according to Wikipedia,
Speaker 1: the third most popular hobby worldwide, I guess people like
Speaker 1: stamp and coin collecting more and I'm not sure if
Speaker 1: by coin they just mean money like amassing wealth, but whatever.
Speaker 1: Before we get into it, let's say thank you to
Speaker 1: the patrons for their coin that they toss at the
Speaker 1: podcast in exchange forgetting to ask the ologists questions. Twenty
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Speaker 1: this week, Mallard the Duck says no Divorce Required. Amazing
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Speaker 1: kept my wife and I entertained and happy on a
Speaker 1: two thousand mile road trip to Canada. So can't wait
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Speaker 2: Thanks Alli, So.
Speaker 1: Mallard the Duck twenty three. I hope you and your
Speaker 1: continued wife are enjoying this episode about postcards. You better
Speaker 1: send me one. Okay, you're a delltyologist. She got her
Speaker 1: bachelor's degree in anthropology, a masters in Early American culture,
Speaker 1: and is now the curator of Public Life, which is
Speaker 1: a thing at the Henry Vard Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.
Speaker 1: So she's been there. Are you even ready for this
Speaker 1: forty one years forty one? I checked her LinkedIn profile
Speaker 1: and I also just looked up to see what the
Speaker 1: traditional forty one year anniversary gift would be, and it
Speaker 1: looks like it's land. Like when you commit to something
Speaker 1: that long, you just deserve chunks of the earth. So
Speaker 1: she curates artifacts relevant to, according to the museum website,
Speaker 1: vacations and worldfairs, to civil rights and social activism, to
Speaker 1: advertising and retail, and has referred to the museum's vast
Speaker 1: collections as quote, a bottomless pit of wonderfulness, she loves
Speaker 1: her job, so I nabbed her for a chat in
Speaker 1: the museum. We ducked into a little classroom off the
Speaker 1: main hall to talk shop about postcards. So yes, we'll
Speaker 1: cover some history and their uses, but this talk turned
Speaker 1: into a really fascinating look at how we tell our
Speaker 1: own narratives and how we want others to see our lives,
Speaker 1: and the luxury of travel and how etching out a
Speaker 1: message changes the way that we remember things. So it's
Speaker 1: a loving gaze at postcards, of course, but it's also
Speaker 1: a look at how we live and how a curator
Speaker 1: is tasked with collecting and presenting back our own story
Speaker 1: for us.
Speaker 2: So it's really cool.
Speaker 1: You can hear in my voice that I'm and I'm
Speaker 1: almost apologetic, but not really to you guys, how excited
Speaker 1: I was to be having this conversation because she's just
Speaker 1: so down to earth.
Speaker 2: She's like this bespectacled.
Speaker 1: Hero because she's an artifact badass, and I just kind
Speaker 1: of was fangirling for a lot of it. So collect
Speaker 1: these museum musings and postcard wisdoms from deltyologist Donna Brayden.
Speaker 2: Can you test and see if it's okay?
Speaker 1: So it looks like your level is look at it
Speaker 1: and I feel like I'm about to inform you that
Speaker 1: you are a deltologist.
Speaker 2: That was a new word to me.
Speaker 3: But I love the fact that there is a word
Speaker 3: about the love of postcards.
Speaker 1: I mean, you don't just love them. You also are
Speaker 1: a curator here at the Henry Ford, so you also
Speaker 1: deal with the collection of them, the inspection of them,
Speaker 1: the cataloging.
Speaker 3: Yes, I have looked through huge swaths of our postcard
Speaker 3: collection and we have many How many postcards.
Speaker 1: Do you think you have in the collections here A few.
Speaker 2: Thousand, We have a lot. How do they get stored?
Speaker 1: Are they in like U haul boxes or are they
Speaker 1: like all an acid fair laver?
Speaker 3: Yeah, imagine shoe boxes, okay that are like acid free.
Speaker 3: Oh so they're like protective certain kind of cardboard that
Speaker 3: is okay for that quality of postcard paper. And they're
Speaker 3: all nicely organized by topic usually state.
Speaker 2: Oh so you can then by topic.
Speaker 1: So like Wisconsin fishing, spon and.
Speaker 3: Bears right, who right? And we have two different collections.
Speaker 3: The main one is all indexed in our computer, so
Speaker 3: we can look up any topic or any state or
Speaker 3: any year and find those postcards and then just kind
Speaker 3: of dig them out and look at them. I think
Speaker 3: there are pictures of most.
Speaker 2: Of them as well. And then there's a whole.
Speaker 3: Other collection that I found more recently that you have
Speaker 3: to know we have.
Speaker 1: What So the museum recently discovered a pristine postcard collection
Speaker 1: by this publishing company which was kind of like this
Speaker 1: papery time capsule into postcards past. And I don't know
Speaker 1: if they had to wear gloves to touch them, but
Speaker 1: I'm going to picture them wearing gloves to touch them.
Speaker 2: They're not indexed. They were not written by people and mailed.
Speaker 1: So they don't have messages like Betty, I wish you
Speaker 1: are on the boat with us.
Speaker 2: Right, and then a licked stamp. They don't separate.
Speaker 3: I mean, those are great because you get postmarks on
Speaker 3: them and you can date them that way. But the
Speaker 3: ones that have no messages, in this one company's collection,
Speaker 3: you get a very more complete run of every postcard
Speaker 3: they ever made. So a couple of years ago, I
Speaker 3: was delving deep into the history of Yellowstone National Park
Speaker 3: and I found that those postcards sem to be earlier
Speaker 3: as well, kind of these really early teens and twenties
Speaker 3: era postcards of every attraction at Yellowstone. I was like,
Speaker 3: oh my gosh, you don't or not finding these on
Speaker 3: the computer.
Speaker 2: But I'm going to get them digitized so people can
Speaker 2: see them now.
Speaker 1: So what is the history of postcards? Did they just
Speaker 1: always exist like forever? Like did the dinosaurs pop them
Speaker 1: in the mail? And they're like eh, down in Mexico
Speaker 1: for VAK there's so huge common or some shit I
Speaker 1: don't know, man made for some red sunsets though, talk
Speaker 1: to you later. No, not so much. Postcards were invented
Speaker 1: for a reason, relatively recently, because they were cheap to mail.
Speaker 1: They're like a penny. Everyone's like, dude, these rule technology.
Speaker 1: It's so crazy. And then from there they evolved. So
Speaker 1: let's get all up to speed on the history of postcards.
Speaker 1: I swear this is fascinating. You'll never look at them
Speaker 1: the same way. You'll be like, OMG, look at the
Speaker 1: border on that ooh a linen finish, and maybe maybe
Speaker 1: you'll join a deltyology club and meet the love of
Speaker 1: your life. I don't know, the world's crazy, but let's
Speaker 1: get into it.
Speaker 3: The first postcards were put up by the government, the
Speaker 3: post office, and you had no choice over what you
Speaker 3: got and then oh oh, they act passed where private
Speaker 3: companies could produce postcards, and then it became a bigger deal.
