Mussolini visits Berlin

The caption says Mussolini will visit Berlin as Adolf Hitlers guest - and celebrated as triumph of.  Yeah, I'm hearing ya. That last part lacks the correct English translation, blame it on Google Translate, not yours truly. I am trying people, I promise.

This is actually really quite small, 5 inches in length and 3 inches wide. I cannot express how much I love finding things from WWII. And here is the news, the now today, look who's going to Berlin, news. Amazing.

Bringing up WWII with me could take pages of pages of my waxing on about battles, books, theories, changes in the world and, and, and.... So I am not going to go there. We all know the history. And here is a piece of it, laying on the table, right next to me. Serious geeking out moment for me, in case you hadn't noticed.

Sad Little Flower

Barely there. Practically a glorified twig. And yet someone placed it between the pages of a book. Perhaps sentimental value? Given by a lover or friend? It's really quite small, about 8 inches in length, but so thin and brittle. You can see some of the color coming through, some yellows and oranges. Where is ET when you need him? Remember that scene where ET reaches out and touches the flowers in the pot and brings them back to life? I bet these sad little flowers would bloom beautifully with some extraterrestrial help.

Danish Stamps July 1957

Stamps!  I do adore finding stamps. I love all the boats and ships on these, and they are decently old, 1957. Nothing that will have stamps collectors around the world begging for me to sell them away for millions of dollars, but they are in very good condition. If I just hold on to them, perhaps my great-great-great grandchild will thank me someday.

I honestly never saw the joy in collecting stamps until I started finding them in my books. Now each stamp is a small work of art for me to enjoy. Some of them are down right beautiful. I even enjoy the silly ones. I have also learned so much about Denmark and the royalty by looking up who's face adorns the stamps I find.

I do sometimes feel a twinge of sadness for the person who placed them in a book for safe keeping. I am only hopeful that they will be grateful that the stamps will be appreciated by their new owner. I solemnly swear to not put these stamps in a book and forget about them. They will be well preserved for the future generations. So let it be written, so let it be done. Yup, I'm quoting Yul Brynner in The Ten Commandments. I have mentioned him before, but you can't say enough about a man who can rock a skirt.

Lieutenant Henrik Hans Nikolaj Haar - Warrior

This is what looks like an obituary for one Lieutenant Henrik Hans Nikolaj Harr. The first line in it refers to a warrior showing up. Our dear Henrik was only 28 years old. How many of these types of obituaries have we had through history? Men and women who serve their countries in the military, never making it back home again? They truly are warriors.

I tried to find out how our young warrior passed away and started my search for wars that may have been happening in 1865. Here is the depressing thing. There are so many wars going on throughout the world at that time, how would I know which one he may or may not have been in? I found a website that literally has you scroll down, year by year, showing every war, who was fighting, who won, and who lost. So many wars! I guess just the biggies get put in the history books, because I haven't heard of even half of these. How depressing. There is always a chance our Henrik died of some other cause, not in a battle of sorts. No matter how our warrior died, he went far too soon.

 I have this crazy concept of heaven, why not spill it here as Henrik has reminded me he is there. I won't give you the full version, that would be far too much information. Suffice it to say, in my heaven we have art classes from Rembrandt, listen to Plato and Einstein lecture, travel to any time and place and see what we missed. Eat, and never get fat. Hear about historical events from the people who were actually there. Snap your fingers and you're on the beach, snap again and you're having a crepe on the streets in Paris. Eat, and never get fat.  See all of your family and friends, and make new ones. Meet the people in your family tree from the beginning of time! Pretty cool, right?  That's it in a nutshell, but I think you get the idea.

Fall Flowers Bookmark

I called this fall flowers, but truth is, I'm not entirely sure what these are. I want to call them leaves, but those brown, stem like things...they have me guessing. The brown curly lines and the white lines are actually little beads. The back is kind of silky, soft, and starting to fray. It's about 5 inches long and 1.5 wide.

