Deltiology (POSTCARDS) with Donna Braden

Oh, hello, old uncle Wally Ward. Here back with another episode of ologies. Now this one, well it's something to write home about. We're talking deltiology, which is the study or just the collection of postcards. Yes, kiddos, there is an ology for that. I wanted to know what in the fricking frick that was about. So I was outside of Detroit shooting the CBS show Innovation Nation at the Henry Ford Museum. I was like, hey, hey, you guys got any ins with the delteologist And they were like,

Thanks Alli, So.

Mallard the Duck twenty three. I hope you and your continued wife are enjoying this episode about postcards. You better send me one. Okay, you're a delltyologist. She got her bachelor's degree in anthropology, a masters in Early American culture, and is now the curator of Public Life, which is a thing at the Henry Vard Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. So she's been there. Are you even ready for this

So it's really cool.

You can hear in my voice that I'm and I'm almost apologetic, but not really to you guys, how excited I was to be having this conversation because she's just so down to earth.

She's like this bespectacled.

Hero because she's an artifact badass, and I just kind of was fangirling for a lot of it. So collect these museum musings and postcard wisdoms from deltyologist Donna Brayden.

Can you test and see if it's okay?

So it looks like your level is look at it and I feel like I'm about to inform you that you are a deltologist.

That was a new word to me.

But I love the fact that there is a word about the love of postcards.

I mean, you don't just love them. You also are a curator here at the Henry Ford, so you also deal with the collection of them, the inspection of them, the cataloging.

Yes, I have looked through huge swaths of our postcard collection and we have many How many postcards.

Do you think you have in the collections here A few.

Thousand, We have a lot. How do they get stored?

Are they in like U haul boxes or are they like all an acid fair laver?

Yeah, imagine shoe boxes, okay that are like acid free. Oh so they're like protective certain kind of cardboard that is okay for that quality of postcard paper. And they're all nicely organized by topic usually state.

Oh so you can then by topic.

So like Wisconsin fishing, spon and.

Bears right, who right? And we have two different collections. The main one is all indexed in our computer, so we can look up any topic or any state or any year and find those postcards and then just kind of dig them out and look at them. I think there are pictures of most.

Of them as well. And then there's a whole.

Other collection that I found more recently that you have to know we have.

What So the museum recently discovered a pristine postcard collection by this publishing company which was kind of like this papery time capsule into postcards past. And I don't know if they had to wear gloves to touch them, but I'm going to picture them wearing gloves to touch them.

They're not indexed. They were not written by people and mailed.

So they don't have messages like Betty, I wish you are on the boat with us.

Right, and then a licked stamp. They don't separate.

I mean, those are great because you get postmarks on them and you can date them that way. But the ones that have no messages, in this one company's collection, you get a very more complete run of every postcard they ever made. So a couple of years ago, I was delving deep into the history of Yellowstone National Park and I found that those postcards sem to be earlier as well, kind of these really early teens and twenties

But I'm going to get them digitized so people can see them now.

So what is the history of postcards? Did they just always exist like forever? Like did the dinosaurs pop them in the mail? And they're like eh, down in Mexico for VAK there's so huge common or some shit I don't know, man made for some red sunsets though, talk to you later. No, not so much. Postcards were invented for a reason, relatively recently, because they were cheap to mail. They're like a penny. Everyone's like, dude, these rule technology.

The first postcards were put up by the government, the post office, and you had no choice over what you got and then oh oh, they act passed where private companies could produce postcards, and then it became a bigger deal. And that's when you got kind of that golden age of early the early twentieth century postcards put out by these companies. Oh okay, and then if you're familiar with postcards, there's that early look on kind of a rag paper

Okay, more little tidbits. So the first first, first postcard ever was invented by this British author, prankster and play boy, this guy named Theodor Hook. And he sent this hand painted postcard to himself in eighteen forty and on it unflattering drawings of a bunch of postal workers. He's like, you've been served. Boom. Now that postcards sold at auction in two thousand and two for twenty seven thousand British pounds. So some Lotvian guy, his name is Eugene Gomberg. I

Now, there was also a white border period.

