Kenneth Wilson
News
and Things From the Side of the Road
April, 2021 Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Vol. CXXiV, No. 4
Review by Richard Selcer
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/786704704 Snapshots and Short Notes, Kenneth Wilson, Univ. North Texas Press, 2020
The postcard has gone the way of the elevator operator and the straight razor, replaced by smartphones and YouTube. But there was a time when postcards were a vital component of our long-distance communication, like the telegraph and the letter. Thank goodness for Kenneth Wilson, who reminds us of the time when it was unthinkable to take a vacation without sending postcards to loved ones at home.
This history of the humble postcard covers its so-called golden age from the late nineteenth century through World War I...Although the book is a selective history, covering only the period from 1900 to 1919, its twenty chapters provide depth about such topics as the degree of artistic imagination and commercial calculation that underlay picture postcards, making them miniature canvases for many aspiring artists. Their wide subject matter included veterans' reunions, historic landmarks, holiday celebrations, natural disasters, train wrecks and other tragedies, as well as the more familiar "wish you were here" images and photographs of airplanes, automobiles, and giant dynamos. In addition, readers will find serious subjects like the Underground Railroad, racist humor, and the Ku Klux Klan.
Wilson does the reader a service by showing not just the card's picture but also the message on the back, which provides historical context for the image and a window into the mind of the sender. This makes the postcard a personalized record that is both brief and unsanitized for public consumption. Although the book is primarily a sample of Americana, cultural history, and the visual arts, as many as forty pages include content related to Texas.
There have been other histories of the postcard, but this book's combination of text, visual images, and beautiful design make it among the best for a non-technical audience... Richard Selcer, Fort Worth, Texas
June, 2020: Article about Snapshots and Short Notes in American Way, the inflight magazine for American Airlines : https://americanway.ink-live.com (At the site "page over" to pages 28 - 29.) "Snaps of History" by Epi Erichsen.
July 9, 2016. In Their Own Words: The Messages of Early 20th Century Texas Real Photo Postcards -- Presentation at Texas State Library and Archives Commission, Austin, TX
Odds and Odds
The journey between what you once were and who you are now becoming is where the dance of life really takes place.
–– Barbara De Angelis
May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.
–– Edward Abbey
The first river you paddle runs through the rest of your life. It bubbles up in pools and eddies to remind you who you are.
–– Lynn Culbreath Noel
I offer this as a timely and important work.
Jedediah Purdy, This Land is Our Land: The Struggle for a New Commonwealth,
Princeton University Press, 2019.
Thoughtful essays that raise important issues that span the geographical and political landscape resulting in a broad, historical perspective on environmentalism with an activist’s view of the work yet to be done. Strong and disturbing, the text declares that “the world that may be coming to destroy us is also the world we have made.”
"A profound meditation for our heedless era." -- Elizabeth Kolbert