Earth Day

The card says "En route to the Moon the Apollo 11 astronauts took a picture of the Earth at a distance of 180,000 km (112,000 miles). The bleak orange Sahara Desert, the Mediterranean Sea, Africa, southern Europe, Asia Minor and the Red Sea show clearly. The Congo, at the Earth's equator, is buried under cloud."

A blue planet floating amongst the stars, our home.  Today is Earth Day, both a celebration and a plea to protect the environment and create a sustainable future.  Too beautiful to loose

  Grose River Gorge, the river over millennia has carved through the Blue Mountains and created soaring sandstone cliffs.

Russell Falls, Tasmania in the Mt Field National Park.  At night time glow worms light the night at the approach to the falls.

 The Blue-banded eggfly, a butterfly of the rainforests

The largest rainforest in Australia is the one in Daintree National Park, north of Queensland and this 2003 flora and fauna series celebrates some of its inhabitants.

An entry to Viridian Postcard's Sunday Stamps

Tang Dynasty Poets

Two poets of the golden age of Chinese Poetry appeared on a set of of Poets and Philosopher stamps issued in 1983.  The first is Li Bai (also known as Li Po) born in 701, who had what is described as a "hard living life" which means he liked a drink or two;  any poetry collection of the Tang Dynasty will contain many of his poems.

The painting is a modern one created by Liu Lingcang (1906-1989) who was apprenticed at 14 and and as a young man went to Beijing alone living off the sale of his paintings to follow the masters of his chosen art.  He himself became a great scholar of painting history and painting theories and in in his 70 year art career he spent 40 teaching those skills. It is interesting to see the scroll painting he made of Li Bai which expands the view of the poet and appeared as "Landscape of Tang Poetry"

Next is Du Fu (also known as Tu Fu) 712-770 who is known in China as the "Poet Sage".  But let the words of these poets tell their own story.  They share a page in my copy of Soame Jenyns's (who was keeper of Oriental Antiques in the British Museum) second collection of translations of Poems of the T'ang Dynasty, you will see why he has done this.

"Sending Off A Friend" by Li Po

Looking north of the city you see the line of blue hills,
Sparkling water flows past the eastern gate.
Here we part once for all;
A solitary waterweed drifts off into the distance.
When I think of the wandering clouds you will come back into my thoughts
Sunset will bring with it memories of you.
We part now with a wave of the hand; as we turn our horses they neigh farewell.

"With the width of Heaven between us thinking of Li Po" by Du Fu

A chill wind springs up from the horizon,
What are your thoughts now I wonder?
When will the wild geese arrive?
Rivers and lakes are big with autumn floods
Your literary compositions are a foe to your success,
The ghouls are gleeful when people (like you) pass by
I fear your path corresponds to that of the "aggrieved spirit".
Throw a poem to him in the Mi-lo River.

Legend has it that Li Po died in a most poetic way by falling from his boat when he tried to embrace the moon in the Yangtze River.  The 'aggrieved spirit' reference in the poem Jenyns says is an allusion to Ch'ü Yüan, who committed ritual suicide by holding a rock and wading into  a river, today celebrated by the dragon boat racing festival.

An entry to Virdian Postcard's Sunday Stamps celebration of National Poetry Month.


 

Happy Easter

The Aunties are enjoying howling at the moon and I think pretending to be Easter Witches, (trulli in Finnish) The trulli are supposed to do mischievous things at this time of year and in Finland are represented as scarf clad women riding a broom with their black cat and copper coffee pot. Yes they are all in place together with daffodils and coins.  I am not sure what the coins are all about but there is a tradition where children go door to door exchanging decorated twigs for coins, so maybe the old ladies have been collecting.

Thank you Eeva for sending this Easter greetings, one of Inge Löök's best, such a fun, and wonderfully imagined card. 

Architecture

In 1811 the Russian Emperor founded the 'Office of Intendant' to supervise building competence in Finland and today the Senate Properties continues the objective of looking after and creating public buildings and this set of stamps commemorates its 200 years.  The stamp designer, Pekka Piippo shows details of six well known buildings owned by the State of Finland, each reflecting a different era. This first is the Government Palace of 1828 which houses the prime minister and government departments.  The other two I have

 

show Malmi Airport - the curved lines so typical of the era it was built (1938) and today still with the original buildings and runway system, considered possibly the best preserved pre WW2 international airport in the world. In contrast next is the Finnish Embassy in New Delhi (1985) which the Embassy site describes as standing " like a Finnish island adrift in the middle of India, permeated by an Indian spirit of place"


Next in complete contrast are some of the 1970 stamps celebrating vernacular architecture in this set of 'British Rural Architecture' designed by David Gentleman

with this house in Fife, Scotland. Harling is a weatherproof shield for a stone building rather like pebble dashing, as the wiki paragraph says "well suited to the Scottish weather".