Speaker 3: And that's when you got kind of that golden age
Speaker 3: of early the early twentieth century postcards put out by
Speaker 3: these companies. Oh okay, and then if you're familiar with postcards,
Speaker 3: there's that early look on kind of a rag paper
Speaker 3: that looks almost like a painting something. Yeah, that's those
Speaker 3: early twentieth century postcards.
Speaker 1: Okay, more little tidbits. So the first first, first postcard
Speaker 1: ever was invented by this British author, prankster and play boy,
Speaker 1: this guy named Theodor Hook. And he sent this hand
Speaker 1: painted postcard to himself in eighteen forty and on it
Speaker 1: unflattering drawings of a bunch of postal workers. He's like,
Speaker 1: you've been served. Boom. Now that postcards sold at auction
Speaker 1: in two thousand and two for twenty seven thousand British pounds.
Speaker 1: So some Lotvian guy, his name is Eugene Gomberg. I
Speaker 1: looked him up on Facebook. I spent some time looking
Speaker 1: towards vacation photos last night. I'm not gonna lie, none
Speaker 1: are photos involving this postcard. I met he legit forgot
Speaker 1: that he bought it. Anyway, I'm going to give you
Speaker 1: a quick rundown. In eighteen sixty one, the US allowed
Speaker 1: postcards to be sent through the mail, and then ten
Speaker 1: years later they were like, hey, let's make some and
Speaker 1: sell our own pre stamped postcards. For God's sake, let's
Speaker 1: make a little money. And then from there, in late
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds to early nineteen hundreds, this was officially the
Speaker 1: Golden Age of postcards. What a time to be alive.
Speaker 1: They really started taking off. People were like, they're so cheap,
Speaker 1: they're so easy, I won't get hand cramps writing these
Speaker 1: long ass inky letters, and wagons with photo equipment started
Speaker 1: traveling and printing pictures onto these mailable postcards.
Speaker 2: Now, there was also a white border period.
Speaker 1: That was in the early nineteen hundreds that saved ink
Speaker 1: by printing on a smaller surface. Nineteen thirties, there was
Speaker 1: a shift to linen texture, nineteen fifties, some scalloped edges,
Speaker 1: and now what we know today they're printed to the
Speaker 1: edges with modern chrome, full color. So congratulations, you now
Speaker 1: know the whole history of postcards.
Speaker 2: We did it.
Speaker 1: Isn't it weird that postcards have an origin story, they're
Speaker 1: like a superhero or a rescue dog. It just makes
Speaker 1: you love them more. And Donna loves her work.
Speaker 3: So there's a big shift in how they look and
Speaker 3: what tends to happen. The reason you can't date that
Speaker 3: that well unless they have postmarks is that those early
Speaker 3: postcards get continue to be offered for years and years
Speaker 3: after they're not made anymore. Oh really, so they keep going.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they keep going.
Speaker 3: So you see these, you see people in like outdated clothing.
Speaker 3: I know this was not taken this year because it's
Speaker 3: so much cheaper just to keep producing those same postcards.
Speaker 1: Right Like when you see people with like feathered eighties
Speaker 1: hair and like Venice Beach postcards, you're.
Speaker 3: Like, whoa, man, it's very nicely still around. It's definitely
Speaker 3: still around. Our ladies with big hats and you know,
Speaker 3: Gibson girl looking outfits and it's like the nineteen thirties
Speaker 3: and it should be like or the nineteen forties.
Speaker 2: That's like nineteen ten. Yeah, okay, that it needs to
Speaker 2: be updated.
Speaker 3: And that was just I mean, the discoveries here are
Speaker 3: always every day.
Speaker 2: Even for me and I've been here forty years. Every
Speaker 2: day new things. That's what's so great about it.
Speaker 1: So does that mean when you digitize them, do you
Speaker 1: have to scan them or photograph them? And then does
Speaker 1: someone have to catalog like them? Okay, this one has
Speaker 1: a barn in it and a bucket, so I have
Speaker 1: to put those keywords in.
Speaker 2: That's a great question.
Speaker 3: I think they do put the keywords in, but in
Speaker 3: the old days before computers, when I was here, we.
Speaker 2: Had to actually physically describe them.
Speaker 3: But we do have to do the company the date
Speaker 3: those keywords I think material sometimes and we put a
Speaker 3: title at the top so that it's descriptive. And then
Speaker 3: something that curators add is something called a narrative, which
Speaker 3: is a short write up explaining the context of each thing,
Speaker 3: which keeps us really busy, and we'll never we'll never
Speaker 3: catch up, but it's something that's ongoing that we try
Speaker 3: to do. So every time somebody looks something up on
Speaker 3: our website, they find a little right up about it.
Speaker 1: And so it might be like a woman picks apples
Speaker 1: in an orchard while a puppy looks on or something whatever.
Speaker 3: We actually try to be more interpretive than that. We
Speaker 3: try to explain why the woman is there, what she's
Speaker 3: looking at why she looks the way she does, what
Speaker 3: kind of you know, was the place of vacasion place
Speaker 3: or you know, sort of try to provide some context
Speaker 3: and some background.
Speaker 2: That's what we curators try to do.
Speaker 1: So I went down a deep, deep, deep, deep rabbit
Speaker 1: burrow looking at the digital archives of postcards and the
Speaker 1: Henry Ford collection, and I was just tickled to see
Speaker 1: this one was this black and white full length portrait.
Speaker 1: It was titled Gentleman Posed with a Chair nineteen ten,
Speaker 1: and it features this small framed man in a dusty
Speaker 1: suit and a like a brimmed hat cocked far back
Speaker 1: on his head, and he's got this silvery mustache over
Speaker 1: an uncertain grin. Just a plucky looking guy. And the
Speaker 1: museum caption of it reads, this man likely decided at
Speaker 1: the spur of the moment to have his photograph taken.
Speaker 1: He has left his tie tucked in as he would
Speaker 1: while wearing a work apron. He probably saw the temporary
Speaker 1: setup by a traveling photographer of a painted canvas in
Speaker 1: a store or a public building. Choosing postcard paper meant
Speaker 1: that he could mail photos to friends and relatives. And
Speaker 1: not to get too sentimental, but museums are so powerful,
Speaker 1: not only when they just display our past for us
Speaker 1: to see, but when they lay out moments and stories
Speaker 1: that we'd never even consider. And postcards kind of tell
Speaker 1: those tales of what aspiration meant. In past Eras and
Speaker 1: Donna curated promotional postcards for one exhibit about motels, and
Speaker 1: they tell the story of hitting the open road in
Speaker 1: a car with your nuclear family for some time away,
Speaker 1: just kind of weaving sunburn and heartburn and discovery and
Speaker 1: tall the new memories.
Speaker 3: So the motel postcards, for example, I, you know, looked
Speaker 3: up each motel on the on the internet, is like,
Speaker 3: what can I find on them? What can I find
Speaker 3: on the owners? What is the back saying when it
Speaker 3: says air cooled rooms, new mattresses, all these crazy things
Speaker 3: that they say. Is the television exactly what does that
Speaker 3: mean for the era? And is it a tiny little motel?
