Author: John C

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Romania 1970, The Problem of Statues

Here we have a statue honoring Romanians and Soviets that fought against fascist forces in World War II Romania twenty five years later. In 1990, it was repurposed to honor World War I fallen. So going from some of sacrificed in the second war to all those sacrificed in the first war. Confusing isn’t it, but creating statues is dangerous stuff in the modern. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

The stamp artist Aida Costantinescu had a challenge. The monument honored communist partisans of two countries, Romania and the Soviet Union. However the stamp might mean more to people if it was more inclusive to include all the fallen. Perhaps that is why the Romanian flag is obvious, but the Russian flag is faded and seems just like a red background. Perhaps if similar care had been taken, the monument might not have been disturbed upon the next revolution.

Todays stamp is issue A658, a 55 Bani stamp issued by Romania on the 25th anniversary of VE Day. It was a single stamp issue. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents cancelled to order.

Statuary is a temporary thing. As the Red Army approached in 1944, the Romanian King Michael had Prime Minister Antonescu arrested and appointed a new communist Prime Minister. Antonescu was killed by firing squad after a show trial. The bending with the wind did not save King Michael he was forced to abdicate when the Prime Minister pulled a gun on him. Rough place, but the regime like that is going to be very particular about who it wanted honored.

In the 1990s after the 1989 Revolution, the statue was repurposed but allowed to stand in honor now of less contreversial fallen of World War I. The nearby masuleam that was part of the complex had the remains of the fallen communists replaced by WW 1 remains taken from the main monument of that war.

During the same period after 1989, at least a half dozen statues of firing squad victim Ion Antonescu went up. This time he was revered not just by right wingers but communists who felt left out of the post war government. Apparently he was now a strong leader.

The overkill firing squad for former Prime Minister Antonescu. With that much living in their brain, was post execution rehabilitation inevitable?

This also didn’t last, and like 1945 by decree. Romania wanted to join the European Union. Like the communists of 1945, they had definite ideas on who an EU country could honor, and that did not include Antonescu. The Romanian government was forced to hire a committee led by Ellie Wiesell to put together a case that Antonescu was anti Semetic and responsible for Jewish deaths. Upon receipt of the report, Romania enacted a law against new statues of Antonescu and requiring old ones removed. Of the six statues, one was removed and another was encased in a metal box. With the other statues, private property was claimed.

Other statues went up after the 1989 revolution. Unfortunately, the modern are better at taking down statues instead of creating new ones. A statue meant to illustrate the Romulus and Remis story of the she wolf nursing the Roman leader instead just resembles a naked guy being chased by a stray dog, a common occurrence in Bucharest, but hardly worth a statue. It was later taken down.

Naked man and stray dog statue

Another was the statue commemorating the 1989 revolution. It is meant to convey an idea crystalizing simultaneously among a large crowd. What was built however resembles an obelisk impaling a potato.

Impaled potato statue

Similarly the base of a former statue of Lenin has gone through 17 itinerations since Lenin was removed. Perhaps the eighteenth should just put Lenin back in his place, understanding it was one period in a long history.

Well my drink is empty, Come again next Monday for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

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North Korea 1978, Before Sanctions, we could admit to, and even Celebrate our Ships

North Korea has always had the ambition to be an exporting nation. To help bring that about, a fleet of maritime cargo vessels was acquired, often from abroad. Now with sanctions on North Korea, as a result of the country’s nuclear program, there can no long be stamps showing off assets, lest they be seized. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

North Korea did later have a new stamp issue of Korean ships in 2013. The lead stamp was a ship that did dinner cruises.

Todays stamp is issue A952, a 5 Chon stamp issued by North Korea on May 5th, 1978. It was a five stamp issue showing various cargo ships, freighters, and tankers belonging to North Korea. According to the Scott Catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents.

The ship on this stamp is the Hyok Sin. It was built in Japan at Mukaishima Shipyard in 1971. The name is a Korean male name but the only prominent Korean with that name I could find was a soccer star born 21 years after the ship was built. The ship served  for 33 years before it was broken up in China in 2004. The Hyok Sin 2 still exists but is not of the same design.

An earlier time when the Hyok Sin was free to roam. It is here seen in Rotterdam in 1980.