The soft tones of Cotswold limestone.

and the fascinating thatched roof.

Lastly in a month where one week the temperatures were in the mid 20s centigrade and and then the next week snow was falling and they were reopening the the ski centres in Scotland

two Bulgarian stamps of ski hotels issued in 1988. The left, the Rila Hotel, Boravets situated right at the bottom of the ski runs and right, Perelik Hotel, Pamporovo.  The winters here tend to be mild but they have 150 days of snowfall a year which makes the ski season a long one where you can swoosh down the runs under sunny skies.


An entry to Viridian Postcard's Sunday Stamps theme of Architecture

Gone Fishing

Evgeniya sent this card from Tomsk and translates the Russian words as "It's nice when someone understands you".  Eyes meet over a gift of fish on this cute scene, this dog knows the way to a cat's heart.  The card reminds Evgeniya of summer, so lets look forward to sitting on a riverbank with someone who understand you, with or without fish.

The card came with definitive stamps

a hare, the Rostov Kremlin and two Moscow Kremlin.

Spring Flowers

The mild climate, long hours of sunshine and rich fertile soil make Jersey the perfect place to grow flowers.  The daffodils flower much earlier than in England so traditionally the Jersey daffodils arrived in the florists the first, originally they and

anemones were grown as another just another crop by farmers. The anemones seem to have been particularly prolific this year where I live, (a long way north of the island)  perhaps our winter was as benign as Jerseys this year. Cultivated anemones have been grown in Jersey for many years, being amongst the Island's first recorded export flower. 

The next are amongst my favourite flowers, the freesia, hybridisation has produced a wide range of colours, many especially the yellow, being heavily fragrant. They can grow out of doors, blooming in the spring from corms planted in August or September but even in Jersey are mostly cultivated under glass, from seed.

Lastly comes a bunch of carnations and gladioli, the former much beloved for decorative purposes by florists and flower arrangers. In Jersey outdoor cultivation of gladioli produces fields of bloom in early summer and earlier flowing occurs under glass.

Jersey lives up to its name of the "Floral Isle" but I always look forward to the waxy Jersey Royal potatoes arriving later in the year. The other main agricultural products are cauliflowers and tomatoes and of course dairy products from those Jersey cows but flowers are the most important export crop mainly shipped to the UK.  No wonder they have lots of flower shows in Jersey, the first of the year is the Royal Jersey Agricultural and Horticultural Society Spring Flower show next weekend.

An entry to Viridian Postcard's  Sunday Stamps

Opera House, Samara

The imposing façade is the Opera and Ballet Theatre in Samara, the largest  in Russia, it opened in June 1931 with a production of Mussorgsky's 'Boris Godunov.  The city is on the banks of the Volga in South East European Russia and was the place the first manned spaceship to orbit the earth was built at Samara Progress Plant. My sender, Vitaly, tells me that the Opera Theatre has recently been resorted inside and out.  Originally called the Palace of Culture it stands in the central square (Kuibyshev).  Looking on their website they have an extensive, and varied programme of events. If you were lucky enough to be walking through the doors and into the ornate interior next week then

you would be treated to a cornucopia of operas dedicated to the memory of Irina Arkhipova (1925-2010), the "Queen of Russian Opera" and star of the world opera stage, seen above in her role of Mary Stuart. Which night would you choose?  There is Madam Butterfly, Prince Igor, Rigoletto, The Tsar's Bride and lots more to enjoy.  But lets go back in time, to the second world war, when Samara would have been the capitol of Russia if Moscow had fallen to the invading German army, the Bolshoi Ballet were performing on the stage and the premier of Shostakovich's Leningrad Symphony was played here. Appropriately the card came with

one of the "Weapons of the Victory" series of Tanks issued in June 2010.  This is the T34-85 which was the improved 1944 version of the T34 light tank, the name coming from the very long 85mm gun which apparently you had to be careful not to get stuck into the ground on certain terrain, there was a three man turret so plenty of eyes and hands to prevent that. The German Panther was a bigger and more heavily armoured tank but the Soviets produced the T34 in such numbers that it became the most important tank design of the war.  Happily those days are long gone so I'll move on to the other stamp Vitaly used

from the Bridges of Russia set, namely the Bridge over the Matsesta Valley, Sochi, which looks to be my favourite form, the viaduct. Sochi is on the Black Sea Coast and will be the venue of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games so there has been a lot of building of both road and rail bridges and tunnels for the event.  There is vague link to the card because Vitaly told me another world sporting event to be held in the city of the card, Samara, which is the World Football Championship in 2018 (the stadium has not been built yet) .  All roads lead to Russia in the sporting world and they will encounter the message Vitaly finished the card  "Welcome to Russia!"