That was in the early nineteen hundreds that saved ink by printing on a smaller surface. Nineteen thirties, there was a shift to linen texture, nineteen fifties, some scalloped edges, and now what we know today they're printed to the edges with modern chrome, full color. So congratulations, you now know the whole history of postcards.

We did it.

Isn't it weird that postcards have an origin story, they're like a superhero or a rescue dog. It just makes you love them more. And Donna loves her work.

So there's a big shift in how they look and what tends to happen. The reason you can't date that that well unless they have postmarks is that those early postcards get continue to be offered for years and years after they're not made anymore. Oh really, so they keep going.

Yeah, they keep going.

So you see these, you see people in like outdated clothing. I know this was not taken this year because it's so much cheaper just to keep producing those same postcards.

Right Like when you see people with like feathered eighties hair and like Venice Beach postcards, you're.

Like, whoa, man, it's very nicely still around. It's definitely still around. Our ladies with big hats and you know, Gibson girl looking outfits and it's like the nineteen thirties and it should be like or the nineteen forties.

That's like nineteen ten. Yeah, okay, that it needs to be updated.

And that was just I mean, the discoveries here are always every day.

Even for me and I've been here forty years. Every day new things. That's what's so great about it.

So does that mean when you digitize them, do you have to scan them or photograph them? And then does someone have to catalog like them? Okay, this one has a barn in it and a bucket, so I have to put those keywords in.

That's a great question.

I think they do put the keywords in, but in the old days before computers, when I was here, we.

Had to actually physically describe them.

But we do have to do the company the date those keywords I think material sometimes and we put a title at the top so that it's descriptive. And then something that curators add is something called a narrative, which is a short write up explaining the context of each thing, which keeps us really busy, and we'll never we'll never catch up, but it's something that's ongoing that we try to do. So every time somebody looks something up on our website, they find a little right up about it.

And so it might be like a woman picks apples in an orchard while a puppy looks on or something whatever.

We actually try to be more interpretive than that. We try to explain why the woman is there, what she's looking at why she looks the way she does, what kind of you know, was the place of vacasion place or you know, sort of try to provide some context and some background.

That's what we curators try to do.

So I went down a deep, deep, deep, deep rabbit burrow looking at the digital archives of postcards and the Henry Ford collection, and I was just tickled to see this one was this black and white full length portrait. It was titled Gentleman Posed with a Chair nineteen ten, and it features this small framed man in a dusty suit and a like a brimmed hat cocked far back on his head, and he's got this silvery mustache over

So the motel postcards, for example, I, you know, looked up each motel on the on the internet, is like, what can I find on them? What can I find on the owners? What is the back saying when it says air cooled rooms, new mattresses, all these crazy things that they say. Is the television exactly what does that mean for the era? And is it a tiny little motel? Did it last? Is it still around? Is it a one off?

Did it go away?

Is it a popular tourist area? These are the things we try to find out.

Why are there so many motel postcards? And in your collection and your creation of postcards in Deltiology, do you find there are Okay, there are state postcards.

There are motel postcards.

There are get Well postcards, like what are the genres?

Well?

The the get Well postcards are very early form of postcards, which was more like greeting cards, and the companies that made their early postcards actually started with kind of holiday greetings. People sent them to each other and it was a very inexpensive way of sending. It was amazing to have something colorful and printed to send people and was very cheap.

Postcards also ended up as a way to send like stupid messages, kind of like a jiff in today's world. Okay, we were talking about lighthearted postcards.

Turned it more into.

Like jokey postcards than you know, greeting postcards, because of course you can find greeting cards everywhere now.

It became a big industry.

The tourism postcards is what's such a gigantic what became such a gigantic industry, And of course you know everywhere you go you can go to the souvenir shop and buy a memory of someplace that you've been. The motel postcards are an interesting case because sometimes you still find but not so often anymore, you would find a free postcard in the drawer of the motel you would stay in.

And they were ads for the motels.

They were like the best, most inexpensive advertising for these motels, and they become such a document. But I still have because I saved postcards.

When I was a kid.

It was a free way to build a collection and all these great messages I would say from my friends and family, and then people would start sending them to

So that was really cool. Do you still have that collection?

Personally?

