Flora of Iceland

In a land like Iceland lots of flowers grow low and the number of species are comparatively small, not because of climate but of isolation.  I like how the card shows the name in Icelandic,Latin and English on the reverse.  The sender of this card wrote that "the flowers are a joy" when she posted this card from Husavik ( a town on the north coast of the island) in July of 1982.  These were the last words on the card, the others said "This is not so much a holiday - more a survival exercise! We were stormbound for 3 days due to a hurricane in NW Iceland but have also managed to have some memorable experiences of the other kind".  Sometime disasters make the best holiday stories.

So there are the flowers for the first day of spring, which I imagine comes late to Iceland,  but the card also came with

two of the three bird stamps issued in 1981, the Raven and the Wren.

 A peaceful Husavik

An entry to Jocelyn of Cuckootree's Our Wonderful World Tuesday

Birds of a Feather

As St Patrick's Day falls this weekend I thought for this week's "anything you like" option I would look what stamps I had for Ireland so here are some native birds,

 Ireland has been issuing Irish flora and fauna definitive stamps since 1997 and these birds span the change of currency from the first two in Irish pennies to

 the change to the Euro in 2002 when the charge was in cents. Thirty Irish birds have appeared on the stamps

one of the last to be issued (which finished the series) was the 60c Sea Puffin.  All stamps were designed by Killian Mullarney the Irish ornithologist and bird artist living in County Wexford, possibly most famous for his illustrations in bird identification guides.  

 

 An entry to Viridian Postcard's Sunday Stamps

Die Marksburg

This is how I imagine a fairy tale castle to look like, soaring towers on a high hill and surrounded by nature. Back to the present day, if you look closely there are red umbrellas on the left which I imagine is a café where one can while away an afternoon gazing down on the Rhine.

On the back of the card it says "Above the village of Braubach is the only Medieval Castle on the Rhine river that has never been destroyed", Originating in the 12th Century it was lived in for over 700 years and is now a museum open all the year.

A panorama here shows the view and the bend in the river, I was also impressed with the beams in the kitchen and you can even take a virtual trip to the gift shop where I spotted a nice twirl of postcards.

An entry to Jocelyn's Cuckootree Our Wonderful World Tuesday

Clara Zetkin

Clara Zetkin (1857-1933), socialist, fighter for equal rights, women's suffrage and peace campaigner.  In 1910 she organised the first International Women's Day and this stamp celebrates the 70th Anniversary of the event.

It was not the first time China had celebrated Clara Zetkin,  for the 50th Anniversary of Women's Day they issued a set of four stamps. Born Clara Eissner in Saxony she studied at the Leipzig Teaching College for Women where was where she was politicised, and joined the Social Democratic Party in 1877, who won 12 seats in the elections. This turn of events worried Bismark and he introduced anti-socialist laws banning meetings and publications. In 1882 Clara  left Germany for Zurich and then to Paris where she married the Marxist Ossip Zetkin, a Russian revolutionary living in exile.

They had two children but sadly he died of tuberculosis in 1889.  In 1890 the anti-socialist laws ceased so Clara returned to Germany and campaigned against militarism and for women's suffrage, editing Die Gleichheit (Equality) from 1891-1917.  She opposed the First World War writing in November1914

"When the men kill, it is up to us women to fight for the preservation of life. When the men are silent, it is our duty to raise our voices in behalf of our ideals."

and in 1915 helped organised the International Women's Peace Conference in Switzerland. She did not agree with the Social Democratic Party suspending strikes and political activism for the war so continued her journey to the left joining the Sparticus League, and was arrested several times during this period for opposing the war.  In 1919 the Weimar republic included complete women's suffrage in the country's new constitution.

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          Woman tractor driver

Clara was elected to the Reichstag in 1920 as a member of the KPD (German Communist Party) and continued her campaign for equality for all but  she was also a life-long anti-racist amongst other things

taking part in the international protests against the Jim Crow laws in the USA.  In 1932 as the oldest member of parliament she was entitled to open the parliament's first session. She took the opportunity to make a speech denouncing the policies of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party.  With the burning of the Reichstag in February 1933 Hitler suspended all civil liberties and she went  into exile again, this time to the Soviet Union where she died in the June. She is buried by the wall of the Kremlin in Moscow. 

An entry to Viridian Postcard's Sunday Stamps

Tsarevich

Алексе́й Никола́евич (12 Aug 1904-17 July 1918)

Tsarevich Alexis in 1913 when he would have been about 9.  The youngest of the family he was affectionately called 'baby'.  Famously he suffered from haemophilia and his parents appointed 2 sailors from the Imperial Navy to look after him so he would not hurt himself, maybe that is why he is wearing a sailor suit.  His parents had prohibited from riding a bike, I guess they were not too successful, although perhaps they weakened thinking three wheels were more safe than two.

When Nedis sent this card at the end of January in was minus, that is -30°, not the weather for riding bicycles.

Hope the bear and fox's fur was thick enough to keep them warm (5th series definitive stamps).

Tilting at Windmills

From the wonderful world of imagination Don Quixote de la Mancha and his trusty squire Sancho Panza on his mule continue their ride in the Plaza de España in Madrid underneath a monument to their creator Miguel de Cervantes.  Forever fighting with 

 Campo de Criptana

windmills thinking they were giants.  These are some of the famous windmills of La Mancha in central Spain. Each of the windmills has a name and at one time there were 34,  today there are about 10 all with their machinery and structure preserved.  La Mancha is very dry and hot in the summer, I imagine being inside one of the windmills would be a good way to cool off, after admiring the shape and their pristine white against the deep blue sky.

An entry to Jocelyn's Cuckootree "Our Wonderful World"

All aboard

I could not find many streetcar stamps in my collection but this one may make up for that, featuring a Glasgow 'Coronation' Double Decker Tram No 1173 and a post box.  The tram still exists and can be seen in the Glasgow Museum of Transport. This stamp was one of a set of 1988 for the Europa theme that year which the post office decided to feature Transport and Mail Services in the 1930s.  The designer has used the style of the posters of the period that invited you to visit many parts of Britain travelling by train,

or in this poster of 1929 travel by tram, but why not give

 Romania a try. A trolley bus from their series of definitives of the 1960s which featured different modes of transport and postal communications.

although I can never love a diesel train as much as a steam one

 so here is a GB Maximum card featuring a  'King' Class loco the "King Edward I" climbing up to Whiteball Tunnel as it "heads the Plymouth-Taunton steam hauled section of a Pathfinder Tour charter train near Burlescombe".  You can see the people on the train are doing what my mother always told me not to do and putting their heads out of the door and window.  The stamp is of Great Western Railway's "King William IV" near Teignmouth in 1935, in the days when there were people in postal trains busy sorting mail through the night.

Railway Travelling Post Office Coach

An entry to Viridian Postcard's Sunday Stamps theme of  Streetcars or passenger transport