The North Korean merchant fleet is managed by a government owned company called Ocean Maritime Management. In 2001 North Korea was named part of the axis of evil by the United States. By 2013 sanctions became universal and United Nations enforced. The sanctions apply directly to Ocean Maritime Management and even the administrators of the company are subject to having their bank accounts seized.

To try to get around the sanctions, North Korean ships now have often changing names. Also shell companies based out of Hong Kong are given theoretical title to the ships. The North Koreans have a sense of humor about it. Among the names chosen for the shell companies are “Trendy Sunshine Limited” and “Advance Superstar”.

It now being almost impossible to acquire new ships from the outside and the fleet aging and indeed shrinking due to ships being seized, North Korea has begun to try to build their own ships. The former ship repair facility at Ryoungnam is now a full shipyard although the output is quite small. The third vessel, the Jang Su San was launched late last year. It was not registered with the International Maritime Organization.

The new to the water Jang Su Sin.

Well my drink is empty. I wonder if Russia is about to receive the same treatment as North Korea. By the time the cancelers are done, perhaps every nation will have been given the same treatment. Come again next Monday for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

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Laos 1993, Remembering the origins of the New York City Subway

Laos did something interesting. They gave you a window into the origins of the subway system  of several important world cities. This allows you to contrast the different timeframes, ideas for technology, and methods of management. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist,

This is a farm out issue from a country that has no subways in country. Thus perhaps such an issue better belongs with the United Nations Post Office.

Todays stamp is issue A262, a 15 Kip stamp issued by Laos on January 9th, 1993, the 130th anniversary of the worlds first subway. The issue contained five stamps plus a souvenir sheet that contained a sixth, otherwise unissued stamp. The metros of  New York City, Berlin, Paris, London, and Moscow were featured. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents whether mint or used.

This stamp shows off New York’s system, so that is what we will cover. The subway got previewed in two ways. In 1869,  Alfred Ely Beach invested $350,000 dollars to construct a 300 foot long, one station pneumatic subway as a demonstration of what could be done. 400,000 people paid to ride it. It took four years to gain approvals from the city to expand it. However in 1873, there was a stock market crash, and Beach was unable to raise the capital needed and he closed the demonstration.

The Beach Pneumatic transit demonstrator. He did manage to build it in 58 days. try that now.

Around the same time the terminus in Queens at the site of the ferry to Manhattan of the Long Island railroad went underground after it was required to not locate the steam train at street level. At first it was just a cut but was later roofed over. Walt Whitman waxed poetic about how going underground gave a wonderful feeling of entering a big city. The use of this tunnel ended when the borough put a large tax on locomotives and the tunnel was sealed up. Later the knowledge of the tunnel underneath became fascinating to the police. During World War I, they dug into it expecting to find a bomb making operation by German spies. In the 1920s, it was again dug into and searched hoping to find a large scale distillery during alcohol prohibition. Nothing was found either time, That was for the best, imagine how bad that water to make the whiskey would have been.

By the 1890s it was realized that it would have to be the government to build a large subway system serving all the boroughs. It was going to be an electric railroad and the timing meant there was an interesting technology choice. At the time there was a current war between the companies of Thomas Edison and of George Westinghouse over how electric current should be delivered. Edison promoted a direct current DC. Westinghouse’s alternating current AC eventually won out but to this day the New York City subway still uses Edison’s DC direct current.

The subway  built out rapidly and peaked out in 1946 at over 2 million annual riders. There was a lot of inflation  in the post war period and reorganizations to cut cost did not succeed. The 5 cent fare went to 15 cents in a six year period and ridership dropped a third. This put on unending hold  on any expansion plans. The citizens could see the system deteriorating and twice passed bond initiatives to modernize and expand the system, however the money raised was syphoned off for other projects.

Starting in 1954, there was a new New York city planner named Robert Moses. He emphasized parks and highways for suburb commuters to easily get into the city by car. Since poor people  of the period did not have cars and were also housed in more large subsidized housing projects that were assessable by the subway but had little car parking, this was hoped to keep crime only in certain neighborhoods. This strategy was later vilified by liberals as racist and when Moses was opposed to a plan to redirect bridge tolls into the city to fund subway shortfalls, he was fired by liberal Republican mayor John Lindsey. The vilification of Moses went so far that a liberal biographer claimed that Moses had tricked his mother into excluding his brother from her estate. It turned out that Moses’s brother was a drug addled bum and his mother had made the decision herself. After Moses budgets then went up but so did crime and ridership continued to drop.

