Vintage postcards

November 25, 2005 12:49 PM

Vintage postcards are pretty neat.They show us the history of local areas, the growth of nations and they provide the briefest of glimpses into the lives of the past. Oh, they even brought porn to the masses.
posted by cmonkey (9 comments total)

FYI, the link cmonkey included under "they provide" is the project of MeFite, mattr. Bravo, mattr. Thanks cmonkey.
posted by terrapin at 1:13 PM on November 25, 2005

Sorry, a nine page thesis on vintage postcard porn (including three pages of end notes!) and not a single illustration?!? Where's the fun in that?

Reminds me of a story one of my lit professors used to tell, of growing up in the old Nevada mining town of Tonapah, and one day while exploring an old mine finding a tattered of "Ullyses". As an adult looking back on it, he was endlessly amused at the thought of some hard-up miner pawing through Joyce's stream-of-consciousness prose "looking for the dirty bits."

Liked the other links, though; nice post.
posted by mosk at 1:20 PM on November 25, 2005

Post cards are still a wonderful way to say hello to friends and family-more personal than email and the limitations of writing space excuse one from being too pithy. Nice post, cmonkey.
posted by DeepFriedTwinkies at 1:23 PM on November 25, 2005

*blush*
posted by mattr at 2:32 PM on November 25, 2005

oh - and by the way, I have about 400 more to scan and put online...keep watching postcard fans!
posted by mattr at 2:33 PM on November 25, 2005

oh - and by the way, I have about 400 more to scan and put online...keep watching postcard fans!

Awesome, I can't wait to see them!
posted by cmonkey at 3:17 PM on November 25, 2005

Mosk,

The original journal article had some... accompanying images. Project MUSE has them, although you need a good university library's access to see them.
posted by dd42 at 10:18 PM on November 25, 2005

This kind of post is why I joined Metafilter - I have been browsing through these for about half an hour now and am still going strong. There is some fascinating stuff here. I particularly like some of the one-liners, which I can imagine often sum up the personality of the writer:

I am in the city but cant say I like it so very much (about Washington DC)

MattR's "please will you send me some envelopes" card also made me smile. Thanks to you and cmonkey.
posted by greycap at 2:58 AM on November 26, 2005

A site with postcards of Louisville. It's kind of disappointing - you wonder if you're missing out by not usually getting the messages, and the selection is probably made with an eye to the impression of the neighborhood.
posted by dilettante at 2:07 PM on November 27, 2005