Speaker 3: Did it last? Is it still around? Is it a
Speaker 3: one off?
Speaker 2: Did it go away?
Speaker 3: Is it a popular tourist area? These are the things
Speaker 3: we try to find out.
Speaker 1: Why are there so many motel postcards? And in your
Speaker 1: collection and your creation of postcards in Deltiology, do you
Speaker 1: find there are Okay, there are state postcards.
Speaker 2: There are motel postcards.
Speaker 1: There are get Well postcards, like what are the genres?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 3: The the get Well postcards are very early form of postcards,
Speaker 3: which was more like greeting cards, and the companies that
Speaker 3: made their early postcards actually started with kind of holiday greetings.
Speaker 3: People sent them to each other and it was a
Speaker 3: very inexpensive way of sending. It was amazing to have
Speaker 3: something colorful and printed to send people and was very cheap.
Speaker 1: Postcards also ended up as a way to send like
Speaker 1: stupid messages, kind of like a jiff in today's world. Okay,
Speaker 1: we were talking about lighthearted postcards.
Speaker 2: Turned it more into.
Speaker 3: Like jokey postcards than you know, greeting postcards, because of
Speaker 3: course you can find greeting cards everywhere now.
Speaker 2: It became a big industry.
Speaker 3: The tourism postcards is what's such a gigantic what became
Speaker 3: such a gigantic industry, And of course you know everywhere
Speaker 3: you go you can go to the souvenir shop and
Speaker 3: buy a memory of someplace that you've been. The motel
Speaker 3: postcards are an interesting case because sometimes you still find
Speaker 3: but not so often anymore, you would find a free
Speaker 3: postcard in the drawer of the motel you would stay in.
Speaker 3: And this is when I was growing up. This is
Speaker 3: what we all did, and that's what free you could
Speaker 3: send your family or your friends, this is where I'm staying.
Speaker 2: And they were ads for the motels.
Speaker 3: They were like the best, most inexpensive advertising for these motels,
Speaker 3: and they become such a document. But I still have
Speaker 3: because I saved postcards.
Speaker 2: When I was a kid.
Speaker 3: It was a free way to build a collection and
Speaker 3: all these great messages I would say from my friends
Speaker 3: and family, and then people would start sending them to
Speaker 3: me because they knew I collected them. But my parents
Speaker 3: would occasionally escape from me and my four brothers and
Speaker 3: go somewhere, always not very expensive, but you know, they'd
Speaker 3: go somewhere and then we'd get a postcard from my
Speaker 3: mom that would circle the room ah and say this
Speaker 3: is the room we're staying, and it would just paint
Speaker 3: I mean, she was so proud to let us know
Speaker 3: that they were staying, you know, you know, in a
Speaker 3: lodging that wasn't at home, and it just gave us
Speaker 3: sort of painted a picture where they were.
Speaker 2: So that was really cool. Do you still have that collection?
Speaker 1: Personally?
Speaker 3: Of course, really I have, Yes, I have savored the collection.
Speaker 3: I would it's very personal. But what's really funny is
Speaker 3: when I was I don't know, elementary school, I had
Speaker 3: a cork bulletin board in my bedroom and there was
Speaker 3: a period of time where I thumbtacked all my postcards
Speaker 3: to the board. And so I look at these postcards
Speaker 3: now in the olive holes in the corners or varied
Speaker 3: places where I changed the holes, and it's like surrounded
Speaker 3: by these holes, and it's like why did I do that?
Speaker 3: But it brings such a funny memory back when I
Speaker 3: was just so proud to display these until it got
Speaker 3: to be too many.
Speaker 2: So note to potential museum curators, don't poke holes in
Speaker 2: things days your future self will build a time machine
Speaker 2: out of lawnmower parts and come back and hurt you
Speaker 2: in the face. So Donna has her personal collection all
Speaker 2: stored in a box at home. How many are in there?
Speaker 2: How many do I have? Probably a hundred? You know,
Speaker 2: that seemed like a lot.
Speaker 3: And I look, you know, recently, every once in a
Speaker 3: while I come across and I'm like, oh, I have
Speaker 3: to look at these. I was like, you know, sometimes
Speaker 3: like i'd go to the well. I grew up in
Speaker 3: Cleveland and the Art Museum was one of my favorite
Speaker 3: all time. I took art classes there and it was
Speaker 3: just this magical place, and I'd always buy a postcard.
Speaker 3: So I have all these wonderful postcards of paintings and
Speaker 3: things from when I was a kid. So it's and
Speaker 3: so many levels. It just kind of brings joy to
Speaker 3: have those that little pile of postcards.
Speaker 1: Do you think that postcards back in the day were
Speaker 1: the equivalent of a text message, whereas a letter was
Speaker 1: an email.
Speaker 3: That's a great I think you could have something there
Speaker 3: because particularly because the back was divided in half and
Speaker 3: one side you had to put the address on, so
Speaker 3: you were left with one half of a postcard write
Speaker 3: the message. And I have messages on some of them
Speaker 3: where you know, people used up the space because they
Speaker 3: wrote too big, and then they're like writing all around
Speaker 3: the edges.
Speaker 2: On the top.
Speaker 3: But I don't think you were supposed to. The post
Speaker 3: office did not like it if you ran over into
Speaker 3: the side with the address right, because that was like
Speaker 3: the rule, the address the stamp, and only the side
Speaker 3: is for the right, So you were that's a great point.
Speaker 3: You were forced to write almost like a post It
Speaker 3: note size message on there. And that's why when we
Speaker 3: studied messages on the back of postcards for an exhibit
Speaker 3: we did called Americans on Vacation, it was fascinating not
Speaker 3: only to see what people wrote, but also there were
Speaker 3: certain formulaic ways that people.
Speaker 2: Wrote things I love this.
Speaker 1: I love this because you.
Speaker 3: Had to write in phrases, and there were certain things
Speaker 3: people come in it on repeatedly, the weather, Yeah, car
Speaker 3: breaking down.
Speaker 1: They're like one of the kids poked the other's eye.
Speaker 1: You're getting a divorce.
Speaker 2: See fun.
Speaker 3: But interestingly, we also found that there was a lot
Speaker 3: of we're not sure how far they stretched it, but
Speaker 3: people tended to want to make their vacations sound really good.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, that's what they do on Instagram.
Speaker 3: Exactly and Facebook. I mean it's a bragging thing, right,
Speaker 3: so like we are here and you are not. Yes,
Speaker 3: therefore we're going to make it sound as good as possible.
Speaker 3: And there's you know, the classic having a wonderful time,
Speaker 3: wish you were here, Yeah, showed up repeatedly.
Speaker 2: I mean it's not made up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was always that kind of we're having a
Speaker 3: great time and you're not you know, yeah, not kind
Speaker 3: of a little bit of one's one upsmanship.
Speaker 1: A lot of times no one's ever like, uh, the
Speaker 1: wife got sal Manila from the shrimp buffet.