Robert Moses with a model of a commuter bridge that never got built.

Well my drink is empty. With modern standards and small construction crews, it gets ever more difficult to build a new subway. Elon Musk through his operation, “The boring company” is trying to invent new technology for underground emission free travel. Obviously boring has a double meaning to Musk, but I don’t think it’s boring and I hope he is able to pull it off. Come again next Monday for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

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Fake Yemen stamp 1966, deposed King Badr studies grave choices of John F Kennedy

North Yemen’s Rassids Royal House was forced out in 1962 and the Mutawakalite Kingdom abolished. On the other side of the world in 1963, American President John F Kennedy was assassinated. It is kind of strange then that a Mutawakalite postal authority would issue a stamp on JFK’s memorial opening in Virginia in 1967. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

The story of how this stamp came to be begins with an American child stamp collector named Bruce Conde. He wrote a letter to then North Yemeni King Ahmad hoping to be sent real Yemeni stamps. He got a letter back from then young Prince Badr who was also a stamp collector. The two became pen pals and eventually Conde was invited to North Yemen. He converted to Shia Islam and was decreed a Yemeni citizen. In 1962, King Ahmad died of natural causes and Badr became King. Before the stamps of North Yemen could reflect having a philatelist King, Nasser’s Egypt funded a coup by the Royal guard that forced King Badr and Bruce Conde out of the capital Sana. From mountainous areas of the country, King Badr, with the support of Saudi Arabia was able to maintain an insurgency. Bruce Conde was authorized to issue stamps to raise funds for the insurgency. Eventually the Saudis tired of the lack of success and made peace with the recognized Egyptian backed government. King Badr went into exile in London where he died in 1996. Bruce Conde was left without a country as he renounced USA citizenship and North Yemen renounced him and his stamps. He moved to Morocco.

King Badr in 1962 during his short time on the Throne

Since this stamp is fake, there is no catalog value.

What to do about a grave memorial for President Kennedy was an area of discussion after his death. The family initially intended to have him interred in the family cemetery in Brookline, Massachusetts. His died soon after childbirth child Patrick had been buried there a few months before. The widow Jaqueline Kennedy however had other ideas. She wanted him buried in a valley at Arlington National Cemetary that Kennedy had found peaceful during visits there. She also insisted on an eternal flame. This was inspired by two things. An eternal flame for France’s fallen soldiers at the Arc de Triumph she had seen on her Paris trip. Also the T. H. White book Candle in the Wind that was the basis for the play Camelot, a family favorite. Many thought the eternal flame tacky, but thought it would be wrong to go against the widow’s wishes.

Jacqueline Kennedy contracted family friend and landscape architect John Warneche. There was a simple New England style black granite  headstone flat to the ground of grass with the body facing the Washington monument and in the shadow of Arlington House, the former home of General Robert E Lee. When the three acre site was ready in early 1967, John F Kennedy and two children died in infancy were interred. Later they were joined by Senator Robert Kennedy after his own assassination and later by the widow Jacqueline upon her natural death in 1996 and Senator Edward Kennedy in 2009.

The grave stone and eternal flame at Arlington National Cemetery. Robert E Lee’s former family home is in the background.

The Eternal Flame went out briefly twice. Once when a group of Catholic schoolchildren sprinkled holy water on it. Later during an exeptionally heavy rain the electric gas igniter was flooded and shorted out. In 2012, the igniter system of unique design started clicking loudly and was replaced while keeping the flame going.

A real American stamp honoring President Kennedy’s eternal flame

Well my drink is empty. I think I will have another since a nice story was found from even a fake stamp. Come again next Monday for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. Next week’s won’t be fake, I promise.

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Haiti 1969, Should the lottery schools teach the alphabet or farming in Creole

90 percent of the schools in Haiti are run by foreigners. The 10 percent of schools run by the government are for the elite and teach a French curriculum designed to prepare the student for overseas university. How is some sort of reform possible when 80% speak Creole. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

This stamp doesn’t look like much and that is pretty reflective of the then current state of education. Haiti had a desire to design a local education system. However qualified local teachers who get paid regularly is not an asset of Haiti. So what to do? Put some lipstick on the pig and kick the can down the road.

