Hitchens Resurrected

 

    A few weeks back, Margaret Atwood received The Hitchens Prize. Her acceptance speech was a fine and humorous one and these portions of it are worth providing to those who appreciate Hitchens-like thoughts.
    Ms. Atwood describes being at a literary event at Hay-on-Wye which Hitchens attended and she argued with him, but,

“At least he didn’t accuse me of hurting his feelings, nor did I accuse him of hurting mine. Having feelings was not a thing back then. We would not have admitted to owning such marshmallow-like appendages, and if we did have any feelings, we’d have considered them irrelevant as arguments. Feelings are real—people do have them, I have observed—and they can certainly be plausible explanations for all kinds of behavior. But they are not excuses or justifications. If they were, men who murder their wives because they’re feeling cranky that day would never get convicted….

Hitch and I were both of an archaic generation that endorsed the basic principles of logic. We knew an ad hominem when we fell over one. We didn’t consider the factual truth of any given matter to be dispensable—or worse, to be some scoundrelly piece of propaganda cooked up by the opposing party. We both believed in a healthy society’s need for public debate, with testable evidence presented…

I expect Hitch would join me in a distinction I have been making lately: that between belief and truth. It’s a comment on our special times that I’d even feel I have to make this distinction. A belief cannot be either proved or disproved. If you wish to believe that invisible flower spirits are causing your string beans to grow, there is no point in my trying to dissuade you, because these entities are invisible and immaterial. Something proposed as a truth can, however, be put to the test. In recent years, people have confused beliefs with truths. From this confusion have come ideologies and dogmas—the characteristic of a dogma being that it’s proposed as an absolute truth and cannot be disputed, and if you try disputing it, you’ll be burned as a heretic.

The conclusion:

But, more immediately, there’s another important question the times we live in are asking us. That question is: What sort of political system should we choose? If it’s open democracy, we’ve got some work ahead of us. We must roll up our proverbial sleeves, grab our arrows of desire, sharpen the paring knives of our wits, dedicate our swords to the pursuit of truth, strengthen our resolve, resist the serpents of false argument, hop into our chariots of fire, and … Oh dear (or slightly stronger exclamation), cries the ghost of Christopher Hitchens. What a sack of mixed metaphors!

Yes, I know. But desperate times require desperate remedies, and our times are desperate. However, instead of all these chariots and swords, I’ll propose something simpler. Don’t panic. Think carefully. Write clearly. Act in good faith. Repeat.

From: "Your Feelings Are No Excuse: Emotions May Explain Why People Overreact, but They Don’t Justify It”, Margaret Atwood, Atlantic, April 1, 2022.

About The Hitchens Prize

    Although I am a fan of Hitchens, I was unaware of The Hitchens Prize which was established in 2015 and awards $50,000 to ”the author or journalist whose work reflects a commitment to free expression and inquiry, a range and depth of intellect, and a willingness to pursue the truth without regard to personal or professional consequence".

The previous winners are:

2019 - George Packer, Journalist and Author

2018 - Masha Gessen, Journalist and Author

2017 - Graydon Carter, Editor

2016 - Marty Baron, Executive Editor of The Washington Post

2015 - Alex Gibney, Documentary Filmmaker

[the prize was not awarded during the ‘pandemic years’.]

   The generous creators of the Hitchens Prize are the lawyer Dennis Ross and Victoria Ross, a writer and art historian, who founded The Dennis & Victoria Ross Foundation. A portion of the “Mission” of the foundation is provided here:

“The Dennis & Victoria Ross Foundation (DVRF) is a non-profit foundation organized and operated for educational purposes, including support for public debate and discussion on topics of current or historical importance, and the promotion of emerging artists working in the theater, film, music, and visual arts. 

