Fanny Packs and The Taj Mahal

This isn't a very old picture, but it came out of a very old book. I am going to place our time in the late 1980's due to our lovely fanny packs and short shorts that were all the rage in the 80's. Although I see that really short shorts are back in vogue, heaven help us if fanny packs make their way back into the main stream. My apologies to those who still have a loving relationship with their little zippered friend, but I for one would be quite happy if I never see a persons hips covered with those pouches ever again. The Taj Mahal is very cool, however, and our tourists look like they were having a great trip. Oh, I just noticed her fanny pack has little buttons or something on it. It almost makes it kind of cute. Almost.

A Sketch

This is a teeny piece of paper that someone has started to sketch a picture on. Now a skeptic might say that this was a traced picture, but I am here to tell you that this is a thick piece of paper and there is no way you could trace through this thing. The figures look like statues and I get the flag, but what is that creature? It's looking like a lizard or frog or something. It killing the whole nude guys with a flag vibe for me, but I'm still impressed with our artist though and wish there were more to our scene.

Good Dog!

You can just see it. They are sooo close to catching Daisy, or some other cute dog name, on film doing a trick. The ball is in place and Daisy is poised to snatch it right out of the air, likely after an amazing back flip or some other stupendous stunt that is totally worth a roll of film. Aren't we spoiled with digital cameras now. I'm rolling with the theory that our darling Daisy did her fantastically amazing flip and those pictures are framed and hanging in some doggie hall of fame. This picture was taken in August 1978. Yay for Kodak putting dates on the back of their pictures!

Henrick Haar

You have probably never heard of Henrick Haar. He was a school teacher at Horsens school in Denmark and this is announcing his death at the age of 81. It sings his praises as a teacher. It says he was one of Horsens schools most highly esteemed and distinctive teachers and that no one would ever doubt that the school was Professor Haar's one and all. He loved teaching and had his own charming way to make the lessons come alive for the students. He taught German and history. It goes on to talk about when he first started at the school, etc. The paper looks really old, but there is a hand written date on it that says 1960 so I assume we will go with that date. It has also been cut and pasted a bit. You can see when you get a close up of it that it doesn't quite look right. It's interesting to find this article just now as my sixth grade teacher recently passed away. I can remember every book he introduced to our class, the books he read aloud, the authors he thought we should try out, the excitement he built up in me for reading. I can't name all my teachers or even the classes I took in jr. high or high school, but my sixth grade teacher, I can still hear his voice reading to us. I blame him for the stacks of books piled around every corner of my home. Thank you Mr. Pollard, for giving me the love of reading. Yes, you should thank the teacher you are thinking of too. Before they are no longer around to be thanked.

Denmark Corvette

I am sure I have mentioned before that this blog has been very educational for me. For instance, I had no idea that a corvette was a type of warship. I kept trying to translate this little article and it kept giving me corvette and I'm thinking no, this is some sort of a ship, not a car. Ok, I feel humbled, slightly humiliated and completely silly. But on the bright side, I learned something new today! Under our picture of our CORVETTE it says, " Today was the third corvette of Belleona-class, Denmark has been built in Italy to Copenhagen." Ok, translation is not perfect but you get the meaning. It was sailed here under the command of Commander M. H. Bredsdorff. The name of the corvette is Flora and is following the previous corvettes, Diana and Triton. All the ships were built by U.S funds made available as part of the USA's great utility help program. The last of the corvettes were expected to arrive shortly after New Year holidays. This ran in the paper November 1, 1956. I tried to find some info on the US utility program and didn't come up with much. This wasn't too long after WWII so I imagine there were many programs in place at that time. It may be that my translation wasn't perfect. Who knows. Interesting though. If anyone out there has any information on this, please let me know. Very interested over here.