Todays stamp is issue A132 a 1.5 Gourde airmail stamp issued by Haiti on August 12th, 1969. The top three values of the issue were airmail stamps. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 80 cents unused. There is a canceled value implying at least Haiti had a system of airmail at the time. The Haitian postal system is even worse than it’s education system. The last stamp issued that is not considered bogus came out in 2003. In 2000 the last airmail stamp came out in the form of a new surcharge on a stamp from 1968.

Haiti won it’s independence from France in the early 19th century. The new constitution proclaimed a right to a free, compulsory public elementary education. What limited budget there was in Haiti were directed at a few schools for the elite in the capital modeled on French schools so the elite will be prepared for a French or Canadian University. In the early 20th century there was an American occupation of Haiti attempting to collect Haitian debts. The education system was redirected to more Creole areas and instead of book learning concentrated on personal hygiene and farming techniques with American teachers. 10 years after the Americans left, Tuskegee University, a black school in Alabama checked up on how the American schools were doing under Haitian control. They found a return to a French curriculum but unqualified teachers and no books. Interestingly the Education authority actually had gotten written in French a local geography and science textbook.

Things got a little better under the father and son Duvalier regime. Instead of committing money they didn’t have, they simply required the many foreign missionaries to have an affiliated school if they wanted to operate a church. This finally got more children in school. Younger Duvalier also tried instructing  the children in Creole the first year before introducing the French alphabet the second year before teaching in French the third and the last fourth year. This is what was being celebrated on the stamp but ended at the end when the dictator was overthrown.

The interesting thing is that public as well as private local for profit schools charge the student’s parents a fee. For this reason, Haitian schools are jokingly called lottery schools because you buy the ticket and if you beat the odds, your child learns something. A recent President tried to stop the habit at least at the public schools but it did not work. Without the parent paid fee, there was no money coming into the school and it evaporated.

Nice counterfactual. Studying vector calculus in Haiti.

There is a public university in Port au Prince named the State University of Haiti. It got it’s start all the way back in 1860 and according to the brochure it has advanced under a system of trial and error in a backdrop of hardship. Where to sign up?

As part of a system of trial and error, former USA President Bill Clinton hands out nursing degrees at the State University of Haiti.

Well my drink is empty. Perhaps via trial and error we should learn not to overpromise on stamps as they seem so sad later. Come again next Monday for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

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Sudan 1962, The World Health Organization would rather fight malaria it’s way, Sudan be dammed

Malaria is a quite deadly disease in the Sudan. One can see then why this stamp expresses the hope that the World Health Organization’s new effort to eradicate the disease will be a great benefit. Now it is my job to figure out how that worked out. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

Has we moved into the 1960s, this stamp shows how much hope there was among the newly independent countries. The international bodies were untarnished by colonial grievances but able to direct expertise and resources of the advanced countries into the poor ones in a non threatening way. Unfortunately this period is over with stamps. Now the UN features an individual from the poor land as a symbol of equality and coping with challenges and forgets to even pretend to fix the problems of a place like Sudan.

Todays stamp is issue A23, a 15 millimes stamp issued by independent Sudan on April 7th, 1962. It was a two stamp issue in different denominations. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used.

90 percent of malaria cases in the Sudan begin with nighttime bites from the female Anopheles mosquito. From the bite, a single celled parasite named plasmodium falciparum is implanted that leads to malaria. Over 40,000 malaria deaths a year plague Sudan, with children and pregnant women hardest hit. This is actually worse that the situation in 1962.

The bug that has to die

This is a strange thing because the WHO efforts to eradicate malaria in the Sudan were largely successful in period. The USA and Japan funded the program that aggressively sprayed insecticides especially along the Nile River so there would be less transmission of the parasite.

Around 1990 there was reorganization that ended the spraying in exchange for a different program that sought to strengthen Sudan’s health infrastructure to lower the death rate among those bitten by the bug. Sudan itself pleaded for the spraying to continue pointing to provinces where spraying had virtually eradicated malaria transmission. The malaria death rate in the Sudan shot to new highs never seen before though Sudan by then was a much more populous country.

