Categories
Uncategorized

Enid Brant, Scrapbooked

All we have to go on is her caption: Enid Brandt, San Francisco’s Child Pianist. Her photo comes from the Pennsylvania Report Scrapbook, what we’d consider ‘altered art’ today. The book was originally the “Pennsylvania Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, 1895,” but an industrious photo-lover cut photos out of magazines and glued them […]

Categories
Uncategorized

Helene’s Swamped Canoe

Don’t look now, Helene, but your fishing excursion isn’t going to get very far. Helene sent a copy of this photo to Marie (along with several others), probably because Marie was along on this girls-day-out. It’s sure good she’s near shore, though; unswamping a canoe in a long dress and snazzy hat would be quite […]

Categories
Uncategorized

Arrangement in Gray and Black: Melby’s Mother

Whistler’s Mother (otherwise known as Arrangement in Gray and Black No. 1) is an iconic image in our culture, recalling a Victorian silence and respectability. Mrs. Melby’s Mother, above, spent Halloween 1960 at a bowling alley. My, how times change is a little less than a century! Not quite as much as you may think, […]

Categories
Uncategorized

Swimming at Mt. Tello

This photo is captioned “At Mt. Tello“. The rest of the series are from Wisconsin, so I assumed there must be a Mount Tello somewhere in the area. Google, sadly, has no results, but it sounds so familiar…Mt. Tello…Tello Mountain…Mount Tello — and a light turns on above my head. Along Highway 23 in central […]

Categories
Uncategorized

Trompe l’Oeil At The Pfister

Say ‘hi’ to Larry & Ruth Smith, frequenters of the Pfister Hotel. This was taken in February 1957, along with several other photos I’ve uploaded. This photo has the best view of the trompe l’oeil wallpaper in the Pfister. A different wallpaper is visible in other photos, but this the best view of any of […]

Categories
Uncategorized

A Sea Of Hats: Farm Foreclosure Sale

This image, one of two captioned “At Uncle Nick’s Auction,” shows a common sight around the rural USA during the 1930s. No, not just a crowd of fedoras and paperboy hats (although those were quite common, especially at the employment office or the bread lines). Farm foreclosures were driven by the Great Depression, a sluggish […]

Categories
Uncategorized

Church Criticism In Czech Scripture

Last week’s postcard got a lot of attention thanks to SPS (nsfw), so here’s card #2. This appears to hail from the same time-period, but isn’t postmarked or dated like the previous card. The top line says, “Quotation From Scripture“, and the bottom reads, “So fear those who slaughter the body and the soul.” Like […]

Categories
Uncategorized

Where Do The Animals Live?

This is a “Pictorial Wildlife and Game Map” from 1956. Unlike a population map or ‘Game of the States”, this documents those critters we hate to have around, but really don’t want to disappear. In terms of information use, the map is very cluttered, but it does an pretty job of covering migration ranges and […]

Categories
Uncategorized

Howard Binford’s Guide

Howard Binford was a journalism instructor at Moorhead State University when he started his magazine: Howard Binford’s Guide, a free publication for tourists or other non-locals providing handy lists of places to eat and sleep, who’s performing in town, and other things of interest in the Fargo-Moorhead area. The magazine ran from 1968 until Binford […]

Categories
Uncategorized

Claiming Her Own Nickname

Here, to the right, is Ruth. She once had a photo album of her life in the late 1930s, which I’ve started scanning recently. On the second page of the album, she has a series of captioned photos captioned as a dramatis personae, identifying the players in her life. Her self-portrait includes several nicknames — […]