Postcards have unexpectedly been a recurring theme for the past couple of weeks (e.g. sea grape leaves; shermania; boring postcards), so another coincidence carries me beyond the tipping point of posting.
What brings me to the topic at this late/early hour is a page on the The Center for Land Use Interpretation web site (http://cluistore.org/mepopo.html; I kind of like that: “mepopo.html”) — I was routed there by way of a post on the Rhizome.org news page — hocking a few sample postcard sets by the “postcard king of the west,” Merle Porter. He was a one-man postcard factory and at his peak, according to CLUI, he was driving 1,000 miles a week to take photos and circulating one million cards a year.
I have no choice but to completely respect someone who works with such apparent diligence at their craft for fifty years, and also hold out some hope that I may find a fraction of that kind of passion for something within myself.
(The CLUI online newsletter looks pretty neat too: http://www.clui.org/clui_4_1/lotl/index.html. Unfortunately there’s no feed or email notification, so you’ll have to remember to check back. Boy, am I getting mentally lazy or what?)
May 13, 2008 at 8:14 pm
Okay, if you can rail about capitalization (and I think I’m with you most of the way on this), then I can cavil about spelling. I think you mean to say “hawking” a few sample postcards. The notion of them pawning the postcards (“hock”) or worse, coughing them up (might this be a regional variant of “hack”?), is a bit much. Blame it on the late/early hour.
May 13, 2008 at 8:22 pm
P.S. I’m so jealous of the ‘cleanness’ of your blog. “Be-YOU-ti-ful” as the previous Abp. of N.Y. was wont to say. (Like the clever tie-in?)