In 1998, Sudan itself started a new roll back malaria program hoping to eradicate malaria by 2010. By then the Sudanese health infrastructure tried to use the deaths to justify more health spending from the government. The program had 60% goals on a veriety of fronts. That 60 percent of new transmissions would be in treatment within 8 hours of symptoms. That 60 percent of pregnant women and children under 5 would receive intermittent preventive treatment and be under insecticide spayed bug nets. There would also be a surveillance system nationally to spot severe local outbreaks that would trigger spraying. One can see how this was a formula to spend a large amount of money. It is not so clear how this was an eradication rather than dealing with it strategy. Naturally it failed. Those that promoted the program blame inconsistent government funding and malaria drug treatment switching to more expensive drugs. Meanwhile 40,000 a year continue to die.

WHO’s man on the malaria scene, Spain’s Dr. Pedro Alonso. His scene however is Geneva, not Khartoum

Well my drink is empty. It is hard to blame Sudan for their malaria situation. Somewhere along the line, our experts lost there expertise and were only comfortable doing certain things. If Sudan pays the price, so be it. Come again next Monday for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

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Great Britain 1935, The Silver Jubilee of King George V

The 25th anniversary of a King’s reign is often a mixed event depending on the remaining health and vigor of the aging royal and assessments of the Reign. King George V was confident enough to go all out for his with a public holiday and much pomp and circumstance. Something went right because here we are still talking about it 87 years later. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

One part of the Jubilee that did no play out well is the stamp value of this stamp. One can imagine the young collector, having enjoyed the holiday and parades soaking this stamp off an envelope that came to his parent’s house in the mail thinking the value would skyrocket at the end of George V’s Reign. Well fast forward 87 years, and if the young collector was blessed enough to still be with us, he will find the value below face value once you adjust for all the inflation. Blame the hobby not the King.

Todays stamp is issue A98, a 1 and a half Pence stamp issued by Great Britain on May 7th, 1935. It was a four stamp issue and the last new stamp of George V’s Reign. According to the Scott Catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used.

A Silver Jubilee celebrates 25 years on the Throne. This was the first time Britain had celebrated it. There were Royal Processions and a service of Thanksgiving at Saint Paul’s Cathedral and the Royal Family waved from the balcony of Buckingham Palace. The appearances were so popular that the King took several more open cairrage rides through London for the rest of the month. On one of them, young Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret were along. The waving from the balcony in full regalia happened daily at the same time for a week.

“The Heart of the Empire”. A painting by Frank Salisbury, showing the Jubilee thanksgiving service at Saint Paul’s Cathedral.

Congratulations and thanks came back to the King from some unexpected places. A new Jubilee chicken dish flavored with curry powder and mayonnaise was popular. Funnily, the dish was updated for Queen Elizabeth II’s Golden Jubilee in 2002. The curry, no more India, was replaced by crème, parsley, and lime juice.

In far off Malaya, a businessman who had emigrated from China named Lin Lean Teng who had struck it rich, thanked George V by having a clock tower built in celebration of the Jubilee. It still stands.

The Jubilee Clocktower in Sungai, Patani modern day Malaysia, courtesy of Chinaman Lim Lean Teng

In any big party, there will be a few party poopers. Some on the left pointed out that the government paid a great deal for the celebration at a time when there was much unemployment. Well at least the counter souvenir below had a lite touch to it.

Hah

Well my drink is empty. Here’s hoping Queen Elizabeth makes it for he Diamond Jubilee this year. If the celebration goes on as long as the 1935 one that Elizabeth herself must remember, I will have to buy a new toasting bottle. Perhaps a toasting case. Come again next Monday for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

 

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Hungary 2001, Who knew there were 45 Hungarian furniture makers worthy of stamps?

As we consider 21st century stamps, I wonder if we have defined down too far who was deserving of a stamp issue. As we get into pretty obscure figures, there is more chance of learning new stories. The guy today even died under mysterious circumstances in a brothel. I hope I have not just given Hungary an idea who to put on their next 45 stamp issue. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

I was drawn to this stamp by the dull colors that defined Hungarian stamps after the cold war regime and the bright colored kid oriented farm out issues of that period to before the modern era where the look and feel of those issues has been recreated. Looking up the stamp however shows it part of a 45 stamp issue that came out over twelve years. Was Hungary that important in furniture? It isn’t now though nearby Germany and Poland are big exporters of furniture. China is far and away the largest producer.

