Three Messages from the Past

Here are three unrelated items found during my recent basement cleanup. First, a remnant from my old habit of keeping paper fortunes when I found them particularly significant:


Or in this case, particularly amusing.

The second is from the piles of antiquarian printing that I've accumulated:


Be sure to click this one to view it larger, so you can appreciate the swastikas that have been worked into the grape vines around the large letter T and at the bottom center of the frame. I'm sure this piece predates the Third Reich, from the time when that shape was better known as the gammadion cross. It signified auspiciousness in several cultural traditions -- but still, it's pretty startling to see it today in a message from the manager of a Girls Club.

Finally, a 1960 Ben Shahn illustration that seemed particularly appropriate after the events of last week in France:


This is one of many full-page ads from a series called Great Ideas of Western Man, which Container Corporation of America started in the 1940s.