POSTCARD N.85 - INDIA

Postcrossing postcard sent on the 15th June; received on the 30th June

Postcard image: Hoysaleswara Temple, Halebidu 

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Hoysaleswara temple was erected in the 12th century in between 1121 and 1160 as a sanctuary dedicated to Shiva, the God of Destruction, one of the three deities in the Hindu trinity, the other two being Brahma, the God of Creation,  and Vishnu, the God of Preservation.

Located in Halebidu, in the state of Karnataka, in the bottom Southwest tier of India’s inverted triangle, it was attacked and plundered by Muslim forces in the 14th century, being devoted to neglect since then until the intellectual curiosity that permeated the 19th century brought it under the light of explorers and academics, awed by the marvellous sandstone sculptures  that have held their intricate and minute detail over the ages.

Thank you Anusha for a beautiful postcard with a image of  a bas relief  image of Shiva of one of the temple walls.

 Stamps, Left to right:

Like many postal administrations India Post has also diversified its sphere of activity, offering financial services through a bank division. The India Post Payments Bank was created on 2018 and on 30JAN2019 India Post issued a 5 rupee commemorative stamp celebrating the fact.  The stamp is illustrated with an allegoric image, although I'm not familiar with the story behind it. The main elements in the image are a person, a horse and 3 belts, over which a silver rupee coin is growing..., the legend Financial inclusion being written on the side frame.

5 Rupee stamp, part of a five stamp set issued in souvenir sheet form on 15AUG2020 dedicated to UNESCO World Heritage sites in India. It depicts a detail image taken from one of the 7th and 8th centuries monuments at Paltadakal.  

5 Rupee stamp issued on 14JAN2020, part of a nine stamp minisheet set dedicated to India's designers creations. The model in my stamp is wearing what is identified as an Ambika Jacket.

POSTCARD N.84 - FINLAND

Postcrossing postcard sent on the 20h June; received on the 30th June

Postcard image: sunset over Rimouski bay, Quèbec, Canada 

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Sunsets have the unique quality of singleness. There is never a sunset equal to any other, and most times they are one of mother nature's beautiful spectacles, with the added bonus of always coming with free admission,..

Of course, there are sunsets and there are sunsets... summer in the northern hemisphere,  is an awful season: the days are too long. too hot, too crowded, too expensive   and  most of the times framed by a too dull, cloudless, sky, that is not even blue but a "whither shade of pale". As such, one can hardly expect to be surprised by the always enrapturing vision of  a kaleidoscope of  reddish, purplish, yellowish, blankets of clouds reflecting on the calm waters of an inviting bay, 

And yet, that's what happened to me. Not that the current and forthcoming summer days (oh hell, there's no escaping it, and  there's always the promise of those nice cloudy autumnal skies in 3 months time....) are any different than those I generalised about above, but upon opening my letterbox, I was greeted by this nice view of a sunset over a bay, with the Postcrossing logo imprinted on.

Beautiful place, beautiful sunset! Thanks a lot Andrèa, ou bien, Merci bien Andrèa, ton coucher de soleil m'a illuminé la journée.

Postcrossers around the world organise Postcrossing meet ups, so that names can be put to faces, histories be shared and, most importantly, postcards can be collectively written and sent.

That is what happened on the last 18th June, in the coastal town of Rimouski, in the province of Quèbec, Canada, and I was one of the lucky few contemplated with a postcard  signed by the participants in the meeting, which Andrèa told me was the first Postcrossing meeting held  there since 2019, for the nasty reasons we all are familiar with.

On the back of the postcard I count 19 signatures, most of them in the form of  personal stamps (rubber stamp markings, I mean) , what to my eye indicates a quite dedicated postcrossing .community (me,  I'm the type who signs a card by scribbling nothing more than a personal hieroglyph (that's how bad my handwriting is...).

Anyway, I was very pleased to be a tributary of this meeting of postcrossers at a place that I would love to visit. 

