COVER N.185 - FINLAND

Postmark: no postmark

Posted on the 22nd November, received on the 5th December 2022

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Nothing could be more appropriate to send a postcard dedicated to an aircraft than an envelope tinted in the colour of the sky. Thanks a lot again Vesa.

To make his envelope fly across Europe into my letterbox, Vesa used one of the two "International", no face value stamps that compose Finland's EUROPA 2022 set, issued on 27APR2022, dedicated to the goddesses of sun and moon in Finish mythology, respectively Päivätär  and Kuutar, the first being obviously the one whose image appears in the stamp on the envelope.

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.

POSTCARD N.95 - GERMANY

Postcrossing postcard sent on the 22nd November , received on the 3rd December 2022

Postcard image: a fox...
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The fox said "Lass uns was unternehmen!" (Let's do something) and I, not knowing what to do, decided I'd post its charming face on my covers and postcards blog. Thank you so much Darryl, for this pretty foxy card.

Baby animals have the added charm of all things infant. Exploring the theme, Deutsche Post has started in 2014 an yearly series dedicated to baby animals, with two stamps being issued each year . For the 2021 issue, which began circulating on 10JUN2022  the two animals chosen were the Foil Sheet-Alpine Ibex (Capra ibex), a wild goat that inhabits the European alps, which can be seen on the stamp used on this postcard, and the European Hamnster (Cricetus cricetus) a critically endangered species, whose distribution area encompasses  Belgium and Alsace in the west, Russia in the east, and Bulgaria in the south. 

The almost imperceptible postmark can only be read with the help of a loupe, but I think it reads Briefzentrum 40, what indicates that the postcard was mailed from Düsseldorf.

 POSTCARD N.94 - TAIWAN

Postcrossing postcard sent on the 24th November , received on the 3rd December 2022

Postcard image: black faced spoonbill (Platalea minor)
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Spoonbills are fun to watch. Their rather conspicuous "spoon" makes them quite distinctive and even if  the species portrayed in the very nice postcard  I got from Taiwan , is  confined to eastern Asia, I have on a number of occasions spent some time watching little groups of the species that occurs here - Palatalea leucorodia - in marshes in the south of Portugal (Algarve) or in the margins of the great Alqueva artificial lake in the  centre south (Alentejo) . So thanks a lot  Ying-Han, for  a nice card full of nice birds!

Chou Lan-ping (1926-1971) was a China born, Taiwanese composer,   who wrote several film and series scores in spite of a rather brief life and whose works became rather well known and regarded amidst the Chinese community at large.

On 06JUL2022 the Taiwanese Post issued a set of four 12  NTD stamps dedicated to modern Taiwanese composers. The Stamp design follows the same general concept on all four stamps with a B&W photo portrait of the composer superimposed on a photo of a page of one of his scores.

Further to Chou Lan-ping, whose stamp can be seem on the postcard, the set honours Deng Yu-Shian (1906-44); Hsu Shih (1919-80) and Yang San-Lang (1919-89).

The Postmark indicates that the card was mailed from the Capital - Taipei.

POSTCARD N.93 - CZECH REPUBLIC

Postcrossing postcard sent on the 24th November inside cover #183, received on the 29th November 2022

Postcard image: Český Ráj
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“Český ráj” reads the main legend of this beautiful postcard I got from Mary, inside cover #183. Not being fluent in Czech, I had to look it up with the use of "deepl" and I learned that this translates into Bohemian Paradise... and I don't dispute it, because the idea I have of the Czech Republic (even though I know precious little more than the charming city of Prague) is that it is a beautiful country, full of outstanding landmarks, both natural and manmade.

Bohemian Paradise, in fact, is the designation of a Protected landscape area , established in 1955, in the north of the Bohemia region, corresponding to the first natural reserve created in what was then  Czechoslovakia and is now the Czech Republic.

Some  of its landmarks, located in the Liberec region, in the centre North of  the country, are featured in this postcard, these being, clockwise from the upper left:

- The Pantheon Chapel integrated  into the Vranov rock castle located on a cliff overlooking the town of Mala Skala;

- The Hrubá Skála Palace, which now is an high end hotel and welness centre, in the town of Hrubá Skála;

- Frýdštejn Castle, a rock castle  in Frýdštejn in the Liberec Region,dating from the 14th century, with several rooms carved into the rock;

- Sychrov castle, built in neo-gothic style,  located close to the village from which it gets its name, dating back to the second half of the 19th century;

-  Hrubý Rohozec castle, in Turnov. The current configuration, dating back to the mid 19th century, is the result of a series of refurbishments to an original castle that was built on the site in 1300 AD. It is thus possible today for the visitor to encounter marks and traces of the gothic,  renaissance, baroque and romantic styles;

- Valdstein castle, also located close to Turnov, in the city of Hruboskalsko, considered to be the oldest of the Bohemian Paradise Castles. The original rock castle was built circa 1260.

