Heavenly shades of night are falling

I have yet to see a postcard from Thailand that is anything less than stunning, but this one from Bangkok is in a class by itself. In fact, according to the card, this photo by Phisit Senanansakun is the winner of the second “Amazing Thailand Through the Lens” Contest. I don’t know what that is, but this photo certainly deserves honors.

We're gonna need a bigger boat

Almost as remarkable as the photo is the 9-baht stamp used on this postcard, which depicts a royal barge (on the same river, no less) and is nearly as long as the postcard itself!

The smaller stamp depicts someone called “Theng”, the Jester, and inexplicably celebrates International Letter Writing Week 2008. Perhaps Theng used his off-hours to write to his penpals and complain about the daily grind. Maybe you should use your off-hours to check out the other blogs celebrating Postcard Friendship Friday today!

Blow it out your trunk

“While training, elephants enjoy their leisure time on a small river.” That description sort of implies that it is the elephants who are in charge and not the men. In fact, it looks as though the human leader is getting a reminder of that.

This postcard was sent to me by the lovely Linkenel, who herself lives in Chiang Mai Province, Thailand.

Verdant Verdal

I love these rare occasions when folks not only send me a postcard, but also write my blog entry for me.  But this card also marks a couple of firsts: not only is it my first card from Norway, but it’s also the first time anyone has sent me a postcard containing a message of nearly 300 words.  Anne was very descriptive with regards to her town and to the views on this postcard.  I’m guessing she was inspired by the stamp, which contains the first 30-40 words of Ja, vi elsker dette landet (“Yes, we love this country”), which is Norway’s national anthem.

Verbosity from Verdal

Even wearing my glasses, I found it much easier to scan this card into the computer, rather than try to read it at arm’s length.  Anne writes, in part: “Here is a card for you from central Norway. The municipality of Verdal is about 95 kilometers northeast of Trondheim. We have a lot of rivers, lakes, woods and mountain areas. The name Verdal is very old. It means the valley with the tranquil river.

“Verdal has 14,000 citizens. About half of them live in the small city centre of Verdalsøra. But Verdal is much bigger, 1,543 km², stretching from the Trondheimsfjord to the border of Sweden. Verdal is most known for the historic site of Stiklestad. The battle at Stiklestad (on) July 29th, 1030 is one of the most important events in Norwegian history.

“The pictures are: Top left: Molana at Stiklestad Museum is built in the traditional building style of my area of Norway. Top middle: Verdal’s railway station. Top right: Part of old Verdal centre. Bottom: Part of Verdal, picture taken to the southeast. The dominant mountain in the background is Hermanssnasa, Verdal’s second tallest mountain (1,035 meters).

“Verdal is divided in two by the main river. Verdal has trade, agriculture, small and medium size businesses, off-shore industry and we export limestone. Both the E6 highway and the railroad connecting northern and southern Norway pass through Verdal. In addition, we have the road across the border to Sweden.

“…Now it is summer, and the days are long. We have 20½ hour(s) of sunshine at this time, and no real night at all.”  That’s it! She’s not sleeping and had time to write all this!  Seriously, though, I appreciate Anne’s time and effort even more than I appreciate the postcard itself.

We'd like to thank you, Herbert Hoover

“Panoramic View of Hoover (Boulder) Dam: This colorful wide-angle shot of the mighty Dam spanning the Gorge of the Colorado River shows the main highway crossing the rim with Nevada on the right and Arizona on the left. The highest dam in the world by far, it is 727 feet high, 650 feet thick at the base and cost more than $125,000,000.00 to build during the 30’s.”  With a set of numbers like that, it’s no wonder that this postcard had to be stretched out a bit; the card is 11 inches wide by 3.5 inches tall (28 cm x 9 cm).  I’m not sure I’d want to trust a card like this to the Postal Service.  For that matter, I’m not sure that they’d take it.

Before construction, the project was known as the Boulder Dam project based on its original planned location in Boulder Canyon, but this was not the official name of the dam at this time.  (The location was moved to a different canyon along the river before construction began.)  Naming of important dams is basically up to the Secretary of the Interior and, when construction began in 1930, Secretary of the Interior Ray Lyman Wilbur announced that the dam would be named for then-President Herbert Hoover.  Not only was it a tradition to name dams like this for the sitting President, but Hoover was himself an engineer and was deeply interested in the project.

Hoover was defeated by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932, and FDR and his new Secretary of the Interior, Harold Ickes, decided not to name the dam for Hoover — basically a big partisan slap in the face.  But after Roosevelt died and Ickes retired, the Congress passed a resolution to restore the name of Hoover Dam, and the resolution was signed into law by President Truman in 1947.

This postcard was produced around 1964.  Then, as now, and despite the official name change, the dam is still frequently referred to as Boulder Dam.

Привет из Ярославля!

For Postcard Friendship Friday, a postcard from some new friends. This beautiful postcard arrived today from Elina, the photographer at Yaroslavl for Me.  She and Evgeny, two university students, felt that most of the information online about Russian life and culture was from an urban point of view, and decided to blog about life in the provinces.  Given that Yaroslavl is less than 200 miles from Moscow, I’m not sure how provincial it is; nevertheless, their observations, as well as the photos and the songs from local bands, are always interesting.

