Day 312: Greeting cards
Jan. 21st, 2021 11:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eve_primeIt used to be that one could easily buy a box of blank greeting cards. Why is this no longer so? Maybe there's much less interest in them, since emails and Facebook messages are so easy to send? Maybe people only need one at a time and are content to buy individual cards, which are readily sold all over? Maybe people are expected to make their own these days?
We used up the five boxes of holiday cards that we'd bought for last year, but we still have a few people we'd like to send them to - including you,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
claidheamhmor, since yours went to an outdated address. I looked at the usual places (drugstores, mostly), but by the time I did so, the holiday displays had been cleaned up, and I wasn't finding blank ones either.
Then, today, one person thanked me for the card I'd sent her, in front of another person who hadn't received one, and I resolved to do something about it on my trip downtown to return a couple of library books. This was a challenge, since I wanted to minimize the number of stores I entered.
First I checked the nice Tibetan store that usually has an appealing window display, but they'd lost their storefront, I assume from the pandemic. (I'd already looked online for the most likely local store, Papyrus, but they'd gone out of business in the fall.) Then I went to the Kiva, an alternative supermarket that carries books too, but they only had individual cards. I got in the car and started driving homeward and noticed a mystical-looking shop I'd never been inside, which included "cards" on their sign. Turns out they just meant tarot cards, and the store was much too scented for me to look around properly anyway. Then I went to Sattva Gifts, which is mostly fancy carved things and glassworks, but which has also gone out of business, alas.
Finally I checked the neighborhood bookstore, Tsunami, where I've bought nice individual cards in the past. And yes! They had two kinds, a more expensive type by a local artist, with pictures of owls and such, and a less expensive kind that has quotations attributed to individuals. There was Thoreau, Lincoln, Virginia Woolf, and the Buddha. I didn't like the Lincoln quotes, so just I bought the Thoreau cards, even though I don't really agree with all of the quotes, since Thoreau is a very distant cousin of my grandpa Ben. They just had one box of them, though, so I may go back for others another time.
It was disheartening to see how many businesses were gone. I hope once the pandemic is under control that others will have the capital to open new shops in their place.
(My icon is pretty similar to the photograph I was going to take of Spencer Butte today, if I struck out on buying cards and had to learn how to make some.)
We used up the five boxes of holiday cards that we'd bought for last year, but we still have a few people we'd like to send them to - including you,
claidheamhmor, since yours went to an outdated address. I looked at the usual places (drugstores, mostly), but by the time I did so, the holiday displays had been cleaned up, and I wasn't finding blank ones either.Then, today, one person thanked me for the card I'd sent her, in front of another person who hadn't received one, and I resolved to do something about it on my trip downtown to return a couple of library books. This was a challenge, since I wanted to minimize the number of stores I entered.
First I checked the nice Tibetan store that usually has an appealing window display, but they'd lost their storefront, I assume from the pandemic. (I'd already looked online for the most likely local store, Papyrus, but they'd gone out of business in the fall.) Then I went to the Kiva, an alternative supermarket that carries books too, but they only had individual cards. I got in the car and started driving homeward and noticed a mystical-looking shop I'd never been inside, which included "cards" on their sign. Turns out they just meant tarot cards, and the store was much too scented for me to look around properly anyway. Then I went to Sattva Gifts, which is mostly fancy carved things and glassworks, but which has also gone out of business, alas.
Finally I checked the neighborhood bookstore, Tsunami, where I've bought nice individual cards in the past. And yes! They had two kinds, a more expensive type by a local artist, with pictures of owls and such, and a less expensive kind that has quotations attributed to individuals. There was Thoreau, Lincoln, Virginia Woolf, and the Buddha. I didn't like the Lincoln quotes, so just I bought the Thoreau cards, even though I don't really agree with all of the quotes, since Thoreau is a very distant cousin of my grandpa Ben. They just had one box of them, though, so I may go back for others another time.
It was disheartening to see how many businesses were gone. I hope once the pandemic is under control that others will have the capital to open new shops in their place.
(My icon is pretty similar to the photograph I was going to take of Spencer Butte today, if I struck out on buying cards and had to learn how to make some.)