COVER N. 478 - ARMENIA

Postmark: First Day 0010 Yeravan 01.11.2023

Posted on ?; received on the 25th June 2024

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This has been a good week with two new countries added to the list, thanks to the kind efforts of my friends. I'm really thankful for this since getting another slot filled in really means that slowly, step by step, I'm inching in the right direction towards achieving the goal I set for myself and my little blog. 

En raison de tout cela, il me faudra une fois encore exprimer ma gratitude pour  votre intérêt et contribution. Un très grand Merci,  Roland. 

Armenia. Strange at it might seem, I always felt indebted to an Armenian, even though I never met him. In fact he died five years before I was born.

Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian, was his name, and the foundation that bears his name, amongst many other actions which as far as I can tell  made it more important to the development of culture in Portugal than the official government structure of the day, was instrumental in ensuring that people who did not have easy access to books and literature in the hinterland but also in the big cities, could still indulge in the pleasure of reading.

In Faro, in the Algarve, I learned to read. My father made sure I could do it before I went to primary school and as soon as I could  make sense of written words, he would take me along whenever he visited the local Calouste Gulbenkian library to borrow books. In no matter of time at all, I would go there alone, myself, also to borrow such classics as the adventures of Grichka and his Bear or Enid Blyton's mysteries...

Later I went to the Azores... Santa Maria at the time had but a small library at the Clube Asas do Atlântico, but the highlight of the week was when the  Citröen H Van of  Gulbenkian's Itinerant Library with its distinctive corrugated metal skin cabin would stop near the park for a full 3 hours so that we could go there return and borrow books.... By that time it was Verne and Karl May that would pile on my bedside table, only to be dispatched in a matter of days....

Gulbenkian made a fortune in oil. Caught in the geopolitics of the second world war, he came to live in Portugal in 1942, where he stayed in an hotel suite in Lisbon until his passing away in 1955.

In his testament he declared that he wanted a foundation to promote culture and science for the benefit of all humanity and  that it woud be headquartered in Lisbon, where it now occupies a magnificent urban park with a fantastic garden designed by Portuguese architect Gonçalo Ribeiro Telles wherein the Calouste Gulbenkian museum and the Modern Art Center are also located, as well as the auditorium, home of the Gulbenkian Orchestra and Choir.

If ever someone reading these words visits Lisbon, just be sure to follow my advice and reserve at least half a day for the Gulbenkian museums, topped by an end of the day concert... you won't regret it... especially if the huge glass panels at the end of the auditorium behind the orchestra are left uncovered while the music is played while the day comes to a close....

Now back to the cover Roland so kindly sent me. 

As I have mentioned before, the Chinese new year and zodiac seem to be very popular philatelic themes even outside the far east, since many are the Postal services that issue yearly sets dedicated to it.

Such is the case with HayPost, the Armenian Postal services provider,  which since 2018 has yearly issued a stamp dedicated to the forthcoming Chinese new year.

On the cover we have stamps pertaining to this series, in the form of the  Year of the Tiger (2022) and  Year of the Dragon (2024) issues, dating of 22DEC2021 and 01NOV2023, respectively, with a face value of 500 dram, both cancelled with the first day postmark for the 2023 stamp, issued at Yerevan, the country's capital.