Trees

 

1998: Definitives - Paintings by Jean-Frederic Schnyder

Trees for all seasons and it looks like summer in Franches-Monagnes but elsewhere we are in winter with a painting of a  'Snowdrift near Neuthal'

1988: Swiss-Chinese Friendship (Design - Xu Yan Bo)

The reflection of trees in Slender West Lake, Yangzhou, China

1976: Bailiwick Views

A sea view from the pine forest on Guernsey

1988: 200th Anniversary of the birth of Joseph von Eichendorff

A sturdy oak.  A woodcut by Ludwig Richter of the poem 'Solitude of the Green Woods' by the romantic poet Joseph von Eichendorff and whose family name means 'oak village'.  I couldn't find the poem but here is an extract from his novella 'Life of a Good-for-Nothing' (Aus dem Leben eines Taugenchts) which contains dozens of poems and where he spends a lot of time wandering around hills and forests and then falling asleep in trees.  Someone once called this novella "far too happy". Trees can have that effect.

"He to whom God Wants to show his favour

God sends him out into the wide world

To him He will reveal his miracles

In hill and woods, stream and field"

Sunday Stamps theme this week - Trees - in bloom at  See It On A Postcard

Great Lives

 Thursday Postcard Hunt is on Inspirational Thoughts and I start with a writer

"Don't Be afraid of BIG ideas!"

who had lots of radical Big Ideas but then Mary Shelley was the daughter of  Mary Wollstonecraft and Stanley Godwin who also had lots of big ideas.

"Stand up for what you believe"

An  activist who believed in deeds not words - Rosa Parks was not going to give up her seat on the bus.  This led to the 382 day Montgomery Bus Boycott and eventually down the road a Supreme Court decision that bus segregation was unconstitutional. 

There is no mention on the cards to the illustrator however I think it may be the Ukrainian children's book illustrator Yulia Zolotova as my Google search turned up a series of books by Mary Nhin called 'Mini movers and shakers' which has an illustration of a similar style.  I like to think the book cover of Rosa Parks was the 'before' and this postcard the 'after'.

Omar Khayyam

1967: Omar Khayyam - Poet and Philosopher

Arab and Persian miniatures and woodcuts illustrating the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. 

As can be seen the sheet is incomplete, missing tabs and selvedges. In the English speaking world the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam is most familiar (and quotable) in the translation by Edward Fitzgerald first published in 1859.  Dubai issued the sheetlets in four languages, English, Arabic, French and German.

The missing quatrains tabs on the top include the two that are most often quoted - Left to Right: -

The moving finger writes, and having writ,/Moves on: not all thy Piety and Wit/Shall lure it back to cancel half a line/Not all they Tears wash out a Word of it

Here with a little Bread beneath the Bough,/ A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse - and Thou/ Beside me singing in the Wilderness -/Oh Wilderness were Paradise enow!

So while the Vessels one by one were speaking,/One spied the little Crescent all were seeking;/And then they jogg'd each other, "Brother! Brother!/Hark to the Porter's Shoulder-knot a creaking!"

Sunday Stamps theme this week is - Poets and Writers - read more at See It On A Postcard

Bamse Bear

It is a  Thursday Postcard Hunt for " Words - Speech Bubbles"

1980: Swedish Comic Strips

Bamse the world's strongest and kindest bear. His strength comes from the Thunder Honey his Grandmother prepares for him but only he and his friend Little Bee can eat it, everyone else will get stomach ache. He has many friends and he is saying "It is good to have friends and little friends too". One of his catchphrases is 'Better to be kind than strong', just as well for sometimes he forgets his honey.

Films and Books

 Thursday Postcard Hunt  this week: Words - Book Covers  and Movie Posters - be careful out there...

Frozen (2005) was filmed locally to me by the shifting sands of Morecambe Bay and won a number of awards. The story is of Kath's older sister who mysteriously disappeared two years ago but who she starts to see. Is it a ghost story or murder mystery? Has  Kath found access to the afterlife or losing her grip on reality?  You never know.

Illustrator Norma Barr

Boo!  You may need something stronger than Chianti to "See Film Differently", Volkswagen's campaign and support for independent cinema.  I was very excited some years ago when I spotted their postcards at my local independent cinema  The posters were displayed throughout the UK

Postcards were also found at my local multiplex this time of Young Adult novels being publicised by Walker Books. The quote on the reverse says "Demons are dangerous, but love is deadly...".  This was the first of Cassandra Clare's Infernal Devices series described as urban fantasy, looks like we are in London.

The other one I found was for 'Scorpia Rising' the sixth in the Alex Rider teenage spy novels by Anthony Horowicz.  I can never resist free postcards. 

Churches

 

1974: Norman Art in Sicily

 The cover photo is the church of San Giovanni degli Ermiti, originally the site of a monastery founded in 581, turned into a mosque by North African Berbers in the 9th Century then restored as a church by the Normans in the 12th Century

1974: Norman Art - Mosaics

The stamps show mosaics of King William offering a church to the Virgin Mary (Montreale Cathedral) and Christ crowning the Norman King Roger II who reconsecrated San Giovanni from a mosque to a church.

Travel north from the warm Mediterranean to

1993: Tourist Attractions

Greenland and two churches both ancient and modern

Ummannaq, Greenland's most northerly town, and its 'new' church dedicated in 1935. The abandoned Norse settlement of Hvalso and the medieval church ruin to which the Hurtigruten ships run a boat tour and everyone learns about Norse life.

Sunday Stamps theme this week is - Places of Worship - for more pray visit See It On A Postcard

City Travels

 Thursday Postcard Hunt for the month is 'Words' - today City Names takes me to

Postsdam and I think I am heading first to that pretty chinoiserie teahouse which Frederick the Great had built near his Summer Palace

2013: Road Trip (Artist - Gavin Ryan)

Or if I am in a mood for a party perhaps head for Adelaide,  the 'City of Churches and Festivals'  Our travellers are not having a smooth ride into town.  But wait something is missing from the card as the stamp shows

a little koala gazing out of the window has come along for the ride. Adelaide is also the home of the Australian Koala Foundation which works to protect them.