Westward Ho

1976: Olympic Games, Montreal

When Canada hosted the Olympics in 1976  inventively the flame was transferred by satellite via an electronic pulse derived from the Olympic flame in Greece.  Some news outlets described it in rather more futuristic terms as a laser beam. Pathe News captured the moment here .

Communication Arts

Thanks to the communication arts we all saw the journey of the flame in Paris by a sure footed messenger amid the deluge of rain.  The veteran Olympians carrying the flame in a speeding boat may have envisioned a balmy Parisian night when they signed up but judging by Carl Lewis' face as the boat bounced along the Seine with spray and rain soaking them this was not the ride he was expecting. Nadia Comaneci with a gymnasts balance looked quite serene, I would be like Serena Williams and know this was the person to grab hold of.

1989: Olympic Games, Barcelona '92

The rain has impacted some events but not

the diving

1990: Olympic Games, Barcelona '92

or volleyball

Sunday Stamps is in the western hemisphere - visit See It On A Postcard

Caribbean Sights

1966: Cuban Shells

Imagine a walk along a Cuban beach maybe find some pretty shells, a Measled Cowrie or in the inter-tidal area a West Indian Fighting Conch (Strombus pugilis), where maybe two sea snail eyes suddenly pop out on their stalks

1994: Caribbean Fauna

Look out to sea and a dolphin leaps

1990: 25th Anniversary of  the Oceanology Institute

Fancy a trip on a research vessel?  I would.

See the marvel of a sailfish.

2010: Tourism

Take a dive and seahorses drift past in the warmth of the Caribbean.

Sunday Stamps this week is all at sea with - Marine Life - See It On A Postcard

 

Art and Crafts

 

1966: Cuban Handicrafts

Afro-Cuban doll and it looks like the doll is a drummer.  The four main African groups uprooted to Cuba were the Yoruba, Bantu, Calabar and the Dahomey. The most numerous were the Yoruba and Bantu and they had the most influence on Cuban folklore and music. Perhaps this doll is of Bantu origin for that is where the Bongo drums originate.  The other stamp features a colourful sombrero to protect from the heat while working under the sun. They are made from yarey, a palm endemic to Cuba.

1961: Professions

I imagine the Dahomey took their pot making skills to Cuba but here they are on home ground.

1972: Plains Indians

'Fancy Dancer', a work by Gerald Tailfeathers of Alberta and the Blackfoot Nation showing the ceremonial costume a man might wear during the sun dance, a grueling physical and spiritual test for the benefit of a dancer's family and tribe

Sunday Stamps theme this week is - Indigenous art, crafts and clothing - See It On A Postcard

Underwater Sights

 

2000: World Tourism Day. Diving Sites

Time to travel to the warm, clear waters of the Caribbean and these Cuban stamps suggest some diving locations to try.  The fish await.  65 - French Angelfish at Santa Lucia a "diving paradise"; 75 - Black margate at Maria la Gorda, Cuba's most western tip

10 - Hawkbill Turtle at Guardalavaca, one of the first ports Christopher Columbus visited and once a refuge for pirates, today it is a refuge for  tourists. 15 - Nassau grouper at El Colony

1998: Deep Sea Fish

A deep submergence vehicle would be required to be able to see these weird and wonderful fish of the deep but without going to all that effort we can  enjoy through the pleasure of stamps.

Top:  Skate and a Gulper; Bottom, lots of teeth - Caulophryne and its illuminated 'fishing lure' and Sloan's viperfish in the twilight zone. Oh no now the  twilight zone theme music is now in my head

Sunday Stamps theme this week is - Fish - See It On A Postcard

Flags

 

2001: Centenary of Royal Navy Submarine Service. Flags and Ensigns

 

The Jolly Roger flag first flown by British  submarines in WW1 with a FDC photo of ship's figureheads from an earlier age on the high seas when no doubt a pirate flag was raised for a different endeavor.

1977-1984: Definitive - Folk Customs

Better sticking to dry land at Zurich's April Spring Festival - Sechselauten, The rider's flag flying at a gallop, in the background is the Böögg, a snowman on top of a bonfire whose head is filled with fireworks. It is said that the faster his head explodes the finer the summer will be.

1990: Latin-American History (5th Series)

From folk festivals to folk costumes of Latin America and one to test my patchy flag knowledge, but happily the stamps tell all - Nicaragua, Ecuador, Costa Rica and Paraguay.

Sunday Stamps theme this week is - Flags - flying at See It On A Postcard.