The Foundation is committed to the value of an educated and engaged public, and to that end plans to sponsor events featuring the work of authors or journalists whose work reflects open, honest, and critical inquiry, and a willingness to challenge or expand conventional wisdom. “

About Christopher Hitchens

   I have already dedicated three posts to Hitchens and if you read them you will know that the use of "Resurrection" was an ironic one. He remains dead, but the ideas he exemplified can still be honoured and promoted.  What it is about Hitchens that needs to be remembered is put well in this paragraph taken from The Dennis & Victoria Ross Foundation:

"Christopher ‬Hitchens defied easy categorization, with interests that spanned the whole landscape of cultural and political topics, and views that crossed conventional fault lines and left him with no firm anchor to the left or right. The Prize, in any event, is not intended, ‬if it were even possible,‭ ‬to identify writers who align closely with Christopher‭ ‬Hitchens,‭ ‬nor to celebrate his views in every particular.‭ Rather,‭ ‬the Prize seeks to advance what he was dedicated to throughout his life: vigorous,‭ ‬honest, and open public debate and discussion,‭ ‬with no tolerance of orthodoxy,‭ ‬no reverence for authority,‭ ‬and a belief in reasoned dialogue as the best path to the truth.‭"

Post Script: 

   For a current example of a case where Hitchen's analytical abilities and bravery could be useful, consider the word "Islamophobia." Earlier this month the government here in Ontario failed to pass Our London Family Act which was written by Muslim community leaders in reaction to a terrible event that occurred in London, Ontario. The subtitle of Bill 86 is "Working Together to Combat Islamophobia and Hatred." While the event was a horrible one and it is likely to be proved to have been motivated by hatred of Muslims or the Islamic faith, not all criticisms of Muslims or Islam need to be regarded as signs of "Islamophobia."

   Also during this month an Angus Reid survey relating to religions was released and one of the headlines about it is: "Canadians Consider Religions More Damaging Than Beneficial." It revealed that all religious groups surveyed viewed evangelical Christianity as more damaging to society than beneficial, while Islam was also perceived in a largely negative light." 
   As far as I know, we don't talk about "Pentecostalphobia" and we should talk less about "Islamophobia." We should be allowed to be critical of any religion without being labelled "phobic." 
  Here is what Hitchens wrote fifteen years ago and I doubt if he would now change it:

"All over the non-Muslim world, we hear incessant demands that those who believe in the literal truth of the Quran be granted “respect.” We are supposed to watch what we say about Islam, lest by any chance we be considered “offensive.” A fair number of authors and academics in the West now have to live under police protection or endure prosecution in the courts for not observing this taboo with sufficient care. A stupid term—Islamophobia—has been put into circulation to try and suggest that a foul prejudice lurks behind any misgivings about Islam’s infallible “message.”

Sources:

   The source for Atwood's speech is provided.  See also: "Hitchens Remembered: On the Occasion of This Year's Hitchens Prize, A Look Back at Tributes to Christopher Hitchens by Atlantic Writers at the Time of His Death," by Cullen Murphy and Annika Neklason, Atlantic, Jan. 21, 2022. 
   My earlier posts about Hitchens are here: "The One and Only Hitch," "Christopher Hitchens" and "Mother Teresa." (A warning about the latter. To put it gently, Hitchens was not a fan.)

   For more about The Hitchens Prize see: The Dennis & Victoria Ross Foundation. 

   Hitchen's remark about "Islamophobia" is found in: "The War Within Islam: The Growing Danger of the Sunni-Shiite Rivalry," Slate, Feb. 19, 2007.  Hitchens is not the only one critical of the term. See the entry for "Islamophobia" in Wikipedia where this is found:

Atheist author and professor Richard Dawkins has criticised the term Islamophobia. He has argued that while hatred of Muslims is "unequivocally reprehensible" the term Islamophobia itself is an "otiose word which doesn't deserve definition. In 2015, along with the National Secular Society, he expressed opposition to a proposal by then Labour Party leader Ed Miliband to make Islamophobia an "aggravated crime". Dawkins stated that the proposed law was based on a term that is too vague, puts religion above scrutiny and questioned if such a law under the term Islamophobia hypothetically could be used to prosecute Charlie Hebdo or if he could be jailed for quoting violent passages from Islamic scripture on Twitter."

The Bonus: 
  Masha Gessen won The Hitchens Prize in 2018 and it was noted that her work is an urgent warning against authoritarian impulses, including in democratic countries. Her life testifies to the power of the written and spoken word as a force for justice and human rights, and as a bulwark against those who would constrain them."
  She is a critic of Putin and the author of this recent article in The New Yorker. It is about Kyiv and more particularly, Babyn Yar, the spot where 33,000 Jews were executed in 1941. "Letter From Kyiv: The Memorial: A Holocaust Atrocity Was About to be Commemorated. Then Came Another War," April 18, 2022.  The writing continues as do the atrocities.

