Category: Uncategorized

Categories
Uncategorized

Samoa 1985, Dividing up the spoils

When trading posts make the mistake of going beyond and interfering with the local system, it inevitably leads to costs exceeding any ephemeral trading profits. In Samoa New Zealand made a muck of it leaving it divided and much weaker. 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 does a good job explaining what attracted so many foreigner to such isolated little islands. Views of a temperate lush tropical paradise. Imagine how welcoming it would have looked to those on a long, scary, dangerous expedition.

Todays stamp is issue A133, a 56 Sene stamp issued by independent Samoa on February 15th, 1984. It was a four stamp issue in various denominations showing off the natural beauty. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 90 cents whether used or unused.

In the second half of the late 19th century Samoa was a united independent kingdom. The USA, Great Britain and Germany had worked out deals with the King for trade concessions  in ports they were building. The Germans went a little farther by establishing plantations of rubber, coffee, and cocoa. It is thought the natives were from a tribal group that had originated from ancient Taiwan. In the 1880s a rival chief began rising up against the Samoan Prince. One could see how the Royals falling from power as dangerous to the in effect trade deals and it was easy to portray the rebel chiefs forces as savages given their propensity to behead the corpses of their fallen adversaries. So area warships would often land parties of shipboard marines to fight with the forces of Prince Tanu. It should be remembered how small these landing parties were and they were not as immediately successful as would be imagined. It does not take many beheaded western Marines to decide that the situation was untenable. The British and Americans decided to divide the islands of Samoa with Germany under formal colony status. In a signal of how times were changing Samoan resident and British author Robert Louis Stevenson was on hand to mock the colonial authorities and romanticize the image of the natives.

At the beginning of World War I the trouble started anew. New Zealand landed a military force and displaced the German authorities. When military Governor Robert Logan discovered that the German owned plantations were still trading with German companies he had them seized. Taking them meant that the economy effectively shut down. To make matters worse, A New Zealand ship arrived bringing with it the Spanish flu. 20% of the natives of New Zealand administered Samoa died with Governor Logan blaming the filthy hygiene habits of the natives.

Governor Logan reading the proclamation taking Samoa in 1914. After Samoa he was pensioned off and retired to Scotland.

Meanwhile there were no Spanish flu deaths in American Samoa. American Governor John Martin Poyer quickly shut off all connections with the New Zealand part and made the quarantine more palatable by ending the prohibition on natives drinking alcohol. Soon natives on the New Zealand side were petitioning to join American Samoa and New Zealand had trouble with natives for the rest of their time there.

In 1962 only the New Zealand side of Samoa was given independence under the son of the last King. He was now officially Paramount Chief instead of King. The American side is still American and still separate. In 2002 then New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark formally apologized to Samoa for the mistakes of the colonial period. Though too long ago to be personally remembered, one can imagine the natives as one putting their hand out, palm up.

Well my drink is empty and I will pour another in memory of the shipboard Marines of the three relevant countries ordered ashore to fight someone else’s war and ended up dead and their bodies desecrated. What a waste. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

Categories
Uncategorized

Netherlands 1936, 300 hundred years of the Blessings of Minerva showing themselves at Utrecht

Europe is blessed with a long history of achievement. Not many places had advanced Universities in 1636AD. Utrecht in the Netherlands did. To recognize 300 years, instead of say showing an old building, why not call fourth the Roman Goddess of Wisdom Minerva, to show that the value of learning is even a longer and richer tradition. 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.

Minerva appears in the seals of many Universities, perhaps the most prominent one the University of Heidelberg in Germany. Usually she appears with her pet owl. The owl is missing here and also on the Seal of the Utrecht University itself. Another odd place that Minerva appears is on the money of the Confederate States of America. In Roman times, Minerva had a secondary role as a Patron of strategic defensive warfare, something the the Confederacy was deeply involved in.

Todays stamp is issue A35, a 6 cent stamp issued by the Netherlands on May 15th, 1936. It was a two stamp issue in different denominations. According to the Scott Catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used.

