Collecting During COVID or the Power of a Postcard

Stephen H. Grant joined the Arlington Neighborhood Village (ANV) in 2015. For those that might not be familiar with the organization, reading the Mission Statement is a good place to begin: “Arlington Neighborhood Village strives to enable members to continue living in their own homes and communities as they age—safely, independently, and with an enhanced quality of life—by providing access to support services and social programs.”

During the Covid-19 pandemic, ANV members were encouraged to share ways in which they coped with the restrictions older people were facing. Many agreed that it was an excellent time to discover a new hobby or revert to a tried-and-true hobby. Grant volunteered to share his experience in a hobby that clearly got out of hand as he practiced it over the decades and around the world: Collecting Postcards.

The opportunity to present his experience collecting picture postcards offered itself in the framework of a weekly ANV activity entitled “Coffee & Conversation.” For an hour, with ZOOM communication techniques, on July 1, 2020. Grant displayed on the screen postcards going back to the first years of the 20th century. He related personal anecdotes of how powerful postcards could be in scrutinizing ethnic customs in South Asia, in safeguarding architectural treasures from oblivion in Central America, and in discovering in consular archives symbolic references during African colonization.