Battle of Kadesh

Now here is an interesting piece. As far as I can tell from translating some of this article, this is part of book that is about to be published that is all about the battle of Kadesh and it is pretty well word for word straight out of the book. I'm not sure the author of the article can take much credit here. It's like something out of a movie. A guy stays out late partying and realizes that he has an article due for printing, oh no, what to do! I'll just write about that history book about to be published and just throw in a chapter to read to get people excited about the book. My editor will think it's brilliant! I'm a genius! Well, maybe that's not how it happened and maybe it was the editor's idea from the beginning, but I still think it's kind of a cheater way to get out of writing an article. I did look up some info on the battle of Kadesh. Pretty cool stuff. Ramses II and the Egyptian Empire and the Hittite Empire battled it out in Kadesh in the year 1274 or 1296 (my sources vary on the year). It was likely the largest chariot battle ever fought, somewhere between 5,000 and 6,000 chariots. In the end most agree it was a marginal victory for Ramses II, but mostly because he was able to hold it together, not because he kicked some butt. If you are into history at all I think you would find it interesting if you looked it up.

A Free Spirit

Where to start on this one. These two pictures are actually from a set of four photos. After serious debate, from which there was no winner, I finally decided to just post two of the four pictures. You see, the other two pictures show this sweet baby's mother in them and she is the free spirit that I named this post after. She is posing nude with her baby and the pictures are actually quite lovely and tasteful. I did all the back and forth about nudity versus art, blah, blah, blah. I see every point for each side and there is no winner, I promise. You can see her knees in one of these pictures. She has long, straight hair and is very pretty. I am guessing we are somewhere in the 60's, hence the free spirit theme. She seems to be in an apartment with hardwood floors and there is a window with some light coming in behind her and the baby. They really are lovely. One of the most amazing things about her, and I speak as someone who has done the whole pregnancy thing, is that she is totally thin. I mean this baby looks really young and she looks like she weighs 110 lbs. and her tummy is totally flat! What gives? Is it that we live in the age of the obese and I am just used to seeing people with the "baby weight"? Did everyone used to look this good right after having a baby? I mean, seriously. I even considered that maybe she wasn't the baby mama. But upon closer inspection I noticed that she still had her linea nigra ( a dark vertical line on the lower abdomen some women get during pregnancy) and that confirmed it. Darn it! Did I ever mention I have my RN?

Deaths

Let me start off by saying that the death that is spoken of in this article isn't of anyone famous. At least I cannot find any information of Mrs Kristine Timmermann searching the internet. I should clarify. There are Kristine Timmermann's out there. There are a handful on Facebook right now. But, the one I am looking for passed away at the age of 79 according to her obituary. We don't have a year but the paper is looking pretty faded and delicate. So, as much as I'd like to see what her interests are, where she went to school, and how many random people she has gathered for 'friends', I'm afraid that isn't going to happen. What we do know is that she was a dentist and was quite involved in politics. She married editor Niels Timmermann, a whole gaggle of these on Facebook as well by the way, who sadly passed away early. No cause was given. She had her practice in the town of Soro, Denmark and had a reputation for being quite enthusiastic about her practice and and often took on seemingly hopeless cases. She remained active politically her entire life. A nice little article about someone who made her mark in her community. I don't know what the year was, but I like hearing about women who were really out there doing their thing when it wasn't as common as it is now. Well done Kristine.

Woven Wonder

What you are looking at is the front and back side of one piece of, well, whatever it is. I can only imagine it was used as some sort of book mark. It's about 6.5 inches long and 5 inches wide and it seems to be made out of leather! Yes, I know, you're thinking it cannot possibly be leather. But I am telling you, if it looks like leather and feels like leather...... Ok, I will concede that it might be some sort of plastic but I like my leather theory much better. There is one edge that seems to be coming apart and I must say, still sticking to my leather theory. Anyway, that's a lot of little papers to go in and out and in and out. I honestly wouldn't have the patience for it. But I grew up in a different time than who ever made this thing did. I need everything now! If my internet is even the slightest bit slow I am going nuts. I know you are nodding along with me. Life came at a different pace 60, 70, 80 years ago. I'm not saying life was better back then or that it is worse now. I'm just saying you couldn't pay me enough to sit and weave this little sucker together, that's all.

Twirly Hair

Yup, it's hair. Don't be alarmed. It's actually quite small. It's only about 2 inches in diameter. Still, it's a pretty fancy way to save a clip of hair. I'm used to parents saving a bit of their newborns hair, but this was no baby. Unless this baby was born with a Repunzel proportion mane, this came from someone leaning towards adulthood. This was not the first time I have found some hair in a book. I am sorry to say I was a little freaked out the first time and rushed to throw it away. In my defense, there was enough hair the first time that who ever it belonged to could have been scalped! In that quantity, I admit I panicked and tossed it in the trash. Looking back now, I am sorry I did. I wish I could have gone all CSI and figured out who was balded like that. But this little beauty was cute and easy for me to save. So maybe someday I will have the means to do some DNA testing and figure out who this hair belonged to. That would be cool.

