Gulo gulo

The theme this week for Sunday Stamps is mammals and Viridian has used a lovely stamp from China of elephants. I have seen lots of elephants - not Asian ones of course but African ones, because I live in Africa. But the stamps I have chosen are of an animal I will probably never see in real life because it is so rare and found only in the far North, the mysterious cold North. This animal is the Wolverine. It's Latin binomial is Gulo gulo which translates to glutton. The wolverine is a fierce killer, a poacher of the prey of others and a scavenger of carrion who likes to cache it's food under the snow and return later - hence it's reputation as a big eater. Anna wrote on her postcard that they are called the 'demon of the taiga'.

These two stamps come from a set of 4 released by Russia in 2004. This is what the whole set looks like:

Check out Sunday Stamps to see more. Joy has a fabulous selection of South African stamps, Danut has bears from Vietnam and there is a lot more.

Snow Soft

I received this postcard from Kate in Russia for the February 50 Round Robin. It was in my favourites so I am very happy to have received it. Naturally I picked it because of the adorable sleeping cats ^_^

The artist is Anna Petrova and she appears to have quite a few postcards, all in this charming and whimsical style.

On the back of the card it says 'снежные-нежные' which according to Google translates as 'Snow-Soft'.

A Chamber Opera

I received this beautiful postcard from Russia when I took part in the Alphabetical tag on the Postcrossing Forum. Have you ever taken part in a tag? It can be lots of fun! The lovely person who tagged me checked my favourites ^_^

This is actually a poster, circa 1885 for a chamber opera. What is a chamber opera? I had no idea myself so I asked wikipedia who tells me:

Chamber opera is a designation for operas written to be performed with a chamber ensemble rather than a full orchestra.

The term and form were invented by Benjamin Britten in the 1940s, when the English Opera Group needed works that could easily be taken on tour and performed in a variety of small performance spaces.

So now I know! However I cannot imagine the story of Puss in Boots performed as an opera, even a small one.

Oddly enough I was just reading about Benjamin Britten the other day because he and WH Auden collaborated on an opera using the words of Auden's poem 'Stop all the clocks'. I happened to be looking it up because I took part in Emilie's 'Adopt Penguin Books Postcards' project. It will be interesting to see how long the cards take to travel back to the USA.

This was a post for Postcard Friendship Friday at "The Best Hearts are Crunchy". Check out the other participants to see more lovely postcards!

A Rebirth

More than 2000 km south east of Moscow, where the Irtysh and Om rivers meet, is the amazing and beautiful city of Omsk. When Tanya contacted me about a trade I was astonished at the number of beautiful postcards she had and it was difficult to choose only three. However this postcard was definitely my first choice.

This is the info on the back of the card:

Omsk. The rebirth of the Uspensky Cathedral. 2007. It was built in 1891-1898. The Cathedral was demolished in 1935. Is in 2007 recovered.

I wondered why such a beautiful building was destroyed. Wikipedia added the info that it was 'blown up' but not why. In an article at the OmskTime website I found this (it is tranlated from Russian so please excuse Google ^_~):

The Cathedral is a unique historical monument, as during the Civil War, he was the main cathedral of White Russia, the Bolsheviks were therefore considered it their duty to destroy this holy Orthodox Russian people, as happened in 1935. Now the restoration of the cathedral was an act of repentance.

So only 37 years after completion the Cathedral was destroyed and then 72 years later it is rebuilt to the original design. Amazing! Despite everything that humans do to each other, we resiliently wait until we can rebuild.

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Reindeer Sledding

I cannot even begin to express how much I love this card. It is one of my favourites of all. When I was small one of my favourite fairy tales was the 'The Snow Queen' by Hans Christian Andersen and the part I loved the best was when Gerda travels to Lapland with a Reindeer as her companion. I have loved Reindeer and the North ever since then.

This was sent to me by Anna from Russia via the Animals RR.

Anna is always thoughtful in her choice of stamps. These feature Reindeer, a Snow Leopard and a Bear!

Red Square after Rain

A gorgeous shot of some of the buildings of Red Square reflected in a sheet of water. The square and the Kremlin were recognised by UNESCO as World Heritage sites in 1990. There are many truly beautiful buildings in the world but surely St Basil's is the most wonderful! I love it.