I've been going through my "office" today and I found all sorts of treasures of mine from long, long ago. I found a post card from the Mainzer Dressed Cats collection of art by the artist Eugen Hartung. This collection features cats dressed in people clothing, doing people things. Some of these cats have dogs as pets. This particular postcard that I have is called "Farmer's Market" and shows about six cats in dresses, in the process of buying or selling produce at this particular farmer's market. One cat has a dog about to break off his leash to chase something, and another dog is standing guard as a police. However, the funniest part of this postcard is that the two cats on the left side of the picture are in the middle of some sort of argument. One of them has a paw full of green onions raised over head, and the other has carrots, and they look like they're about to beat each other with their vegetable weapons after they realized that hissing just wasn't enough.
Anyway, this whole painting/postcard thing got me thinking to when I was a child growing up in South Minneapolis. I would go over to my neighbor Mary's house almost everyday and she'd make us some iced tea, and we'd just talk. Somedays she'd host a popcorn party where she'd invite all the neighbor kids over and we'd sit in lawn chairs in her back yard, each of us with our own wooden bowl of fresh popcorn. She had this little envelope with a smiley face on it, and in it she'd leave me little things to take home. One day she left me that post card.