Of course, really I have, Yes, I have savored the collection. I would it's very personal. But what's really funny is when I was I don't know, elementary school, I had a cork bulletin board in my bedroom and there was a period of time where I thumbtacked all my postcards to the board. And so I look at these postcards now in the olive holes in the corners or varied places where I changed the holes, and it's like surrounded by these holes, and it's like why did I do that?

So note to potential museum curators, don't poke holes in things days your future self will build a time machine out of lawnmower parts and come back and hurt you in the face. So Donna has her personal collection all stored in a box at home. How many are in there? How many do I have? Probably a hundred? You know, that seemed like a lot.

And I look, you know, recently, every once in a while I come across and I'm like, oh, I have to look at these. I was like, you know, sometimes like i'd go to the well. I grew up in Cleveland and the Art Museum was one of my favorite all time. I took art classes there and it was just this magical place, and I'd always buy a postcard. So I have all these wonderful postcards of paintings and things from when I was a kid. So it's and

Do you think that postcards back in the day were the equivalent of a text message, whereas a letter was an email.

That's a great I think you could have something there because particularly because the back was divided in half and one side you had to put the address on, so you were left with one half of a postcard write the message. And I have messages on some of them where you know, people used up the space because they wrote too big, and then they're like writing all around the edges.

On the top.

But I don't think you were supposed to. The post office did not like it if you ran over into the side with the address right, because that was like the rule, the address the stamp, and only the side is for the right, So you were that's a great point. You were forced to write almost like a post It

Wrote things I love this.

I love this because you.

Had to write in phrases, and there were certain things people come in it on repeatedly, the weather, Yeah, car breaking down.

They're like one of the kids poked the other's eye. You're getting a divorce.

See fun.

But interestingly, we also found that there was a lot of we're not sure how far they stretched it, but people tended to want to make their vacations sound really good.

Oh my god, that's what they do on Instagram.

Exactly and Facebook. I mean it's a bragging thing, right, so like we are here and you are not. Yes, therefore we're going to make it sound as good as possible. And there's you know, the classic having a wonderful time, wish you were here, Yeah, showed up repeatedly.

I mean it's not made up.

Yeah, it was always that kind of we're having a great time and you're not you know, yeah, not kind of a little bit of one's one upsmanship.

A lot of times no one's ever like, uh, the wife got sal Manila from the shrimp buffet.

I don't hear that a lot on a maybe a letter, yeah, you know, maybe a letter, but where people have a little more time to play that out. Certainly journals that we've read, sort of trip diaries where they don't expect anyone.

To ever read them.

Oh yeah, I have a lot myself on those. But postcards, No, it's very short and sweeten. It's mostly highlights and don't like social media now it is kind of like that, you know, we get a picture and a little bit of impression, mostly positive.

So now the Americans on vacation collection you put together, Where did you get those postcards? And what was it like reading all those little messages and like seeing the handwriting and the post was that just was that mind blowing for you?

We I can't even remember how we came up with the idea to do a presentation in the exhibit on the messages and postcards. I think as we read about vacations, we realized that everybody's familiar with the pictures on the front, but not a lot of people are familiar with what people say on the back. Nobody's written anything about that. It was a new idea. So when we started reading them, they went, this is rich. And we thought, all right,

How do we do that?

So we went to antiques and there was a one nearby here that was every month, and so my colleague I was working with and I went there for the specific goal of looking at postcards with messages. And there were a few dealers we knew that had postcards, and they were all organized by state or topic, and they were freaked out by what we were doing.

They're like, well, what topic are you looking for?

I can help you, and we're like, no, we're not really looking for topic, we're.

Just reading the bags.

And eventually they just gave up and threw up their hands and said, okay, you're on your own, and they let us stay for like, I don't know, an hour or two hours at a time because they didn't organize anything that way. No one ever bought postcards that way, And we just had the best time reading all of them, and we made a pile of, you know, some of the more interesting good and bad messages, and that became this media presentation in the exhibit.

So this American's on Vacation exhibit appropriately toward the country, and it featured these chronological looks at types of recreating we did.

Back in the day.

