Postcard: Mamma to Mrs. Henry Link, August 1913

Kind of on the subject of picnics, I wanted to share with you a picture postcard from 1913. I found it at a flea market in northern Ohio several years ago. It was just so intriguing, full of people who are all long dead, but they’ve been having so much fun, because they’re having a picnic meal together out in the woods somewhere.

Maybe it’s a family reunion. I understand that people used to get together in the teens and twenties for camping trips. Photographers often brought their equipment with them into the woods and made picture postcards for everyone. Sue read about it in old issues of American Photography magazine (she went through a period of reading a bunch of issues of it from the early 1900s). (You can find issues online.)

The card is from “Mamma,” who apparently lived in Milan, Ohio, but was on a trip to Clare, Michigan; she sent it to her daughter, Mrs. Henry Link, who lived in Bellevue, Ohio. I'm providing a transcription of the simple message, below.

Clair, Michigan, was probably a nice, cool place to go camping in August 1913.

One of the nice things about digital images is that you can zoom in on stuff and see things without having to use a magnifying glass and squint. So I’m providing some closeups for you, so you can enjoy this picture better.

To Mrs. Henry Link
Bellevue, Ohio
R. D. No. 3

Postmark: Clare, Mich., 7 PM 18 Aug 1913

Clare [Michigan] 8.18.1913

Dear Daughter

Earns came today we expect to start tomorrow for Milan can’t tell just when we will get home. We have had rain yesterday north of hear it rained very hard the rain just divided & went around we are all well hope you are getting along all right you can call Rob & tell him

Lovingly, Mamma

Boat Ramp Scavenger Hunts

Here’s a new summertime activity that works well with pandemic-inspired desire for social distancing: collecting boat ramps!

Just kidding, sort of. Here’s what it actually is. As some of you know, I’ve been working for several years as a freelance contractor for our state conservation agency providing writing and editorial services for one portion of its website. As I’ve used the site over the years, I’ve noticed that of the hundreds of conservation, natural, and fishing access areas that appear among the “Places to Go” on their website, several don’t have a representational photo—like, not even a thumbnail image to appear as you scroll through the lists of search results. (And a few are kind of lame—like a closeup photo of the area’s sign.)

Mostly, the ones that don’t have photos are access points along rivers (boat ramps—so not very compelling, photographically), and community lakes where the state agency has a partnership with the local government (so, not 100 percent the state agency’s job to promote). Still, it’s the web, and you know . . . pictures!

Anyway, since I have a camera that takes pretty okay pictures (good enough for web, anyway, and in some cases equal or better than the ones used on the website) . . . and since I can edit that part of the site (although I’m not in charge of it), I’ve been adding pictures here and there for the areas that need them. Yeah, for free. In fact, until recently, they invited users to upload their own photos, so it’s not like I’m going crazy here.

It started a few years ago, when I’d use the site myself to find directions and noted there was no image. Well, since we would be there, I might as well take a few clicks and provide a pic here and there.

And so Sue and I have been taking little excursions on weekends. I make a list of places that don’t yet have pictures, we figure out an itinerary, and off we go. We see how many boat ramps and backwoods public lands we can visit in an afternoon. It’s been quite an adventure, connecting these dots, going places we’ve never been before, occasionally missing a turn from one gravel county road onto another because the road sign has been knocked over and is laying in the weeds (Osage County, I’m talking about you) . . . but you know. Adventures.

We’ve seen a lot of beautiful places.

And a lot of boat ramps.

LOTS of boat ramps.

. . . All manner of boat ramps.

We usually have a picnic while we’re at it. It’s easy to find a pleasant place to sit.

It’s nice to get out of the house and do something together. We take pictures of all manner of beautiful and strange nature things. Then we go home and try to identify what we've seen, if it's something new.

Fun fact: this is a lot like something else we did when we first moved back to Missouri—we were living in Columbia, and Sue had never lived there before, and I thought she should get to know the university better. So many buildings! So we made a scavenger hunt out of visiting and entering every campus building we could. Why not? Those are public places, and we’re Missouri residents and taxpayers! Also, many of the buildings at the University of Missouri are beautiful examples of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century public architecture, so it’s a treat to step inside them.

We had a campus map and a checklist. Also, irreverent but in a nondestructive way, we had a roll of adhesive paper dots that we used to mark our conquests. In multiple-story buildings, we sought to put one dot on each floor. We made sure no one saw us while we were marking the buildings this way, and we’d stick the dots in odd, not-quite-conspicuous places. The tops or sides of door frames. The side of a light fixture. The top edge of an elevator door. A few times, in plain sight, but on a surface where the heads of screws, for example, created a pattern where one more little round circle wouldn’t draw notice. I think we might’ve put one above a switch on a classroom’s light-switch plate, which looked like someone might have marked “this switch” as somehow special.

We only put the dots onto metal or painted stuff, nothing that was finished wood. . . . I wonder how many of those are still there. I wonder if other people discovered these dots and wondered about their significance. Hah. We ought to make a new project of going back to those buildings and looking for the dots. We even put them on the parking structures.

We didn’t finish our little project—we didn’t conquer the University of Missouri. But we had fun walking around that beautiful campus in a lot of majestic buildings, marking them as “ours” in an exceedingly mild way. Just like we're having fun visiting all these boat ramps.