Speaker 3: I don't hear that a lot on a maybe a letter, yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, maybe a letter, but where people have a
Speaker 3: little more time to play that out. Certainly journals that
Speaker 3: we've read, sort of trip diaries where they don't expect anyone.
Speaker 2: To ever read them.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I have a lot myself on those. But postcards, No,
Speaker 3: it's very short and sweeten. It's mostly highlights and don't
Speaker 3: like social media now it is kind of like that,
Speaker 3: you know, we get a picture and a little bit
Speaker 3: of impression, mostly positive.
Speaker 1: So now the Americans on vacation collection you put together,
Speaker 1: Where did you get those postcards? And what was it
Speaker 1: like reading all those little messages and like seeing the
Speaker 1: handwriting and the post was that just was that mind
Speaker 1: blowing for you?
Speaker 3: We I can't even remember how we came up with
Speaker 3: the idea to do a presentation in the exhibit on
Speaker 3: the messages and postcards. I think as we read about vacations,
Speaker 3: we realized that everybody's familiar with the pictures on the front,
Speaker 3: but not a lot of people are familiar with what
Speaker 3: people say on the back. Nobody's written anything about that.
Speaker 3: It was a new idea. So when we started reading them,
Speaker 3: they went, this is rich. And we thought, all right,
Speaker 3: we need to start collecting. We need to start accumulating
Speaker 3: a collection of postcards with interesting messages.
Speaker 2: How do we do that?
Speaker 3: So we went to antiques and there was a one
Speaker 3: nearby here that was every month, and so my colleague
Speaker 3: I was working with and I went there for the
Speaker 3: specific goal of looking at postcards with messages. And there
Speaker 3: were a few dealers we knew that had postcards, and
Speaker 3: they were all organized by state or topic, and they
Speaker 3: were freaked out by what we were doing.
Speaker 2: They're like, well, what topic are you looking for?
Speaker 3: I can help you, and we're like, no, we're not
Speaker 3: really looking for topic, we're.
Speaker 2: Just reading the bags.
Speaker 3: And eventually they just gave up and threw up their
Speaker 3: hands and said, okay, you're on your own, and they
Speaker 3: let us stay for like, I don't know, an hour
Speaker 3: or two hours at a time because they didn't organize
Speaker 3: anything that way. No one ever bought postcards that way,
Speaker 3: And we just had the best time reading all of them,
Speaker 3: and we made a pile of, you know, some of
Speaker 3: the more interesting good and bad messages, and that became
Speaker 3: this media presentation in the exhibit.
Speaker 1: So this American's on Vacation exhibit appropriately toward the country,
Speaker 1: and it featured these chronological looks at types of recreating
Speaker 1: we did.
Speaker 2: Back in the day.
Speaker 1: And it had this audio visual component of actors reading
Speaker 1: the backs of vintage postcards, kind of giving life to
Speaker 1: these long gone moments and voices to people who would
Speaker 1: never know that their road trip or steamer cruise memories
Speaker 1: would be in the hands of postcard collectors and in
Speaker 1: the ears of future strangers. And I tried so hard
Speaker 1: to find audio of this, but we're just gonna have
Speaker 1: to imagine. I'm imagining. And it's super cool, Okay.
Speaker 3: They would read a line or two from these postcards,
Speaker 3: and he put the thing together by showing the fronts
Speaker 3: and people reading the backs.
Speaker 2: It's wonderful, Oh, wonderful, so cool to see it come
Speaker 2: to life like that.
Speaker 3: Sometimes you get media people who don't do what you
Speaker 3: yeah visioned, but he was beyond what we envisioned.
Speaker 2: It was really great. So that was a wonderful project.
Speaker 1: Do when you go on vacation, when you go to
Speaker 1: a museum, do you look at the postcards? Do you
Speaker 1: still collect them? Or do you look at them fondly
Speaker 1: and say, oh, that's a cool rack of postcards, Like.
Speaker 2: I'm all filled up here.
Speaker 3: I still buy postcards, not for exactly the same reason,
Speaker 3: but what I tend to do with them, although we
Speaker 3: do get more than I can do that do this
Speaker 3: with is I keep a daily journal?
Speaker 2: I have for many years? You do I do? That's amazing.
Speaker 2: Tells me organize the chas and come to terms with it. Sometimes.
Speaker 3: And I go through about three different journals a year
Speaker 3: before I use one up and have to start another one.
Speaker 3: And I pick my favorite postcards and I put them
Speaker 3: in the back of the journal during which the time
Speaker 3: which I took that trip. And every time I open
Speaker 3: the journal now or in the future, I see those
Speaker 3: postcards and it reminds me of the trips.
Speaker 2: It's wonderful. It's a wonderful thing.
Speaker 1: So on the subject of archiving and personal memories, I
Speaker 1: had to ask her about this daily journaling because I
Speaker 1: just had to. It's Dad's podcast. She'll ask what she
Speaker 1: wants and it turned into this really interesting discussion. Wow,
Speaker 1: how many journals do you think you have.
Speaker 2: Oh gosh, I hope.
Speaker 3: I'm afraid some future person is going to read them
Speaker 3: and oh my god, what was this crazy person thinking?
Speaker 3: But I started, well, I kept journals when I was
Speaker 3: in high school, in college a little bit. But I
Speaker 3: started a daily journal in Are you ready for this
Speaker 3: in nineteen eighty two, yes, and I have daily writings
Speaker 3: in there ever since then.
Speaker 1: So you'd be a great expert witness. Where were you
Speaker 1: the night?
Speaker 3: Know?
Speaker 1: And I'll tell you how much do you forget?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Myself and my family, and how often I always keep
Speaker 3: last year's journal out because I was like, when did
Speaker 3: we plant flowers last year? And I'll let me check
Speaker 3: my journal and these are the flowers we planted, and
Speaker 3: this is what days we went shopping, and this was
Speaker 3: the weather. And it always comes in handy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I find this extreme adorable.
Speaker 3: And a lot of times it's like, how was I
Speaker 3: feeling a year ago? When what kind of work was
Speaker 3: I doing? When I have to document, you know, what
Speaker 3: I've accomplished for the year, or just so many, so
Speaker 3: many things that comes in handy. How many journals do
Speaker 3: I have? Probably I hate to think somewhere between fifty
Speaker 3: and one hundred. Probably that's amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what happens if you decide you're going to go
Speaker 1: live in an island or something and you leave your
Speaker 1: journals behind. Would you be like burn these or would
Speaker 1: you be like I hope one day someone publishes these.
Speaker 3: I think that if someone published them, I would want
Speaker 3: them to be me fair enough. I think I'd freak
Speaker 3: out at the thought of somebody else reading them. I
Speaker 3: know my fan, my my husband, my daughter watched me
Speaker 3: write my journal every day. I hope I would be
Speaker 3: nervous to think if because I write things about them
Speaker 3: and what I want them to know. Maybe sometimes, but
Speaker 3: sometimes not, because it just helped. It's a tool for
Speaker 3: me to try to figure out what happened, Yeah, and
Speaker 3: how to you know, proceed from there.