And it had this audio visual component of actors reading the backs of vintage postcards, kind of giving life to these long gone moments and voices to people who would never know that their road trip or steamer cruise memories would be in the hands of postcard collectors and in the ears of future strangers. And I tried so hard to find audio of this, but we're just gonna have to imagine. I'm imagining. And it's super cool, Okay.

They would read a line or two from these postcards, and he put the thing together by showing the fronts and people reading the backs.

It's wonderful, Oh, wonderful, so cool to see it come to life like that.

Sometimes you get media people who don't do what you yeah visioned, but he was beyond what we envisioned.

It was really great. So that was a wonderful project.

Do when you go on vacation, when you go to a museum, do you look at the postcards? Do you still collect them? Or do you look at them fondly and say, oh, that's a cool rack of postcards, Like.

I'm all filled up here.

I still buy postcards, not for exactly the same reason, but what I tend to do with them, although we do get more than I can do that do this with is I keep a daily journal?

I have for many years? You do I do? That's amazing. Tells me organize the chas and come to terms with it. Sometimes.

And I go through about three different journals a year before I use one up and have to start another one. And I pick my favorite postcards and I put them in the back of the journal during which the time which I took that trip. And every time I open the journal now or in the future, I see those postcards and it reminds me of the trips.

It's wonderful. It's a wonderful thing.

So on the subject of archiving and personal memories, I had to ask her about this daily journaling because I just had to. It's Dad's podcast. She'll ask what she wants and it turned into this really interesting discussion. Wow, how many journals do you think you have.

Oh gosh, I hope.

I'm afraid some future person is going to read them and oh my god, what was this crazy person thinking? But I started, well, I kept journals when I was in high school, in college a little bit. But I started a daily journal in Are you ready for this in nineteen eighty two, yes, and I have daily writings in there ever since then.

So you'd be a great expert witness. Where were you the night?

Know?

And I'll tell you how much do you forget?

Yeah?

Myself and my family, and how often I always keep last year's journal out because I was like, when did we plant flowers last year? And I'll let me check my journal and these are the flowers we planted, and this is what days we went shopping, and this was the weather. And it always comes in handy.

Yeah, I find this extreme adorable.

And a lot of times it's like, how was I feeling a year ago? When what kind of work was I doing? When I have to document, you know, what I've accomplished for the year, or just so many, so many things that comes in handy. How many journals do I have? Probably I hate to think somewhere between fifty and one hundred. Probably that's amazing.

Yeah, what happens if you decide you're going to go live in an island or something and you leave your journals behind. Would you be like burn these or would you be like I hope one day someone publishes these.

I think that if someone published them, I would want them to be me fair enough. I think I'd freak out at the thought of somebody else reading them. I know my fan, my my husband, my daughter watched me write my journal every day. I hope I would be nervous to think if because I write things about them and what I want them to know. Maybe sometimes, but sometimes not, because it just helped. It's a tool for me to try to figure out what happened, Yeah, and how to you know, proceed from there.

And it's so interesting that the notion of public writing short format public journaling for others consumption versus the private journaling. And it's interesting because it almost makes you wonder what memories are etched in permanently, you know, is it?

Wow?

If we don't, if we don't write down the good and the bad, I.

Have forgotten details.

A few years ago I went back and got a second master's degree because I for various reasons, asked the deep studying of a topic and the writing about it. And it was a cool program on Liberal Studies, which is interdisciplinary, and I took these amazing I took these amazing classes on time, on place, on memory. So I was always doing these crazy papers. So one paper was on called autobiographical memory. And the whole point was the whole key was that emotional things that are more emotional

Right, it had it imprints, It imprints exactly everyone knows where they were when they heard about nine to eleven or JFK when an earthquake happened.

But and there's been studies on those, but it then they sort of relate it to, you know, in general, what you remember, and it just makes total sense.

So the little daily details you totally forget.

That's so fascinating. Yeah, do you have a favorite postcard that you have ever seen? Like if you if there were a fire and you had to say, oh, a postcard, I know that's difficult.

Yeah, Wow. I have a personal love for Route sixty six and we did a lot of that road several years ago, and we have one, at least one great postcard of a motel court is it called Coronado Courts with a K on Route sixty six And it's so, you know, Pueblo looking Southwestern looking and.

