I am your friend

I am quite taken by the sentiment on the back of the portrait of this studious and very sincere seeming young man. On the back of this portrait it says:

With kind remembrance 

I am your Friend 

Henry Johnson

I love that he just states it. Just in case the recipient isn't sure he is letting it be known and making the commitment. I think that's lovely and I think we should do that more.  Maybe we could start posting on facebook walls and just say "I am your Friend" (friend capitalized as he did) to friends we really feel committed to. I am totally serious about this. I am not making fun of it, in case you can't tell.

I just listed old Henry here and also the beautiful wistful portrait below on my Etsy shop.  Her signature on the back is hard to see (partly damaged) but she also tells the recipient they are an old friend.

Alpine Love

In honor of Oktoberfest, I thought I'd share these vintage postcards in my collection. I love all things Alpine-y.

Neither postcards have any messages on them and there is very little info on the back. But, if I enter in what it says I do get some clues from Google.

 This one above is a place in Austria and there are some pictures of the place here, which are really neat to see. Such a pretty illustration.


This group above is an Austrian musical group who put out records and you can see one here on Ebay

You got a couple more days to celebrate Oktoberfest in Austria.

Postcard Predictions for the Year 2000

I came across these awesome German Postcards through my google+ interests feed. They were produced by a German Chocolate Company around 1900 and they depicted some ideas of  how life would be in the year 2000.

It's funny how in some ways a persons imagination can think out of the box and imagine all kinds of things and in other ways it just can't fathom anything different.  Like, I think it's funny that they still imagine people using horse and wagons in the year 2000, but yet we'll be able to control the weather.

personal flying machines

weather control

an afternoon walk on the water

Some sort of broadcasted live performance with a projected image and audio through the phone

You can see more on the blog Retronaut

welcome september

My summer has not been that great and I'm looking forward to a better fall - my favorite season. I will miss the summer fruits, though. Seasonal produce, swimming and longer days are my favorite part of summer. The weather here is hot and going to get hotter. In fact, it's hotter than it's been all summer these last several days and will continue.But, I'm still thinking of September as I always do -  like a new beginning - a fresh start. I guess it's a feeling left over from school days.

So, here's a postcard for the end of summer. Sent to a college boy.  I really like the message on this postcard.

This was sent from Cleveland, Ohio in June 1929 from Adele to Mr. Stanlee Bates at Case School Camp

Mercy I thought college fellows always kept things going. 

Don't talk about the weather. I am simply melted.

Am off for the day on a picnic at the beach, to bad you aren't here to go along. Was real glad to hear from you.

starting to return to normal

For the last month or so I've been busy working on my zine for the Portland Zine Symposium. This is why things have been so quite here.

The zine I made this year is all about Vintage Postcards! I wanted to do some outreach, teach some folks about them and tell them why they're so neat. People seemed to be really interested in them at the symposium and I even gave away some applications to the local Postcard Club.

If you read this blog, you probably already are a collector, but if you're interested I thought I'd let you know about the new zine. Below is a picture of my table at the zine symposium last weekend. You can read more about that on my other blog here.

This new issue of my hodge-podge themed zine Paper Crush is Paper Crush #4. Each zine comes with a free vintage postcard. You can find it at here on The Cedar Chest shop.

Now, I am working on getting the house and my life back in order. A back injury and a cold haven't helped me much. Hopefully, I'll be posting more postcards and photographs soon.

NE Tillamook and 15th St

I'm incredibly smitten with beautiful and unique house that has long left Portland. I just found out about it from the blog Vintage Portland. This wonderful image is from the University of Oregon Libraries and when you look at the large image it is overwhelming how clear a picture it is. What a stunning house, I so wish I could see it.

This is what is there now. The little white house next door still stands, but unfortunately this run of the mill apartment building is now where this house once stood. The house was demolished in 1965.

View Larger Map

Not everything can survive of course, but I'm sure glad that at least someone got an image before the house was gone.

are you with the cats or dogs?

Did you're 4th of July weekend look like this picture above?

Or maybe it looked more like the one below?

Vacation or Staycation - whatever you did hope you cats and dogs had a great time.

These postcards were drawn by European artist Eugen Hurtung. The images were popular and used on postcards which are still sold today. They are usually called Mainzer cats after the name of the publisher. The really early cards from the 1950's were published by Kunzli in Switzerland. (information taken from this site>