Sweet

 

1970: The Cuban Sugar Harvest Target

 'Over 10 Million tons' of sugar heading for export and perhaps used in the making of

2007: Chocolate (Design Jesper Arfors)

chocolate and with a cherry on top, what a delight.  Chocolate dipped strawberries (I prefer ice cream with my strawberries). The cacao bean makes an appearance and a chocolate drink, perfect for winter.

And lastly something to pop in ones bag - chocolate coil. It looks a bit like our Rolo which has a runny caramel middle - mmm - or perhaps it is something completely different. I love trying other countries confectionery.

Sunday Stamps II theme this week is - Food - enjoy at See It On A Postcard

Children

1983: Year of the Child

Its playtime with a purpose in Mongolia, building robots and archery practice.

1986:25th Anniversary of Children's Day Care Centres

Meanwhile in Cuba small children seem to be playing with boxes.

1968: Paintings of Children

This little girl has a basket full of cherries. It is a painting by John Russell (1745-1806), an English portrait painter who worked in oil and pastels travelling extensively around the country, his paintings of children usually done in pastels.  Girl Presenting Cherries can be seen in the Louvre, Paris.

A charming house in Horn, Germany (now a suburb of Hamburg) which was the start of the Rauhe House Childrens Homes in 1833.  The Rauhe House was gifted to the founder Johann Hinrich Wichern who moved here with his wife and mother to look after poor boys, the homes later expanded to include all neglected children.

1983: 150th Anniversary of Das Rauhe Haus (Design - Börnson)

This building was the starting point of the diverse social and education activities of the Rauhe House homes. The children lived in 'families' of 12 to 15, a great contrast to the large institutions.

The Sunday Stamps prompt this week is - children - play along at See It On A Postcard 

Cuba and Costumes

1990: Latin American History - Flags and Traditional Costume

These two look as though they are just waiting for the music to start before shaking their ruffles.  Lets C some more Latin American countries featured on Cuban stamps.

These look more like practical clothes.  I think the poncho type top is Chilean chamanto and both men and women wear them but it seems only the man gets to wear a hat

whereas Columbia is an equal opportunities place in the hat stakes.

Costa Rica is made up of seven provinces and each has its unique variation of the traditional costume. Of course one must not forget sporting costumes

2003: Baseball World Cup

and the nifty baseball outfit.  The stamp features Lourdes Gurriel, baseball legend, who had an amazingly long career as a player and after retirement managed and coached.  The Gurriel baseball genes are very strong for both his sons are talented baseball players; Yuli plays for the Houston Astros and Lourdes Gurrel Jr plays for the Toronto Blue Jays which I'm going to sneakily claim as another C for Canada in a 'six degrees of separation' type of way. 

Sunday Stamps II prompt of the Letter C - for Cuba, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, chamanto and costumes - See It On A Postcard

Castles in the Air

1932: Definitive 'Coffee Plantation'

We've got a busy day ahead, time to get buzzing with a fine cup of coffee from Colombia

1939: Definitive

on the way out perhaps passing by these workers on the coffee plantation.  Lets head to the teleporter which will beam us across the seas to the city of Prague

1918-1919: Definitives

and Hradcany Castle. This was the design of Czechoslovakia's first stamp which appeared in December 1918 just after the first world war as the country emerged from provinces of the collapsing Austro-Hungarian empire. The limited technical equipment available at the time meant that there are many plate flaws and varieties so it can be a popular subject for a specialist collection, with the added attraction that the stamps were designed by the great art nouveau artist Alphonse Mucha.  He chose the ancient Hradcany Castle (also known as Prague Castle) which dates from the 9th Century as the subject because "the palladium embodys the past and future history" of the country.  In this ancient home of kings, emperors and presidents somewhere, in a hidden room, are the Bohemian Crown Jewels.

There are a lot more castles to explore

The Castles of Trencin, Bezdez and Kost

there seem to be hundreds in the country, so no wonder it was a popular subject for Czechoslovakia Post

The Castles of - Pernstejn and Kremnica

and indeed is still a popular subject for what are two countries today.

The Castles of Karestejn, Smolenice and Kokorin

This is an incomplete set of the 1960s definitives, the one missing is Krivoklat Castle which today is a museum.

Feel like doing something more sporty? 

1950: Tatra Cup Ski Championship

Lets zoom down a mountainside and the Tatra Mountains would be a beautiful destination although I think my preferred option might be to watch this championship competition

although I'll miss out on the efficiency badge.