Speaker 1: And it's so interesting that the notion of public writing
Speaker 1: short format public journaling for others consumption versus the private journaling.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting because it almost makes you wonder what
Speaker 1: memories are etched in permanently, you know, is it?
Speaker 2: Wow?
Speaker 1: If we don't, if we don't write down the good
Speaker 1: and the bad, I.
Speaker 2: Have forgotten details.
Speaker 3: A few years ago I went back and got a
Speaker 3: second master's degree because I for various reasons, asked the
Speaker 3: deep studying of a topic and the writing about it.
Speaker 3: And it was a cool program on Liberal Studies, which
Speaker 3: is interdisciplinary, and I took these amazing I took these
Speaker 3: amazing classes on time, on place, on memory. So I
Speaker 3: was always doing these crazy papers. So one paper was
Speaker 3: on called autobiographical memory. And the whole point was the
Speaker 3: whole key was that emotional things that are more emotional
Speaker 3: you remember better. Oh that makes it will makes totally
Speaker 3: makes sense. So the things that are a lot of
Speaker 3: times the really bad things that happen are the things
Speaker 3: you remember because the emotions were higher.
Speaker 1: Right, it had it imprints, It imprints exactly everyone knows
Speaker 1: where they were when they heard about nine to eleven
Speaker 1: or JFK when an earthquake happened.
Speaker 3: But and there's been studies on those, but it then
Speaker 3: they sort of relate it to, you know, in general,
Speaker 3: what you remember, and it just makes total sense.
Speaker 2: So the little daily details you totally forget.
Speaker 1: That's so fascinating. Yeah, do you have a favorite postcard
Speaker 1: that you have ever seen? Like if you if there
Speaker 1: were a fire and you had to say, oh, a postcard,
Speaker 1: I know that's difficult.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Wow. I have a personal love for Route sixty
Speaker 3: six and we did a lot of that road several
Speaker 3: years ago, and we have one, at least one great
Speaker 3: postcard of a motel court is it called Coronado Courts
Speaker 3: with a K on Route sixty six And it's so,
Speaker 3: you know, Pueblo looking Southwestern looking and.
Speaker 2: Road sixty six. And I think it's more all of.
Speaker 3: The memories and meaning wrapped up in that postcard as
Speaker 3: well as how beautiful the art is. And maybe that's
Speaker 3: kind of the reason that that one sticks out in
Speaker 3: my mind.
Speaker 2: But I'm sure I.
Speaker 3: Have many favorites and I love many, many of them,
Speaker 3: but that one sticks out in my every time I
Speaker 3: look at him, like, oh, I love those postcard.
Speaker 1: Okay, So I found a picture of this postcard and
Speaker 1: it looks kind of like a double wide one like
Speaker 1: a it folds out, and it's panoramic, and it has
Speaker 1: a linen finish from the nineteen forties. I basically, right now,
Speaker 1: I'm like the postcard equivalent of a person who's gone
Speaker 1: to one wine tasting but changes all my online profiles
Speaker 1: to say I'm an una Fhile now her favorite postcard
Speaker 1: depicts the super cute kind of cream colored cottages with
Speaker 1: red tile roofs and manicured trees, and it says Joplin,
Speaker 1: Missouri underneath. So I went digging to see if possibly
Speaker 1: that cottage motel is still there, because how awesome would
Speaker 1: that be? And number one, no, just no. I looked everywhere.
Speaker 1: I used Google Maps to pinpoint the exact spot it was,
Speaker 1: and I think it was on Seventh Street and Schiffendecker
Speaker 1: in Joplin, Missouri, where there is now a convenience store
Speaker 1: named Cases, and according to Yelp photos, they appear to
Speaker 1: sell sushi, which is a bold move. Anyway, Then I remembered,
Speaker 1: oh Man, Joplin, there was a twister there. And then
Speaker 1: I spent like an hour getting super sad looking at
Speaker 1: aerial photos of the aftermath of the May twenty eleven
Speaker 1: tornado and looking at.
Speaker 2: Maps of its path.
Speaker 1: And it missed the former location of these Coronado courts
Speaker 1: motel by like two houses, so it went right through
Speaker 1: where it used to be. Nothing like the mutability of
Speaker 1: the human made landscape to make you appreciate time captured
Speaker 1: in historical artifacts and our fleeting presence on the planet. Anyway, No,
Speaker 1: you can't visit Coronado Courts on a road trip because
Speaker 1: it's now a minimart. But you can see the postcard
Speaker 1: online on the Henry Ford's website, and I'll post it
Speaker 1: on the Ology's Instagram, which is kind of like a
Speaker 1: digital postcard these days.
Speaker 2: So there's that.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure that the Coronado Courts are still there.
Speaker 3: I just love the postcard. It looks like a suburban
Speaker 3: city of little motel courts and the just you know,
Speaker 3: it's like the best lodging on Root sixty six. So
Speaker 3: it's just a great kind of combination of things.
Speaker 1: What do you think of the movie Postcards from the Edge?
Speaker 1: Do you ever see it? Meryl Streep?
Speaker 2: How have I not seen that?
Speaker 1: It's Postcards from the Edge? But it's it's uh Meryl
Speaker 1: Streep plays Carrie Fisher. Is that her one aboutmar Yes? Yes,
Speaker 1: okay and and yeah so, but it's I can't think
Speaker 1: of any other movies dealing with postcards, are you? The
Speaker 1: postcard always rings twice a.
Speaker 3: Little bit With National Poons Vacation, they show postcards in
Speaker 3: the credits.
Speaker 1: Oh they do?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Oh man. I just pulled up the title sequence of
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighty three Chevy Chase Blockbuster Comedy, National Lampoon's
Speaker 1: Vacation and Donna right on the money. It is postcard
Speaker 1: porn and you are gonna love it. So many motel
Speaker 1: posts cards, so many what do you How do you
Speaker 1: feel about the style of you know, it'll say like Wyoming,
Speaker 1: and then each letter has like a I.
Speaker 3: Love those things you do? I do they sum up
Speaker 3: a place. I think they're so clever. And they still
Speaker 3: sell replicas of those. I don't think they make new ones,
Speaker 3: but they make We were just in Wyoming last summer
Speaker 3: and I was like, oh, look one of those Wyoming
Speaker 3: postcards with the scenery in it, and Yellowstone has one.
Speaker 3: And then if you get to know a place, you're like,
Speaker 3: well you have to identify each landmark in the letter.
Speaker 3: Well that's not a very good, you know version of it.
Speaker 3: Or I really missed this thing, or you know, who
Speaker 3: are these people that pick this? But it's really it
Speaker 3: becomes very interactive, actually because it's ours.
Speaker 2: I just think they're very clever.
Speaker 1: I always thought they were so beautiful. Yeah, do you
Speaker 1: want to do a quick lightning round? Okay, So these
Speaker 1: are people who are Patreon subscribers get to submit questions
Speaker 1: to the ologists so I put out a call for
Speaker 1: del teology questions. Okay, and here is what people ask.
