COVER N. 268 - AZERBAIJAN

Postmark: Azerbeijan - Baki A71000 - ?-05.2023

Posted somewhere between 14 and 19 May; Received on the 19th June 2023

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Who would have thought? How could I forget to include the country name while addressing this cover to my own self? 

The great thing is that, in spite of it all, it did find its way home, probably because on the back there is also my own full address, this time not forgetting to end it with a capitalised PORTUGAL.

My wife attended a conference in Baku and I couldn't let go the opportunity, so I prepared a couple of addressed envelopes and gave them to her, asking if she wouldn't mind, if the opportunity arrived, to pass by the Post Office and mail them.

This she kindly did, but the lady at the counter, to whom she gave the envelopes to affix the stamps and postmark them, made sure I'd not only get two quite imperfect stamps with missing corners, but she also managed to glue them juxtaposed (what is understandable because there was little available space in the envelope 😀).

My wife also told me that in spite of the sender's address being written on the back of the envelope, she asked her to write her name and address on the front of the envelope, since it seems to be mandatory... pretty unusual, If I may say so, but if those are the rules...

 

Huseyn Javid or Hüseyn Cavid in Azerbaijani, (1882-1941) was a prominent Azerbaijani Romantic poet and playwright who was also a victim of Stalin's purges, being labelled as a counterrevolutionary, in spite of him being a well known and beloved man of arts, and sent to exile in Siberia, where he would eventually die on December 5, 1941, in the village of Shevchenko, province of Irkutsk, near Lake Baikal.

As a matter of curiosity, Javid was the first Azerbaijani poet to introduce the sonnet form in Azerbaijani poetry.

On 16DEC2022, Azerpost issued a single 0,50 manat stamp, commemorative of the 140 years of the birth of the poet, illustrated with his portrait, based on a photograph that is also easily found on internet.

COVER N. 267 - CHINA

Postmark: ? - 03.06.2023

Posted on the 3rd June; Received on the 16th June 2023

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Thanks, Ruinan, for another cover with an interesting set of stamps.

Literature is an essential part of our development. 

It's main benefit is that it allows us to travel when physical means to do so aren't available as only by travelling, or should I say, discovering, can we start to realise that the world extends much further away that our own backdoor, and that the way I see it, might not be the way someone else does. 

Literature can even allow us to travel through time, without the need to invest in a DeLorean. 

Of all the things I have been grateful for throughout my life, the day my father introduced me to the joys of a public library in Faro, when I was just going to primary school, has to rank amongst the top handful. Since then I've lost count of the many, many hours of absolute pleasure I have spent indulging in the almost sacred ritual of pushing my right index over a sheet of printed paper to flip  page after page...

Heroes, villains, places, habits, thoughts, doubts, certainties, discoveries, disquiets, interrogations, solutions.. all this and a huge lot more have i found in Literature, in its many guises. 

The social importance of Literature is acknowledged in many forms all over the world, mainly though the contests as prizes awarded to writers. but to me, the most relevant proof of the attention that is given to literature lies in the work of that most times unsung hero, the Translator, for if the writer is to be blamed for the act of creation, the translator is the one that makes the writer's work travel past the boundaries of idiom, 

A good translation is a comfort to a good book, a bad one is a bed of nails....

And we now face a terrible danger, I feel, not only in the form of automated creation but also of automated translation. 

Some time ago (I think I have mentioned this before, here on the blog) I've bought a copule of Emilio Salgari's Sandokan books in a new Portuguese edition (I had  to read them. It was a personal thing that had been with me since my early teens...). and the translation sucked... I strongly suspect that AI translation was involved and that there was no human revision of the results.... cheap to produce, the more so since the original texts are already in Public Domain, but decidedly cheap in the results...

If this is a sign of things to come, it discomforts me, since I really think a good translation is almost as important as the original text in order to ensure the wok's "travelability" trough the libraries of non speakers of the original language in which it was written.

If not, how on hell would I read a Chinese novel?

The four stamps (3x1,20 + 1 x1,50 Yuan) on the cover are a stamp set issued on 17APR2023. Further to the 4 stamps, a souvenir sheet with a 6 Yuan stamp was also issued.

The stamps and sheet set are the 5th, and probably final issue on the subject "Journey to the West" in a series dedicated to Chinese Classic Literature.

"Journey to the west" or Xi Yóu Ji,  is a classic novel, written in the 16th century, in the Ming Dinnasty,  probably by Wu Cheng'en.