Starling Revisionism

    

   One of the four readers of this blog indicated to me once that at least I provided sources in most of my posts. He was implying, I think, that they were the readable bits and that from them one might learn something and be able to actually figure out what I was rambling on about. Given the importance of sources to him and my extensive use of them, I will provide here, additional sources to correct a factoid I presented a while back.  A 'factoid', you will recall, is "an assumption or speculation that is reported and repeated so often that it becomes accepted as fact."

   The oft-repeated assertion which was repeated by me was put this way: "One gentleman, Eugene Schieffelin, was responsible for importing starlings and other birds which appeared in the works of Shakespeare, but were missing in America." The Schieffelin/Shakespeare connection is well known among birding folklorists, but it is a factoid rather than a fact. Schieffelin did, in fact, release starlings in New York City in 1890, but not likely because he was a fan of the Bard. He was a chairman of the American Acclimization Society and the members of such a group deliberately imported various species to the United States, for a variety of reasons unrelated to Shakespeare. Sparrows also were brought to North America and a "sparrow war" resulted. 

   The origin of the Schieffelin/Shakespeare connection has been traced back to Edwin Way Teale and I will, of course, provide the source.  Although I admit to being a Teale fan, I think it is correct to say that his connection of Shakespeare to Schieffelin is a rather innocent one. There was (and still is) a Shakespeare Garden in Central Park which contained plants mentioned in his plays and Teale seems to think that Schieffelin had a similar motivation. There were many readers of Teale's books and essays, but the connection between Shakespeare and the starlings was make known to more people when an essay was published in 1947 in Sports Illustrated - "A Plague of Starlings," by Robert Cantwell.

   That a lover of the literature of Shakespeare sought to populate the United States with the birds mentioned by the Bard provides an interesting anecdote. “If true, it would suggest that a long-dead dramatist totally reshaped the ecosystem of a foreign continent, which is a fascinating connection between literature and science,” One could argue, for example, that the crash of a Lockheed L-188 Electra taking off in Boston in 1960 was caused by the large number of starlings hitting the plane's propellers and, indirectly, because of Shakespeare. 

   Perhaps the anecdote can now be put to rest. The arguments about starlings and sparrows and "invasive species" and the consequences of their introduction continue and you can learn more about them below.

Sources:
   This starling story was prompted by this article: "The Shakespearean Tall Tale That Shaped How We See Starlings: Researchers Debunked a Long-repeated Yarn That the Common Birds Owe Their North American Beginnings to a 19th-century Lover of the Bard. Maybe This Ubiquitous Bird’s Story is Ready for a Reboot." Jason Bittel, New York Times, April 11, 2022.
   If you cannot read the article in the NYT, the one by the researchers is accessible and readable even by non-academics. An abstract is provided. John MacNeill Miller  with Lauren Fugate “Shakespeare’s Starlings: Literary History and the Fictions of Invasiveness.” Environmental Humanities Vol. 13, No. 2, 2021, pp. 301-322. 
"Scientists, environmentalists, and nature writers often report that all common starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) in North America descend from a flock released in New York City in 1890 by Eugene Schieffelin, a man obsessed with importing all the birds mentioned by Shakespeare. This article uses the methods of literary history to investigate this popular anecdote. Today starlings are much despised as an invasive species that displaces native birds and does almost a billion dollars worth of damage to agriculture annually. Because of the starling’s pest status, the Schieffelin story is considered a cautionary tale about the dangers of ecological ignorance. Diving into the history of the Schieffelin story reveals, however, that it is almost entirely fictional. Tracing how its elements emerged and changed over a century of retelling clarifies how the story came to shore up uncertainties in the bird’s environmental history and to distract from the lack of data supporting the starling’s supposedly disastrous impacts. In explaining how a fiction repeated over time attained the status of fact in debates about invasive species, this literary history suggests humanistic methods can serve as useful tools for understanding the value-laden narratives underpinning environmental attitudes and practices today."

   Although I am not a 'birder' and can barely tell a cardinal from a crow, I will stand by my "Sparrows" post and the sources in it. 

