Visual Entertainment from Near and Far
March 1981
Dear
The Bells from Ford F. have been here this week. Mary and I spent one day looking in needlepoint shops – had a great time. Alicia and I will take them to airport this am (since Bill left last nite for Nairobi for the weekend). Then he leaves the 12th for 10 days in the Philippines. I will go to Amer. Women’s Club luncheon next wk. and see what it’s about. Still cold and cloudy here.
Love to you, Dede
January 1985 Den Haag
Hi
we got back ok without problems. Kees met us with 2 boquets of flowers – in his big snowboots! It is col, snowy and foggy… sot of whitish everywhere. They are skating on our canal beneath our bedroom window and have plans for the 400 km race on the canals of Friesland this eek if ti stays cold. It is not as low templ as Minn. but seems chillier beacuse of the dampness, I guess.
Love, Va
Postcard: Yoruba Coronation Cloth (detail) – Nigeria. To benefit UNICEF.
1973
Dear K
Didn’t have a chance to go skiing, as everything was shut up until the season opens on the 12th so no broken legs or anything. Really enjoying the sun in Malaga. Right now sitting in a sidewall cafe drinking a “cerveza”. Move on to Madrid tonight etc. Hope we didn’t put you out too much while we were there. Hope your SAT went alright tambien.
Love, Tom and Jen
June 1974
Dear Mom
This is a lovely city – we toured and walked yesterday in the lovely spring sun. Kathy and I are trying all the gorgeous (and fattening) pastries – no wonder many people here are plump! We’re off by train to Vienna this noon. Wish you were here.
Love, Dede
The festival city Salzburg – the Mirabell garden with the cathedral and the fortress.
June 1968
After some delay getting visas for Hungary in Rome, we came to this beautiful Venice – crowded with German tourists. Will take the train for Budapest tomorrow morning; Sheila will come along for four or five days and then fly back to Mexico via London. Hope your African safari went all well!
Best Regards, Stella
May 2005
Dear Noah
There are lots of sheep in Ireland, 500,000 on the Dingle peninsula alone – Most have little colored splotches on their backs so you can ell who owns them. There is also a lot of green country, because it rains almost every day!
Love, Tim
Wisconsin August, 1984
Hi
Recognize this picture? I had a good trip over and am waking up at 3 or 4 am as usual. Jean and I will go to Madison tomorrow – then I’ll go into Hosp. Sun. pm. It’s colder than I expected. How about the Twins?? 🙂
Bill should be enjoying Szarvas (Hungary) this weekend.
Love, Va.
August, 1999
We decided Metz would be a good place to view the total eclipse of the sun in 1999. We rented a car in Paris and drove to Metz stopping on our way to see the cathedral in Reims with its stained glass windows designed by Chagall. Once in Metz, we scoped out the area and early the next morning, we headed out with the telescope, video camera and other cameras. We set up our camp in the middle of the Esplanade, a nice park right by the river. The town had organized a big festival around the eclipse and there were parades, music, etc. going on all day long.
It was cloudy. I decided I should have an umbrella just in case, so I ran to a nearby department store and managed to fight my way through the crowd. I wasn’t the only one with the idea. During the first half of the eclipse we were able to see it off and on. But about 20 minutes before total eclipse it started to rain. We could tell when the total was, though, because it was completely dark. All the flowers closed up and all the lights came on and it was really night and everybody was quiet and it was kind of eerie. Then during the second half it cleared up a bit and we were able to see more. My son kept looking at the “moon” through his glasses. When we got back to Paris our friends who had gone 25 minutes north of Paris on the train said they had seen the whole thing perfectly.
From Metz we drove into Lorraine and the Vosges area. We stopped at the Haut Konningburg castle which is a huge restored castle with a moat and drawbridge and inner yard. It sits on top of a mountain in the middle of the forest. It would be very hard to penetrate. The path up to it was steep and muddy. I commented on how “mucky” it was and my son responded, “monkeys? Where are the Monkeys??” He would not let it go and kept asking for the rest of the day.
From there we wound our way around down to La Bresse in the heart of a big ski area amid mountains and forest. Really beautiful. Our hotel was very nice with a good restaurant. We drove throughout the area and went hiking around a glacial pool where my son spent the better part of an hour throwing rocks into it and hunting for dragonflies.
Sept 1978
Sorry for the delay. Meet me here on Jan 15, 1979 for cocktails (gluvine) on the slopes. You know you are a creep! Why aren’t you here? The city’s nice, I live alone. It’s great. So where are you?
Your friend, Pope Paul
This postcard is from a friend of mine who was not in St Moritz at all. He was in San Francisco at the time. But I knew him when we both spent time in St Moritz. My first experience with skiing was in St Moritz. I was in boarding school and my parents were living in Africa. My school spent two weeks skiing in St Moritz every winter so I went directly from Nigeria – tropical Africa – to Switzerland with no warm, winter clothes. I layered on my blue jeans and sweatshirts and was freezing most of the time.
The flight from Lagos only left twice a week so I arrived in St Moritz a day late and missed the first day of ski lessons. On the second day I went to my ski class and everybody already knew how to stop, so I spent the whole day stopping the only way I could – on my ass. The next day we had a German teacher who didn’t speak a word of English. He was teaching us how to sideslip and traverse and sent us down the bunny slope where we were supposed to be learning how to stop sideways. I couldn’t catch on to that at all so I would just fall down in order to stop, at which point the teacher would scream at me in German. Not the greatest experience.
We stayed in a big modern tourist hotel. Some of the rooms had as many as ten or twelve people in them. I could sit at my window and watch the horse races on the frozen lake below. There was a picturesque little town where we ate Raclette and other delicious cheesy things. It is one of the few areas where they actually speak the fourth Swiss language, Romansh.
June, 2010
Happy Father’s Day!
Wait, that isn’t for you… It was nice to chat with you in Madison. Hope you had fun after we left. Here’s another battle scene for your collection from the Zurich Museum.
Love Tim and K
Feb 10, 2022 – Today is actually my father’s 102nd birthday. He sent me many of these postcards and helped to build my collection. He visited 90 countries by his 90th birthday. These days he doesn’t have much desire to travel but he loves to hear about others’ travels. He very much enjoyed my recent trip to Egypt and the photos of my son on the camel. I see him most weekends for lunch and I often hear new stories of his life.
Happy Birthday, Bill!
Postcard Buzz 