Quoting directly from Wikipedia, on the subject of the 100 chapter novel: "(it) is an extended account of the legendary pilgrimage of the Tang dynasty Buddhist monk Xuanzang, who travelled to the "Western Regions" (Central Asia and India) to obtain Buddhist sūtras (sacred texts) and returned after many trials and much suffering."

COVER N. 266 - CHINA

Postmark: ? - 03.06.2023

Posted on the 3rd June; Received on the 16th June 2023

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Roses are red, and violets are blue.... so went Sandy Denny's immortal  "Old Fashion Waltz", but to my mind, roses have always been...  rosy.... Bang! This takes me back to Fairport Convention again....and to Dave Swarbrick's Rosie, the perfect soundtrack for this blog entry fuelled by one of the two Covers I received on the very same day from Ruinan in China. Thank you so much, Ruinan!

Back to roses, then.... The humble wild rose, the members of the genus Rosa, that are later declined into hundreds of cultivars....

Here's a photo of a wild rose I took in central Portugal a couple of years ago

 

I confess to have mixed feelings regarding Roses, though. If they do look nice and  sometimes smell very well indeed, some of the cultivars that are so common in urban gardens, have the most  annoying pricks there are (if you disconsider Bougainvilleas...)!

This I know from personal experience, and year after year, when the time has come to prune the shrub, I have a rather unpleasant conversation with a rose  plant that I have in my garden, which is always trying to inflict serious damages on my rather soft and delicate skin! And the worst is that,  most of the times, it is successful in its intent!

The stamps on Ruinan's cover are the four constituents of a set of 1,20 Yuan stamps issued on 20May2020, dedicated to... you've guessed it, roses. Although separated here on the cover, the stamps were issued as panes of four se-tenant, in sheets with two blocks of 4 stamps.

Left to right we have a white rose, a double petal pink rose, a single petal pink rose and a red rose (although it looks as pink as the others, to me...)

Roses are associated with love and lovers and it is no surprise to see hearts and swallows, and swans in the background of each stamp. The main image in each stamp is also encompassed by an embossed heart with little glittering dots on the embossed line. a bit kitschy to my taste, but the rose illustrations are very good.

COVER N. 265 - SERBIA

Postmark: NIS 18106 - 29.05.2023

Posted on the 29th May; Received on the 15th June 2023

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And so the list keeps growing: Welcome Serbia and Thank you very much, Slavoljub, for this very interesting cover with this and last year's Day of the Stamp commemorative issues.

I, being quite unlearned in philatelic history and peculiarities, had to go and look over the internet to try and comprehend what was behind the images in the stamps, since the Cyrillic alphabet makes it impossible for me to decipher anything in the legends. 

This of course happens also with the Latin alphabet for languages that have no close proximity with Latin idioms, but sometimes, since I generally know how the consonants and vowels interact, phonological resonance of a particular word can be a clue to its meaning. Trying to do that with the Cyrillic alphabet would first imply learning the correspondences between the two systems,...

In Portuguese we have a saying, though, that claims "Burro velho não aprende línguas"  (an old donkey will learn no idioms) and popular wisdom is time proven (hence the perennity of aphorisms)....but I'm retiring soon, and trying to learn some Slavic language might not be that bad an idea to integrate in the "things to do, now that I might have the time" folder, so who knows if this old donkey will try to break the rule in the future...

My research first led me to conclude that the stamps were issued in commemoration of Stamp day. (by the way...just to make my point,  applying my phonological resonance theory  to the  main title, which reads ДАН МАРКЕ, provided me with something as DAN MARKE, which would be consistent with "day of the mark" or Stamp Day...).

And here my first perplexity for if in Serbia Stamp day is celebrated in May, in my own country it is celebrated on the 1st December, in France in February or March, ... 

Luckily today we don't need to go to the central library to research the encyclopaedia volumes and after some Wikipedia mostly surfing, I found out that the  Fédération Internationale de Philatélie (FIP) had established in 1937 that World Stamp Day should be commemorated on the 7th January, but that countries would have full liberty to choose another date, according to their conveniences.... I wonder is anyone celebrates Stamp Day on the 7th January...?

This first problem solved, I turned to the Post of Serbia website for information on the stamp since whenever release notes are available these help a lot.

And yes, I discovered that the 30 Dinar stamp on the right hand corner,  issued on 13MAY2022 was the Day of Stamp 2022 issue, entitled " 150 years of Serbian Philately Rarity: Milanče Tête-bêche".

