Nostalgia in 4" x 6"

There comes a time, in correspondence as with everything else, when you have to give up something that means a lot to you. In the realm of stationery, maybe you've held onto an item for too long without having used it sufficiently; maybe it's taking up space and you can't justify retaining it any longer; maybe you know someone who would like it better.

This is one postcard among many in my collection, and I just decided I had to give it up. It's an image from a collector of retro memorabilia, a photograph of these little cards called "Winky Dinks," I believe. It's that simple Cracker Jack prize concept: the front is a corrugation of little triangular rows that emphasize one gatework of printed image or another--you wiggle it back and forth to see the different scenes and in this manner the illusion of movement is suggested. These cards in particular demonstrated old dance moves from the '60s, and you turned the cards back and forth to see how the simple steps were achieved. (Hullabaloo was a popular dance/music show of the era, kind of like American Bandstand.)

It's nothing big, nothing to scream about. The postcard itself did not achieve this effect. Why does this card mean so much to me? Personal reasons: where I got it, where I was in life when I picked it up, things like that which it represents to me. But now I have to think about conservancy of physical space, and since virtual space is so vast and cheap right now, I scanned the card in and kept it that way. This postcard went to China, received by a young woman who appreciated it.

So it goes.