Wintertime at Jax Cafe - Minneapolis, Minnesota

Jax Cafe has a long history as a popular restaurant in northeast Minneapolis. This postcard shows Santa and his reindeer in Jax Old World Garden.

Norwegian Stamps 1990 - Norske frimerker

This postcard shows the 1990 Norwegian postage stamps. The title on the back of the postcard refers to the background picture, Sognefjorden mot Nærøyfjorden . The Nærøyfjord is the most spectacular arm of the Sognefjord and the narrowest fjord in the world, at one point only 250 meters wide, with mountains towering more than a thousand meters above its tranquil waters. (source)

These are the stamps shown:

• row 1: Mute Swan, beaver, Dactylorhiza fuchsii (Skogmarihand), Epipactis atrorubens (Rødflangre)
• row 2: Winter Cities - Tromsø, 50th anniversary of the German invasion 9 April 1940, Re-Conquest of Narvik 28 May 1940, Peter Wessel Tordenskiold (navy hero 1691-1720), Tordenskiolds coat of arms
• row 3: Trondheim post office, Longyearbyen post office, Nathan Söderblom (bishop and Nobel laureate 1866-1931) and Nobel Medal
• row 4: Johan Svendsen (composer, 1840-1911), Detail of the monument of Johan Svendsen, Christmas stamps
  

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

Christmas Greetings & Sailor Suits

The choice of the Christmas postcard shown above, with two boys wearing sailor suits, was prompted by the Sepia Saturday 104 photo of Princess Marie-Gabrielle of Bavaria and her young son Prince Luitpold dressed in dark sailor suits.

Sailor suits were especially popular for boys around the turn of the twentieth century. The beginning of this fashion trend has been attributed to the young Prince of Wales (the future King Edward VII). He was shown dressed in a sailor suit in an 1846 painting commissioned by Queen Victoria. The painting, which is shown below, is from the Royal Collection.

The next two photos are from the Bain Collection and also show royalty. The first is of the Russian Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich (1904 – 1918) of the House of Romanov. The second photo is of the Crown Prince of Spain Alfonso, Prince of Asturias (1907 - 1938). Both boys suffered from the disease of hemophilia. The Tsarevich was murdered with his family during the Russian Civil War by order of the Bolshevik government. Alfonso died from internal bleeding following a traffic accident.

The last photo is of future U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt. The photo shows him wearing a sailor suit at age seven in 1889. This is one of several 1889 photos of Roosevelt in a sailor suit in the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum collection.

For more vintage photos, visit Sepia Saturday

Christmas Stamps - Finland 1980

This postcard shows Finland's 1980 Christmas stamps. The stamps represent old Finnish Christmas games.

Two games are shown on the first stamp: "Pull the roller" and "weighing out the salt." These are trials of strength. A table with holiday food, homemade beer, and candles is in the background.

The second stamp shows the game "putting out the shoemaker's eye." The straw on the floor was traditional. Straw Christmas decorations are still popular in Finland.

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

Health Museum Exhibits

HINSDALE HEALTH MUSEUM. Hinsdale, Illinois. Thousands annually visit the Hinsdale Health Museum to learn more about themselves. The exhibits, many operated by push-buttons and equipped with moving parts, telephones and loudspeakers, tell the dramatic story of human biology. [This is a view of the medical center building where the museum was located.]

This beautiful exhibit is an artist's representation of magnified body cells. Here a visitor learns how he began as a single cell which multiplied into 30 trillion cells, and all manner of other amazing things about these wonderful "units of life."

Valeda, Hinsdale's famous Talking Glass Lady, is the star attraction of the Health Museum. Created by a medical artist in Cologne, Germany, Valeda is a lifesize plexiglas figure whose organs light up one by one as she herself tells the wonderful story of how they work.

The story of human reproduction is beautifully told in a series of lifelike sculpture studies by Adam Belskie, Fellow of the National Sculpture Society, based on hundreds of X-ray pictures made by Robert L Dickinson, M.D.

Two of the many popular things to do at the Health Museum are to see and hear one's own heartbeat by means of the combined oscilloscope and stethoscope equipped with amplifier, and to test one's lung capacity with the Vitalometer.

Partial view of the unique brain exhibit. The transmission of messages along nerve pathways is demonstrated. The memory process is explained. Motor and sensory centers are located on the giant brain model by use of an electric wand.

The eye exhibit clearly demonstrates what happens in near- and far-sightedness and explains how glasses help. The ear lights up step by step, as a narrator tells of the miracle of hearing. The greatly magnified section of skin makes plain all the many functions of the body's largest organ.

The inside of the mouth, nose, and throat are visible from both front and rear of the Big Face, so that taste areas, structure of the nose, the adenoids, the tonsils, the Eustachian tubes, the epiglottis, the vocal chords, and the esophagus may be observed.

The Sepia Saturday 103 prompt is a 1961 photo of a public health nurse. The postcards of the Hinsdale Health Museum shown above are also circa 1961. The text below the images is copied from the back of the postcards. More information and images from the early years of this health museum can be found in a 1959 article about the Hinsdale Health Museum in Public Health Reports (PDF version). There are also unpublished photos in the LIFE photo archives hosted on Google. Here are a couple of the LIFE images:

The Hinsdale Health Museum was moved to a different location and renamed the Robert Crown Center for Health Education in 1974.

Visit Sepia Saturday for more vintage images.

General Motors Motorama of 1956

The following description is printed on the back of this postcard:

The 1956 MOTORAMA features the Car of Tomorrow on the Highway of Tomorrow--and the most beautiful GM Cars of Today--starring the latest creations of Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick, Cadillac--also Body by Fisher, Chevrolet and GMC Trucks, Frigidaire Kitchen of Tomorrow, GM Diesel and other new General Motors Products.

The General Motors Motorama was an auto show staged by GM from 1949 to 1961. These shows were designed to whet public appetite and boost automobile sales with displays of fancy prototypes, concept vehicles and other special models. They were usually held in conjunction with the New York Auto Show in January. The 1956 dates were New York City (January 19–24), Miami (February 4–12), Los Angeles (March 3–11), San Francisco (March 24-April 1), Boston (April 19–29). Attendance was over 2.2 million.

Design for Dreaming is a musical film about a woman who dreams about a masked man taking her to the 1956 General Motors Motorama at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel and Frigidaire's "Kitchen of the Future."

Popcorn Wagon - Minneapolis, Minnesota

This postcard of the popcorn wagon on Nicollet Mall in Downtown Minneapolis is ©1976. On the back it says "When you're on the Nicollet Mall, be sure to visit "The Popcorn Lady". In addition to serving delicious popcorn and Coca Cola, she is happy to tell you about Minneapolis, what to see and how to get there."

There is a popcorn wagon near there now, but I don't know if it is the same one or if it has been there continuously. The wagon on the postcard has a sign "Wagon Popcorn Franchises" and it appears to be a reproduction of a Cretors Style Model C.

A column in the December 28, 2000 Minneapolis Star Tribune reported the death of the "Popcorn Lady":

Charlotte Sunderlin of Blaine, known for two decades as "the Popcorn Lady of Nicollet Mall," died Tuesday following a stroke. She was 84. She ran a red-and-gold popcorn wagon on the Nicollet Mall in downtown Minneapolis for 23 years, beginning in 1970. Over the years, her popcorn wagon was stationed at various locations between 6th and 8th streets, but always on the mall. On a good summer day, the wagon sold more than 1,000 boxes of popcorn.