The Mary Collection

Don't get all excited -- it's not a collection of knitwear or anything that delightful. It is a collection of postcards!

Once upon a time, some friend on Facebook posted a link to an image from a postcard of one of the college libraries at the University of Toronto. Who could resist, so I clicked through... and discovered a whole blog about postcards! This was what we call serendipitous, because I had just found a box in my house full of postcards I had collected as a kid. Some from England when I was living there in 1965-6 and 1972-3, some from art shows, some from European travels in the 80s and 90s. It had been several years since I had last cast eyes upon them and though it did give me a small amount of pleasure to look through them, it was not enough to keep them forever. (Okay, I did hold back a couple... )

It turned out our postcard fellow was at U of T, so it was easy to get my cards to him, and he has posted a few of them.

Here are a few of the gems I kept.

I suspect this is from 1972, but might be 1966. Actually, it was glued down to a page in a scrapbook with a big glob of white glue, so I hope I did that when I was 6 and not 12. Anyone identify the building going up in the background?

My mom and grandma went to Expo 67.

I bought this in 1989 at the Vatican Museums. One of my all-time favourite pots, Achilles and Ajax playing a game.

I got this in Santa Barbara when we went to see an exhibit of the AIDS quilt. This is it spread out in Washington DC in 1992. I remember the exhibit well; it was an excellent idea to make the disease real to people who thought it would never touch them, as well as an inspiring piece of textile art.

Last Friday when we went to the art gallery, I had to hold myself back from the postcard rack...