Road sixty six. And I think it's more all of.

The memories and meaning wrapped up in that postcard as well as how beautiful the art is. And maybe that's kind of the reason that that one sticks out in my mind.

But I'm sure I.

Have many favorites and I love many, many of them, but that one sticks out in my every time I look at him, like, oh, I love those postcard.

Okay, So I found a picture of this postcard and it looks kind of like a double wide one like a it folds out, and it's panoramic, and it has a linen finish from the nineteen forties. I basically, right now, I'm like the postcard equivalent of a person who's gone to one wine tasting but changes all my online profiles to say I'm an una Fhile now her favorite postcard depicts the super cute kind of cream colored cottages with red tile roofs and manicured trees, and it says Joplin,

Maps of its path.

And it missed the former location of these Coronado courts motel by like two houses, so it went right through where it used to be. Nothing like the mutability of the human made landscape to make you appreciate time captured in historical artifacts and our fleeting presence on the planet. Anyway, No, you can't visit Coronado Courts on a road trip because

So there's that.

I'm not sure that the Coronado Courts are still there. I just love the postcard. It looks like a suburban city of little motel courts and the just you know, it's like the best lodging on Root sixty six. So it's just a great kind of combination of things.

What do you think of the movie Postcards from the Edge? Do you ever see it? Meryl Streep?

How have I not seen that?

It's Postcards from the Edge? But it's it's uh Meryl Streep plays Carrie Fisher. Is that her one aboutmar Yes? Yes, okay and and yeah so, but it's I can't think of any other movies dealing with postcards, are you? The postcard always rings twice a.

Little bit With National Poons Vacation, they show postcards in the credits.

Oh they do?

Yeah?

Oh man. I just pulled up the title sequence of the nineteen eighty three Chevy Chase Blockbuster Comedy, National Lampoon's Vacation and Donna right on the money. It is postcard porn and you are gonna love it. So many motel posts cards, so many what do you How do you feel about the style of you know, it'll say like Wyoming, and then each letter has like a I.

Love those things you do? I do they sum up a place. I think they're so clever. And they still sell replicas of those. I don't think they make new ones, but they make We were just in Wyoming last summer and I was like, oh, look one of those Wyoming postcards with the scenery in it, and Yellowstone has one. And then if you get to know a place, you're like, well you have to identify each landmark in the letter. Well that's not a very good, you know version of it.

I just think they're very clever.

I always thought they were so beautiful. Yeah, do you want to do a quick lightning round? Okay, So these are people who are Patreon subscribers get to submit questions to the ologists so I put out a call for del teology questions. Okay, and here is what people ask. But before we take questions from you, our beloved listeners, we're going to take a quick break for sponsors of the show. Sponsors.

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That's a good question.

Maybe they don't even allow them anymore, but there was a period of time when they were out. And whether you needed extra postage, I bet you did. I'm sure you did that you did. But I've seen these oversized postcards and probably they're not around too much because they were to expect people. Postcards are supposed to be cheap. You're supposed to use one stamp and be done with it. So if there are some bigger good question.

Al Martinez wants to know, with social media so prominent, has the romance with postcards faded? Do you think or do you think people still have a romance about them.

I don't know that people send them so much anymore. I mean, geez, you got to find a stamp. Where do you even find a stamp? Sattom and your purse start to someone else. It's amazing sometimes when gift shops have stamps at the cashier.

Oh God, bless you.

I know you have to.

Ask because I always have to send a Mother's Day card to my mom when I'm on vacation, Someone's like, oh, I forgot stamps, or well will you? Ten years ago we were still sending postcards. My daughter, bless her heart, who's twenty eight now, used to send a postcard to each of her dolls. Serious, seriously, when we would go on vacation and then we would get home, there would be the postcards.

Did she save those? I hope? Of course she saves everything.

She's her mother's daughter, she's the daughter of a curator of correctly, everything is like, can you please get rid of some things. No, I can't get rid of anything. It's going to be collectible someday. That's her favorite life. But no, that was I thought that was the coolest idea ever. But I do think that I don't think that postcard purchasing has gotten less because people buy them for themselves. Yeah, certainly, that's what we do. We come home with a bunch of postcards wherever we go, and

Well it's lovely because a lot of times you might take a nice photo, but you're not going to print it out. But it is nice to have something tangible that you can look at, and especially when it's a beautiful professional photograph or a photo of a jackalope or somebody or some weird.

