Shortly before his death in 2004 my father gave me a dusty old box full of postcards. I didn't pay too much attention to them at the time and they languished on a closet shelf for a few more years.

Before email, Twitter and Facebook. Before even telephones were common, the penny postcard was used to announce both births and deaths along with dinner plans for the following week. My grandmother and her immediate family sent these things by the dozen, often within the same neighborhood.