At it’s founding, Utrecht was the third university in the Netherlands. It was hoped that the University would give the city more stability, the Rhone River was constantly shifting and threatening flooding. The University started small with just a few dozen students and offered Philosophy training to all plus advanced teaching in Theology, Medicine, and the Law. Very unusually for the time, Utrecht admitted a female student prominent young artist Anna Maria van Schurman. In Lecture Halls she sat behind a screen so she could not be seen by other male students.

Around 1850, Utrecht was able to achieve some prominence  in the field of the hard sciences. The school innovated the use of laboratories for learning. By then the leaders were all male, but who knows what went on behind the screens.

Today the Utrecht University has 31,000 students. According to the Shanghai Ranking, it is the best University in the Netherlands, the 13th best in Europe, and the 49th best in the world. I wonder how Minerva would feel that such world rankings now emanate from Shanghai.

Well my drink is empty. There is still some time to decide, but I wonder how the Netherlands will remember 400 years of Utrecht in 2036. I hope they don’t just print up the Shanghai Rankings on a stamp. Yes more modern and I suppose it is important where young Chinese decide to apply or not apply. Somewhere though, we seem to have lost some of the majesty. Come again tomorrow for another story to be learned from stamp collecting.

Categories
Uncategorized

France 1961, Remembering when form was broken down into cubes and then Orphists splashed it with color

Around the start of the twentieth century Paris was the center of the art world. Though many in Paris had traveled from elsewhere to be a part of it. First color was reimagined and then form itself was broken down to allow multiple perspectives within one work and then as war was darkening prospects, bright color was added by Orphist to break with a dark reality. All in 20 years in one city, well worth remembering. 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.

Todays stamp shows the painting “The Fourteenth of July” by French artist Roger de la Fresnaye. July 14 is Bastille Day in France. Given the politics of the avant-garde of the art world, it is a little surprising that patriotic themes were so common among the output. Of course the subjects are being treated to more than a grain or two of salt, but to modern eyes it is striking how much mind space this stuff occupied.

Todays stamp is issue A373, a 1 Franc stamp issued by France on November 10th, 1961. There was a long issue of oversize painting stamps in this format from the early sixties through the mid 1970s. Some of the first stamp issues displayed the most avant-garde paintings. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth $1.90 used.

Roger de la Fresnaye was born into a noble family from Falaise in Normandy. He received art training at many of the top Paris art school. As he was coming of age more established artists like Pablo Picasso and  Georges Braque were breaking down form into little cubes within their paintings. This allowed many paintings within a painting and was thought to be an allegory of the industrial revolution where people labor and one particular aspect of a product with no access to the overall diagram of what is being accomplished.

Into this comes younger man Roger de la Fresnaye. The upcoming war was more personally threatening to him and he became attracted to a new movement within cubism called Orphism. This dispensed with the small cubes forming a larger form and instead add a great deal of bright colors in order to portray a more infinite universe. In this way perhaps adding a purpose outcome to the patriotism which was proving so flawed.

Joan of Ark circa 1912. Viewing her a little differently than how she was presented to French school children

One can see the conflicting attitudes within Fresnaye when the war came in 1914. He enlisted in the French Army as his father had done. While serving  he contracted tuberculosis and was released by the Army. Fresnaye late paintings took on a more linear style but he gave up painting in 1922 before dying at age 40 in 1925. One of his paintings sold in 2017 for 2,370,500 Euros.

Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast the French postage stamp designors from this era. Even with the oversized paper, it was no small feat transfering the painting images properly to a small scale. Come again tomorrow when there will be another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

Categories
Uncategorized

South West Africa, With long distances, we should find a way to keep in touch

This stamp celebrates 100 years since the first post office. The stamp hints though at an earlier history, when Missionary developed a regular communication to look out for each other. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip if your adult beverage and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

In keeping with the 100 year post office theme, the stamp dates the mail carrying camel crossing the Kalahari desert to 1904. By then there was a long history of it. Spread out colonial outposts had to stay in touch even if the technology did not yet make it easy. Think of how treacherous these necessary and regularly scheduled treks were.