Andrèa used a 2.71 CAD stamp issued on 13JAN2022 integrated in the year's "From Far and Wide"

emission,  a multi annual series that promotes Canada's natural scenic beauties. The set comprises 9 stamps (five P Tariff plus 1.07; 1.30;1.94 and 2.71 CAD denominations)  in minisheet form. The stamp on my card  is illustrated with a view of the Cabot Trail in Cape Breton Island.

The stamp is cancelled by a nice postmark that has the image of what I believe is the lighthouse on my card and the legend "Site Historique Maritime de la Pointe-au-père", a museum complex of all things sea located in Rimouski, at the mouth of the Saint Laurent,  but I could not find any information about in on the pictorial cancels page of the Canada Post website.

COVER N.129 - BRASIL (please allow me to maintain the Portuguese ortography as a sign of respect for one of the most beautiful languages in the world).

Postmark: AC Resende Resende - RJ 15.06.22
Posted on the 15th June; received on the 28th June 2022
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"Independence or death! The famed cry on the banks of the Ipiranga river that is considered to be the seminal moment in the establishment of a new state in the South American continent was uttered, exactly two hundred years ago this coming 7th September, by D. Pedro IV, The Emperor of Brasil, who for a brief period was also King of Portugal and who would be responsible for  ensuring the end of absolutism in his own motherland, defeating through the force of arms his absolutist brother D, Miguel.

Brasil (or Brazil, in Anglo-Saxon ortography), the land so called because upon arriving on its shores, in 1500, the expeditionaries led by Pedro Álvares Cabral and those that followed, found a land rich in resources such as Pau-Brasil (Paubrasilia echinata), famed for its exotic timber and resin that was used as a red dye for deluxe textiles.

A country united in history and blood with my own. Muito Obrigado,  Pedro! I Finally have the great pleasure of adding the land of Caetano, Maria Bethânia, Simone, Ney, Chico, Vinícius, Jorge Amado and so many others to my philatelic atlas. 

Stamps, left to right:

Stamp of the 1º Porte de Carta tariff (Domestic, up to 20g) part of a se-tenat pair issued on 14JAN2022, celebrating the Feast of Our Lord Jesus of Bonfim, a religious feast, held at the Church of Our Lord of Bonfim, wherein Catholicism and Candomblé, an Afro-Brazilian  cult  rooted in the African slave origins  of a significant part of the Brazilian population, go hand in hand.

The stamp is illustrated with a couple wearing white, the traditional colour to be worn by the participants in the feast, on their way to the church that can be seen in the background, its towers being adorned with the famous Senhor do Bomfim cloth bracelets.

2,15 Reais Single stamp set issued on 03DEC2019, celebrating the diplomatic relations between Brazil and Finland.

The stamp is part of a series that the  Brazilian Post office regularly issues celebrating diplomatic relations between Brazil and other countries.

The stamp is illustrated with a reproduction of a painting made by Brazilian painter Eila Ampula in 1973 for the offical residence of the Finish Ambassador in Brasília.

 Stamp of the 1º Porte de Carta tariff (Domestic, up to 20g) issued on 27JUL2021, celebrating the centenary of the discovery of insulin, a scientific exploit that has meant so much to so many since Frederick Banting and Charles Herbert Best, first isolated it at  J. J. R. Macleod laboratory in the University of Toronto..

The post mark tells us that the letter was mailed from the city of Resende in the State of Rio de Janeiro.

POSTCARD N.83 - FINLAND

Postcrossing postcard sent on the 14th June; received on the 28th June

Postcard image: Jean Sibelius 

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Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) is often cited as instrumental in the creation of a Finnish national identity through music. Having been born in what was then Russian soil (small wonder Finns nowadays look across the border with the utmost distrust...) and although speaking Swedish at home, he would go on to attend the "first Finnish-speaking school in Russian-held Finland, where he came into contact with Finnish literature and in particular with the Kalevala, the mythological epic of Finland, which remained for him a constant source of inspiration" as can be read on Encyclopaedia Britannica website.