Todays stamp is issue A1091, a 200 Florint stamp issued by Hungary in 2001. 7 stamps of the ultimate 45 came out that year. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used.

This stamp features a settee made by furniture maker Sebestyen Vogel in 1810. Mr. Vogel’s family came from Saxony in Germany but his father died when he was 6 and the next year his widowed mother remarried a guild belonging furniture wood joiner in Budapest. After working in his stepfather’s shop he got a valuable apprenticeship in Vienna. Remember this was the period of Hapsburg rule of both places. Returning to Budapest, Vogel had great ambitions that would see his furniture widely exported to places like Russia and Transylvania. He thought that the volume of Hungarian wood needed would expand new avenues of trade. With this as a premise, he petitioned the Kaiser to be allowed the use of duty free Royal warehouse located in many cities throughout the empire. After several years, Vogel was granted what he sought and his workshop employed over 130 furniture builders and was tied for the biggest furniture operation in the Empire, and the largest in Budapest.

The furniture style being made was not original. More ornate/gaudy versions of French styles called Egyptized. It was the time of Napoleon. The concern was also able to do copies of the German Biedermeier style and the British Hepplewhite style.

By the 1820s, the style of the furniture changed but not due to developing something unique. Rather the commissions coming in were for standardized simple designs appropriate for government and big business offices.

I can find no work of what became of Vogel’s workshop after his death in the Theresianstadt brothel in 1837 at age 58. Not much of the furniture survives although the Museum of Applied Arts in Budapest has a few pieces including the settee on the stamp.

From Vogel’s more ornate period, a fold out Biedermeier style writing desk.

 

Well my drink is empty. Come again next Monday for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

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Australia 1983, Can ANZCER become CANZUK, and should it?

This stamp commemorates an agreement to free up trade and travel restrictions between Australia and New Zealand. Understanding that I have just lost half of this week’s readers, 39 years later it might be fun to examine if ANZCER worked as intended and perhaps even if it should be built upon. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to this week’s offering from The Philatelist.

The picture below shows the charmingly black and white photo of the charmingly grey second string politicians that signed the agreement in 1983. By the time of the signing the terms of the agreement were already in effect and even this stamp was already issued. So for the stamp we get an 80s stylized emblem of a kiwi bird and I think a wombat no doubt hiding out together from the indigenous predators. You might think this a little dated, but the stamp was reissued in 2013 and what really proved dated was the 27 cent denomination.

New Zealander and British High Commissioner Laurie Francis(left) and then Australian Deputy Prime Minister Lionel Bowen signing the ANZCER agreement on March 28th, 1983

Todays stamp is issue A325, a 27 cent stamp issued by Australia on February 2nd, 1983. It was a single stamp issue. According to the Scott Catalog, the stamp is worth 50 cents (American) unused. The value of the 2013 reissue catapults to 70 cents unused.

Australia and New Zealand started out as separate, self-governing British colonies. The British Queen is still Head of State of both countries. In 1965, Australia and New Zealand signed their own NAFTA agreement cutting tariffs between the two countries 80%. There were fears in Australia about being flooded with cheap New Zealand dairy products, but the decision was made to take integration further by cutting tariffs to zero and allowing the free movement and right to work of people between the two countries. These provisions of the ANZCER agreement took full effect in 1990. Below are two graphs of each country’s exports to the other since the agreement. The graphs show the trend as up, up, and away but you should remember how much inflation there has been in the last 39 years. This 1983 stamp denomination should remind.

Australian exports to New Zealand since the agreement pre COVID
New Zealand exports to Australia since the agreement pre COVID

Being seen as a success, modern politicians of both left and right in both counties have spoken in generic terms of expanding the integration. However in 2015 a new group got started with the acronym CANZUK, that proposes a similar to ANZCER relationship that includes the United Kingdom and Canada. They point out that all the countries share the Queen as Head of State, similar Parliamentary and legal systems, similar standards of living and growth rates. There is sort of lead balloon aspect of no home rule empire reconstituted to CANZUK, but the right-wing party in Canada and only them have endorsed it. As an outsider American, I can see the bigger problem. The group lacks a popular emblem that adds an English bulldog and a Newfoundlander dog to the kiwi bird and the wombat hiding out together from the indigenous predators. Guys you have to learn to sell your ideas!

