Study Break

I talked myself into enrolling in a doctoral program in Information Studies at University of Maryland in College Park. Classes started this week. That’s the big news. Countless times in my career I have stopped studying to focus on work, or passed on an opportunity because of my age, the cost, or the lack of a noteworthy topic. This time, I leapt at the chance.

My fellow students are majority middle-aged, too. Most already hold leadership roles in libraries and archives, or manage records for huge federal agencies. We all seem to know a lot, and share the sense that there is so much more to discover. Leading universities are searching for the business model for lifelong learning. My bank account tells me they’re onto something.

The program is organized around leadership, which I love and have studied and taught extensively. It’s nice to revisit topics like motivation, inclusive management strategies, and creative ways of knowing, and to see how much the literature has incorporated these concepts that were seen as quaint not so long ago. I recall vividly having to convince my policy professors that ‘cultural policy’ was indeed ‘a thing’ and that artists had unique mindsets and methods that could contribute to policy strategy and decision-making as often as they could enhance the delivery of social goods across sectors. The entire field of arts and healthcare has come along in the meantime. I hope it has reached you!

But, I’m not here to teach or even to learn more about what I know. Instead, I’m keenly interested in what I don’t know, and what postcards still have to say about who we have been. The front of a postcard usually tells the story of how we wanted to be seen. The back tells us what we actually said to each other.

Obviously, vintage postcards aren’t new, but it’s only with the latest technology (combined with my own ceaseless squinting) that makes it possible to read them in bulk and in context. As we came to understand with Nurse Aird, even a small collection saved by one person long ago can open a window on history.

Finding new ways to source wisdom has always been my aim with The Posted Past, along with a desire to better stay in touch and avert loneliness in my late father, myself, and others. Actually, there is a new theoretical approach that has caught my attention. Weak theory (popularized by Eve Kosofsky Sedgewick) offers that digging deep isn’t the only way to discover. Sometimes staying at the surface shows us more. Also, all-encompassing theories aren’t terribly compelling for understanding our complex and absurd world.

The weak theory framework is a better match for the quixotic and episodic nature of the study of postcards, epistolaries that form their own epistemologies as we look closer. It’s no less serious to me. In fact, probably more so since I’m paying for it dearly. I hope the effort will bring value to you, too. The Posted Past will certainly become more of a resource. To that end, here are a few pages to make your own searches easier.

Tips on Evaluating Postcards – Learn to look a little closer for the clues.

Places to Buy and Sell Postcards – Where to collect and how to connect.

Major Postcard Collections – Archives to visit online and in-person.

Postcard Search Categories – Postcards are about (nearly) everything!