History is Real People Too

History is a collection of the stuff we leave behind. Sometimes it's treasured stuff in glass cases and stored in museums. Other times, it's the stuff we find in boxes in antique and junk stores stuffed to the brim with the ephemera of the past.

Museums do amazing work to present and contextualize the past. They give us a big-picture view of the world that once was; the world that we've written over and over in a palimpsest of experience. We go to museums to understand ourselves and also to remember where we come from. Museums curate the record of everything from our tragedies and atrocities to the kaleidoscope of wonder that is the human experience. They are also the product of a lot of hard work and research, with knowledge built on knowledge condensed into an informatory plaque.

Sometimes with this big picture, we can forget the past was vibrant and in full color. It is also full of humans just as strange, sassy, hopeful, and complex as we are today. They had memes and inside jokes, traveled to places that brought them wonder and longing, and were sometimes as mundane in their post cards as we are in our social media posts.

Antique and junk stores give us glimpses into this small world through the things we find there. Lately I've found a not-insignificant number of postcards in them, often postmarked, sent with messages that humanize our precursors.

So these posts will be a project in sharing the postcards I find, translating the cursive for those who can't read it, and a not-insignificant amount of editorializing as I see fit.

I hope you enjoy.