Mail Adventures

09 April 2023

Sunday Stamps | Easter

Today's Sunday Stamps is dedicated to Easter. My country does not issue Easter stamps, I found a couple in my collection, more than forty years old, and a recent one from the USA not exactly intended for Easter.

Suriname, 1980

Grenada, 1976

USA, 2022

I wish happy Easter to all those who celebrate it!

08 April 2023

Alphabet 2023 | C Is for Coloma

Postcard sent by Bryon (the USA), full of C!

Circus stamps from 1993, and a California condor. The postcard was mailed in Coloma, California. That condor intensely looking at the postmark makes me smile, because coloma, in Catalan, means 'female dove or pigeon'.

07 April 2023

A Chronicle of Hours and Days

«My friend Delia, reading over letters from her friends in the early 1990s when she was a student in America, said:

It was funny reading these letters back. Sometimes they would be written over days, or even weeks, they’d stop and start and stop again: “Sorry, got distracted with something. Anyway …” Or be continually updated: “Well, I finally got a phone call from X, you won’t believe what happened …”

They were provisional, real-time, patched-together accounts of life as we lived it, as it occurred, on the spot. An unspooling of self onto the page in real time.

Or selves perhaps; each letter, each recipient, facilitating an adjustment of the self, a tweak: there’s the correspondent we make laugh, the correspondent we confide in, the correspondent to whom we offer advice and comfort. Like a diary, a letter can function as a “chronicle of [one’s] hours and days”, but because it is, in essence, a two-way communication – an ongoing, unfinished conversation – a letter invokes a relationship so it needs to be sensitive to the reader in ways a diary need not.»

Edwina Preston, Friday essay: a lament for the lost art of letter-writing – a radical art form reflecting ‘the full catastrophe of life

06 April 2023

Here Comes the Sun (II)

Big letter (look at the size of the pens!) sent by Phillip (the USA). Envelope made of a placemat from a cosmic restaurant.

The Sun Science Stamps are really stunning!

05 April 2023

Here Comes the Sun (I)

Postcard sent by Phillip (the USA), with matching stamps. It is difficult to take a proper picture of these foiled stamps...

04 April 2023

Drinks & Foods & Postcards

Typical Malaysian Sweets

From a French Cooking Notebook

Wine is sunlight, held together by water.

Postcards sent by Sarah (Malaysia), Fabienne (France) and Bryon (USA).

03 April 2023

Graham Bell

This postcard featuring Graham Bell and a prototype telephone, sent by Bryon (Canada) landed in my mail box last week.

On the back, among others, I found this stamp featuring Mr Bell, issued in 1947 to commemorate the centenary of his birth.

There are a lot of stamps celebrating the invention of the telephone. Royal Mail issued a series of four in 1976, on the centenary of the first telephone call.

Finding phones on stamps seems quite common!

02 April 2023

Sunday Stamps | Languages

Languages is a favourite theme (not only on stamps), so I'm glad today's Sunday Stamps is dedicated to A different language.

2019 was the International Year of Indigenous Languages, and France issued this stamp to commemorate it. I have just learned that 2022-2032 is the International Decade of Indigenous Languages.

Stamp issued by Russia on 6 June 2016 to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Pushkin Russian Language Institute.

This stamp belongs to the series The Welsh Bible (1588-1988), issued by Royal Mail in 1988 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the publication of Bishop William Morgan’s translation of the Bible into Welsh.

Spanish stamp from 2014, celebrating the 3rd Centenary of the Real Academia Española ('Royal Spanish Academy'), an official institution with the mission of ensuring the stability of the Spanish language. It is based in Madrid, Spain, and affiliated with national language academies in 22 other countries.

The books on the stamp forming a "III" are their famous dictionary of Spanish language.

I have never got this stamp on a letter, but I have sent it several times and it is in my collection. It was issued in 2007 to celebrate the centenary of the Institut d'Estudis Catalans ('Institute for Catalan Studies'), an academic institution which seeks to undertake research and study into all elements of Catalan culture. The IEC is known principally for its work in standardizing the Catalan language.

On the first day postmark and cover, however, the name of the institution is written in Spanish. Correos is very reluctant to issue stamps in Spanish languages other than Spanish: only one of the Christmas stamps says Happy Christmas in Basque, Catalan and Galician... some years.

01 April 2023

Postbox Saturday | Castelló de la Plana

31 March 2023

Happy Veggies

This stamps have low values. I have got them more than once, used to complete the due postage rate. But they always cheer me up!

And what about these cheerful veggies from Belarus?

30 March 2023

Chocolate Packaging

For some reason, I enjoy turning chocolate (or carob bean chocolate) package into postcards. Of course, it has nothing to do with eating the chocolate first...

Sent to Bryon (USA), Laura (the UK) and Heleen (the Netherlands).

29 March 2023

Waiting Not to Get a Letter

«"You know what Ida Farkasz is sitting in her room in the hotel waiting for? Her daughter not to write to her."

"That's what she is sitting doing, you're right" says Sophie Bauer. "The poor thing is waiting not to get a letter. What she needs is to get her amnesia back. »

Lore Segal, Half the Kingdom

28 March 2023

Windows and Balcony

Drawn and collaged envelope sent by Lilli (Canada). I think that, as it often happens, the picture does not do justice to the artwork. And you would never guess who live in this (my?) house...

Big Brothers / Big Sisters

A Queen

A Princess
(The similarity with the Queen is incredible!)

A couple of, err, popsicles
(Love is love)

An evening gosbeak
(on the mailbox)

Apart from a letter, it contained some postcards. Among them, this Balcony, an artwork by M. C. Escher. And, actually, the house of the postcard does remind me of my own house!