Under Southern Skies

2009: Stargazing - Southern Skies

The Southern Pinwheel Galaxy is located in the Hydra (water snake) constellation and the best time to see it is in the Spring which starts next month (in Australia).

1990: Animals of the High Country (Design - D Higgins)

If lucky enough to be in Australia and stargazing who knows perhaps a nocturnal marsupial may glide past and if you are in a eucalyptus forest then it will be this Greater Glider.

1966-1974: Decimal Definitive (Design - Betty Temple-Watts)

The sun is up and so are the cockatoos and this one is a galah - which I think is best said in an Australian accent.

2006: Australian Wildlife (Design - Trevor Marriott)

Meanwhile on the ground, a Tasmanian Devil  and another nocturnal creature, the common wombat.

 

Sit by fresh water and the curious creature that is the platypus may be playing there.

1966: Decimal Definitive (Design - Betty Temple-Watts)

Where next to go to watch the southern skies perhaps a beach,  where the nocturnal and gregarious Australian hermit crabs may be scuttling.  As they grow they need new shells and there is strong competition for the best shells so a fight may break out at any moment. 

The sun has risen

2010: Fish of the Reef (Design - Simone Sakinofsky)

 

take a trip underwater for a blaze of colour

with tropical fish  I was quite taken with the name of one as Spotted Sweetlips.

2011: Cocos Island Boats

Take a boat to sail the Pacific islands or travel much further south - but wrap up

1990: Australia/USSR Joint Issue -  Antarctica (Design - Janet Boschen and Yuri Artsimenev)

its going to be cold. 

 

Sunday Stamps II theme this week is - the Southern Hemisphere - travel to See It On A Postcard

All Yellow

Felix the Rabbit is doing something I would like to try on this FDC - blowing an alpenhorn.

2005: Felix the Rabbit

Felix is a travelling stuffed rabbit who gets lost at the airport and writes letter home to his owner Sophie as he travels the world.  The stories are written by the German author Annette Langen who has a rather topical webpage at the moment called Felix v Corona complete with bravery medals to download and a letter from Felix (in a variety of languages) to be sent.

1980: PTT Services (Design - Karl Tanner)

 

 Here is a letter box for Felix to post his letter before jumping on the postbus to take him to his next destination

1999: 150th Anniversary Swiss Postal Service

as he travels the world

1967: Flags of EFTA countries (abolition of EFTA tariffs) - Design - Rudolf  Mumprecht)

 

I wonder where he will choose next?   

1977: Journey of a Letter (Design - Henri Galeron)

Why not nip over the border to France.

 

 

Sunday Stamps II theme this week is - The Colour Yellow - for all shades See It On A Postcard

Food

1992: Trades (Design - Walter Haettenschweiler; Engraver - Schopfer)

Switzerland issued stamps over a number of years on the theme of occupations, a set of which can be seen with a brief obituary of the illustrator Walter Haettenschweiler (1933-2015) here.  Apart from the many stamps for Swiss Post he is also remembered for the typeface Schmalfette Grotesk.

I'll now get on track for the theme and as the kitchen looks hot so its time to head outside for a picnic

2008 Booklet: Summer Tables (Design - Inga-Karin Eriksson)

or a full feast of alfresco dining on this stamp set. The booklet of stamps has the motto Eat Out - 'Äta ute'.  The stamp on the top left intrigues me, they look like potatoes with dill, is that soup or stew in a pot, mustard dill sauce or pickled gherkins in the bowl.  I know they love their dill in Sweden.  No need to wonder about the indulgent strawberry cake and cheese.  A single sheet stamp completes the set -  

with the sun setting on the day and a crayfish plate with a sprig of dill.  Poor little things, I'll just take whatever is in the glass.  I learn that crayfish parties in Sweden are usually accompanied by beer and shots of snaps/aquavit.  Then I wondered why these were not shot glasses but apparently ice cold snaps is served in a glass with a stem so you don't touch the glass  and the drink stays cold.

Eat Out booklet cover (Design -Norbert Tamas)

Sunday Stamps II theme this week is Food - a fine dish is served at See It On A Postcard

Illustrations

1984: Characters from Children's Books (Design - Georg Rimensberger)

Pippi Longstockings looks to be waiting for the postman or maybe she is loitering with intent ready for her next adventure.  A journey to Lake Geneva perhaps?

1985: Anniversaries - International Lake Geneva Rescue Service (Design - Kurt Wirth)

Anything can happen when boating.

1989: Swiss National Sound Archive (Design - Raffaello Somazzi)

Ah look - a tape cassette. The Swiss National Sound Archive has lots of them.  The archive's aim is to preserve Switzerland's audio heritage of music and the spoken word from the beginning of sound recording to the present day. 

1992:  20th International Comics Festival, Sierre (Design - Yves Robellaz Aloys)

Say it with flowers but even better with stamps.