Speaker 1: But before we take questions from you, our beloved listeners,
Speaker 1: we're going to take a quick break for sponsors of
Speaker 1: the show. Sponsors.
Speaker 2: Why sponsors?
Speaker 1: You know what they do? They help us give money
Speaker 1: to different charities every week. So if you want to
Speaker 1: know where Ologies gives our money, you can go to
Speaker 1: Aliward dot com and look for the tab Ologies gives back.
Speaker 1: There's like one hundred and fifty different charities that we've
Speaker 1: given to already, with more every single week. So if
Speaker 1: you need a place to go, donate a little bit
Speaker 1: of money but you're not sure where to go. Those
Speaker 1: are all picked biologists who work in those fields, and
Speaker 1: this ad break allows us to give a ton of
Speaker 1: money to them. So thanks for listening and thank sponsors. Okay,
Speaker 1: your questions. Charles Anderson wants to know what's the biggest
Speaker 1: thing you can rightly call a postcard? Probably a size limitation, right, Like,
Speaker 1: maybe you know I have some giant postcards and I
Speaker 1: think we have we have oversized postcards in our collection.
Speaker 1: Really I think they're about a foot wow, y'all, I
Speaker 1: look this up. I'm too excited. Okay, technically you can
Speaker 1: send a giant postcard through the mail, provided that it
Speaker 1: is quote sufficiently stiff to make it through the machines,
Speaker 1: so you don't get the cheaper rates if it's huge.
Speaker 1: But you can mail postcards up to twelve inches by
Speaker 1: fifteen inches, so over a square foot of Like dear
Speaker 1: Aunt nadel, I went to a lake and saw a
Speaker 1: weird bird, and then we ate corn dogs, and Mary
Speaker 1: and Jonas had a water balloon fight, and then and
Speaker 1: then and then there's so much space, so many mems.
Speaker 1: So you should mail someone hear me out a giant
Speaker 1: postcard and just see what they say. Don't tell them
Speaker 1: it's coming. Just mail them a giant postcard. Please do
Speaker 1: this and report back. Thank you, And you can still
Speaker 1: send those my mail.
Speaker 2: That's a good question.
Speaker 3: Maybe they don't even allow them anymore, but there was
Speaker 3: a period of time when they were out. And whether
Speaker 3: you needed extra postage, I bet you did. I'm sure
Speaker 3: you did that you did. But I've seen these oversized
Speaker 3: postcards and probably they're not around too much because they
Speaker 3: were to expect people. Postcards are supposed to be cheap.
Speaker 3: You're supposed to use one stamp and be done with it.
Speaker 3: So if there are some bigger good question.
Speaker 1: Al Martinez wants to know, with social media so prominent,
Speaker 1: has the romance with postcards faded? Do you think or
Speaker 1: do you think people still have a romance about them.
Speaker 3: I don't know that people send them so much anymore.
Speaker 3: I mean, geez, you got to find a stamp. Where
Speaker 3: do you even find a stamp? Sattom and your purse
Speaker 3: start to someone else. It's amazing sometimes when gift shops
Speaker 3: have stamps at the cashier.
Speaker 1: Oh God, bless you.
Speaker 2: I know you have to.
Speaker 3: Ask because I always have to send a Mother's Day
Speaker 3: card to my mom when I'm on vacation, Someone's like, oh,
Speaker 3: I forgot stamps, or well will you? Ten years ago
Speaker 3: we were still sending postcards. My daughter, bless her heart,
Speaker 3: who's twenty eight now, used to send a postcard to
Speaker 3: each of her dolls. Serious, seriously, when we would go
Speaker 3: on vacation and then we would get home, there would
Speaker 3: be the postcards.
Speaker 2: Did she save those? I hope? Of course she saves everything.
Speaker 3: She's her mother's daughter, she's the daughter of a curator
Speaker 3: of correctly, everything is like, can you please get rid
Speaker 3: of some things. No, I can't get rid of anything.
Speaker 3: It's going to be collectible someday. That's her favorite life.
Speaker 3: But no, that was I thought that was the coolest
Speaker 3: idea ever. But I do think that I don't think
Speaker 3: that postcard purchasing has gotten less because people buy them
Speaker 3: for themselves. Yeah, certainly, that's what we do. We come
Speaker 3: home with a bunch of postcards wherever we go, and
Speaker 3: we save them. We have a giant, you know, growing
Speaker 3: and out of space box of postcards for postcards that
Speaker 3: we you know, just put our collective postcards from trips.
Speaker 1: Well it's lovely because a lot of times you might
Speaker 1: take a nice photo, but you're not going to print
Speaker 1: it out. But it is nice to have something tangible
Speaker 1: that you can look at, and especially when it's a
Speaker 1: beautiful professional photograph or a photo of a jackalope or
Speaker 1: somebody or some weird.
Speaker 3: People may send joke ones, you know, that's a good question.
Speaker 3: I think the biggest problem is the need for a standstamp,
Speaker 3: because who would think to even bring them and who
Speaker 3: even knows what it costs to send a postcard now
Speaker 3: I know, just posed to a letter. So I think
Speaker 3: people buy them in a spur of the moment. Buying
Speaker 3: souvenir mania because you want memories, visual memories of those trips.
Speaker 3: But buying them is important when you're there for your
Speaker 3: own memories. And you're right, you can show them to people.
Speaker 3: But I think they're more keepsakes like other kinds of keepsakes.
Speaker 3: They're just beautifully stunning, stunning visual records of a trip.
Speaker 1: And I think when you do buy them and send them,
Speaker 1: even if you're doing it kind of like the same
Speaker 1: way people buy vinyl, you don't need to listen to
Speaker 1: something on vinyl. Right, it is large, it is commercame.
Speaker 1: I think it's interesting when you go on vacation and
Speaker 1: you buy a bunch of postcards and then if you
Speaker 1: have people's addresses to sit at a cafe or a
Speaker 1: coffee shop or a diner and write things out.
Speaker 3: That's it's a wonderful idea. It's part of your vacation
Speaker 3: is to sit there. And I hope that people are
Speaker 3: doing that because I find that we never have time
Speaker 3: to sit there and be reflective, and I have to
Speaker 3: force myself to keep that journal going, and sometimes all
Speaker 3: I can do is write notes and write it at
Speaker 3: the airport, or you know when I get home, because
Speaker 3: we never had time to be reflective and I'm sad
Speaker 3: about that. It's like we used to have more time
Speaker 3: to do that. Yeah, and postcards are part of that.
Speaker 3: You have to sit there and think, how do I
Speaker 3: sum this experience up for somebody? And Facebook online on
Speaker 3: Facebook with a picture just ever so much easier.
Speaker 1: But it's so But postcards are so personal because I'm
Speaker 1: not going to write the same thing to my sister
Speaker 1: true as I.
Speaker 3: Would, you know what I mean, write, And for somebody
Speaker 3: to get something in the mail these days is so
Speaker 3: exceptionally wonderful. Who you know to get a personal note.