The illustration on the stamp is therefore the only existing pair of  1 Serb para stamps in tête-bêche form (although adjacent, one in printed upside down in relation to the other) of the Prince Milan stamps issued between 1869 and 1880, this particular pair having been part of the 1872 issue.

As a matter of curiosity and still according to the release notes, the last time this item was auctioned, the hammer hit the table at 70,000 Swiss Francs.

The two stamps on the left corner are this year's Dan Mark issues (no, not Denmark,..Dan Mark, Day of Stamp, remember?!), but this time I could not count on the help of the release notes because the link on the site pointed to the next in line issue of the Serbian Post, that is, one dedicated  to Nicolaus Copernicus (who himself was certainly a rarity, but not of the philatelic type). 

Looking at the image on the stamp and the translation of the issue title by the Serbian Post "150 years of the first correspondence card of Serbia" I think the issue, a 48 Dinar stamp, issued on 12May 2023, commemorates the 150 years over the first prepaid, pre-stamped card of Serbia, which would have been issued somewhere in 1873.

On top of the postcard featuring a imprinted Prince Milan 10 para stamp and the coat of arms of the Principality of Serbia is also an image of what looks like one of the stamps issued in 1880/83, with an older Prince Milan (from 1882 on King Milan of Serbia), but with no indication of face value....

Postage was completed with the 4 Dinar ATM Label, also on the cover.

The Postmark indicates that the letter was mailed from Serbia's third largest city, Nis, located in the centre south of the country, midway between Bulgaria and Kosovo.

POSTCARD N.105 - NETHERLANDS

Postcard sent on the 9th June, received on the 15th June 2023

Postcard image: Stamps and Postcrossing 
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It has been a while since I posted a Postcrossing postcard here on my blog. This is mostly due to the fact that I haven't sent that many lately and also to some of the few I have sent having not reached the destination or, most likely, having not been registered by the recipients, something which is rather unpleasant for its consequences...

Luckily, some days ago I received a notification from a postcrosser that one of my postcards had been registered, and that meant I was on the circuit again, so all it took was to wait some days for Mr. Postman to drop a postcard into my letterbox.

So thanks a lot Becky, it felt good to get a postcard again!

Postcrossing needs no introduction amongst people who like to swap postcards and stamp fans. It is a simple yet safe and user friendly postcard swapping platform, and more that that, it is also a meeting place for postcard swappers and collectors, through the forum and blog associated with it.

Created in 2005 by fellow countryman Paulo Magalhães, the platform has today 804,000 + registered users and according to Wikipedia "by January 2023, 70 million registered postcards had been exchanged", what is a clear indicator of the volume of traffic generated ( and of its economic impact).

The impact of the platform is so effective that several postal services have already issued Postcrossing themed stamps. The Portuguese CTT, though,  have not yet contemplated  Postcrossing on their issue programme, what is strange, considering it all started here.... 

The stamp is part of a self-adhesive 5 stamp tariff 1 international (up to 20 g) booklet issued on 03JAN2014 themed on Dutch Icons. Other icons featured, besides the tulip, are windmills, bicycles, Dutch houses and milk cows. The milk cow stamp can be seen here.

 

 COVER N. 264 - PORTUGAL

Postmark: Vila Nova de Cerveira 4920 CTT 13.06.2023

Posted on the 13th June; Received on the 14th June 2023

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Plenty of interesting stuff, sent by Eric with a view to a "special operation" very different from what the expression lately has been disgracefully associated with.

Thanks a lot,  Eric! The wheels are moving...

Supporting this special operation is a pleasure even if  I will only act a middle man, Eric being the generous soul behind it all. Further to him, the procedures  will have to rely on the fundamental contribution of one of my daughters, whom I really need to thank  since she is not particularly into any type of collecting hobby and most time looks at her father's requests as another eccentricity of the old one,  and whom I know has a busy schedule into which she will have to fit her precious collaboration.

But there's nothing she won't do for daddy, right? 😀

On to the stamps

The theme for the EUROPA 2004 issues was "Holidays". Tourism is fundamental to the Portuguese Economy and Tourism and holidays go hand in hand so the Portuguese contribution for the Europa issues highlighted Portugal as a tourist destination. As usual three different souvenir sheets were issued, Mainland Portugal, Azores and Madeira, all of them showcasing reasons for putting Portugal on one's journey plans.