People may send joke ones, you know, that's a good question. I think the biggest problem is the need for a standstamp, because who would think to even bring them and who even knows what it costs to send a postcard now I know, just posed to a letter. So I think people buy them in a spur of the moment. Buying souvenir mania because you want memories, visual memories of those trips. But buying them is important when you're there for your own memories. And you're right, you can show them to people.

And I think when you do buy them and send them, even if you're doing it kind of like the same way people buy vinyl, you don't need to listen to something on vinyl. Right, it is large, it is commercame. I think it's interesting when you go on vacation and you buy a bunch of postcards and then if you have people's addresses to sit at a cafe or a coffee shop or a diner and write things out.

That's it's a wonderful idea. It's part of your vacation is to sit there. And I hope that people are doing that because I find that we never have time to sit there and be reflective, and I have to force myself to keep that journal going, and sometimes all I can do is write notes and write it at the airport, or you know when I get home, because we never had time to be reflective and I'm sad about that. It's like we used to have more time to do that. Yeah, and postcards are part of that.

But it's so But postcards are so personal because I'm not going to write the same thing to my sister true as I.

Would, you know what I mean, write, And for somebody to get something in the mail these days is so exceptionally wonderful. Who you know to get a personal note. I think we should revive the writing of postcards.

I'm with you, Donna, one hundred percent. Sarah Michelle says, I see your old weird postcards and I raise you. Victorian Christmas cards. Have you seen them before? And are they better or worse than the postcards? In your opinion?

I think Victorian Christmas cards are like early postcards. They're very embellished. They're sometimes a little imprinted, like they're a little three d Oh like, engraved, engraved and raised sometimes if that's what that must be. The meaning is in the early twentieth century, there were for every holiday, there were these postcard greeting cards, and that maybe I mean, I'm sure there were more Christmas ones of those than any other holiday.

Yeah, and that's what we were talking about in the beginning.

That that was early the early form of greeting cards and the early form of postcards. And then I think as greeting cards became a bigger industry, you could probably.

Thank Hallmark for that.

Yeah, you know, postcards went off in another direction, which was as souvenirs.

I wanted some visual references for Victorian Christmas cards because I didn't know what this question was about. And boy, howdy did the Internet deliver. I'm sure there were plenty of examples of like boring bowls of like winter treats, and beautiful calligraphy with holiday tidings, but there are some straight up acid trip offerings also. So picture Victorian era postcards with drawings of frogs stabbing each other.

What.

There's a robin dead belly up on this plain beige surface bearing the message may yours be a joyous Christmas. There's one of an army of ants slaughtering each other, one aunt holding a flag that reads the complements of the season. Another one I saw has Saint Nick kidnapping a child. And then there's my personal favorite, a message of make Christmas be merry, alongside the visual of a frog and a stag beetle dancing in the silvery blue dusk while a nearby fly plays the tambourine. I kid

That is a great question. You You have to realize that anybody could read it.

Yeah, that's right. True.

The postman could read it, the postal worker could read it, your mom could read it. It's not private.

So your point there is tale to god. I have enjoyed relations with seventeen neupile suitors on this sojourn to Niagara Falls.

You probably do want to think about what you're writing, because it isn't It's really a very unprivate form of communication, and that's what makes them so cheap. But boy, they are very public, right, And probably maybe what lent itself to that sort of formulaic way of writing, people didn't really reveal what was really going on, and part of it.

Maybe their post men might read it.

Yeah, part of it.

Might be they didn't want people to know what it was really like, but part of it might be that they knew anybody could read it.

I am willing to wager that every postcard that has been sent through the US postal mail has been read by at least twelve people, right.

And it is a little funny now to read postcards in our collection that, you know, individuals meant for their friends and family, and here we are, you know, here they are in this public archive, and everybody is reading them, and we're reading them because they're historically have some historical interest to us.

That must be.