Speaker 3: I think we should revive the writing of postcards.
Speaker 1: I'm with you, Donna, one hundred percent. Sarah Michelle says,
Speaker 1: I see your old weird postcards and I raise you.
Speaker 1: Victorian Christmas cards. Have you seen them before? And are
Speaker 1: they better or worse than the postcards? In your opinion?
Speaker 3: I think Victorian Christmas cards are like early postcards. They're
Speaker 3: very embellished. They're sometimes a little imprinted, like they're a
Speaker 3: little three d Oh like, engraved, engraved and raised sometimes
Speaker 3: if that's what that must be. The meaning is in
Speaker 3: the early twentieth century, there were for every holiday, there
Speaker 3: were these postcard greeting cards, and that maybe I mean,
Speaker 3: I'm sure there were more Christmas ones of those than
Speaker 3: any other holiday.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's what we were talking about in the beginning.
Speaker 3: That that was early the early form of greeting cards
Speaker 3: and the early form of postcards. And then I think
Speaker 3: as greeting cards became a bigger industry, you could probably.
Speaker 2: Thank Hallmark for that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, postcards went off in another direction, which
Speaker 3: was as souvenirs.
Speaker 1: I wanted some visual references for Victorian Christmas cards because
Speaker 1: I didn't know what this question was about. And boy,
Speaker 1: howdy did the Internet deliver. I'm sure there were plenty
Speaker 1: of examples of like boring bowls of like winter treats,
Speaker 1: and beautiful calligraphy with holiday tidings, but there are some
Speaker 1: straight up acid trip offerings also. So picture Victorian era
Speaker 1: postcards with drawings of frogs stabbing each other.
Speaker 3: What.
Speaker 1: There's a robin dead belly up on this plain beige
Speaker 1: surface bearing the message may yours be a joyous Christmas.
Speaker 1: There's one of an army of ants slaughtering each other,
Speaker 1: one aunt holding a flag that reads the complements of
Speaker 1: the season. Another one I saw has Saint Nick kidnapping
Speaker 1: a child. And then there's my personal favorite, a message
Speaker 1: of make Christmas be merry, alongside the visual of a
Speaker 1: frog and a stag beetle dancing in the silvery blue
Speaker 1: dusk while a nearby fly plays the tambourine. I kid
Speaker 1: you not. I have never considered a tattoo before, but man,
Speaker 1: that is some solid imagery. And also I'm like, what,
Speaker 1: but I suppose people smoked a ton of opium back then.
Speaker 1: Another explanation is people didn't care about Christmas as much
Speaker 1: and they were like, I don't know, let's make this weird,
Speaker 1: and or the visuals were socially relevant references that are
Speaker 1: just totally lost today, Like if you went back in
Speaker 1: time from the future and you were like, why does
Speaker 1: this Jack in the box magazine ED have a guy
Speaker 1: in a suit but with a clown, huge clown head.
Speaker 1: He's holding a burger, he doesn't have a mouth. This
Speaker 1: isn't normal. So I guess essentially, maybe with these Victorian
Speaker 1: Christmas postcards, you just had to be there and on
Speaker 1: opium is there? Ashley Perez wants to know is their
Speaker 1: proper postcard etiquette.
Speaker 2: That is a great question. You You have to realize
Speaker 2: that anybody could read it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. True.
Speaker 3: The postman could read it, the postal worker could read it,
Speaker 3: your mom could read it. It's not private.
Speaker 1: So your point there is tale to god. I have
Speaker 1: enjoyed relations with seventeen neupile suitors on this sojourn to
Speaker 1: Niagara Falls.
Speaker 3: You probably do want to think about what you're writing,
Speaker 3: because it isn't It's really a very unprivate form of communication,
Speaker 3: and that's what makes them so cheap. But boy, they
Speaker 3: are very public, right, And probably maybe what lent itself
Speaker 3: to that sort of formulaic way of writing, people didn't
Speaker 3: really reveal what was really going on, and part of it.
Speaker 1: Maybe their post men might read it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, part of it.
Speaker 3: Might be they didn't want people to know what it
Speaker 3: was really like, but part of it might be that
Speaker 3: they knew anybody could read it.
Speaker 1: I am willing to wager that every postcard that has
Speaker 1: been sent through the US postal mail has been read
Speaker 1: by at least twelve people, right.
Speaker 3: And it is a little funny now to read postcards
Speaker 3: in our collection that, you know, individuals meant for their
Speaker 3: friends and family, and here we are, you know, here
Speaker 3: they are in this public archive, and everybody is reading them,
Speaker 3: and we're reading them because they're historically have some historical
Speaker 3: interest to us.
Speaker 2: That must be.
Speaker 3: It's a little it's a little funny sometimes to think
Speaker 3: about the original purpose being personal.
Speaker 1: But it's also like, I don't know, I think that
Speaker 1: almost all of us strive for our narrative to be
Speaker 1: immortal in some way.
Speaker 3: That's true, and I think that people were conscious of
Speaker 3: that when they were when they write those messages. It's like,
Speaker 3: who's going to read this? How's it going to sound?
Speaker 3: It's not you know, when I in my own personal journal,
Speaker 3: it's stream of consciousness. Every once in a while, I think,
Speaker 3: how can I write this a little better? But it's
Speaker 3: most important it's just getting all those thoughts down. If
Speaker 3: you're writing a postcard, you sort of have to think
Speaker 3: about what you right. I mean Facebook too, it's not unlike,
Speaker 3: how do I want to word this exactly right so
Speaker 3: I get the most likes? You know?
Speaker 2: Can I word it better? You know? Is it worth sending?
Speaker 3: What are people going to think of it? If I
Speaker 3: put this picture in? And there's always that quality when
Speaker 3: you know somebody else is going to read it.
Speaker 1: But I think it's great to know that our stories
Speaker 1: live on past us is, even if it's just something mundane,
Speaker 1: like we had a very delicious candalope at breakfast and
Speaker 1: then we saw flamingos.
Speaker 2: Like that's exactly your story. That would be lost right,
Speaker 2: that takes on an importance. I mean, I've read a
Speaker 2: lot about going on vacation and as soon as you
Speaker 2: leave home, you go.
Speaker 3: Off into another frame of mind. You are not home anymore.
Speaker 3: You are away from home, and it's a different world.
Speaker 3: You're experiencing different things. You're hoping to grow from it.
Speaker 3: You're hoping to come back more relaxed, or smarter, or
Speaker 3: just a better person, a different person.
Speaker 2: And postcards are all part of that.
Speaker 3: So yes, to be immortalized because you feel kind of
Speaker 3: feel that way during your trip, I have done something
Speaker 3: different and I've changed in some way person now.
Speaker 2: So true.
Speaker 1: Also, studies show that just planning a vacation and having
Speaker 1: something to look forward to boosts your mood for months
Speaker 1: before the trip. So get a good deal, just book
Speaker 1: something in advance. Go somewhere anywhere, even if it's not
Speaker 1: that far away and you can't in the dirt because
Speaker 1: it's worth it and it's working brain magic on you
Speaker 1: before you even go. Ali Ward pleaded with herself Mia
Speaker 1: and a Side on her podcast. I have two our
Speaker 1: questions from Okay, what is the hardest thing about your
Speaker 1: job or what? Especially when it comes to postcard curation.
