May 17, 2005                                    

                                          Calendar of Events

 

Last Week:     Antique Postcards   Wayne Tucker

This Week:     Community Work Projects

Next Week:    Community Work Projects

Events Coming Up:     

                        May 17-June 7 Community Work Projects           

June 5  Charlton Founders’ Day Parade

June 9  Flag Day Parade in Charlton

June 14  Club Assembly @ Methodist Church

June 21  Awards Night

Give suggestions for future programs to Rey Whetten or Linda LeTendre

 

News Briefs:
Community Work Projects Identified
            Mark Gasparovic identified the four community work projects
that will occupy the club for the next four weeks as follows:
            •  Move a rail fence at the 4H Club off Middle Line Road north of
Route 67.
            •  Remove cranberry plants and replace them with shrubs at
Council Meadows on Kingsley Road.
            •  Town in Bloom Project: This is a change.  Meet 5/17 at the
Town of Ballston library for weeding, raking, and reapplying the Rotary
sign on barrels.
            •  Put in a mesh fence at the STEP equestrian center on Maura
Road just off Spring Road in Glenville.  This project will not begin until
May 24.
            Mark distributed a sign-up sheet for these projects and said that Rotarians should report for work as close to 5 PM as possible.  If you
didn’t sign up, just choose a project and show up.  Additional volunteers
will be welcomed.  If you need directions to any of the work sites, call
Mark at 384-0765.  Dinner will be served at the church around 7:30 PM
on the 17th.  Linda LeTendre is preparing her own chili recipe which
promises to be as good as her chocolate cake.
 
Fred Baily to Organize Participation in June Parades
Fred Baily is organizing club participation in the Charlton
Founders’ Day Parade on June 5 and the Flag Day Parade which follows
on June 9.  Note the dates on your calendar.
 
Club Awards Night Scheduled for June 21
            President Steve announced that the Rotarian of the Year, the
Citizen of the Year, and the Stan Garrison Award recipients will be
honored at the June 21 club meeting.

 

 
 
 
Hobbyist Wayne Tucker Displays Antique Postcards
            Glenville resident Wayne Tucker spoke at last week’s meeting
about his hobby of collecting antique postcards.  In his day job Wayne
owns and operates a software engineering company, but he also has
spent many hours acquiring his collection of 10,000 postcards that
occupies one of the rooms in his house.  He said the major satisfactions
from this hobby are (1) finding a new card (which can’t be easy when you
have 10,000);  (2) organizing the collection;  and (3) showing it to people.
 
            Wayne began his collection 30 years ago when he found
several early 20th century Schenectady postcards at a flea market in
New Jersey.  After returning home, Wayne went to the Schenectady
Museum to view an exhibit of antique postcards where he met Wayne
Harvey, a collector who motivated Wayne to begin a collection of his own. 
During the peak popularity years (1900-1915) for American postcards,
GE and the American Locomotive Co. were “big” in Schenectady.  As a result, Mr. Tucker has acquired 3500 different Schenectady cards for his collection, surpassing his first goal to have as many cards as his mentor, Mr. Harvey.  In contrast, he has found only 24 Burnt Hills cards, many of them churches.  Because Ballston Lake was a railroad terminus in the early 1900’s and had a popular amusement park, Wayne has been able to acquire 66 Ballston Lake cards.
 
            Mr. Tucker talked about the early history of postcards.  Postal cards
without pictures at a cost of $.01 were acceptable in the U.S. mails
beginning in 1873. “View” cards were sold for $.02 at the Chicago Exposition
in 1893 and you could mail one for an additional $.01.  Three years later the
term “postcard” was introduced, and in 1907 cards were divided on the non-picture side and the recipient’s address separated from the message from the sender.  The popularity of postcards soared from around 1900 until 1915.  Most of the cards at the time were printed in Germany, where the printing press was
invented, and when World War I disrupted the supply, postcards declined in popularity.
 
            Mr. Tucker brought with him a number of cards from his collection, particularly those that represented one of the many types of cards.  He showed us examples of “disaster” cards; “real photo cards” (the most valuable type because of their rarity);”hold to the light cards” (which revealed a second hidden scene when held up to a light); “mechanical”, “squeaker”, “series”, “exaggeration” (ie. a fish bigger than the boat), and a number of other types.  Wayne’s presentation was interesting and informative, and we were grateful that one of the rewards of his hobby is sharing his collection with others.
 

                                                WEBSITES:

                                BHBL Rotary:   www.bhblrotary.org                                                                          District 7190:   www.capitalregionrotary.org

District 7190:  www.capitalregionrotary.org