Elaborating on the canons of the  19th century Romanticism from which he would transition into a musical language that although strictly tonal was ever more permeated by the echoes of modernism,  he would produce a body of work that would lead to him being considered the most important symphonic Scandinavian composer of all times.

One of his most well known works is the Violin concerto, written in 1905, which I remember having had the pleasure of  hearing executed by Leonidas Kavakos and the Philadelphia Orchestra, directed by Christoph Eschenbach, many years ago.

Thank you so much Johanna, for making me recall it!

Stamps, L to R:

Both stamps used by Johanna are part of the same five self-adhesive domestic rate stamp set issued on05JUN2019, celebrating the Natural Life of Finland. These two depict granite rocks and the Holly Blue (Celastrina argiolus) butterfly,  a species that is also present in my own country, the remaining three on the set being illustrated with photos of a horse, a perch (Perca fluviatilis) and silver birch (Betula pendula) trees.

POSTCARD N.82 - USA

Postcrossing postcard sent on the 15th June; received on the 24th June

Postcard image: The Webb Farmhouse of Meadow garden, Longwood Gardens, Pennsylvania, USA 

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Thank you so much Stacey for a lovely postcard with interesting stamps on it.

I had never heard of Longwood gardens before, and this beautiful postcard prompted me into investigating what lay behind the beautiful brick house that stands amidst what seem to be  a fallow field. 

And so I gathered that the very colonial looking property was built in the 1700 on land bought from William Penn,  included in the nothing short of huge territory Penn got from King Charles II as payment from a debt of the latter to the father of the former.... those were the days and the native Indians of the Leni Lenape tribe who had claim to the land for hundreds if not thousands of years were eventually evicted, but that's another history...

The new owner of the land  was William Webb who built the house in 1734-35, which would serve as homestead for the Webb family, whom I presume derived their income form agriculture, for several generations.

Meanwhile, in 1798, on adjacent fields who had also been bought from Penn by a quaker named George Pierce, a 15 acre arboretum with species both native and imported from abroad was being carefully created by the grandsons of Pierce.

Works of love such as this magnificent opus, firmly rooted on the personal interests of  someone, can only thrive if supported by equal interest and will from those that will continue them, but these, unfortunately,  are  prone to wearing off  from generation to generation. And that's precisely what happened to the arboretum which, in the turn of the 19th into the 20th centuries, was showing the signs of neglect and abandonment to the extent that, at some point in history, its owners were on the verge of having all the trees cut by a lumber mill operator for timber.

Enter Pierre du Pont, a member of the well established Du Pont family, who had the vision and the money, and so the parcel of land was bought in 1906 to save the important arboretum.

Overtime  Du Pont, would develop what he would christen as the Longwood gardens, a vast garden park in the original property that he would increase in area through the acquisition of several adjoining properties, including the one on which the Webb farm house stood.

The property is nowadays managed by the Longwood Foundation, established by Pierre S. Du Pont in 1846 to ensure the future of his beloved gardens and is considered to be one of the world's most important botanical parks.

Stamps, left to right:

"Additional Ounce" stamp, issued on 24JAN2021 with the image of a brush rabitt (Sylvilagus bachmanion) it by the USPS. The stamp was issued so as to cater for the increase in postage from 15 Cents to 20 Cents of first-class domestic letter mail.

Also issued as a non-denominated Forever domestic stamp on 14JUL2021, this colourful stamp invites the beholder to decipher the phrase spelled by the individual letters on each of the coloured squares and which aptly reads "More than meets the eye".

Forever domestic stamp, issued on 19JUL2019 as part of a two se-tenant same value stamp set, commemorative of the 50th anniversary of man's first landing (or should I say "mooning") on the moon. The stamp is illustrated with a picture of  Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, on the lunar surface, taken by Neil Armstrong, whose image can be seen reflected on the visor of Aldrin's helmet. The companion stamp shows an image of moon with a yellow spot marking the area of the first landing (oh... that doubt, again....): Mare Tranquillitatis, or the Sea of Tranquility.

