Sunday 25 November 2012

Sepia Saturday – Greetings from the Past

May I draw your attention, please, to my blog

2012_11_24 Greetings Header

Greetings from the Past

where I just added a new post and also updated the introduction pages and the layout a bit.

As I mentioned a few weeks ago (here), I recently got an email out of the blue from a distant cousin, who had happened to find my blog and recognized our mutual relatives in it. He managed to fill in some blanks for me concerning my grandmother’s older sisters – the essence of it summarized in today’s post.

I also recently found the blog Sepia Saturday with a weekly meme based on old photos. I will try to join in there from time to time (from the Greetings blog), using their prompts as one tool among others to continue to explore the old family photos.

Ester o Gerda porträtt A

My grandmother’s half-sisters Ester and Gerda, probably around the time my grandma was born, which was 1900.

Last night I also scanned another dozen or so old postcards and I hope to be getting on with posting those soon. Posts for the Greetings blog tend to be rather time consuming though, partly because I’m keeping them bilingual (English and Swedish), and partly because I never know when I start out, where the research is going to take me! Hopefully, some of the new facts I learned will be of help as I continue to try to interpret the messages written on the postcards.

By the way, as I followed a few links from Sepia Saturday today, I learned a new word : deltiology.

Deltiology (from Greek δελτίον, deltion, diminutive of δέλτος, deltos, "writing tablet, letter"; and -λογία, -logia) is the study and collection of postcards. Professor Randall Rhoades of Ashland, Ohio, coined a word in 1945 that became the accepted description of the study of picture postcards. It took about 20 years for the name to appear in the dictionary the first time.

And if you devote yourself to deltiology, then you are a deltiologist.

8 comments:

  1. Ah! That was a new word for me, too, so: thank you! I wonder whether Ester and Gerda were as sweet-natured as they look in the picture :-) Do you know how old they were when it was taken?

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  2. Meike, the portrait must be from before Gerda emigrated to the US in 1902. Ester was born in 1876 and Gerda in 1881. So around 25 and 20 here, or younger. There is more info about them in the other blog, especially Gerda.

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  3. How very interesting...beautiful woman.

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  4. my grandmother was born in 1906 and her one photo i have is a lot like this one. i have a photo of my great great great aunt from the late 1850's

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  5. Well, you taught me a new word, too! I wish these neatly prim and proper and very tidy ladies would show just a hint of a smile! I have never heard of Buddha bears! I wait to see your next photos of them.

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  6. I've been called a few names in my time but deltiologist is a new one - thank you!

    I do like that picture of Ester and Gerda and shall be off to see the changes on Greetings from the Past, shortly.

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  7. I really enjoyed Greeting when it started up. I shall have to catch up now you are posting again.

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  8. By request I have just added the sidebar gadget "Follow by email" to the Greetings blog, which might be useful to some of you who wish to follow it, as my postings there tend to be irregular.

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