Summary: Rural snow-covered scene with couple in horse-drawn sled; bridge in foreground; church in background.

Painted by W.C. Bauer. Published by Raphael Tuck & Sons; London.

Library of Congress stamp, Aug 18, 1887.

Library of Congress image.

Singer sewing machine, that is.

Copyright 1898 by J. Hoover & Son, Philadelphia

Library of Congress image.

License Some rights reserved by aldenjewell

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Published by J. Hoover, 628 Arch Street, Philadelphia,

Copyrighted by J. Hoover 1880

Library of Congress image.

Postmarked December 24, 1913

Update: The blue cloaked Santa is a tad unusual for what we’re used to these days, so I thought I’d see how he would look in red.

Some rights reserved by Roadsidepictures

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Copahue volcano on the border of Chile and Argentina has started erupting, with an ash plume  reported to be over 30,000 feet (9.5 km) tall. I cropped the satellite image below from the NASA  Terra/MODIS imagery site. It’s about 8 hours old as I write this.

There’s not a lot of online information about this eruption, yet, and, if the eruption is short-lived or doesn’t impact the public, it may not hit the main stream media.  The only article I could find is from today’s Buenos Aires Herald.

One might think that, with the infrequent reporting, volcanoes eruptions are a rare occurrence.  Actually, it would be safe to say that there are always volcanoes erupting somewhere. There’s an estimated 1,500 active volcanoes and about 50 of them, on average, will be erupting at some point during a calendar year. (In Focus in the Atlantic has a great image collection of volcanic activity from 2012.)

Painted by W.C. Bauer. Published by Raphael Tuck & Sons; London.  (circa 1885 – 1890)

Library of Congress image.

Children leaving gifts on the doorstep of a home on Christmas Eve –  a 1912 Vintage Greeting Card Illustration.

Some rights reserved by IronRodArt – Royce Bair (“Star Shooter”)

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