   For Teale see: "Edwin Way Teale (1899 - 1980).    

Berry College

 

Small College - A VERY BIG Campus That Tops the Rankings For Size

  It is a mid-April Easter weekend, but here the weather remains bad and the landscape still barren. Last week, some of us seeking sunny relief turned to television and the Masters where sunshine was sure to be, along with beautiful flowers. The weather there also was disappointing, but I will present here another Georgia destination where I am sure you will be pleased to spend some time on these cloudy days.

   I have often thought that it would be interesting to tour the United States and visit the colleges and universities found in small towns. There are many of them. Usually the campuses serve as oases where green spaces and Gothic buildings offer some relief from the asphalt and malls that are adjacent to the Interstate Highways. Berry College is about 75 miles from Chattanooga or Atlanta and an exit to it from Route 75 would be well worth taking if you decide to wait no longer for good weather and head to Florida. 

   Berry is big as you will see from the caption above. The 'bigness' of a campus is hard to define and often includes the population contained on it. Often, as well, the 'bigness' is exaggerated if it appears on the college brochure, since most things are. In addition, what constitutes a 'campus' can be expanded quite a bit to include all the campuses of all the branches of, say a state university system.
   Close by, the central campus at Western consists of about 420 acres, which, over the years, have become less Gothic and green. One can also include the campuses of what used to be the Affiliated Colleges, which have graduated to become universities. There is also Spencer Lodge and the Research Park and the Elginfield Observatory and the campuses of the Ivey Business School in Toronto and Hong Kong. 

   Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh has a campus in Qatar. 

  Small Berry College has a very big campus in terms of area if not population. It is said to be the largest in the world and probably is. It is certainly the largest on this continent. Two of the military academies in the U.S. (Air Force and West Point) occupy a lot of space, but neither approaches 27,000 acres. In Canada, B.C. is often said to be the largest in terms of area, but it is probably second to the University of Saskatchewan ( 1,508 acres to 2,925 respectively.) By the way, the Wikipedia entries for colleges and universities, usually provide campus size by area as well as the population. 

What About the Beauty Ranking?

  Such a ranking is more subjective, but I am confident that Berry is near the top.  If you take a virtual tour of the campus, you can decide for yourself and the other sources provided will give you something to do during what is predicted here to be a rather grim weekend. 

Have a Look

   The Berry story is an interesting one, by the way, and on the 27,000 acres you will find some impressive buildings and the largest hard court tennis facility in the United States. There are also trails and forests and they moved the location of their stadium to accommodate some eagles which you can view on one of their EAGLE CAMS. 

   You can begin your tour at Berry College, but I would start at the Oak Hill and the Martha Berry Museum, where you will find a useful timeline as well as pictures. Rome is nearby and looks like an interesting college town.  Tourism Georgia also promotes Berry and its nature trails. 

Additional Sources:

   In terms of beauty, Berry is listed as second after Stanford in: "America's Most Beautiful College Campuses," Travel + Leisure, June 24, 2021. 
   See also: "South's Most Beautiful Colleges 2020," by Jennifer Chappell Smith, Southern Living, Sept. 11, 2020.

"The Ford Complex, inspired by Oxford University’s Christ Church in England, gives Berry College a touch of British grandeur in the midst of its rural Georgia setting, and its Neo-Gothic architecture inspires serious study. On this 27,000-acre property, the formal Ford Complex gives way to pastureland, hills, lakes, log cabins, and the Mountain Campus, where an old mill and waterwheel make a great spot for a photo op. Miles of split-rail fences are maintained by the students, who not only study here but also work to keep it beautiful. In fact, 90% of Berry students work on campus in some capacity during their academic tenures. “We believe that beauty nurtures the heart just as academic studies mold the mind, and work experience trains the hands,” explains Berry College president Stephen Briggs. “[Founder] Martha Berry believed that beauty is an integral part of education.” She created an institution where both can flourish."

But What About Sewanee?

  I anticipate that loyal readers of Mulcahy's Miscellany will ask  that question. As they will know, I produce a series of posts under the clever title "Periodical Ramblings." The very first one was about The Sewanee Review which is produced at Sewanee which is really the University of the South. I happened to mention that the campus at Sewanee is both serene and VERY BIG  and the 'Domain', as it is known, also occupies thousands of desirable acres. If you do take that drive south, before you get to the exit that will take you towards Rome, take the one near Chattanooga that will put you close to Sewanee, TN. 

