“View of harpooner ironing a Sperm Whale. From The Capture a lithograph made in 1862 by Endicott & R. S. Gifford, corrected by Benjamin Russell.” What sort of corrections could have been required? Did the Giffords read Moby Dick and think all whales were white? Did they draw Captain Ahab’s leg in there somewhere? This [...]
And all this time I thought everything in Kansas was in black and white. “Unlike the small native sunflower which grows wild in Kansas, these large sunflowers are grown by farmers as a crop. Large fields of the golden flowers are visible in the summer and early fall.” You think that’s weird? In my hometown, [...]
This postcard (with matching stamp, no less) arrived recently from Emi in Shimane Prefecture, Japan. Naturally, she is very proud of this local landmark, Matsue Castle, one of the few remaining medieval castles in Japan, and the only one to retain its original wood form. (The rest of the castles have been preserved by casting [...]
As much as I’m tempted to say that this card originated from somewhere in the Ozarks, it actually came from Olga, a Russian woman living in Norway. Even before I saw Olga’s name on the card, I could tell that her handwriting was distinctly Russian, especially from the way she writes her lower case “b” [...]
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