Todays stamp is issue A128, a 50 Cent stamp issued by South West Africa, on July 7th, 1988. It was from the last days of the South African administration before the area became Namibia. It was a four stamp issue in various denominations mistakingly dating the start of the postal service to the construction of the first village post offices during the German period of the area. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth $1.25 used.

The coast of South West Africa was first spotted by the Portuguese at a time when it was very sparsely populated by nomads who the British called Bushmen and the Germans called Hottentots. Nam seems to be the current boring term for them. The British were first with a permanent settlement on the coast at Walvis Bay and the Germans followed further south at Luderitz. The postal service on camel dates to 1814 and was a regular messenger service between Christian Missionary camps in the interior. Again there was British and Germans involved with Congregationalists of the London Missionary Society and German Lutherans of the Rhenish Missionary Society.

South West Africa began to change with the arrival of a former tobacco trading German named Adolf Luderitz. He had worked in America and Mexico in failed tobacco ventures. Back in Germany, he married a rich heiress and was ready anew to seek his fortune. He was very concerned at the number of young Germans that were setting out to America as he had. He felt that they were loosing his Germanness. He thought an area of just Germans in Africa could be a better outlet for Germans seeking a fresh start.  The newly united Germany was very weary of African commitments but Bismarck was convinced to grant Luderitz’s area German protection. Luderitz had expanded his area of control by trading rifles for land with the African tribes. With official German support, a deal was struck that gave South West Africa a strip of land called the Caprivi strip that connected the colony to the Zambezi River and by extension to German colonies in east Africa. Keeping connections being so important so far from home. Adolf Luderitz desperately sought to find the mineral wealth that might justify all the work he put in. During one of his missions his boat on the Orange River was lost showing how treacherous it all was.  As he was checking in nightly, it is at least known what day he was lost. The Hottentot chief who took the rifles for the land later claimed he did not understand the magnitude of the land he was giving up. He then filed a complaint with the Germans demanding money.

Adolf Luderitz

Namibia Post Offices still function though the camels have been retired. A private company NamPost took charge of the postal system in 1992 and claims to have 135 post offices and 743 employees. The Caprivi strip still officially belongs to Namibia though it attempted to break away under the African name Itenge around the year 2000. Perhaps a private profit seeking postal service is not ideal to keep solid connections. The town in Namibia retains Luderitz’s name post independence as it attracts tourists but many of the streets named for him in German cities are being renamed one by one.

Though lacking camels, NamPost delivers more.

Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast the adventurers who travel far whether for profit or God. It sure beats standing around with your hand out. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting

Categories
Uncategorized

Tristan da Cunha 1987, Remembering castaways hunting sea Elephants for food on Inaccessible Island

You don’t usually see the actual animal being taken down on the rare hunting stamp. When it is the survivors of a shipwreck on an unoccupied island and the prey is a 10 foot tall, 7000 pound sea elephant and the picture is recreated from the account in a survivor’s journal, you are getting a fairly evocative stamp. 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.

Tristan da Cunha was clearly having a good time telling the stories of their shipwrecks through postage stamps. Well there often is a good story to be learned from stamp collecting.  There were 9 stamps out over a three year period telling the story of a different ship wreck.

Todays stamp is issue A60, an 11 Penny stamp issued Issued by Tristan da Cunha, a Dependency of the British Overseas Territory of Saint Helena on April 2nd, 1987. The 1987 tranche of the issue included 3 stamps of various denominations. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 55 cents whether used or unused.

Tristan da Cunha is a small volcanic island in the South Atlantic lying on the old east India trade route. It has a population of about 300 many of whom are descendants of the survivors of log ago shipwrecks. There are several completely unoccupied islands nearby including Inaccessible Island that the survivors of the Blenden Hall found themselves marooned on in 1821 after the ship hit underwater rocks.

