Sunday Stamps #62

This week's theme: anything you wish. I had a stamp picked out for this but then a postcard from Russia arrived this week.

This was sent from a 6 year old boy who is learning a lot about geography, I am sure.  He or his parents found an old, circa 1982 postcard (from the copyright date).  And note the hammer and sickle CCCP (USSR) mark in the corner!  Thank you for not covering this with a stamp - it really takes me back.

Of course the other gem here is the triangular stamp of lace.  I like all sorts of textiles, especially quilting so it really brightened my date to receive this card.

Please join me with any stamp you wish - it doesn't have to be from Russia, or triangular, or of a textile :-).

Theme next week: Spring or flowers.

Viridian

Sepia Saturday March 17

This week's Sepia Saturday theme is scouting, semaphores, groups of young men, etc. I don't have scouts or semaphores. I have today a photograph of a music class at a boy's school in the American Midwest.

This is from the archives of the University where I work.  In the interest of my personal privacy I am not going to divulge my source.  That sounds so secretive doesn't it.

This photo was taken between 1905 and 1912, according to the archives.  They are not playing music at the moment but are posing for their class picture.  I'm glad my University is preserving its heritage and digitizing much of it.

Happy Sepia Saturday!

Andrea

Sunday Stamps #61

In which our theme today is famous women, women's rights, International Women's Day, etc.  My stamp for today comes from the US Postal Service website, and is of Anna Julia Cooper.

According to the USPS website, "With the 32nd stamp in its Black Heritage series, the U.S. Postal Service® honors Anna Julia Cooper, an educator, scholar, feminist, and activist who gave voice to the African–American community during the 19th and 20th centuries, from the end of slavery to the beginning of the Civil Rights movement." 

According to Wikipedia she was born a slave in 1858 in Raleigh North Carolina.  She became a teacher, a speaker, an author, and earned a Ph.D. from the Sorbonne in Paris.  "Cooper completed her first book, A Voice from the South: By A Woman from the South, published in 1892. It was her only published work, although she delivered many speeches calling for Civil rights and woman's rights.  Perhaps her most well-known volume of writing, A Voice from the South is widely viewed as one of the first articulations of Black feminism."

She died in 1964 at the age of 105.  I would have loved to have met her, if I could.

Part of her legacy (again, from Wikipedia)  is that pages 26 and 27 of every new United States passport contain the following quotation: "The cause of freedom is not the cause of a race or a sect, a party or a class - it is the cause of humankind, the very birthright of humanity." - Anna Julia Cooper

Theme next week: Anything you wish.
Viridian

Sepia Saturday 116; hair

The prompt for this week's Sepia Saturday is Hair, and shows a man with a fine full beard, American painter William Morris Hunt.  The photo made me think of the gentleman above, who you won't recognize, so let me explain.

Long time readers of this blog know I like all things geology and this man is geological.  He is John Wesley Powell, soldier, geologist, second Director of the US Geological Survey, and leader of the Powell expedition, which made the first known passage of the Grand Canyon by boat. According to Wikipedia, "He was director of the Bureau of Ethnology at the Smithsonian Institution, where he supported linguistic and sociological research and publications."  This was later is life, and when I think this photo was taken.

The first passage of the Grand Canyon was made in 1869. He later went back in 1871-1872, this time with photographer J.K. Hilliers (imagine the conditions! with glass plate negatives!). They made the river run again, this time chronicling the journey in photographs.

Rapid at Canyon of Lodore, Green River. Head of Hell's Half Mile. Jones, Hillers, and Dellenbaugh in the Emma Dean at foot of rapid. Dinosaur National Monument. Moffat County, Colorado. June 1871.

My source for these photos: US Geological Survey Photo Library.

Edited to add:  If you are a regualr user of Facebook, you can keep up with me at my Facebook page,
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Viridian61/347674418583948#!/pages/Viridian61/347674418583948?sk=wall.  Just click on the link and 'like' me!

Viridian

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