1964: Olympic Games, Tokyo (Design - Heinz and Hella Shillinger)

Lastly the Olympic Games would have started this week in Tokyo so I commemorate it and look back to the 1964 Tokyo Games with this stamp.   The Games were the first ones I remember and it certainty delivered its iconic moments plus the marvel that live broadcasts were being beamed by satellite from the other side of the world for the first time.  The BBC programme always started with the Olympic Flame and the theme tune 'Tokyo Melody' (composed by the German jazz violinist Helmut Zacharias).  It still sends me right back in time.
 

1964 Tokyo Olympic Poster

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

Mathematicians

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1982: Europa - Historical Events - Celsius (Design and Engraving - Lars Sjööblom)

Andreas Celsius and his temperature scale.  I remember when the UK changed from Fahrenheit to Centigrade learning the rhyme - "5, 10 and 21/ winter, spring and summer sun". Now I automatically think in Celsius, just as well as we had summer temperatures in spring this year. 

1994: International Congress of Mathematicians (Design - Burkard Waltenspul)

A gathering of big brain mathematicians first took place in Switzerland in 1897 and this stamp celebrates the August 1994 congress with a portrait of Jakob Bernoulli (1655-1705) painted by his brother Nicolas which hangs in the University of Basel (where he was Professor of Mathematics). It also shows a modern formulation of his law of large numbers and its pictorial representation.  He travelled throughout Europe learning about the latest discoveries and had a lifetime of correspondence with leading mathematicians so he would have been ecstatic if the Congress of Mathematicians had existed in his day.  He was an early proponent of Calculus and sided with Leibniz in the Newton-Leibniz controversy as to who invented it first (eventually declared a draw) 

1996: 350th Anniversary Birth of Leibniz (Design - Elizabeth von Jonota-Bzowski)

Here is the polymath himself, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and a mathematical diagram.

1977: 200th Birth Anniversary of Carl Friedrich Gauss

Moving from portraits we come to the numbers taking centre stage and Gauss's Plane of Complex Numbers.  Gauss was called the Prince of Mathematics for the range of his discoveries.

1992: 500th Birth Anniversary of Adam Riese (Desing - Harry Scheuner)

The German mathematician Adam Riese ran a mathematical school and published textbooks.  In one of his textbooks, intended for apprentices and craftsmen, he described numerical calculations with Indian/Arabic numerals which I'm guessing these flowing numbers are from.  Unusually for the time his books were not in Latin but in German and they have been through many editions.

1995: UPU Bern Postmark Cover

Sunday Stamps II theme this week is - Numbers - count on See It On A Postcard for more   

Night Skies

1986: Appearance of Halley's Comet

Halley's Comet streaking over the night skies of Athens.  I don't know why Laos chose Athens although the Ancient Greeks were among the first to produced a mathematical model of the universe. Aristotle mentioned the comet that appeared in 466BC, the earliest recorded sighting.  His work 'Meteorology' (which he wrote a hundred years later) also talks of the meteorite that struck northern Greece in the same year, which was 'the size of a cartload'.

1986: Appearance of Halley's Comet

Chinese astronomers reported the comet in 240BC but here it is in a modern setting lighting up the skies of Hong Kong.  I wonder what the scene will look like in 2061 when it makes its next appearance?  I turn next to our natural satellite that brings light and wonder to the night.

2019: 50th Anniversary of Apollo 11 Mission to the Moon (Design - Edward Fuglø)

There is a rather cute story about this stamp.  The artist, Edward Fuglø, was 4 years old in 1969 and living in the town of Klaksvik in the northern Faroe Islands and had listened to radio reports all day and evening, although he didn't really understand what they were about.  His father Jens lifted him up in his arms walked to the window and pointed up at the sky and told him about the men on the moon.  It is his earliest childhood memory.

2019: First Day Cover - Apollo 11 Moon Landing

Sunday Stamps II theme this week is - Night Views - See It On A Postcard

Sea Strand

2010: Australian Beaches (Design - Janet Boschen)

Hellfire Bay in Western Australia is part of the Cape Le Grand National Park and is famous for its quartz sand beaches.  Despite the name of Hellfire this is considered one of the best Aussie beaches although if it does get too hot the waters are said to be very cold.

More white sand and blue water in the Bay of Fires, Tasmania. The granite rocks are covered in lichen which gives them this orange hue. Surrounded by the rainforest is Cape Tribulation, so called because this is where Captain Cook's ship scraped the a reef and then ran aground and he wrote  "now began all our troubles".  No troubles nowadays for it is part of the Daintree National Park.  A boardwalk can take one through the mangroves.

2011: Cocos Island Boats (Design - Rachelle Flynn)

Alternatively perhaps take a boat out from a beach in the Indian Ocean from one of the Cocos Islands and you may spot dolphins or whales but travel to the other side of the Indian Ocean for

1993 Definitive - Endangered Fauna (Design - Denis Murphy)

the Cape Penguin only found on the South West corner of Africa

1997: 3rd Series Definitive - Endangered Fauna

and it can face in either direction on its rocky perch on these stamps.

1978: Arctic Fauna (Design - V Kolganov)

But this bird of land and sea is in its element in the water. Here is the Snares Penguin (named after a group of islands lying 200k south of New Zealand) catching its fishy snack.

Sea Sandwort

Sunday Stamps II theme this week is - Land and Sea - travel over to See it On A Postcard