A Pressed Flower

One lone pressed flower. I found this flower in a book that was published in 1872. If only the flower could tell me when someone put it in there. It's not the first flower I have found, but it's the first one that hasn't completely fallen apart and turned to dust when I tried to get it out of the book. It's lovely. And someone else, a long time ago, thought so as well.

Matterhorn!

This is the postcard you send you when you promised someone you would send them one. One line. No wish you were here, no we are having so much fun, no first we did this, and then we did that. Just one line. Maybe this is the 10th card they had filled out and they were just done. No more! Sorry, but you were at the end of the deck, just one line for you. Who knows, but I love it. It's enough to say, " we were thinking of you" but we are having such a good time we haven't the energy to write a novel about all of our escapades. And who doesn't love the Matterhorn! Alright, I'm not a huge fan of the snow, but this mountain is majestic. I don't need to be actually in the snow to enjoy it's beauty. That's the joy of Switzerland. You can be standing on lovely green grass and look up and see it's lovely snow capped Alps without becoming a soggy, cold mess. If you take a look at our stamp, we are from 1974. Not sure I loved 70's fashion but the music was the bomb.

H. C. Olrik

Henrik Gerner Snedorff Benedict Olrik was born on August 30, 1876 and died on Friday November 18, 1949. I'm giving you these details because there are so very few others available online in English. Henrik had a law degree and worked on the General Executive Board of the state railway, where he became head of second Tariff Bureau and was responsible for advertising and ended up attending the world exhibitions in Paris and Brussels in 1935 and 1937. He is quoted as saying, "There are tracks other than State Railways" when he resigned in 1943 to devote himself to personalize historical studies and writing full time. Which leads us to this article. He is apparently celebrating his 60th birthday which would put us in August of 1936. A little before he actually resigned to write full time it looks like. He went on to write several books. One most famously cited was Hans Christian Andersen's Family which is mentioned in this article. It talks a little bit about his understanding the character of H. C. Andersen and how well that comes across in his book. I wish there were more available about him in English online. It's funny, I would never have placed the year at 1936 based on the picture. It looks much more recent than that to me. Some of the books in the background look like they are leather bound. Not that I notice that. Ok, I always look at that now. Movies, tv, it's completely out of my control. Like a dentist noticing teeth. Can I check out your books?

Stone Age Sculpture

This little article is fairly recent. I would date it somewhere in the 60's or 70's. There's no date so I am going entirely on the age of the book it was found in and how old the paper looks. I know, terribly unreliable but there you are. The translation of the article is below and starts out by stating that art has not changed much in the last 7,000 years. I mostly agree with that statement except that our gal here has got some, how shall we say, interesting curves? You decide, are we still portraying women like this? Wow, this could really start a debate. Onto the article.
If anyone believes that visual art has changed dramatically over the past seven thousand years, they should take a closer look at this 38 cm tall woman sculpture. It has just been excavated in Donja Branjevina, an archaeological place 150 km from Yugoslavia's head city Belgrade.
The place is the oldest known farming community in the history of European civilization. The similarity between the sensational discovery and more cubist figurative statuettes from the beginning of this century is quite striking.
The little lady with the large end may not have been above the earth's surface since the early Stone Age.
Under the photo of the sculpture it says:
Woman sculpture from the Early Stone Age have been found in Yugoslavia

Jagermeister!

We have a Jagermeister fan out there. This little newspaper clip is announcing the new opening of another Jagermeister restaurant in Copenhagen. The picture shows from left, marketing manager Erik Andersen, Director of Sales Helge Leidicher and restaurateur Villy Lukow Persson. There's no year printed anywhere on the paper but it's looking very close to the '70's based on the managers side burns and suit. Looks like it was a chilly day with those fur hats and coats!

A little Jagermeister history, just for fun.

The term Jägermeister was introduced in Germany in 1934 in the new Reichsjagdgesetz (Reich hunting law). The term was applied to senior foresters and gamekeepers in the German civil service. Thus, when the liquor was introduced in 1935, the name was already familiar to Germans. Curt Mast, the original distiller of Jägermeister, was an enthusiastic hunter.