COVER N.183 - CZECH REPUBLIC

Postmark: V O   Hradiště 2950...
Posted on the 24th November, received on the 29th November 2022
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I wrote it before: it only takes a stamp, a postmark and an envelope to make someone happy at the end of the lelter's journey, after all it seems it has been acknowledged long ago, when someone wrote "Lonely days are gone, I'm a-goin' home /My baby, just-a wrote me a letter..." 😀

Of course, mine was a completely different case, but Mary was kind enought to mail a postcrossing postcard (#93) to me inside an envelope, as I do prefer, and this kind attention deserves to be acknowledged in this blog of mine, so Thank you so very much, Mary! Trully appreciated it.

Dandelions - Taraxacum sp. - everybody knows it, and I'm sure there is no one that hasn't blown one of its balls of seeds into the wind. Still, this humble plant with its yellow flowers. better, its yellow inflorescences, is so common, that we never stop to look in detail at the beauty of them. Next time do pick one up and look at it in detail. it is a thing of wonder!

... And well deserving of a stamp, Czech Post thought, as it selected the " Pampeliška" as the flower to feature in the 2019 single E tarif stamp issue of the definitive series started in 2002, dedicated to the beauty of flowers, which began circulating on 23MAY2019.

The Postmark indicated that Mary sent her letter from Hradiště, a small town which had around 600 inhabitants in 2010, in the west of the Czeck Republic, in the region of Karlovy Vary..

POSTCARD N.92 - NETHERLANDS

Postcrossing postcard sent on the 22nd November, received on the 29th November 2022

Postcard image: De Slufter - Nationaal Park Duinen van Texel
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A gull's eye view over a lagoon in De Slufter, a large salt marsh in between two sand dikes in the Island of Texel, the largest of the Frisian Islands in the North Sea, an important nesting area for some bird species given that most of the area is not of public access, although the southern part of the area is a popular spot for nature lovers

Thank you so much Willem. Really nice postcard, and great stamps too!

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Stamps, left to right

- Greeting stamps are a strange concept, I think, but I've seen them issued by several administrations, so they must sell well.

Anyway, on 01SEP2005, Post NL issued a three 0,39 € stamp set in souvenir sheet form under the slogan "Ik denk ann je" (I think of you) each with a balloon where one could write a message. The stamps were all of identical composition, although in differing colour schemes.

The strange thing is that the stamps were meant to be used until the 3rd December 2005, after which they would no longer be valid, Could it be that Willem included this stamp on the card because he knew I like stamps? If that's the case, I truly appreciated the gesture.

- On 06JUN2006, Post NL issued a souvenir sheet with 2X4 0,39€ stamps and 4 vignettes dedicated to the theme "Choice of the Netherlands". 

I can't make much of  this theme choice, but I suppose this means that  the persons and organisations chosen are well beloved in the Netherlands.

The stamp on my postcard is dedicated to Max Havelaar (1820-87), and confessing my ignorance, I'll quote directly from wikipedia: "Eduard Douwes Dekker (2 March 1820 – 19 February 1887), better known by his pen name Multatuli (from Latin multa tulī, "I have suffered much"), was a Dutch writer best known for his satirical novel Max Havelaar (1860), which denounced the abuses of colonialism in the Dutch East Indies (today's Indonesia). He is considered one of the Netherlands' greatest authors."

The other stamps on the set are dedicated to Elvis Presley, Freemasonry, the Dutch idiom, and the Muppets.... eclectic, to say the least....

- I, being a republican in the strict sense of the word,  although deeply respecting the choice of others,  feel that monarchies always capitalise on their monarchs as  consumer products. This is nowhere more evident than in the UK, but everywhere else a crown is worn, the faces of those who wear it and of their next of kin usually appear in a lot more than institutional portraits (and a good deal of times, nor for the best reasons...). 

Stamps, do qualify as "institutional" media. After all, the tradition of having one's monarch effigy on stamps dates back to the invention of the stamp itself, but one only needs to think about what has happened quite recently when Queen Elizabeth II passed away, with stamps being issued all over the world, (I even seem to remember having read about issues with errors in dates, so strong was the urge to cash in on the event) to feel that the borderline between institutional and strictly commercial is quite thin at times....

Anyway,  one of the grand events for monarchies is a royal wedding, and the Netherlands had one such moment in time when, on the 2nd February 2002, the Dutch King to be, Alexander Claus George Ferdinand, born in Utrech in 1967, married Maxima Cerruti, an Argentinian, born in Buenos Aires in 1971.

To mark the event Post NL issued on 01JAN2002 a souvenir sheet with two se-tenant 0,39€ stamps, of which one can bee seen on my postcard, featuring the side portraits of both bride and groom and the number 20 superimposed on them. The companion stamp featured the names of the soon to be newly weds with  the  numbers 02 also superimposed, so that when put alongside its partner, the legend 2002, the year of the wedding, would be apparent.

- A set of 10 stamps with congratulatory messages was issued by Post NL on 03SEP2001. One of these can be seen on my card, with the message "Gefiliciteerd" (Congratulations).

The Postmark indicates that the postcard was mailed from the city of Zwolle.