Speaker 1: What's the most annoying thing? What is the.
Speaker 3: Most Is it paper weavils? Is it alphabetizing? Well, I've
Speaker 3: been lucky that I don't have to be the person
Speaker 3: who does the conservation the arrangements of cataloging. I just
Speaker 3: get to look at them. Possibly the most frustrating part
Speaker 3: of it is that as technology of our computer system changes,
Speaker 3: the information change looks different, so that we did a
Speaker 3: massive cataloging and imaging of our postcard collection twenty years
Speaker 3: ago and the pictures.
Speaker 2: Don't look good anymore.
Speaker 3: So you can see some weird, vague version of it
Speaker 3: as opposed to other collections that have been more recently digitized,
Speaker 3: because with how many two thousand postcards you cannot look
Speaker 3: at them all in person to select. As I pick
Speaker 3: new things for new projects, they then re they digitize
Speaker 3: them so they look nice. But that's a very long,
Speaker 3: slow process. So photographic archiving I think that's that's a
Speaker 3: good way of putting it. But at the other end is,
Speaker 3: oh my gosh, I get to go look at postcards today.
Speaker 3: That's so oh my gosh, look at these amazing things
Speaker 3: in our collection. That's the coolest thing. The coolest thing
Speaker 3: is like get out of your office and go look
Speaker 3: at you know, postcards in the archives. And it makes
Speaker 3: my day to do things like that. So it's the
Speaker 3: best job on earth when I get to do things
Speaker 3: like that.
Speaker 1: That was my next question is what's your favorite thing
Speaker 1: about it? But does it feel like you're cheating because
Speaker 1: you're getting paid to do something that you want to
Speaker 1: do Anyway.
Speaker 2: No, it all balances out at the end of the day.
Speaker 2: You're like, I'm still the work. That's like the high
Speaker 2: points to escape.
Speaker 3: From the emails and at the meetings and just kind
Speaker 3: of work with the pure collections. And that's always been
Speaker 3: what I've loved about museum work. It's not it's not
Speaker 3: just looking at them, but figuring out what the context
Speaker 3: is behind them. That's the whole reason I'm in this
Speaker 3: is what do objects mean in people's lives past and present?
Speaker 3: And that's what I most love. So being able to
Speaker 3: go look at a collection of postcards.
Speaker 2: It's the best.
Speaker 1: Staying always learning is something that you probably love about
Speaker 1: your job. I do.
Speaker 2: That is a good boy. You pick up things well.
Speaker 3: That is one of the main things I love in general.
Speaker 3: I always love to keep learning and creativity and learning
Speaker 3: are like two of the things that keep me going
Speaker 3: just in all ways. And if I can bring them
Speaker 3: into my job, so much the better. If it feels creative,
Speaker 3: I'm good. You know, it feels like.
Speaker 2: I'm learning new things. I'm good. And so yeah, you
Speaker 2: got a good beat on it.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for doing this. This is so interesting.
Speaker 1: Now you know you're a del teologist.
Speaker 2: Delteologist.
Speaker 1: Isn't that crazy?
Speaker 2: It's wow, I know it. It's great.
Speaker 1: So Donna once again is the curator of Public Life
Speaker 1: at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, which is
Speaker 1: such a lovely place. It's filled with all kinds of history,
Speaker 1: from like Edgar Allen Poe's desk to the Rosa Parks
Speaker 1: bus to presidential limos and postcards. And I'm a correspondent
Speaker 1: on their Saturday morning CBS show, the Henry Ford's Innovation
Speaker 1: Nation with Morocca. But they are in no way paying
Speaker 1: me to make this episode. And I try to hide
Speaker 1: this podcast from them because I swear so heavily and
Speaker 1: it usually accept not that much in this episode. And
Speaker 1: actually I'll be there at the museum shooting from July
Speaker 1: eighth to thirteenth, coming up. Just in case you see
Speaker 1: me around the halls. If you happen to be there,
Speaker 1: say hi to old Dad Ward. You can join up
Speaker 1: on the Facebook Ologies pot cast group. Typically, if they
Speaker 1: have meetups, they usually arrange them there. We did that
Speaker 1: last time I was there a few weeks ago. Digital
Speaker 1: postcard archives are at the Henry Ford dot org and
Speaker 1: I'll also post links from this episode at aliward dot
Speaker 1: com slash ologies. You can also find photos of images
Speaker 1: that we talked about on the Ologies Instagram just at Ologies.
Speaker 1: We're also on Twitter at ologies, and I'm Ali Ward
Speaker 1: on Twitter and Instagram. Thank you to Hannah Lippo and
Speaker 1: Aaron Talbert for being just lovely and wonderful friends and
Speaker 1: adminting the Facebook Ologies podcast group. And if you'd like
Speaker 1: to support the podcast, you can do so by getting
Speaker 1: yourself some sweet merch at ologiesmerch dot com. There's shirts
Speaker 1: and tots and pins and Dad hats and phone cases
Speaker 1: and onesies. Thank you Bonnie Dutch and Shannon Felts for
Speaker 1: running all of that. And you can kick in as
Speaker 1: little as a buck a month and you can become
Speaker 1: a patron at patreon dot com slash ologies. You get
Speaker 1: to hear what episodes are come up next to answer
Speaker 1: my questions for me to ask theologists, And thank you
Speaker 1: all for making this podcast possible. I would not get
Speaker 1: the incredible editing of Steven Ray Morris without you. The
Speaker 1: music was written by Nick Thorburn, and actually the title
Speaker 1: of the theme song officially is Ali at the Museum.
Speaker 2: Is that cool?
Speaker 1: So now you know, and you also know at the
Speaker 1: end of each episode, I tell you a secret, and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell you about my latest horrible snack because
Speaker 1: I know Shannon Feltus loves those. Tonight, like a few
Speaker 1: hours ago, I really want a cookie dough so bad,
Speaker 1: and I didn't have any cookie dough, but I took
Speaker 1: some margarine and I mixed it with a little bit
Speaker 1: of brown sugar in a bowl and I ate it.
Speaker 1: And then I remembered that I had these lentil potato
Speaker 1: chips in the cupboard, and I was like, would this
Speaker 1: be a good dip, and so I put some margarine
Speaker 1: sugar on a lentil potato chip and it wasn't as
Speaker 1: gross as it sounds. Anyway. I've been gone a lot
Speaker 1: and haven't been grocery shopping, so cupboards are a little bear,
Speaker 1: and I will rectify that tomorrow. There's your secret. We
Speaker 1: all eat weird stuff, right, Okay, So please continue to
Speaker 1: ask super smart people just stupid questions, because honestly, I
Speaker 1: think those are kind of the best questions anyway, and
Speaker 1: I think that they really secretly love it all right
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