The Blenden Hall was built in 1811 as a 450 ton armed merchantmen with a crew of 28. In 1813 she set off on a run to Bermuda with three other merchantmen ships and a Royal Navy frigate as this was during the Napoleonic Wars. After a night of of bad weather the cargo ships lost sight of their escort. Soon however they found the French frigate Clorinde. All four ships were taken and their crews were put aboard the merchantman Lusitania and allowed to sail back to England. The French than sank two other ships but in their rush to depart they left Blenden Hall adrift. A British packet ship named Eliza found the ship and put a prize crew of 10 to sail it back to England. Bad weather again struck and Blendon Hall lost sight of Eliza. Then HMS Challenger, a brig, spotted Blendon Hall  and placed it’s own prize crew on it for it’s return to Plymouth. Coincidentally the ship and it’s formally prisoner crew arrived at Plymouth the same day. Ashore there was a court case  between the Eliza crew and the Challenger crew over the prize. The court decided with the Eliza crew as they were on the ship first and the Challenger crewmen were unnecessary to get the ship back to port.

In 1814 the ship changed hands and began to be employed in India trade. In 1821 it was in the south Atlantic ocean making for Bombay with a crew of 24 and carrying 28 passengers including 5 women and three children. The ship struck rocks off Inaccessible Island and two of the ships sailors drowned swimming ashore. The group was stuck on the island for four months. A makeshift raft was constructed and five men set out for Tristan. They were never heard from again. A second raft was constructed and three men this time made it to Tristan. Tristan then sent out two ships to rescue the remainder. After two more months on Tristan a British sloop arrived that was willing to take the survivors to Cape Town. A man and a women from the Blenden Hall  elected to stay on Tristan.

The cottage the survivors were allowed to use on Tristan after their rescue

While on Inaccessible Island, the group ate fish, bird’s eggs and seal meat. Sea Elephants are the largest form of seal. They are still native to the South Atlantic and not endangered. Their genus was not established until several years after the events of 1821 so one can imagine the survivors had no idea what these giant animals were.

Well my drink is empty and I will pour a few more for the survivors, the fallen, and of course the rescuers of the Blenden Hall and also the sea elephants. Come again on Monday when there will be another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

 

Categories
Uncategorized

Germany 2011, Remembering Loriot for Wum the talking dog and yodeling diplomas

The idea of putting dignified people in absurd situations and watching them getting flustered is often comic gold. Perhaps less so now as we gradually run out of the dignified. 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.

Talking of this stamp issue is dangerous. The issue appeared shortly before cartoonist Loriot died in 2011. In 2012, his daughter sued those on the internet displaying images of the German stamps. She won, and got a large settlement from the German language Wikipedia. I think I am okay with my wife having taken a picture of a stamp in my personal collection. If not Ms. von Bulow, let me know and I will pull the article down. If the estate didn’t want there to be a series of stamps honoring your late father however, surely the time to act was before they came out.

Todays stamp is issue SP475, a 45 Euro cents +20 cent semi postal stamp issued by Germany on January 3rd, 2011. It was a four stamp issue in various denominations. Those dignified readers out there will be happy to know that I don’t have the one with the cartoon depiction of two naked men in a bathtub. According to the Scott Catalog, the stamp is worth $1.90 whether used or unused.

Vicco von Bulow was born into an aristocratic Prussian family in 1923. After wartime service and university training in graphic design, no not yodeling but really not that far off, he began work as a cartoonist in 1950. His work was released under the name Loriot. This is based on the French word for the oriole bird as it appears on von Bulow’s family crest.

His greatest success came in the 1970s when he created the character of Wum, a talking dog who becomes the mascot of a German protest organization. Wum was voiced by Loriot himself when he got a radio show. Wum/Loriot had a German pop hit in 1972 with the dog singing “I wish I had a little kitty cat” in a half sung/half spoken style called Spechgesang. In 1976 the characters got a German television show that went back and forth between skits acted by Loriot and cartoons drawn by him. among the more famous skits were the protest organization demanding equal treatment of man and women. even if means suckling babies temporarily lose weight. Cue the Cartoon a a baby trying to suckle a man. Another features a bored housewife goes back to an iffly credentialled college to get a diploma in yodeling, convinced that such a waste of time credential will change her lot in life.

