Paris Flowers

The magnificent Louvre in Paris hardly needs elaborate flower gardens, but I bet they are wonderful. Erika in Brazil adopted this card and writes that she visited Paris in the autumn, but wishes she could go back in the spring to see all the flowers.

I'm not sure, but this postcard might be from before 1980s because I think the Pyramid would be visible from this angle. Perhaps this garden is no longer a feature?

Interlude XXIX - More Pub Crawling

Back in October I featured an orphaned postcard adopted by Joyce in the UK. The Morcambe Heritage Pub Crawl card is a fantastic addition to my beverage collection, and I love the design. Well, Joyce happened upon another of the same design, feature Chester pubs and sent it to me!

And, Joyce found the card in an ice cream shop. This area is well-known for its ice cream shops and they are busy, even in the winter. Two favorite collecting themes in one postcard!

And, just the other day I happened to notice this postcard on Postcrossing. I think a UK pub crawl needs to be in my future.

A Place For Contemplation

The stone in the foreground is called "metate," and was used to grind corn in ancient times. This archeological site is Aztec Ruin, in New Mexico. It was occupied between 1106 A.D. and 1240 A.D., and this ruin had about 400 rooms and stood three stories high in some places!

Aztec Ruin is part of the UNESCO World Heritage site called Chaco Culture. The other part is in Chaco Canyon, a bit to the south. Chaco Canyon is remote, and you have to drive a bumpy, bone-jarring dirt road to get to it. Rough, but well worth the trip! I was there two years ago.

Aztec Ruin is not at all remote. It is in the middle of a small town called Aztec, though there never were any Aztec people anywhere near this area. The early settlers named it Aztec, a mistake not uncommon in the southwest. There are lots of places with odd names because of assumptions. Anyway, Aztec Ruin is often very quiet. It was when Juli visited it on her 70 plus National Park and Monument motorcycle trek a few years ago. And it was when I was there two years ago. Great for contemplation about the people who once called this place home. So strange to have a town quietly surrounding this ancient ruin, like it was just another park. I think it is a little like an ancient ruin in Greece ... it is just there and people get used to it.

Smile! Okay, Maybe Not

Mim and her husband visited Tower of London back in 1970. Like many tourists, they tried to get the sentry to smile, to no avail. Mim writes that she would love to go back and visit this site now that she has more Tudor education.

Mim's comment about wanted to revisit London armed with more information reminded me that I would love to create a program for smart phones that would see my location and pull out interesting tidbits about the place ... just quick little anecdotes. It would just be a little pop-up with the tidbit, not an entire travel book entry, something that would pique my interest to investigate more, or perhaps linger longer. Perhaps such a program exists, but I've not found it.

Don't Waste It

This postcard a reproduction of a lithograph by Jan Lewitt from 1944, but its message is still very true. Somewhere between 1944 and today the message got lost.

Genise discovered that supermarket produce travels an average of 1,300 - 2,000 miles (2,000 - 3,200 km). In the US there is a fairly quiet, but getting louder, movement to buy food as local as possible. And, more and more people are growing their own food, even in cities. Genise writes, "Yay small farmers!" I agree!

I just started reading a blog called Little Homestead in the City, and I'm impressed with how much these folk do for themselves. It is a huge site, and there is lots to read, but it is intriguing.

On an aside .... Genise used this little stickers on the back of the postcard, up where the stamp goes. When I got the postcard I thought the stickers were postage and was surprised that I had never seen them. Took a moment to realize the US Postal Service didn't sneak a new postage set past me. However, the USPS just released a preview of this year's commemoratives, and I'm very excited about some of the designs.

Memory Shared

This postcard recalls a particularly poignant memory for the sender.

Ryanne, who is from Netherlands, and her family spent a summer holiday in California. They were all suffering a bit of jetlag, so they cut a visit to Sequoia National Park short and decided to head onto their next destination. It was 11 September, 2001. They heard on the radio about the planes crashing into the World Trade Center, and thought it must be a dramatization, not real. When they got to Bakersfield, they stopped at a store and saw the whole thing on television. Ryanne writes that she will never forget that day, or that store.

I think it must have been hard for Ryanne to put all that onto the back of a postcard. I hope it helped to write it all out, though.

Sunny Paris

Café de Flore in Paris is know for its connection to intellectual greats like Sartre and Beauvoir. Sandrine writes that she has never visited this café on her trips to Paris, but it looks like "the place to be seen."

I would be tempted to visit this café if I ever got to Paris. I can't say I've read Sartre or Beauvoir, other than excerpts, but it would be fun to see where they sat and discussed philosophy.

However, I think I'd get annoyed with the crowds, and I'm thinking not many Parisians linger at those cramped tables.

A Quilt, Not Melting Pot

On this day, 119 years ago, Annie Moore, a 15 year old girl from Ireland, became the first person to enter the United States through Ellis Island.

Tallie writes that she is struck by the thought that so many American stories began at Ellis Island, and imagines "little threads running from Ellis Island to NYC, Brooklyn, Florida, Minnesota ...." That is such a lovely image ... like a quilt. And I like it better than the "melting pot," which just sounds like a big mess of all the same.

Ellis Island is not used as an immigration station anymore, and hasn't been since the early 1950s. It now houses the Immigration Museum.

I didn't plan it, but it worked that I ended 2010 with a card adopted by Tallie, and began 2011 with another card adopted by her.