COVER N. 339 - USA

Postmark: Grottoes VA USPS 24441 16.10.2023

Posted on the 16th October; received on the 31st October 2023

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Airmail covers with their colourful borders always tickle my fancy. I had never seen such a longish one though, quite longer than the European DL size common around here.  Thanks a lot, Jewel!

George Mason (1725-1792) is one of the founding fathers of the United States and the author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which would form the basis for what would become  the United States Bill of Rights, comprising the first ten ammendements to the American Constitution. These constitute (no pun intended), as Britannica puts it, "a collection of mutually reinforcing guarantees of individual rights and of limitations on federal and state governments".

On 07MAY1981 he was honoured by USPS with an 18 cent stamp of the "Great Americans" definitive series.

Quoting from a previous post of mine:

- Joel Sartore has been on a mission, which luckily has been well publicised, so there is no need to get into great detail here. Suffice to say that in the 18 years that have passed since he started his amazingly ambitious project of photographing every living species in human care, out of a total of 25,000, he has already photographed more than 14,000 producing exquisite images that have been exhibited throughout the world, in books and....in stamps.

On 19MAY2023, USPS issued a sheet of twenty Forever self adhesive stamps dedicated to the Photo Ark Project illustrated with photographs by Joel Sartore.

Two of these stamps are on this cover, one featuring a black footed ferret (Mustela nigripes), a mustelid native to central America, and a Lower Keys marsh rabbit (Sylvilagus palustris hefneri),  which curiously was named after Mr. Playboy, Hugh Hefner.....probably something to do with his rabbit connection....

Judging by the postmark, the cover was mailed from the city of Grottoes, in the State of Virginia.