You can probably gather this type of thing is not my cup of tea. To each his own. These people who pretend to mock the comfortable when they are really on the inside just protecting them from the notion that it is their charge is to maintain standards in order to prevent the sinking into depravity.

Well my drink is empty and so I will have to wait until tomorrow when there will be another story to be learned from stamp collecting.

Categories
Uncategorized

New Zealand 1994, Fonzie jumped the shark, and now stamps get holograms

Fonzie was supposed to be a cool character on 70s tv. He rode a motorcycle and wore a leather jacket. To emphasize how cool he was, there would be motorcycle jumps in the 70s style of Eival Kinevil. In a late season they had Fonzie jump a shark while water skiing. The country reacted strongly that Fonzie was no longer cool but had made himself silly. This matches putting holograms on stamps as New Zealand did in 1994. 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

My stamp is unused so I get to see the hologram in all its glory. You can’t because how could the 3 dimensional effect be photographed. If the stamp was mailed, the cancellation might well blot out the hologram. Further when the collector soaks the used stamp off the envelope, the hologram will be damaged. All a long way of saying that the designers were probably thinking more about wowing each other that interesting the stamp collector. Notice also that the moon landing anniversary being recognized has nothing to do with New Zealand.

Todays stamp is issue A388, a $1.50 stamp issued by New Zealand on July 20th, 1994. It was a single stamp issue remembering the first moon landing by the USA 25 years earlier. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth $2.25 unused.

Holograms were invented in 1960 as a way for a two dimensional image to have a three dimensional effect. A laser beam is split before projecting an image onto film so the image comes from two perspectives. This is indeed how it was done on the first stamps but now the effect can be achieved by computer software more recently. Holograms are very useful in securing currency and credit cards. If stamps required a small one in the corner to avoid fakes, my objections would drop away.

How a hologram is achieved

Austria was first with a stamp with a holographic image in 1988. Over 80 countries have now issued over 450 stamps with holograms. Most of the images are outer space themed. The fad seems to have peaked around the millennium. The stamps are obviously more expensive to print so usually show up on a special issues related to a stamp show. For example, the denomination on this stamp at $1.50 was over three times the going rate to mail a letter in New Zealand at the time, which was 45 cents.

Well my drink is empty and sorry if my take on this stuff annoyed you. Some collectors are quite excited about new technology being adopted to postage stamps. If I thought  the hobby would be saved by involving children I might agree. A big push for kids to collect occurred around World War II. The biggest effect of this is many high end collectors use that war as a cut off date for their collections. It is my belief that the hobbies’ best chance is educated, well travelled mature men who find themselves under utilized by economic and family dislocations. These days many such people are of mixed background so there are often multiple places for whom they feel an affinity. My guess the best way to attract them to the hobby is to assume they are serious people. Come again tomorrow when there will be another story to be learned from stamp collecting.

Categories
Uncategorized

Russia 1993, Watch out questors, Baba Yaga eats children or maybe she helps

Russia has a long tradition of epics aimed at children that centers on noble quests ordered by the Czar where the young hero is challenged by evil spirits. A while back we did a 1914 stamp featuring questor Ilya Muromets, see https://the-philatelist.com/2020/01/31/russia-1914-it-is-again-time-for-young-would-be-ilyas-to-defeat-the-german-idolishche/   . Here is a stamp from a much later era that features one of the evil or at least challenging spirits that test the questor in many Russian children’s stories, Baba Yaga. 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 more modern stamp offers bright colors and well done drawing. However Baba Yaga  has been modernized and loses a little of the idea of her challenge. The 1914 stamp was different. A real Czar was featuring an old epic to inspire his countryman on the near hopeless on all sides quest of fighting World War I. This stamp is just saying Russia had some neat characters for kids, didn’t we?

