All The Beach and James/Seguin Postcards are in here in one place for quick review. I’ve also included a few other interesting Parry Sound Postcards that have weaved their way into my stash.
Through an embarrassingly laborious process I have put the front and reverse of all postcards side by side. There has to be a better way – I’m satisfied neither with the time involved or the onscreen result.
Most of my cards are standard sized, although I do have a few oversized cards and one card almost a foot long (which is a beauty but have unfortunately temporarily misplaced). I’ve also included a few novelties – 2 leather Postcards among them.
After some consideration I’ve also included a few cards I have snipped (sniped?) from the web notably from http://media.cottagecountrynow.ca/special/parrysound/gallery/history but also from a few other sites. I’ve been using these to help me identify new cards as I’m hunting for them. These cards should be clearly marked as “Cards I’m Looking For“.
Here’s a related piece of information:
If you enter “parry sound postcards” into www.google.ca the first link returned, is optimistically sub titled VintagePostcards.org: Parry Sound History, Ontario: Canadian History … however in the mysterious world of postcards, google and the web, you’ll soon find that it contains precisely 0 (ZERO) postcards from the town of Parry Sound, Ontario. Fun party trick and True Story.
How to Organize these Cards? – Thats a Good Question!
For the time being I have elected to organize the cards:
- by location – The Beach/James&Seguin
- by perspective – looking north/south/east/west
There are of course many other compelling options on how to organize the set. Weaving them into the broader story about Parry Sound is an attractive but daunting idea – particularly when much detailed work on the history of Parry Sound already exists from the likes of John Macfie and Adrian Hayes (my old school mate) and of the course the magnificent Facebook site “Parry Sound Historical Photographs” lightly edited and heavily contributed to by Mike Morden – not to mention several others. However, with these cards and my limited knowledge, I think it would be difficult to add anything significant to John, Adrian and MIke’s contributions on the history of the town.
A simpler task would be to provide a straight forward sorting capability. I haven’t decided on sorting parameters for these cards yet – since even with these small number it all becomes a little unwieldy. Should I use tags, or characteristics or elaborate descriptions associated with the image file itself?
Even if I did attempt to sort them, I’d need to make a decision about what sorting them meant. For example if I sorted by Date would I sort by
- postmark date
- sometimes there are multiple postmarks with different dates
- date on the front of the card if it exists
- date written in by the sender
- perhaps by the type of stamp
- or my guess when the photo was taken
I guess I could sort by all the date choices. Why not. Then what about Location, Orientation Sender/Receiver Detail, Postcard Manufacturer, Condition, Subject Matter Detail are all reasonable sorts. A few sorts I think could tell us something:
- high water marks on the beach
- number and variety of cars on James/Seguin
- destination of card
However, it looks like this type of tagging and sorting requires an update to WordPress and the download of a custom plugin(s). Which I will get around to but I don’t want to get too distracted on add-ons just yet. All in time.
Sorting is a work in progress.