COVER N. 485 - BRASIL

Postmark: Central de São Paulo SE/SPM

Posted on the 17th June; Received on the 5th July 2024

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Another transatlantic cover from Brazil. 

Muito obrigado Luis. É sempre um gosto receber  cartas que falam a nossa bonita língua. A resposta seguirá em breve.

In fact, I always find it very special to receive mail from a foreign country that uses the same language as I do. This might seem absolutely irrelevant to the vast community of English speaking countries out there since English, in its various norms, is so common an idiom that you almost expect everything that lands on your mailbox to be written in it, so the "unusualness" factor does not apply here. 

The same, I presume, is the case for people from places where national idiom usage is restricted to their own country, since, if coming from abroad, either it is written in the common day lingua franca, or else there are great chances that the recipient might not be able to read the message.

But for nationals of countries who do use a language that is not English and is spoken elsewhere in the world, such as I,  receiving a letter written in their own language coming from abroad, will, I'm certain, add an indefinable and unquantifiable hint of specialness to the envelope that cannot be easily translated in words, but which will reside in it for as long as it will last.

The Christmas issue of Correios do Brasil for 2016, which began to circulate on 22SEP2016,  comprised two stamps: the one on the cover,  gummed, with a face value of 2.4 Reais, illustrated with a representation of Archangel Gabriel, and a self-adhesive, tariffed as  "1º porte de carta comercial", illustrated with a nativity scene, along the same fashion, that is, a golden image on a blue(ish) background.

Bioluminescence is a wonderful spectacle to behold. Most of us will only be familiar  with the ethereal glow of glow-worms, but there are many more bioluminescent organisms on the face of the earth, like some mushrooms or even scorpions.

In Brazil, in the Emas National park, in the State of Goiás, glow-worms of the Pyrearinus Termitilluminans deposit their eggs on the base of old termite mounds and when the rain season comes, the hot humid weather is like an electrical switch that once activated makes the mounds glow in the dark with a multitude of tiny light spots, each one corresponding to a larva of the species.

This interesting phenomenon is captured in the photograph that illustrates the "2º Porte de Carta Comercial" stamp on the cover, part of a three stamp set  dedicated to Brazilian Fauna, issued on 23SEP2019.

I believe that the A C initials in the postmark stand for "Agência Central" although I don't have a clue as to what the SE/SPM initials refer to.