I hope you're having a fun summer, and that you're all staying safe and well.

Walking Among the Ghosts and Lichens

Here’s a new idea for you. What have you been doing for exercise this winter—this socially distanced, pandemic winter, when half of what we need, really, is to just get out of the house?

Well, we’ve been taking walks out at Riverview Cemetery—one of Jefferson City’s big nondenominational cemeteries with rolling hills, lots of big, mature trees, and curvy, winding paved roads. It dates back to the 1910s.

We first started taking walks there in early December when we went to decorate my peoples’ graves—we realized how ideal it was as a walking location.

You want social distancing? There are very few people there—most folks don’t get out of their cars, and when they do, they stay close to whatever grave they’re visiting (decorating).

You want safety and solitude? Unlike walking on city streets, there’s no one brushing past you, and no traffic or noisy mufflers roaring by. You want fresh air? No stinky black exhaust fumes. Cemeteries are quiet places.

And we’re not superstitious. Neither of us is squeamish about being at the cemetery—we’re always intrigued and interested, reading the stones, noting the fresh graves (“ooh, do you think they died of COVID?”), straightening up dislodged decorations, etc. Indeed, we think of cemeteries as nice places. A place were mortality and eternity walk together in harmony.

Once, we came upon about a dozen deer walking around among the tombstones. When they noticed us, they all ran into the nearby woods. I’m pretty sure that was on Christmas Day. Yeah, indeed. We went walking there after Christmas dinner.

And the lichens! Championship flavoparmelias, bright orange xanthorias, sinewy ramalinas, ruffly parmotremas, etc., etc., etc., on the stones and the trees. Gorgeous, amazing organisms that make you glad to be stationed here on planet Earth for a time.

I guess cemetery trees get just the right amount of open sunshine, combined with lower air pollution and little mechanical disturbance, to grow nice, big perfect circles of lichens.

Sue and I probably look like weirdos out there, peering so closely at the trees and taking pictures. So far, no one has complained about us or asked us to leave.

Taking walks in cemeteries? We can recommend it!

Please enjoy some of the pictures I’ve taken on our walks.

So Many Miscellaneous Mushrooms

Hi, folks! With our nice, moist spring and this coolish summer, it has been a great year for mushrooms!

As you might remember, Sue and I enjoy going "mushroom-watching." We like to take picture of them on our hikes, even though we're not very careful about getting identifications "just right." As I explained in a previous post, we usually aren't looking for mushrooms to eat.

Nope, we're not into picking them at all, really--well, except for morels (which we can't resist)--since mushrooms are the fungus's spore-bearing structures, picking them represents a dent in their ability to reproduce. If you don't pick wildflowers because you understand wildflowers create seed, then why pick mushrooms willy-nilly? And so we photograph them.

Sue, with her nice camera, takes excellent photos at various angles, while I concentrate on getting ground-level shots and photos of the undersides, which her big camera can't do (remember, my little camera swivels so I can hold it on the ground, beneath the cap, to photograph gills and pores without disturbing the mushroom).



We recently went hiking on some of the nature trails at Columbia's Cosmos Park--near the Bear Creek Trail. I haven't been hiking out there in ages, though I used to hang out at the beaver pond there a lot during college . . .

Anyway, we decided it'd be fun to check out the place again. My, how it's changed!

And yes, there were a lot of mushrooms popping out--various species--what fun!

Here's some type of bolete we saw.



Here's a more artsy picture of the cap of another type of bolete. (If I do say so myself.) I think it might be a two-colored bolete (Boletus bicolor), but again: I'm not too anal about getting them id'd "just so." I'm content to exclaim, "Wow, look at this beautiful bolete!"



Maybe, when it comes to mushrooms, I'm just easily amused.

Here's one I'm fairly confident about identifying: It's an "old man of the woods" (Strobilomyces floccopus). There was a patch of them at one place along the trail. They were kind of camouflaged against the dirt and leaf litter, but once we saw a few of them, they seemed to be all over (in that area).



This was the first time I'd ever seen this type of mushroom "in person." I've seen pictures of them and thought, "That's a cool-looking thing. Wonder if I'll ever seen one." And there they were!

Since they are usually out in July, August, September, and October, I guess it's not surprising I haven't seen them--midsummer, with the skeeters, other bugs, and humidity, isn't my favorite time for hiking in Missouri. But with the unusual cool weather, we got outside and made discoveries!

Well, these few pictures are just a small sample of what we saw, which was itself just a small sample of all that's out there right now. I mean . . . we weren't even looking for them.



If you're interested in mushrooms and want to get more regular updates on what fungi are popping out here in Central Missouri, check out Lisa K. Suits's blog, Mycologista. She takes lovely photos of mushrooms, and she goes the extra mile to identify them correctly. As she says, she's "crazy for wild mushrooms." But if you ever thought mushrooms were boring, you should scroll through her posts for an attitude adjustment.

It's funny how you can go into the woods, say, with binoculars and a bird guide, and plan on seeing a bunch of birds; or you bring old sneakers, a few nets, and containers and a magnifying lens for looking at aquatic invertebrates--but you end up having a "mushroom trip" instead. Or maybe it's the butterflies that are somehow everywhere that day, or daisies. Nature outings, "field trips," can be like that.

. . . And it's always fun!