  Sewanee also ranked high on Southern Living's list of most beautiful campuses in the South. Here is the accompanying description:

Collegiate Gothic architecture defines The University of the South, aka “Sewanee,” which is tucked into a rural, forested perch atop the Cumberland Plateau. Just a mile away from downtown Sewanee, the campus feels like a retreat. Laurie Saxton, an alum who now works at the university, points to some of its most striking features: Abbo’s Alley, a natural spring and creek, runs near the center of campus and is lined with daffodils in spring. Dorm-side lakes offer spots for recreational fishing. The woods inspire professors to take students out for “labs” that usually involve hiking and listening to lectures under the trees. In the heart of campus, the iconic All Saints’ Chapel rises on the central Quad. “We think of it as the living room on the Quad,” says Saxton, “and it’s open to people of all faiths or no faith.”

The Bonus: Thinking About Retiring (to someplace warmer and sunnier)?

   Premium subscribers to Mulcahy's Miscellany will know that it contains the most comprehensive guides to retirement communities near or on college campuses. They were designed for those who are demented enough to think they would be welcomed back to their, or someone else's, alma mater and that they would have long to stay.  The first one is: Retiring Back to University: Bucolic College Towns and the second: Lifelong Learning: University-Based Retirement Communities. 

To those exhaustive lists, you can add this new one: The Spires at Berry College: Lakeside Senior Living - An Extraordinary Setting For Your Next Chapter. 

The Purple Martin Problem

 

  I wrote about the murder of crows in the Vancouver area and more recently called your attention to another murder of crows in Sunnyvale, California, where lasers are being used to scare the crows away. Now I gather that a gathering of purple martins is creating a lot of problems in Nashville. Apparently the collective noun used to refer to such a group is a 'colony', which doesn't seem quite as threatening as a 'murder.'

  The purple martins would be a problem if they were pooping elsewhere in Nashville, but perhaps it is more of a problem when they are pooping on the patrons of the Schermerhorn Symphony Center. The Center doesn't have a lot of extra money for cleaning away the problem and Nashville nature lovers don't want the purple martins to be harmed or the elms cut down to deprive the colony of its home. It is yet another "colonial problem" with which we have to deal and the conundrum created is likely to settle in other urban settings as well. 

For more see: "A Flock of Beautiful Birds in a City Is a Miracle, a Disaster and a Conundrum," Margaret Renkl, New York Times, April 11, 2022. 

"The conflict boils down to this: A magnificent gathering of birds, who are facing a host of human-created environmental stressors like habitat destruction and climate change, has in turn created a host of bird-related environmental stressors for human beings. The birds just want to gather in a safe place while they fatten up on insects for the long journey to South America. The symphony just wants to play music again. Both are simply doing what their own species does best.
This conflict is a perfect example of how complex it can be to make urban settings welcoming for wildlife, even when all invested parties are proceeding with good will. Suitable roost sites in Nashville keep falling to development, and the purple martins are bringing into stark relief the need for cities to grow in ways that are both wildlife-friendly and safe for humans. This city is finding out just how disruptive it can be — to all species involved — when they don’t."

Source: 
   For pictures see: "PHOTOS: Tens of Thousands of Purple Martins Swarm Downtown Nashville, Tennessean, Aug. 6, 2021. 
  Since murders and colonies are becoming more of a problem, this might be helpful:
"Bird Dispersal Techniques."

The Bonus:
   In 1940 the folks near Rockford, Illinois used dynamite and an estimated 328,000 crows were murdered. I doubt if nature lovers today would approve of this solution. See: Life Magazine, Mar. 25, 1940.

Great Lakes Funding

 

  I noticed the announcement above and it reminded me that recently President Biden and the EPA announced that $1 Billion is going to be spent on cleaning up the Great Lakes. Let's hope it is not too late. One would think that the water in Lake Superior would be superior to the water in the others, but apparently there are problems even in that lake which is farther from the big cities.  The announcement was made in Lorain, Ohio and one of the Areas of Concern being addressed is the Maumee River near Toledo which is a major contributor to the algae bloom close by us in Lake Erie.

