COVER N.184 - USA

Postmark: manual: Lexington MA 02420 - 21.11.2022; machine applied: Boston MA 21 NOV 2022 PM 7 L

Posted on the 21th November, received on the 3rd December 2022

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Again, a perfectly composed cover, addressed in a rather spiffy handwritting, marred by a quite unecessary double postmark...

Thank you so much, Karl. nice cover, indeed.

Alan Shepard was the fist american in space and only the second Homo sapiens to be so, after Yuri Gagarin's maiden return trip to "infinity and beyond". 

I was not much more than a newborn whan that occured, but as for any kid growing up in the 60s and 70s of last century, the space race was the stuff of constant wonder and curiosity.

Then, years later, I read Tom Wolfe's "the right stuff" (and, of course, saw the movie, as well)  and read Michner's "Space" (and watched the series on TV too) and my appreciation for Alan Shepard grew enourmously, for If I do recall correctly, he was presented (well, in Mitchner's book, the characters are semi-fictional but one of them fills in for Sheppard's role) as an immensly witted bloke, who always looked on the bright side of life.... Quotes like the one  he uttered upon returning from his first epic space flight - "It's a very sobering feeling to be up in space and realize that one's safety factor was determined by the lowest bidder on a government contract" - and the joyful way in which he was portrayed on the above mentioned films contributed to this, and to this day, Alan B. Sheppard is one of my favourite names in the astronaut gallery.

This notwitstanding, it should not also be forgotten that he also said "I realized up there that our planet is not infinite. It's fragile. That may not be obvious to a lot of folks, and it's tough that people are fighting each other here on Earth instead of trying to get together and live on this planet. We look pretty vulnerable in the darkness of space."  Hear that Vladimir?

On 04MAY2011, the United States Postal Service issued a two self-adhesive stamp Forever tariff stamp set dedicated to milesstones in space exploration. The very beautiful illustration of the stamp on my cover,  celebrating the 50th anniversary of Sheppard's flight into space, depicts  the astronaut's portrait in astronaut tenure, while on the background, on one side we have the  Mercury-Redstone 3 rocket lifting off and, on the other, the Freedom 7 capsule in space. The companion stamp is dedicated to the Messenger mission, launched in August 2004, the first spacecraft to orbit Mars. 

The stamp below  with an head-on flying Curtiss Jenny was issued on 11AUG2018 as part of a two stamp set celebrating centenary of the establishment of regular Airmail Service in USA, 

The stamp and its blue compoanion issued on 01MAY2018 echo, but do not mirror, the design of the infamous " 24 cents Jenny" issue (on this "Forever" self-adhesive stamps the aircraft is pictured from head-on as opposed to a side view on the former) that was the first ever air mail stamp produced and which originated the most famous stamp printing error of history: The Inverted Jenny.  

The Red Pear 10 cent definitive self-adhesive stamp was firt issued on 17JAN2016, although the one on my cover has a little 2017 legend on the bottom left corner, that should indicate that it is part of that year's print run. 

The very clear manual postmark indicates that the cover was mailed from Lexignton, Massachussets, but at some point if was procesed in Boston, where the mechanical postmark was applied.