As you might know, I’m a big fan of postcards. The older the better!

Since I can’t go on my much-wished-for-first-vacation-to-Copenhagen this year, I took a short, refreshing visual side-trip by browsing through my Danish grandmother’s collection of postcards.

Dating from the early 1900’s, these postcards feature beautiful photographs of Copenhagen (København) and other locales around the world. I love these postcards for the images, but also because they show that Grandmother Anna had many, many friends, which suggests to me that she had a lovely life.

I also love this collection because now I know exactly where my grandmother lived in Copenhagen before she immigrated to Canada. So when I finally get to Denmark, I can visit the building. Score! 

Today on Paper Lantern Writers I’m sharing some of Grandmother Anna’s Copenhagen postcards. And today on this blog I’m sharing some of her beyond-Copenhagen postcards. I hope that you enjoy them as much as I do.

We’ll start our trip by train, leaving from the Danish town of Roskilde. This postcard is dated June 21 1908.

Our First Stop is Skodsborg. This postcard date unreadable.

Second Stop is Bornholm. This postcard is dated December 7, 1902.

Third Stop is Korsor. This postcard is dated February 12, 1912.

Our Last Stop in Denmark is Egeskov Castle. This postcard date is October 23, 1906.

Fifth Stop is a forest somewhere in Germany. I just love this fence! This postcard date is September 19, 1909.

Sixth Stop is the Elisseeff Emporium in St. Petersbourg, Russia. This postcard date might be October 29, 1907.

Seventh Stop is way across the Atlantic–The State Fair Grounds in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a town & state that attracted a lot of Danish emigrants. This postcard date is April 27, 1916.

Our Final Stop is the City by the Bay–my own San Francisco, California! This postcard date is May 24, 1910, just four years after the big earthquake.

These are just some of the hundreds of postcards sent to my grandmother. She treasured these postcards her entire life, bringing them across the Atlantic when she immigrated to North America, and I treasure them now.

Although we can text to each other in seconds, sending a friend a meaningful image of our travels might keep us connected even longer. Postcards, anyone?

About Ana:

Ana Brazil has a master’s degree in American History and writes historical crime fiction celebrating bodacious American heroines. She is a founding member of the Paper Lantern Writers Collective of historical fiction writers, winner of the IBPA 2018 GOLD for Historical Fiction, and hangs her hat at www.anabrazil.com.

It’s a BOOK CLUB!

Virtual, of course!

My girls, the Paper Lantern Writers, have started PAPER LANTERN WRITERS READ! where we’ll share…the books we are reading and want to read.

Join us!

Would you take up boxing to research your Regency Historical? Paper Lantern Writer Katie Stein (aka Edie Cay) did!

Find out more in this YouTube interview.

A LADY’S REVENGE

The Paper Lantern Writers are a collective of Historical Fiction Writers, both published and unpublished.

Our goal is to tell a cracking good story, using the context of history.

Please subscribe to our YouTube Channel!

Ever wonder how American women got the right to vote? Check out my Links Essay  on PaperLanternWriters.com!

I’m sharing links to women’s suffrage archives, exhibits celebrating the 19th Amendment, women’s suffrage artifacts, and LOTS MORE!

Now on PaperLanternWriters, it’s Friday Wordsmith: Regency Romance Spymaster, Author Elizabeth Cole.

As Katie Stine (aka Regency Romance author Edie Cay) shares…

“In our first Friday interview for our new Friday Wordsmith series, we’ve thrown some questions at historical romance author Elizabeth Cole. Ms. Cole is the author of the Regency spy series Secrets of the Zodiac, the medieval romance series The Swordcross Knights, and the paranormal romance series The Brothers Salem. Her latest book, Breathless in the Dark was published earlier this year.”

Yesterday’s links essay on Paper Lantern Writers featured some great quotes about photography, including this one:

“There are no bad pictures; that’s just how your face looks sometimes.” – President Abraham Lincoln

There were, in fact, so many great quotes about photography and being photographed that I couldn’t used them all. But I would like to share them with you.

“The two most engaging powers of a photograph are to make new things familiar and familiar things new.”
– William Thackeray

“I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn’t photograph them.”
– Diane Arbus

“A good snapshot keeps a moment from running away.” 
– Eudora Welty

“When you photograph a face… you photograph the soul behind it.”
– Jean-Luc Godard

“Which of my photographs is my favorite? The one I’m going to take tomorrow.”
– Imogen Cunningham

Photo from the Frances Benjamin Johnston Collection, via the Library of Congress.

“May I secure your likeness?” is a quaint, mid-19th century way to ask if you can take someone’s photograph.

It’s also the name of my first Links Essay for Paper Lantern Writers.

GREAT links in this essay for readers, writers, & historians.  I hope you enjoy them.

“The poignant and atmospheric tale captures the pre–World War II diversity of Hawaiian culture,

a melting pot of religions and ethos… Evocative and engaging,

with a protagonist determined to keep the aloha spirit in her heart.” —Kirkus Reviews

ALOHA!

Win a copy of fellow Paper Lantern Writer Linda Ulleseit’s novel THE ALOHA SPIRIT and get it BEFORE it’s released August 18!

The Giveaway is here at Goodreads!

We’re all on ZOOM these days, right?

I ZOOM in from my home office, which unlike everyone else’s beautifully-bookshelfed office, is really not that attractive. (No, I’m not going to provide photographic proof!)

So I often use the ZOOM virtual backdrop option and these are my favorite backgrounds so far:

Since I didn’t have a beautifully-bookshelfed background naturally, I went looking for my own bookshelf image. I found it in The Library at Edith Wharton’s The Mount.

When I feel like I want to be outside, I choose this Canal Street postcard. It’s not quite FANNY NEWCOMB’s 1889 New Orleans, but it’s close. 

Those are my two favorite virtual backgrounds. What’s yours? 

It happened TODAY in 1893.

Lizzie Borden was acquitted of the murders of her father & step-mother.

For a look at what happened “after Lizzie Borden took an axe”, here’s the podcast of my ghost story “Mr. Borden does not quite remem–“

Thanks again, Lorie Ham, Kelly Ventura, & Kings River Life!