Todays stamp is issue A2924, a 10 Ruble stamp issued by Russia on February 25th, 1993. This came out as a strip of five stamps featuring modernized versions of children’s book characters. According to the Scott catalog, the strip of five stamps is worth 75 cents cancelled to order. That the catalog only bothers to list the five stamp strip together shows how little the issue was used for mailing letters. If we extrapolate the value of this single stamp at 15 cents, that makes it the least valueable stamp I have written about here and I have written over 700 articles, many on  bulk postage stamps.

Baba Yaga appears in Russian epics as early as 1755. Some think she goes back even farther in Finnish legend. Early Russian depictions often have her dressed in a Finnish style. She is an old woman with bony chicken legs and carries as weapons kitchen implements. Her desire is weed out the heroes unworthy of the quest they are on whom she then eats. If the questor passes her tests, she will give tools that will help him later.

Questor Ivan Bilibin faces off against Baba Yaga. She gives him a horn that he blows to call birds that save him as she prepares to eat him. This is from 1911.

These stories usually have some young male hero visit the Czar. He finds the Czar unhappy because he lacks something he needs. Perhaps the Czar is beset by lame horses or wives that lack for beauty, or the ever present shortage of gold. The Czar is inspired by his young visitor and gives him a challenge of traveling far to bring the Czar back what he needs. If the young hero succeeds, the Czar will make all his dreams come true.

Baba Yaga has been around a while and occasionally shows up in strange places. She is a recurring character in the “Hellboy” series of comic books. In the first John Wick movie, when the title character faces off against Russian bad guys, they refer to him as their Baba Yaga, There is also a version of her that appears in Japanese epics where she is known as Yama uba.

Well my drink is empty and this story has got me thinking the the creators of the questing game “Dungeons and Dragons” got more than a little inspiration from old Russia. Come again on Monday when there will be another story to be learned from stamp collecting.

 

Categories
Uncategorized

Mexico 1974, Remembering when the underdogs became overdogs

What is a country to do when the other political side comes to power after much time in opposition and proves to be just as bad as who they replaced. Perhaps the healthiest thing to do is admit it, and in Mexico after the 1910 revolution that is what Mexican author Mariano Azuela did with his novel, “Los de Abajo” which means the underdogs. 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 is from the period around their Olympics when there was an optimism that the country was finally emerging as an important place. Part of that emerging is presenting figures in the local arts that a wider audience doesn’t know but perhaps should. Mr. Azuela main literary works center around the Mexican civil war of the 1910s that he was a part of. Notice on the stamp he is displayed as a distinguished older gentleman rather than a younger hothead. By the 1970s, it was less important what he wrote but instead the fact that one of us was indeed writing.

Todays stamp is issue A301, a 40 Centavo stamp issued by Mexico on April 26th, 1974. It was a single stamp issue honoring author and physician Mariano Azuela a little late for his birth century the previous year. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used.

Mariano Azuela was born the son of a successful rancher in Lagos de Moreno. He studied religion and  local history under Father Augustin Riviera,( and married the Priest’s niece). He then shifted his studies to medicine. Mexico was nearing the end of the long rule of Porfirio Diaz and like most of the young and educated, he opposed Diaz. After the 1910 revolution the other side briefly came into power and Azuela  served as a public health official. The country was breaking down into a long civil war and Azuela joined Pancho Villa’s force as a medic.

Mexican President Porfirio Diaz

It was from this experience that Azuela wrote his most important novel “The Underdogs”. The lead character Macias has a misunderstanding with a wealthy landowner and Diaz’s Federales police come to arrest him. Not finding him they cruelly kill his beloved dog Dove. Now on the run, Macias builds a group of fellow angry misfits that have various grudges against the government. The interesting part is that the group becomes if anything more cruel than the hated dictator. Every night Macias changes what they are fighting for. One day it is to recreate the Aztec empire and the next it is to cruelly avenge some past slight. Meanwhile the long suffering Mexican peasants are preyed upon by both sides. The end of the book has Macias try to go home having lost most of his misfits only to be hunted down by his enemies for one final? gunfight. The Civil War in Mexico lasted 10 years and as in the book all the figures are left with a foul smell.