The mainland Portugal souvenir sheet that Eric used, was issued on 10MAY2004 and it comprises two 0,56 € stamps , one presenting Portugal as a cultural tourism destination with a little detail image of one of the Painéis de S. Vicente (which can be appreciated in the National Ancient Art Museum in Lisbon) and the other as a destination for those more sensitive to sun and sand, with an image evocative of the beaches of the Algarve. The legend reads Férias em Portugal or Holidays in Portugal.

On top of the souvenir sheet ERic also used  a 0,70 € stamp, part of a four stamp  (0,30; 0,43; 0,55; 070 €) and a souvenir sheet with two stamps (1 and 2 €), dedicated to Museums in Madeira. The stamp is illustrated with the painting Le Départ, by Madeiran artist Marta Theles (1930-2001), which can bee seen in Madeira's Contemporary Art Museum, located in Calheta, about half an hour drive from Funchal.

The snowboarding 0,03 € stamp is part of the five stamp definitive set issued on 31MAR2016. This was the last set of  a "Radical sports" series started in 2014.

Lastly, the 1,20 € souvenir sheet with a  stamp illustrated  with a reliquary cross from the treasure of  Lisbon cathedral, was issued on 07JUN2005, as part of an issue that also comprised another six stamps, dedicated to the Cultural Heritage of the Filipino Period (the period in which which Portugal was ruled by Spanish Monarchs - 1580 - 1640).

The very neat postmarks hail from the town of Vila Nova de Cerveira on the mouth of the Minho River, which is the natural physical border between northern Portugal and Spain.

COVER N. 263 - CANADA

Postmark: City of Toronto UC - MR 6 1834 / Canada Post Postes Canada Toronto ON Toronto's First Post Office 07.06.2023

Posted on the 7th June; Received on the 13th June 2023

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A rather interesting wild fauna related issue from a country that is undergoing right now a tremedous forest fire ordeal. 

Being a Portuguese, I cannot but feel the utmost sympathy for all the brave men and women that right now are fighting this incredibly huge disaster and I'm very happy and even proud to see that some Portuguese fire-fighters were dispatched to Canada to lend a helping hand. I'm also hoping that weather changes soon and rain comes to the help of all those that have been fighting this disgrace for so long now. The scale is so huge that Canadian smoke is set to arrive over Portugal this coming weekend...

Although otters and grebes do not live in forests, I'm sure a disaster of such proportions affects all the ecosystems one way of the other, so may the beautiful stamps on Jeff's cover be a reminder of the huge task we still have ahead if we want to make sure that Earth will still be an habitable place in a not so far future....

Thanks a lot for the very nice cover, Jeff! 

Earth's day is in itself a way of raising awareness, of reminding, of calling on the attention of us all to the effects of our greed, negligence, stupidity in what concerns our relation with the planet we live in and with its non human occupants. It first was celebrated in 1970... that's 53 years ago... and the obvious, disturbing fact is that in this half century we have  managed to cause seas to dry, glaciers to evaporate, species to become extinct,... yes, there is another side to the coin, as always. Smallpox was eradicated, extreme poverty has declined from 44% of the population in 1981 to 10.7% in 2013;  endangered species were protected and so on and so forth, but population has risen to a staggering 8 billion and just feeding all this people is a gargantuan challenge...

Celebrating Earth, sustainability and biodiversity is more than ever a priority, as all actions taken to this end will keep the flame alive and at least shake our conscience, make us feel uncomfortable, but there is no escaping the fact that if  the questions that  directly impact on us Humans, like access to housing, water, food, income, healthcare, education,  aren't properly and thoroughly addressed, then sustainability and  biodiversity will barely be more than a debating theme  for  the lucky ones who chanced to have been born to a household where all it takes is to turn the tap to see water flowing, for the others, the majority, will still have more pressing needs to cater for... 

The beautiful Domestic Permanent stamps chosen by Canada Post to honour Earth's Day 2023, issued on 18ABP2023, were conceived as embroidered works of art resulting from the creative minds of designer Meredith MacKinlay, and embroider Caroline Brown.  The two images thus created, besides honouring Earth's day also resonate to the fundamental bonds between mothers and their babies, celebrated by Mother's day.

The species chosen were the sea otter (Enhydra lutry) and the red-necked grebe (Podiceps grisegena), highlighting the role mother otters and grebe play in raising their offspring.

A rather interesting short video featuring one of the stamp authoresses can be watched here. 

On the lower left corner of the envelope there is also another recently issued (23MAy2023) Domestic Permanent stamp, commemorative of the 150th anniversary of the famous Roayal Canadian Mounted Police, instituted as the North-West Mounted Police by an Act of the Canadian Parliament on May 23, 1873.