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'.

Old Tom Gin

This is an advertisement poster circa 1880 for Cordial Old Tom Gin distilled by Boord & Son of London and apparently distributed in the USA by Du Vivier & Co of New York.

Gin is an alcoholic beverage whose flavour comes primarily from Juniper berries. The name 'Gin' comes from either the French 'genièvre' or the Dutch 'jenever' both of which mean Juniper. There have apparently been various forms of gin over the years and Old Tom Gin was a slightly sweetened version that was popular in the 1700's in England (so long before this advert). It was a cloudy drink back then and only became the clear liquid known today when distillation methods improved.

I love this postcard but remember dogs and cats should never drink alcohol! (And nor should humans in my opinion.)

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!

New Friends

I received this lovely postcard today from Annett in Munich who found my address on lettermo.com.

Annett writes that the main photo for this card is of the Christmas market taking place in Marienplatz, which is right in the city centre. Doesn't it look wonderful with all the lights and the gorgeous Christmas tree? That magnificent building is the New Town Hall which was built between 1867 and 1908 and contains 400 rooms! They really do things big!

The other three smaller pictures were also taken in winter and show the Chinesischer Turm (Chinese Tower in English) which is actually a famous beer garden; the Friedensengel (Angel of Peace in English) located in Maximilian Park and the Theatinerkirche (Theatine Church of St. Cajetan in English) built between 1663 and 1690.

I have received two other pieces of mail through lettermo - one from Tish in the USA and one from Linzé who lives in Pretoria! I haven't received any mail from another South African for ages, even my own family! My attempts to convince them to send me postcards fail because they tell me they will be back from their holiday before the postcard arrives!

So A Month of Letters is over. I did not post any letters because I had enough postcards to write and I managed to post 101 of them! I am pretty pleased with myself ^_~

A Window With a View

Right after I started being active on Postcrossing again in September last year I received a message from a wonderful girl (Ptawka) who offered to send me a card of hers that I had favourited. This is the card. It got a bit smudged by postal ink but I think that adds to the charm. Ptawka says she has a grey cat who never goes out because there are many stray dogs in Kiev so he loves to watch the birds from the windowsill. The picture, the stamps she used and her lovely message have made this one of my favourite received cards.

Mountain Lion

This postcard is from Susan in the USA, someone I love to swap with because she is just so considerate and also she loves South Africa. I love the card mostly because I love cats of all sorts but also because it reminds me of a poem by DH Lawrence which was one of my favourites in my teens.

The Mountain Lion
D.H. Lawrence (1885 -1930)

Climbing through the January snow, into the Lobo canyon
Dark grow the spruce-trees, blue is the balsam, water sounds
still unfrozen, and the trail is still evident.

Men!
Two men!
Men! The only animal in the world to fear!

They hesitate.
We hesitate.
They have a gun.
We have no gun.

Then we all advance, to meet.

Two Mexicans, strangers, emerging out of the dark and snow
and inwardness of the Lobo valley.
What are you doing here on this vanishing trail'?

What is he carrying?
Something yellow.
A deer?

Que tiene, amigo?
Leon -
He smiles, foolishly, as if he were caught doing wrong.
And we smile, foolishly, as if we didn't know.
He is quite gentle and dark-faced.

It is a mountain lion,
A long, long slim cat, yellow like a lioness.
Dead.
He trapped her this morning, he says, smiling foolishly.

Lift up her face,
Her round, bright face, bright as frost.
Her round, fine-fashioned head, with two dead ears;
And stripes in the brilliant frost of her face, sharp, fine dark rays,
Dark, keen, fine eyes in the brilliant frost of her face.
Beautiful dead eyes.

Hermoso es!

They go out towards the open;
We go on into the gloom of Lobo.
And above the trees I found her lair,
A hole in the blood-orange brilliant rocks that stick up, a little cave,
And bones, and twigs, and a perilous ascent.

So, she will never leap up that way again, with the yellow
flash of a mountain lion's long shoot!
And her bright striped frost-face will never watch any more,
out of the shadow of the cave in the blood-orange rock,
Above the trees of the Lobo dark valley-mouth!

Instead, I look out.
And out to the dim of the desert, like a dream, never real;
To the snow of the Sangre de Cristo mountains, the ice of
the mountains of Picoris,
And near across at the opposite steep of snow, green trees
motionless standing in snow, like a Christmas toy.

And I think in this empty world there was room for me and
a mountain lion.
And I think in the world beyond, how easily we might spare
a million or two of humans
And never miss them.
Yet what a gap in the world, the missing white frost-face of
that slim yellow mountain lion!

Roztocze

More beauty. This is Roztocze, a range of hills in Poland and Ukraine threaded through with a river which I think is the Wieprz River. Part of the range in Poland is a National Park. There are many mammal species living there (all my favourites) as well as more than 190 species of bird as well as adorable little Polish ponies!

There are many reasons I love this card. First the white border; most South African postcards have white borders and I find them very attractive. Then the nice font; a quick way to ruin a good card is to use an inappropriate or ugly font. Thirdly the picture is just gorgeous for many reasons. Lastly it came from Poland, which must be one of my favourite European countries!