   The $1 Billion is part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and to make it palatable to some of the very partisan members of Congress promises had to be made that the result would be more than just cleaner water. The economic spin-off can be substantial: In 2018, an independent economic study from the Great Lakes Commission and the University of Michigan found that every Great Lakes Restoration Initiative dollar spent produces an additional $3.35 of economic activity. For older industrial cities, including AOCs such as Buffalo and Detroit, the study found that there may be more than $4 in additional economic activity for each federal dollar spent. A 2020 analysis of the Great Lakes determined that the region supports more than 1.3 million jobs, generating $82 billion in wages annually.

  I did not notice much of a reaction on this side of the lakes. Perhaps most Canadians were more worried about the shutdown of Line 5, the rupture of which could really dirty the lakes. Canadian Press did take notice and this was found in the Toronto Star: "Biden's Billion-Dollar Cleanup Pledge Puts Great Lakes Back in the Environmental Spotlight," James McCarten, March 9.

"Joe Biden, facing a Republican reckoning in November's midterm elections, marked one year since his inauguration with a vow to get out of the White House and brag a little more about his legislative wins….So it was, then, that Biden found himself in Lorain, Ohio, last month, announcing plans to spend no less than US$1 billion on what he called the most significant restoration of the resource "in the history of the Great Lakes." The effort will target 22 of the 25 problem areas, known as "areas of concern," on the U.S. side of the lakes -- a level of commitment that experts, advocates and activists have been clamouring for since the 1990s and beyond."That's a huge thing, you know?" said John Hartig, a U.S.-born conservation scientist who's currently serving as a visiting scholar at the University of Windsor's Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research. Hartig, widely hailed as one of the world's leading experts on Great Lakes remediation, grew up in Detroit before becoming the first graduate to earn a PhD at the institute more than 35 years ago. "Money makes this go, right? You need resources to do it, you can't just talk about it. So these are pretty significant investments."

The same is true on the Canadian side -- and hopes are high that the latest levels of ambition in the U.S. will increase pressure on the federal and Ontario governments to finally finish what they started.
It's happening already: Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault visited Hamilton Harbour on Wednesday to announce major progress on Randle Reef, long the single most polluted area of concern on the Canadian side of the lakes."

Sources:
   This is the news release: "President Biden, EPA Announce $1 Billion Investment from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law Will Significantly Accelerate Cleanup and Restoration of Great Lakes: EPA Projects Work to Be Completed at 22 of 25 Remaining Great Lakes “Areas of Concern” by 2030, Feb. 17, 2022.
   GreatLakesNow provided the Associated Press story: "Biden Infrastructure Plan Gives $1 Billion For Great Lakes Cleanup," Feb. 18, 2022.
"The lakes provide drinking water for 40 million people and underpin the economy in eight Northeastern and Midwestern states and two Canadian provinces. They fueled a 20th century industrial boom that generated wealth and jobs but caused ecological devastation."
 For Canadian Areas of Concern see: "Great Lakes: Areas of Concern."
 I live close to two of the lakes so Mulcahy's Miscellany often has material about them. See, for example, North Of Long Tail (Lake Erie) which also has links to some of the other posts.

The Bonus:
   Here are the "Top Five Great Lakes Stories of 2021."
1. Canada and Ontario mark 50th anniversary of Great Lakes agreement
2. New partnership to publish community water monitoring data from Great Lakes region
3. Great Lakes communities to spend $2 billion combatting climate change
4. Partnership aims to bolster coastal resiliency along Great Lakes communities
5. Circular Great lakes launches to combat plastic pollution.

Leather Postcards!

Vintage Postcards

Loch Lomond Tarbet

                [Another post about libraries that are still in business and continue to collect.]

  The Newberry Library is a remarkable one and it is located in Chicago. It was founded just twenty years after the founding of Canada and it has been collecting many things (primarily related to the humanities) since that time.  In 2016 it accepted the Curt Teich Postcard Archives Collection which consists of approximately 2.5 million postcards that had been printed by Curt Teich which was one of the largest producers of postcards.  
   The cards are continually being digitized and recently over 25,000 related to the early 20th century were released. The Raphael Tuck & Sons Oilette Postcards were promoted as “veritable miniature oil paintings," the Oilettes depict landscapes, seascapes, pastoral scenes, and city streets, both in Great Britain and abroad. In addition to tourist destinations, the cards also feature scenes of domestic life, holidays, and humorous images, including a few dozen reproductions from Punch magazine." They can be viewed by clicking on the link provided above.
   To make the vast collection of postcards more accessible, Newberry has also made 26,000 additional ones available on the Internet Archive. They can be searched and viewed at Newberry Postcards and the terms of use are very generous. 

