The day mankind began walking upright he started looking for things to improve and prolong health. Along with a few useful remedies, hundreds of cures more wishful than useful were concocted – and some were downright dangerous.

The fall auction at the Lyn Knight gallery proved once again that the postcard hobby is alive and well. Bidding wars were fought for many fantastic postcards. Record prices were achieved on real photo postcards, as well as artist signed and Halloween.

Here they are — 2008's postcards celebrating National Postcard Week.

John Guare’s concept of “Six Degrees of Separation” confounds me. Using the principles of such a theory, I should be able to make connections with each person I mention on this page, but I can’t and I wish I could.

Colin Waye has a collection of century-old postcards that his grandfather, a sea captain, sent back from his travels before he was lost at sea in 1917.

Fall is here and mothers everywhere are rushing to get their children off to school. It is very complicated these days with schools sending out long expensive lists of what is required by the first day. Life during the postcard era was much simpler. It required a pencil and a pair of shoes.

This is the second in a two-part series on Kraemer Company postcards of Cincinnati, Ohio. In the first part [published in the Feb. 3 issue] we learned the Kraemer Art Co. became famous for producing  private mailing cards among others. Collectors pursue Kraemer’s souvenir cards featuring important buildings, street scenes and skylines.

In 1967 I was twenty years old, in the middle of college, and facing the Vietnam draft. So I have paid nostalgic attention to the 40th anniversary of one of the great cultural events of my generation.

Excuse me! I’ve fallen way behind in reporting on readers’ write-ins. We’ll catch up a bit right here, right now.

One of the great personalities of American medical quackery is a fascinating, ne’er-do-well egomaniacal character named John Brinkley.