End of the year

Not everything we write needs to educate or explain. Sometimes we just want to catch up with news and notes, or plans, or whatever comes to mind. This is one of those times. We’re looking out the window at a cool, somewhat dreary day, but Mau-Mau the cat makes sure we remember he needs his attention, too. If you knew his personality, and even better if you speak Cantonese, you would understand why we now call him “Jiu JICK Mao” (Chairman Mao).

So what’s happening with the site now? If you’ve been following this blog, you know we have many unscanned–therefore, unentered–cards waiting to be processed. We just opened one box and discovered a great stash of old cards of lighthouses. You may be thinking, well, all lighthouses look the same. Absolutely not. We had no idea of the variety of size and shapes, but as we scan more and more cards we know not only that, but also

* many claim to be the tallest, the oldest, the brightest, the longest-running, or something like that

* many have been moved from where they were originally built

* many are now used for something other than their original purpose. They are private homes, museums, libraries…

* many are falling into disrepair for lack of funding

Apart from lighthouses, we have found enough of certain topics to be able to open new topical categories soon. Because we don’t like to have open categories with nothing there, we are waiting to finish more scans, but as a sneak preview, we will soon be opening “Automobiles” (already in there, but empty right now) and at least two other semi-obscure themes.

Another change, though more of an explanation than a change, was an adjustment to the Grading text. We keep needing to stress that a completely objective description–such as “postally used” or not, or “with stamp(s)” or not–can never convey the card’s true appearance. As we wrote before, grading is still subjective. So we adjusted the introduction, hoping everyone still recognises that Grade One is the best we have, and Grade Five is no more than a space filler until you find something better.

New Year’s Resolutions? Sure, we will have two. One will be to make real progress in scanning and entering the cards we already have, for they do no good just sitting in bins. The other will be to try to find at least a few postcards from countries where we now have none. Since there are still about 100 of those, that shouldn’t be too hard–if we make the effort!

Finally, to all of you who have signed up for this Blog, and even to those of you who haven’t, we want to wish you very happy holidays during this season, and a great year ahead. Send more postcards!