  Images from postcards can be found easily on the Internet and the market for historical ones is brisk. Provided below, however, are a few archival postcard collections.

VintagePostcards.ca

Quebec: Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec
Approximately 20,000 have been digitized 

Calgary Public Library - Postcards From the Past

See McMaster University for "Postcards Provide Glimpse of Canada's Wintery Past."

For sunnier pictures see these two Florida collections:
Museum of Florida History
University of Florida: Postcard and Brochure Collections.

Source: 
  The Smithsonian provides a good Postcard History. 

The Bonus: And Now, About Those Leather Postcards!
   I learned while doing this that there were leather postcards which were often made from the hides of deer. I found this out at the website of the Wellington County Museum & Archives in Fergus, where they had a wall display of them. They also have a postcard collection. See: "Leather Postcard Frenzy."  Here is what the display looked like:

For more information see: "A Look at Leather Postcards," Bonnie Wilpon, Postcard History, Aug. 27, 2020. The image below is from her article as is the text that follows.

Starting in 1903, postcards made of leather were decorated by pyrography (literally “fire-writing”). Also known as pokerwork, it involved decorating the postcards using the tip of a sharp tool heated by fire. Surprisingly, it was a popular craft among ladies. Designs were burned into deerskin and color was often applied afterward. While the leather in newer postcards is often stiff, the leather of the pre-1915 era is very thin and soft.

About 1909, the post office banned the mailing of leather postcards because they were getting hung up in the new sorting machines. But dedicated collectors still sent them using envelopes. In later years when postal machinery became sturdier, the cards were again permitted in the mail. They can still be purchased in souvenir shops, especially in the American West.

"Jersey Girls Don't Pump Gas!"

    I often offer 'Factlets'  which are curious facts that are true, as opposed to 'Factoids' which are facts that everyone assumes to be true. The one for today is that it is indeed a fact that you can't pump your own gas in the state of New Jersey. You could hop in your car and pump your own gas all the way to Florida, except in New Jersey, which may be a state you were going to try avoiding anyway, unless you prefer to have someone pump the gas for you. As you will see, it appears most people would.

   The bill banning self service has been on the Jersey books since 1949. An attempt was just made to alter the bill, but the "Motorist Fueling Choice and Convenience Act" was rejected. The act was supported by the the gasoline retailers and the proponents argued, among other things, that: reducing the overhead costs associated with hiring employees would lower gas prices; that service would be speedier because more lanes could be open and you wouldn't have to wait for the attendants; that it was difficult to find people who wanted to work and that customers should be offered the choice since they were serving themselves already at banks and grocery stores, etc.

   Who would be against "choice and convenience?" Well, as the quotation at the top of this post suggests, Jersey girls. Apparently the quote is often seen on bumpers and T-shirts. A poll conducted at Rutgers found that 90 percent of women preferred to have someone pump their gas and 73 percent of all the people surveyed wanted self-service.  Self-service stations are popular, so the politicians capitulated and the "Retail Gasoline Dispensing Safety Act of 1949" remains in force. 

Source: 
"Pump Your Own Gas? No Thanks, Say New Jerseyans," Tracey Tully, New York Times, March 31, 2022.

The Bonus:
   It seems that the only other state that restricts self-service is Oregon, where it is allowed in some rural counties, but not in the urban areas. 
   I am not sure what the situation is in Canada, but it was the case in 2018 that self-service stations were banned in Richmond and Coquitlam, B.C. and may still be. 
   For more about "Service Stations" and the old days when uniformed attendants looked under your hood, washed the windshield and gave you a map when you came out of the clean bathroom, see my Gasoline Stations. 

   While "Gasoline Stations" contains Canadian information, here is some for this post: Just yesterday this funny sign was seen near London, Ontario: "Need Gas? We Have Beans!"