A Postcard Diaspora effort: Entrance to Afton Villa, St. Francisville, Louisiana
This long avenue of moss-draped oaks leads from U. S. Hwy. 61 to beautiful Afton Villa. This drive was the setting of a memorable scene in the movie "Drango", filmed here in 1956.
Photo by B. F. Holmes
Pub. by Bernard F. Holmes, Box 475, Baton Rouge, La.
Dexter Press
61915-B
Postmarked January 1, 1969, at Baton Rouge, Louisiana, with a slogan cancel that reads “’ABCD’ MAIL FOR BETTER BUSINESS SERVICE”; mailed to Grafton, Wisconsin.
Message:
Dear Folks-
Got back to B.R. at 12 noon. for I'm still waiting my luggage. It didn't get on with me at Chicago, so I hope it will get in at 10:15. I'll let you know. I had a good trip. It was cold all the way down. But B.R. was real warm!!!
Happy New Year,
[signed] Barb
P.S. My luggage came!! 7 A.M.
* * *
I have a project to return, one by one, old postcards that I've purchased in bulk to the address they were originally mailed to. The project is called "Postcard Diaspora."
The ephemeral nature of postcards has always appealed to me. Postcards aren't quite letters — and their messages are more like the 20th-century analog of texts, or of selfies, but selfies made of words. So many were (and continue to be) tossed in the garbage or, these days, dumped in the recycling bin. Some small fraction of postcard accumulations get donated to thrift stores or sold off in estate sales, etc. Any used postcard is a survivor, the really old ones especially.
No matter how banal the scrawled (and very infrequently, typed) messages these postcards carry may be (and really, even the most prosaic jottings represent a snapshot of a time and a place and a person), I find them interesting, little portals that drop you (like in Quantam Leap, with Scott Bakula and Dean Stockwell?) into a moment with little to no context, around which you can spark up some ideas and go places in your head.
It’s also fun for me to imagine what it’s like to be on the receiving end of one of the re-sent postcards. Maybe it's a connection to the house's past, to long-dead previous owners. Maybe it's a postcard your mother or father or grandmother or grandfather or even great-grandmother or great-grandfather sent. Maybe it'll make you sad, or nostalgic, or happy, or indifferent if you receive one of these old cards. Who knows?
I mail these postcards in an envelope along with a form note that sketches out the basic idea of Postcard Diaspora. The note encourages recipients to send me any comments they might have, which I'll share when I get them.
A Postcard Diaspora effort: Entrance to Afton Villa, St. Francisville, Louisiana
This long avenue of moss-draped oaks leads from U. S. Hwy. 61 to beautiful Afton Villa. This drive was the setting of a memorable scene in the movie "Drango", filmed here in 1956.
Photo by B. F. Holmes
Pub. by Bernard F. Holmes, Box 475, Baton Rouge, La.
Dexter Press
61915-B
Postmarked January 1, 1969, at Baton Rouge, Louisiana, with a slogan cancel that reads “’ABCD’ MAIL FOR BETTER BUSINESS SERVICE”; mailed to Grafton, Wisconsin.
Message:
Dear Folks-
Got back to B.R. at 12 noon. for I'm still waiting my luggage. It didn't get on with me at Chicago, so I hope it will get in at 10:15. I'll let you know. I had a good trip. It was cold all the way down. But B.R. was real warm!!!
Happy New Year,
[signed] Barb
P.S. My luggage came!! 7 A.M.
* * *
I have a project to return, one by one, old postcards that I've purchased in bulk to the address they were originally mailed to. The project is called "Postcard Diaspora."
The ephemeral nature of postcards has always appealed to me. Postcards aren't quite letters — and their messages are more like the 20th-century analog of texts, or of selfies, but selfies made of words. So many were (and continue to be) tossed in the garbage or, these days, dumped in the recycling bin. Some small fraction of postcard accumulations get donated to thrift stores or sold off in estate sales, etc. Any used postcard is a survivor, the really old ones especially.
No matter how banal the scrawled (and very infrequently, typed) messages these postcards carry may be (and really, even the most prosaic jottings represent a snapshot of a time and a place and a person), I find them interesting, little portals that drop you (like in Quantam Leap, with Scott Bakula and Dean Stockwell?) into a moment with little to no context, around which you can spark up some ideas and go places in your head.
It’s also fun for me to imagine what it’s like to be on the receiving end of one of the re-sent postcards. Maybe it's a connection to the house's past, to long-dead previous owners. Maybe it's a postcard your mother or father or grandmother or grandfather or even great-grandmother or great-grandfather sent. Maybe it'll make you sad, or nostalgic, or happy, or indifferent if you receive one of these old cards. Who knows?
I mail these postcards in an envelope along with a form note that sketches out the basic idea of Postcard Diaspora. The note encourages recipients to send me any comments they might have, which I'll share when I get them.