POSTCARD N.81 - GERMANY

Postcrossing postcard sent on the 19th June; received on the 23rd June

Postcard image: The Krefeld Port on the Rhine, Uerdingen district 

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Germany is one of the countries in the world with more registered postcrossing users, so it comes as no surprise that of all the postcrossing postcards I get, a good deal comes from the land of the fabled October Fest.

That was the case with this postcard with a view of the port of Krefeld, for which I have to thank Anna.

The Rhine river is a real waterway as far as navigation is concerned. the second longest river in central Europe after the Danube, it crosses the central part of the continent in a South/North trajectory. I took a look at a map of the port system on the Rhine, and in between  Switzerland, where it begins its journey, in the Swiss Alps, France and  Germany, there are 18 main ports on it, before it splits into the lower Rhine and the Waal, on its way to its estuary on the cost of the Netherlands, where it finally meets the Northern sea.

The  Krefeld port was inaugurated in 1906 and, in 2009, it processed 5.5 million tons of cargo, a figure that quite illustrates the economic importance the port plays for the North Rhine-Westphalia region that it serves as an import/export interface.

stamps, left to right :

On 01MAR2018, Deutsche Post issued a two stamp set with face values of 0,70€ and 0,90€ in a lovely souvenir sheet dedicated to the famous creation of Charles Schulz, The Peanuts,  that first saw the light of day in 1950 and would go on to be published until the 3rd January 2000, in newspapers all around the world. The 0,90 € stamp on my postcard features some of the main characters of the series, (L to R: Sally Brown, Lucy van Pelt, Snoopy, Linus van Pelt and Charlie Brown), while the 0,70 € is illustrated with an image of little Woodstock and Snoopy.

The 0,05 € stamp is part of the "World of the letter" definitive set, issued on 02_DEC2021. This set is composed of 5 stamps with 0,5€; 0,85€;  1€; 1,60€; 2,75€ denominations, respectively illustrated by images showing letters as lotus flower; bird; ship; kite and boat by lighthouse.

The machine applied cancellation includes the vignette  "Gemeinsam Gegen Corona sich selbst und andere Scützen..." (Together against Corona, protect yourself and the others...)  that began to be machine applied on correspondence in Germany on the 1st June 2021, although it shows a different rectangular format than the previous square format I was familiar with, no doubt indicating the use of  a different postmarking machine model.

POSTCARD N.80 - HUNGARY

Postcrossing postcard sent on the 15th June; received on the 21st June

Postcard image: Senta, Serbia
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 rather different postcard, to use an apt characterising word. Thank you Szabó, for the opportunity of adding another country to the List.

Szabó tells me that although the postcard was posted from Hungary, the image on the front of his homemade circumeconomic postcard is of  his hometown of Senta, in the north of Serbia, a city of around 20,000 inhabitants which has this most amazing art noveau town hall building that is featured on the very small vintage photograph on the postcard that also contains the city's  coat of arms.

Built in 1913-1914 as the main administrative and commercial centre of Senta, the building has retained it's administrative functions and incidentally houses the local post office, so I read.

 

Stamps, left to right:

On 05MAY2021, Magyar Posta issue a  definitive stamp set  comprising five values (Belföld; Belföld elsőbbs; Európába; Belföld ajánlot and Európán kívülre, that is to say Domestic; Domestic priority; Europe; Domestic 2nd class and Outside Europe) themed on Postal history artefacts. My stamp is the Europe tariff and it shows a 19T truck from Magyar Posta.

A postcrossing stamp on a postcrossing postcard is the bee's knee! Hungary is one of the countries that over the years had issued stamps celebrating the brainchild of a fellow countryman - Paulo Magalhães - created in 2005 and that at the time of writing has 802,726 registered members in 206 different countries.

Hungary's Postcrossing stamp was issued on 02FEB2018 as a single stamp set with a face value of 120 Forints and it depicts  my good old friend Mr. Postman doing his delivery round.

The  postmark lets us know that the postcard was mailed from Hungary's capital, Budapest.