I always feel kind of obligated to blog about the bookmarks. Someone put time and effort into it, seems a shame to just stuff it away and not appreciate it. Every time I see one I just wonder what their lives must have been like to have the time, patience, and enthusiasm to make these bookmarks. There's a scene in one of my favorite movies, Pride and Prejudice, the one with Keira Knightley, they are all laying around in the parlor doing a lot of nothing. It's right before Bingley shows up to...well, I hate to ruin it, but if you know, you know.

These are the scenes that pop into my mind when I find a bookmark such as this. Bunch of girls, no TV, no Internet, no jobs, and no school. Just time to paint, read, and stitch things together. And yes, I have seen and own the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice with Colin Firth. I've seen Greer Garson version from 1940 with Laurence Olivier, hello gorgeous. And I have read the book. More than once.

Find Your Zen in Saltum

This postcard is from 1998, that is pretty much like yesterday compared to everything else on this blog. When I first saw it, my first thoughts were how much this postcard is missing! Where were the sites, the attractions, museums, amusement parks? And then I figured, perhaps this place is geared towards the people living in the concrete jungle, aka the city. Come and see what green grass and trees look like in their natural habitat. Dip those toes into the ocean and have nice, sticky sand stuck to every inch of you.

 Sounds good to me, and I live in San Diego. There's something about going to the beach, looking out over the water and realizing how big the ocean is, and how small our worries and concerns should really be. Anywhere in nature has that affect on me, on many of us.  So, maybe this postcard isn't touting that it has the best attractions, the most to see and do, but maybe it's really trying to tell us to slow down, breathe in life, relax, rejuvenate, find yourself. Find your Zen.

Charles Dickens Newpaper 1948

This is an article written in February of 1948. The captions says; Swedish critic of Gunnar Gunnarsson writes about Martin Lamm's remarkable dickensskildring Dickens and his novels who recently recovered from Bonnier in Stockholm. Yeah, this is a direct quote from Google translate. See that long dickkensski.....word? I cannot make heads or tales of it. I do, however, think that the Bonnier that is mentioned is referring to the privately held media company in Switzerland. It was founded in Denmark, by a German, and then later moved to Switzerland.

 Isn't that how Europe seems to work? A lot mixing around, people moving and living in different countries. Picking up a language here and there, having friends at every train stop. I will stop here as waxing on about Europe could lead to some serious rambling. 

The scene below is from depicting a moment from David Copperfield. 

Alstrom's Bookstore

The paper with the red flowery top is from Alstroms Bookstore which I cannot find any information on except that I have also blogged about a postcard that came from the same store! It is apparently in Faaborg, on the island of Funen. The postcard and this paper thing came out of totally different books. Check out the telephone number, 138.  Remember those old Doris Day movies when they would make a call, asking the operator to connect them to 555 Daisy Blue or something obscure like that?  I love old movies. Alright, anyway this paper is about 5 inches long and the flowery top is about 2 inches wide.

The piece of cloth was also found in a book on the same day as our little flowery piece. I almost didn't include it, but I figured what the heck. Cute little scrap of cloth, rather thick. Decent little book mark.

Herman Bang

 This is a clip from a newspaper from 1937, 25 years after the death of Herman Bang. Mr. Bang was born April 21, 1857 in Denmark. He was a novelist who was a major Danish representative of literary Impressionism. His work reflected the profound pessimism of his time, depressing, right? His first novel, Hopeless Generations, was confiscated as immoral for it's depiction of the life of a decadent homosexual writer. Herman was homosexual himself and that contributed to his isolation in the cultural life of Denmark and made him the victim of smear campaigns. He lived most of his life with his sister but found happiness for a few years with the German actor Max Eisfeld, with whom he lived in Prague in 1885–86. He eventually earned fame as a theatre producer in Paris and Copenhagen. He became a journalist and critic. He also wrote plays, poetry, and short stories, but was best known for his novels. He died while on a lecture tour in the US.

Here's the trip, Herman died in Ogden, Utah!  I was born and raised in Ogden. It just strikes me as odd that this famous Danish novelist should happen through my hometown in 1912, get sick and die! It's like it's too cool, in a sick kind of way. And the thought of something cool happening in Ogden, well...cool is for exotic places? Far off lands? Maybe, also in a sick kind of way, someone in Denmark might think Ogden is exotic. Wow, that's a weird concept.