Translated literally, Jägermeister means "hunt-master", combining Jäger (hunter) and Meister (master, in the sense of an accomplished professional). A free translation would be gamekeeper.

In parts of Germany (Lower Saxony), it is often humorously called Leberkleister (“liver glue”). The humor plays upon the fact that Leberkleister is an exact rhyme with Jägermeister.

The Jägermeister logo which shows the head of a stag with a glowing Christian cross between its antlers, is a reference to the stories of Saint Hubertus and Saint Eustace, patron saints of hunters.

Contrary to an urban legend, Jägermeister does not contain deer or elk blood. Thank goodness!

Jägermeister’s ingredients include 56 herbs, fruits, roots, and spices including citrus peel, liquorice, anise, poppy seeds, saffron, ginger, juniper berries, and ginseng. These ingredients are ground, then steeped in water and alcohol for 2–3 days. Afterwards, this mixture is filtered and stored in oak barrels for about a year. When a year has passed, the liqueur is filtered again, then mixed with sugar, caramel, alcohol, and water. It is filtered one last time and then bottled.

You'll never look at a bottle of Jagermeister the same, will you!

Rijksmuseum Postcard

Ok, I am cheating a little bit here. I did find this postcard in a book but it is completely empty. No writing, no stamp, nada. It's just that it happens to be from one of, if not my favorite, museum and has one of my favorite artists work on it. Rembrandt! I know, everyone loves Rembrandt. I can't help it. Dutch artists make me weak at the knees and Rembrandt is no exception. This particular work is The syndics of the Cloth-Hall. Go ahead, gaze lovingly. Take your time. Ah. Nice, right. Ok, I'm picking myself up off of the floor. Well, maybe just one more look. Ok, I'm totally good now.

World's Smallest...

I liked this piece of paper I found in a book. It was all torn around the edges like someone just ripped it right out of the paper, no cutting required. I could have cleaned it up a little, but I decided I liked the rough edge look. This is from 1949 and is nice and faded. The little description above the picture says, "This airplane is said to be world's smallest but its safety is believed to be greatest. Wing Span (?) is 6 feet, it is 3 yards and 40 long, weighs 130 kg and can fly 145 km an hour. It is also from France and only uses 6 Liter Gasoline per 125 km." Sometimes the translations aren't perfect, but I think we get the idea here. What a cute little plane. I wonder if our page ripper was a pilot or a wanna be? A kid dreaming of the skies?

Thorvald Bindesboll

Thorvald Bindesboll (1846-1908) was a key figure on the European scene, a man who created his own unique style on the basis of contemporary artistic trends and an extensive knowledge of the art of previous epochs and other cultures. Bindesbøll is Denmark's most original designer to date, the Danish artist who has done most to open up new avenues of possibility in the fields of ceramics and silver. Bindesbøll set new standards for work in crafts and design, and he was a leading figure in the developments that took place in the field of design at around the beginning of the twentieth century. In terms of decorative work, he is the most distinguished artist ever to have emerged from Denmark, producing designs for furniture, bookbinding, embroidery, and much more. His work still serves as a source of inspiration to this very day. The article is celebrating the 100th anniversary of his birth and goes on to talk about his many contributions to the art world. It's an interesting article if you can read Danish. If not, you can google the guy. Pretty interesting.

1955 Postcard

I have no shortage of postcards. The front of this one says "That my story would give herself so practical terms, I had never imagined the honor." Or, at least that's how it's translating for me on Google. Who thinks up these crazy drawings. Our cafe is Cafe Top and the Ball. Hmmm, not sure what to make of that. The wooden shoe looking thing has a green sign that says Fine Ting, now that translates as Great Stuff, that makes sense! I like the boy cranking the big yellow bird although I'm not crazy about regurgitated lunch myself. On the back of our postcard we have the usual Danish writing I can't make heads or tails of, but we do get two stamps to check out. The two stamps are of Spottrup Castle, a medieval castle that has been around since the 1500's and is now a museum. I always forget when I look at the date, 1/4 -55, that they mean April 1, 1955, not January 4, 1955. I think we do it backwards here in the US, no?