2006: Christmas Cards from 1931 'Painters of Canada'

This skier is enjoying the view and a sun bathed landscape, illustrated by Edwin Holgate he called it  'Contemplation' so lets contemplate another natural wonder and

1957: National Wild Life Week

this beautiful waterbird, the Common Loon whose eerie call I would love to hear for real across a northern lake.  The designer is Lawrence Hyde (1914-1987) and one can see why he was famous for his wood engravings in this attractive stamp.

1970:

The Grand Cayman thrush that once flew over mangrove swamps but became extinct in the 20th Century due,it is thought, to habitat loss which was a mix of deforestation and storm damage from hurricanes in 1932 and 1944.  A creature that once was also once found in the Cayman Islands was

1982: Reptiles

a small species of crocodile now only found in Cuba so yes is called the Cuban Crocodile but only found in two swamps and is described as 'critically endangered' due to human hunting but captive breeding programmes are in place to  help the species recover.

An entry to the Sunday Stamps II -  this week's prompt is the letter C - so welcome to the countries of Colombia, Czechoslovakia, Canada, Cayman Islands and Cuba - drink the coffee, see the castles, watch the championships, contemplate a skiing Christmas, hear the Common Loon, mourn the Cayman Thrush and beware the small but feisty Cuban Crocodile.
C more at See It On A Postcard.
  

Lift Off to the Red Planet

Cuba celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Cuban Postal Rocket Experiment with various rockets and satellites stamp sheets in 1964. These are four stamps which originally would have made up a corner of the sheet, as you see these are franked so no longer part of a sheet. I think they portray different versions of Sputnik.  I know the one on the top left is Sputnik 3 because there is a Sputnik 3 enthusiast out there in cyberspace who has listed all the stamps featuring it.   The one on the top right is the distinctive shape of  Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite in history launched in 1957 by the USSR, it was polished to a high sheen to enable it to be tracked by telescope and was enthusiastically tracked by both radio and visual amateur astronomers around the world.

I show these stamps because they depict  our home planet with the satellites beeping their way around it, oh and it has a red background. Wondering about the Postal Rocket?  It was an experiment by the Cuban constructor Antonio Funes and Dr Tomas A Terry, president of the Cuban National Philatelic Club in 1939.  The latter was the driving force and the rockets carried first day covers but being propelled by gunpowder and also being unstable they did not produce practical results.  What a shame, just think of all the traffic that would have been kept off the road, I can just imagine giant rockets flying from post office to post office however

Inauguration ceremony of Cuban Postal Rocket

perhaps this rocket is just a little smaller than I imagined. There is one of the original rockets on display in the Cuban Postal Museum.

Oh yes lets show a proper NASA rocket with the space shuttle attached ready to launch. This Maxi card stamp shows a launch site on Mars with the space shuttle taking off while in the foreground a surveyor works with his robot assistant. The stamp is part of the miniature sheet "Exploration of Mars" for Australia's Stamp Collecting Month in October 2000.

Illustrator: Otto Schmidinger Designer; Beth McKinlay

 What else could they publicise this with but "Stamp Collecting is Out of This World".  I'll agree with that as we visit the red planet.  The sheet shows a colony situated inside Olympus Mons, a 24 km high volcano, the rim of which is in the background as well as Mars' two moons Phobos and Deimos.

The stamps starting on the left show 1) an astronaut making a free fall entry from a cruise ship above her. She controls her descent using a personal thruster. 2) Skimmer craft leaving the cruise-ship 3) Flight crew are escorting two remote controlled cargo skimmer vessels 4) launch site as the maxi card 5) Terrain stamp shows two domed cities with a reservoir between with water being piped from Mars north pole and lastly on the far right 6) robots cleaning the kelp rods. The rods are filled with kelp and algae which is adding oxygen to the atmosphere. The rods are flexible so they can withstand the high winds on Mars.

I like the concept of this sheet showing what can be imagined and known at this point in time. Mars is not a very hospitable place, besides the cold (an average of  -65 degrees Celsius or -85 Fahrenheit) the surface receives high levels of radiation.  It is imagined colonist would either use caves or the geodesic domes shown on the stamp sheet.  In the long term Mars could be terraformed to become an Earth like planet perhaps by releasing carbon dioxide locked under the polar caps by heating it with orbital mirrors.  This would liberate water to fall as rain and raise the atmospheric pressure, eventually allowing microbes and plants to grow.

"Mars is there, waiting to be reached" Buzz Aldrin (astronaut)

“The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn't have a space program. And if we become extinct because we don't have a space program, it'll serve us right!" Larry Niven (author)

An entry to Viridian Postcard's Sunday Stamps.  This week's theme - Space, Exploration and Planets