It's a little it's a little funny sometimes to think about the original purpose being personal.

But it's also like, I don't know, I think that almost all of us strive for our narrative to be immortal in some way.

That's true, and I think that people were conscious of that when they were when they write those messages. It's like, who's going to read this? How's it going to sound? It's not you know, when I in my own personal journal, it's stream of consciousness. Every once in a while, I think, how can I write this a little better? But it's most important it's just getting all those thoughts down. If you're writing a postcard, you sort of have to think

Can I word it better? You know? Is it worth sending?

What are people going to think of it? If I put this picture in? And there's always that quality when you know somebody else is going to read it.

But I think it's great to know that our stories live on past us is, even if it's just something mundane, like we had a very delicious candalope at breakfast and then we saw flamingos.

Like that's exactly your story. That would be lost right, that takes on an importance. I mean, I've read a lot about going on vacation and as soon as you leave home, you go.

Off into another frame of mind. You are not home anymore. You are away from home, and it's a different world. You're experiencing different things. You're hoping to grow from it. You're hoping to come back more relaxed, or smarter, or just a better person, a different person.

And postcards are all part of that.

So yes, to be immortalized because you feel kind of feel that way during your trip, I have done something different and I've changed in some way person now.

So true.

Also, studies show that just planning a vacation and having something to look forward to boosts your mood for months before the trip. So get a good deal, just book something in advance. Go somewhere anywhere, even if it's not that far away and you can't in the dirt because it's worth it and it's working brain magic on you before you even go. Ali Ward pleaded with herself Mia and a Side on her podcast. I have two our questions from Okay, what is the hardest thing about your

Most Is it paper weavils? Is it alphabetizing? Well, I've been lucky that I don't have to be the person who does the conservation the arrangements of cataloging. I just get to look at them. Possibly the most frustrating part of it is that as technology of our computer system changes, the information change looks different, so that we did a massive cataloging and imaging of our postcard collection twenty years ago and the pictures.

Don't look good anymore.

So you can see some weird, vague version of it as opposed to other collections that have been more recently digitized, because with how many two thousand postcards you cannot look at them all in person to select. As I pick new things for new projects, they then re they digitize them so they look nice. But that's a very long, slow process. So photographic archiving I think that's that's a good way of putting it. But at the other end is, oh my gosh, I get to go look at postcards today.

That was my next question is what's your favorite thing about it? But does it feel like you're cheating because you're getting paid to do something that you want to do Anyway.

No, it all balances out at the end of the day. You're like, I'm still the work. That's like the high points to escape.

From the emails and at the meetings and just kind of work with the pure collections. And that's always been what I've loved about museum work. It's not it's not just looking at them, but figuring out what the context is behind them. That's the whole reason I'm in this is what do objects mean in people's lives past and present? And that's what I most love. So being able to go look at a collection of postcards.

It's the best.

Staying always learning is something that you probably love about your job. I do.

That is a good boy. You pick up things well.

That is one of the main things I love in general. I always love to keep learning and creativity and learning are like two of the things that keep me going just in all ways. And if I can bring them into my job, so much the better. If it feels creative, I'm good. You know, it feels like.

I'm learning new things. I'm good. And so yeah, you got a good beat on it.

Thank you so much for doing this. This is so interesting. Now you know you're a del teologist.

Delteologist.

Isn't that crazy?

It's wow, I know it. It's great.

So Donna once again is the curator of Public Life at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, which is such a lovely place. It's filled with all kinds of history, from like Edgar Allen Poe's desk to the Rosa Parks bus to presidential limos and postcards. And I'm a correspondent on their Saturday morning CBS show, the Henry Ford's Innovation Nation with Morocca. But they are in no way paying me to make this episode. And I try to hide this podcast from them because I swear so heavily and

Is that cool?

So now you know, and you also know at the end of each episode, I tell you a secret, and I'm gonna tell you about my latest horrible snack because I know Shannon Feltus loves those. Tonight, like a few hours ago, I really want a cookie dough so bad, and I didn't have any cookie dough, but I took some margarine and I mixed it with a little bit of brown sugar in a bowl and I ate it.

Can't argue with that shop in store or online.

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