The book became famous and was soon translated and sold widely in the USA. The book influenced many later generations of left political Hispanic writers and is still an object of study in Hispanic studies departments.

Well my drink is empty and I am impressed that Mexico proved sophisticated enough to feature an author who told the real story instead of some lesser piece of glossing over. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

Categories
Uncategorized

New Zealand 2016, Remembrance of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force

This article is going to have me come across as an aging bitter old ass. Guilty x 4. Here we have a stamp celebrating an organization with Royal patronage whose mission is remembering the bravery and sacrifice  of especially the New Zealand Expeditionary Force a 100 years later. Noble stuff, but it leaves me with sadness at the thought that none of the western countries are united enough to do that again. The connection to who we are and where we come from is just too frayed. In the places we live, we are now the minority, the aging vestige. A big project of this organization is restoring gravestones, so at least there are monuments to what we were. How many are left who even care? 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.

Before we get to that, a note on the visuals of this stamp. At first glance, and second and third, I thought this was a South African stamp, remembering New Zealanders that fought in the Boer Wars. There were some. RSA was how South Africa labeled the stamps. 100 years after the Boer War puts you in the time of the new South Africa, but once in a while they forget Mandela and topicals for a moment and put out a proper Commonwealth issue. This mistake proves that the designer of this stamp is himself not a collector.

Todays stamp is issue A653, a 80 cent stamp issued by New Zealand on February 3rd, 2016. It was a four stamp issue honouring the 100th anniversary of the Remembrances and Services Association. According to the Scott Catalog, the stamp is worth $1.10.

In 1914, the New Zealand Army was mostly a part time Territorial reserve force with no capabilities to project force beyond New Zealand. Similar to the situation today. The declaration of war by the British Empire immediately saw New Zealand commit to raising two brigades and sending them wherever the British Empire saw fit to use them. A ship convoy taking them and Australians was indeed diverted to Egypt where they camped in their warm European woolen uniforms in sight of the pyramids. Seeking a soft underbelly of Europe they landed in the Dardanelles  hoping to make quick work of the Ottomans. Instead they faced a grueling and unsuccessful campaign. New Zealand ultimately sent a force of over 100,000 at a time when the country had only one million. Maori were excluded from the draft and only a few volunteered. The losses to New Zealand were catastrophic. Of the 100,000 sent 16,000 died and 41,000 were injured.

I mentioned that the Maori did less than their part 100 years ago. Indeed there was civil unrest at the prospect of it. New Zealand is now 5 million people but about 30 percent Maori and Pacific Islander and another 15 percent Asian. In the largest city, Auckland, people of any brand of European heritage are a minority. What kind of expeditionary force could New Zealand raise today. When I was in Auckland a few years ago I visited the ANZAC Memorial which is located in a hilly park. Preparing to enter, I saw an Asian jogger use an unknown soldiers monument to adjust his sneaker before going back down the hill. Inside the displays had been reoriented to talk up the few Maori that did serve and room had been converted where a film was shown of a modern Maori girl who is there to tell you how much she is owed. Hint what ever number you have in mind is not enough. An attack in a city called Christchurch, which seem only filled with mosques teaming with people on a work day resulted in the European heritage PM and much of the surprisingly feminized police force wearing Moslem religious attire. The image of her so attired was then broadcast off of the Burj Khalifa highrise in Dubai. The nation bowed down, and not to God.

At what cost, and for how long?

I hope you don’t interpret this as an attack on New Zealand. The same thing is happening all over the world and seems only to be accelerating. I am not sure anything can even be done anymore about it. Speaking for myself and only myself, I don’t like it.

Well my drink is empty. Hint, I am going to refill it. Come again on Monday when there will be a new story that can be learned from stamp collecting.