Elina tells me that this photo (which I presume that she took herself) is the view of Yaroslavl as seen from the bridge over the Kotorosl River.

The stamps, with a nice, clear postmark from Yaroslavl, feature the Tsarskoye Selo (Tsar’s Village), a collection of palaces outside Saint Petersburg.

Stop by yarfor.me and say hi; maybe Elina will send you a postcard and you’ll make a new friend, too. Once you’ve done that, don’t forget to check out the other blogs celebrating Postcard Friendship Friday.

A Classic Bend of River Kunhar (Photo by Aamir Rashid)

“The Kunhar River, swollen by the glacier melt, meanders its way through the entire Kaghan Valley to join the Jehlum River at Muzaffarabad. The swift and foaming river is the live line of Kaghan Valley. At some places it becomes a raging torrent especially in the the lower part of the valley, while in upper part where the valley broadens, the river becomes calm and serene. Kunhar is stocked with delicious brown and rainbow trout fish which is considered to be the best throughout the sub-continent.”

I was having a hard time getting a sense of scale from the photograph, until I realized that the small dots in the lower right seem to be large grazing animals standing next to vehicle tracks worn into the terrain.

This terrific oversized (about 5 in. x 6-3/4 in.) card comes from Cheema; check out his collections of both postcards and covers.  The stamps are pretty cool, too. I am always fascinated by triangular stamps; to my knowledge, the US Postal Service has only issued three three-sided stamps in its history.  Looks like postage from Pakistan to me was 32 Pakistan Rupees, equivalent to about US$0.40.  Postcard postage from the U.S. to Cheema increased recently to 98 cents, equivalent to about 79 PKR.  He’s getting a deal!

Aareschlucht bei Meiringen

This early postcard, probably around 1910-1915, features the Aare River gorge (Aareschlucht) near Meiringen, Switzerland.  Satellite imagery from the area is quite stunning, and the view from the ground today is equally as beautiful as it was a hundred years ago.

The first path to and through the gorge was built in 1888 and, naturally, admission was charged.  Interestingly, it was not Meiringen that received the original concession from the government; instead, it was the village of Villigen, which was over 120 kilometers away.  By 1912, electric lighting had been added, allowing the gorge to remain open to the public after dark, and the first restaurant was built and opened in 1928.  A flood in 1942 destroyed most of the paths, but these were rebuilt and additional roads to the gorge were added by 1947, resulting in a large increase in visitors.

From 1912-1957, a tram ran between the gorge and the towns of Meiringen and Reichenbach, home to Reichenbach Falls, also on the Aare River and the place where Sherlock Holmes met his death in A. Conan Doyle’s “The Adventure of the Final Problem”.

Church of the Sacred Heart of Christ, Samara, Russia

This card came in the mail today from Yana, who has her own very fine blog of her postcards and stamps.  This card features a photo by Pavel Vorobyov of the Church of the Sacred Heart of Christ, the only Roman Catholic church in the Volga region.  It was constructed in 1906; this photo was taken in 2001 during what looks like sunset on a foggy day.

(I notice that this is the very first card I’ve posted from Russia; all of my other “Russian” cards, both posted and not-yet-posted, were technically produced by the Soviet Union.)

I’m also very interested in the stamps on this card, especially the portrait of Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin, a Russian landscape painter who lived from 1832-1898 and is still well regarded today.  Click on the image to see a larger version.  (I’m very proud of myself — I was able to sound out “I. I. Shishkin” well enough to google him on the first try.)  Shishkin painted landscapes, not portraits; this portrait of him was done by Ivan Nikolayevich Kramskoy (whose name I also sounded out, thank you very much) in 1880.  Kramskoy had painted Shishkin once before, in 1873.

The Potomac Panorama from Capon Mountain, West Virginia

“One of the most panoramic views of the entire Eastern section of the country is this Potomac Valley scene south of Hancock, Maryland. It shows portion of West Virginia, Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania and a great fruit growing section.”

This postcard bears a Curt Teich serial number indicating manufacture in 1943, but the publisher’s mark reads Marken & Bielfeld, Inc., Frederick, Md. From what I can tell, Marken & Bielfeld seems to have been (at least in the past) a publisher of local histories like this one of Carrollton Manor, Frederick County, Maryland. They are still in business in Frederick after over a century.

View on the River Kelvin

This is an early photochrome postcard from the Philco Publishing Company of London. For some reason unknown to me, the image is surrounded by the tartan of the MacIntosh clan.

What’s interesting to me is that the back of the card has been modified by hand in a very unusual way:

Detail from postcard back (image altered to emphasize modification)

If you look carefully, you can see that there was some text after the phrase “Printed at our works” which has been scratched out; it appears to have been done with the tip of a pin. My theory is that the card used to say “Printed at our works in Germany.” Like many postcard companies, Philco had several cards made in Germany and, if this card was being sold during wartime, the legend “Made in Germany” would no doubt have an impact on sales.