Well my drink is empty. Come again next Monday for a new story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

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USA 2006, Remembering Actress and Singer Judy Garland

A controversial aspect of modern stamp issues is issuing stamps not just of a country’s statesman, but cultural figures, even low culture. Some collectors avoid this by ending their collection at World War II. Not here at The Philatelist, where with Judy Garland we get to learn about soaring movies like Wizard of Oz, Meet me in Saint Louis, and A Star is Born filled with sad heart strings songs Garland later sang at swank dinner clubs on two continents. Part of the story also though is multiple marriages, affairs, abortions, breakdowns, drug abuse, tax leins, suicide attempts, and an early death. Maybe the traditional stamp collector has a point sticking with Queen Victoria and George Washington. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

In her teens, Metro Golden Mayer studios marketed Judy Garland as the girl next door going so far as having her diet and exercise to prevent curves from forming on her under five foot frame. Garland rebelled against that and after the success of The Wizard of Oz she was allowed to glamourize and appear in a successful string of musicals aimed at adults. A portrait from this period is perhaps how Garland would want to be remembered and what the United States Postal Service offered.

Todays stamp is issue A3117, a 39 cent stamp issued by the USA on June 10th, 2006.The date would have been her 84th birthday. It as a single stamp issue. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 1$ unused.

Judy Garland was born into a vaudeville performing musical family in 1922. Her birth name was Francis Ethel Gumm. Beginning at age two, she performed with her sisters as the Gumm Sisters with her mother accompanying on piano. Their manager thought that Gumm Sisters sounded too much like Glum Sisters, and Judy picked Garland after her manager said she was as pretty as a garland of flowers. The family relocated to southern California when she was thirteen and now Judy Garland was signed to MGM studios after being spotted singing Yiddish songs in a Vaudeville style revue. Her first movies were semi successful and often paired her with boy actor Mickey Rooney.

The Gumm, not glum, Sisters. Francis, er Judy Garland is at the bottom at age 13
Judy Garland early with Mickey Rooney

The biggest success of her life came at age 17 playing Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. It came at a troubled time in her personal life. Her first chosen affair ended badly after her intended eloped with Lana Turner. On her 18th birthday, she attempted to announce an engagement to her new musician fellow, but he was still married to Ethel Merman. The studio convinced Judy to wait a year until his divorce went through and also to abort his child to not complicate her film schedule. No surprise that marriage didn’t last.

Her success earned her more adult roles and she married Vincent Minnelli, her frequent movie director. By this point she was taking heavily barbiturates and morphine. When the first of her films failed at the box office, MGM let Garland go not willing to put up with the expensive delays that happened when you hired her. She had a mental breakdown and cut her neck and wrists in a suicide attempt. This story got out and Garland was highly embarrassed thinking that everyone was looking for her scars.

She did find a new success away in London performing musically live both her movie songs and her earlier vaudeville material at the London Palladium. This was quite lucrative but her now third manager husband was not making sure her taxes were being paid and her big payday was seized by the IRS. The success however lead to her last big movie musical, a remake of A Star is Born. The production of the movie was as troubled however as her late MGM work.

Just 10 years later, a publicity picture from her time at the London Palladium

After a brief American variety TV show that had Garland singing with Frank Sinatra and Robert Goullet was cancelled, to was shown opposite Bonanza, Garland was back to London trying to recreate her live success from years before. Her performances were hit or miss. She by now was on her 6th husband and her health was failing. She died at age 47 of a barbiturate overdose complicated by scerosis of the liver. The death was ruled accidental because though she had 10 barbiturate capsules in her system, her jar was still half full and she had another unopened jar with 100 capsules.

Judy Garlands 6th marriage, three months before her death in 1969. Thats not Tom Jones.

Well my drink is empty. Learning about this type of person with super high highs and deep lows takes it out of you. Come again next Monday for another new story that can be learned from stamp collecting.