Children of Marken, Holland

The Sepia Saturday 97 prompt photo is a group of young Irish boys lined up in rows for the camera. Above I am showing the front and back of a postcard picturing a group of children of Marken, Holland. Dutch children were a popular subject on postcards of the early twentieth century. This particular postcard has advertising on the back for Droste's Cocoa and Hillman's Grocery Department in downtown Chicago. Hillman's is gone, but Droste's Cocoa currently is distributed in more than 60 countries.

Near the top of the message area are the words "From the Frou-FrouFolks." The Frou-Frou-Folks are not what one would expect from the dictionary definition of frou-frou. The word frou-frou here refers to Frou-Frou wafers, which are thin wafer sandwich-like cookies filled with vanilla creme. They are of Dutch origin and are less sweet than American made vanilla wafers. Below is an enlargement of the Frou-Frou wafer logo from the back of the postcard.

Marken is a peninsula in the IJsselmeer (an artificial lake) in the Netherlands. It is an island, which nowadays is connected to the North Holland mainland by a causeway/dike. It was formerly a fishing village before it was cut off from the sea. It is now a tourist attraction known for its characteristic wooden houses and traditional costumes.

Below are some more circa 1900 pictures of Marken children from the Library of Congress.

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New Fall Hats - 1930s Style

This advertisement for fall hats from a "Big Hat Store" in downtown Minneapolis was printed on a government postal card and mailed September 14, 1936.

Many of the women's hats of the 1930s could be described as pert or perky and were worn at a jaunty angle. The style shown on the card seems typical of hats of the 1930s, fitting relatively close to the head and tilted to the side so that one eye and one ear were concealed.

Women needed hats in the 1930s in order to be considered properly dressed. Buying a new hat would have lifted their spirits in the midst of the depression. However, the $1.88 price that seems cheap today would have been equivalent to nearly $30 in 2011 dollars (DollarTimes Inflation Calculator).

Chinese Panda Stamps

Sporting

Climbing

Panda and Bamboo

Little Partners

Above is a set of four maximum cards from the People's Republic of China with panda postage stamps that were issued on May 24, 1985. The backs of the postcards have titles in both Chinese and English. I believe that the artist for this series of stamps was Han Meilin.

Another Chinese artist who created panda stamps was Wu Zuoren. From Wikipedia:

1963: Wu Zuoren sets out to change the face of China when presented with the opportunity to design a three postage stamps for the People's Republic of China. Known for his ink paintings of yaks and camels in western China Wu Zuoren's Giant Panda stamps first issued in 1963 establish the Giant Panda as the emblem of the new China. A second series of six Giant Panda stamps by Wu Zouren was issued in 1973, and a more elaborate Giant Panda edition based on his ink paintings produced in 1985.

Wu Zuoren's 1985 edition seems to be something in a different style than the drawings on my maximum cards.

1963 Panda Stamps
http://www.cpi.com.cn/cpi-eng/oldstamp/img/s59.jpg



1973 Panda Stamps
http://stampstory.blogspot.com/2008/12/giant-panda.html

China Philatelic Information

I am participating in Sunday Stamps at Viridian's Postcard Blog

KP Duty - Peeling Potatoes

For Sepia Saturday 96, I have some WWII era military comic postcards featuring KP duty peeling potatoes. The first postcard was "furnished for convenience of men in the armed services by the Idaho State Department of Agriculture, Boise, Idaho." The state of Idaho is linked with potato production in the United States, and it produces one of the largest yearly crops.

The potatoes shown on the Idaho postcard are large and have an elongated shape. Although many varieties of potato are grown in Idaho, the Russet Burbank potato is the most common. Russet Burbanks have an elongated shape with rough skin and few eyes. If you have had much experience peeling potatoes, you know that large potatoes with few eyes are the easiest type to peel.

K.P. is the abbreviation for "kitchen police" or "kitchen patrol." KP duty is tedious routine kitchen work, not including cooking, assigned to junior U.S. enlisted military personnel. Images of enlisted soldiers peeling potatoes were once associated with the popular culture image of KP duty due to its frequent appearance in mid-twentieth century movies and comic strips about life in the service for Americans. (source: Wikipedia)

The first video at the end of this post is titled Recalling KP Duty & Kitchen Hell and is by a man recalling his KP experiences in the military. The second video is a humorous musical film made in 1942 about KP in the Army: Soundie - $21.00 A Day, Once A Month.

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A Study From Nature

The title on this postcard is "A Study From Nature, Twin Cities, Minn.," but it is impossible to tell where the scene really is. The card has a 1911 Minneapolis postmark.

I really can identify with this postcard because I have painted (or tried to paint) similar scenes. My attempts at plein air painting have been awful. I do have an acrylic painting of a similar scene, based on one of my fall photos, that turned out fairly well. This scene reminds of the types of scenes Impressionists painted, and I may try to use the postcard as a basis for a painting of my own.

Czech Figure Skating Stamps

The postcard above was issued to commemorate the 1973 World World Figure Skating Championships that took place on February 26 to March 3, 1973 in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia.

The stamps in the four corners of the card commemorate the 1966 European Championships that were also held in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia. The two stamps in the second row commemorate the the 1962 Figure Skating World Championships in Prague. These championships were originally planned for 1961, and the stamp on the left is dated 1961. The championships were cancelled in 1961 due to the airplane crash which killed the entire US figure skating team on its way to the World Championships. The stamp in the center of the bottom row commemorates the 1972 Olympics that were held in Sapporo, Japan.

Below is the stamp on the back of the postcard. This is a stamp commemorating the 1973 Championships in Bratislava.

I am participating in Sunday Stamps at Viridian's Postcard Blog

Minnesota Girls Basketball - 1913 Team Photo

I have had this old real photo postcard of an early Minnesota girls basketball team for a long time. I was reminded of it when trying to think of something to fit the theme of Sepia Saturday 95. This card shows the 1913 Bellingham, Minnesota girls basketball team. The card not only shows a group of young women, but it also deals with sexual equality in sports. This was even before women had the right to vote, and much longer before Title IX banned sex discrimination in the schools and led to a proliferation of women's sports.

The message on the back of the postcard describes both boys and girls basketball games:

Dear Cousin:
Don't we look stunning? We have only played a couple of games. We played Odesssa and beat them. The scores were: girls 8-2. Boys 30-10 Both in favor of Bellingham. But--we played Madison and got beat. Girls 20-5. Boys 23-13.
Gertie Lillejon(?)

I attended a large high school (in another state) in the 1960s, and girls sports were practically nonexistent then and there. My high school yearbook shows team photos for 10 boys sports, with a total of 26 different teams. There is only one girls team--tennis. Things have changed a lot since then. The Wikipedia page for my old high school lists teams for 15 sports for boys and 13 sports for girls.

I searched for "history minnesota girls basketball" and discovered that there is a whole book on the subject: Daughters of the Game - The First Era of Minnesota Girls High School Basketball, 1891-1942, and it is available for Kindle. I don't have a Kindle, but that was no problem. I downloaded Kindle for PC (a free app), and then downloaded the book.

The book is fairly short, but very interesting. It has a lot of reminiscences of the old players and pictures of teams. In the early years of the twentieth century, most Minnesota towns had girls basketball teams. The teams often used the same rules as boys until they were forced to change to supposedly safer girls rules. By mid-century, girls were not even allowed to play competitive basketball.

By coincidence, the subject of womens basketball turned out to be especially appropriate this week in Minnesota. The Minnesota Lynx team is competing in the WNBA 2011 playoff finals this week.

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