Games of the Olympiad: Sunday Stamps

I think the word "Olympiad" is sadly under-utilised these days.

The opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games are just around the corner: 5 days, 9 hours and 51 minutes away, to be precise. This week through Viridian's Sunday Stamps, we are very-fittingly sharing Olympic themed stamps.

I have chosen to share this lovely set of four stamps issued when my own home city hosted the Games of the XVIth Olympiad in 1956. The two coloured stamps present two fairly iconic images of Melbourne. The 1s stamp shows Melbourne's green and yellow trams, which still trundle through our streets today; and the 2s stamp shows the Yarra River, with Flinders Street station in the background. Both scenes have changed somewhat in the intervening 56 years, but both remain identifiable.

A large part of the reason cities choose to host the Games is to showcase the city's appeal to a worldwide audience, and I think the above two stamps would have been issued with that objective in mind. The last stamp in the series is a monochromatic red stamp that features Melbourne's Coat of Arms.

As always, I have once again learnt something through choosing stamps to share. This week I learnt that the City of Melbourne has a Latin motto: Vires Acquirit Eundo. It is apparently a line taken from Virgil's Aeneid and means "We gather strength as we go". I have said it before, and I'll say it again: I love a good Latin motto. And I think perhaps the pomp of a Latin motto sits well with the pomp and ceremony of the Olympic Games, so I will just leave it at that, for today.

Plura Scriptum Epistola

Hello Friends!
I am feeling the love at the moment, or more precisely my mailbox is feeling the love, and I just wanted to say thank-you to all the wonderful people who have sent me mail lately.

Postcard from Rohan, my semi-retired jungle-explorer friend (for real!)

This blog is not really supposed to be about the mail I receive, but the thing of it is, stamps and mail go hand in hand.

I love stamps, and I love post. Part of what makes stamps so special though, is that they adorn envelopes, which in turn promise to hold gems of  correspondence. Hand-written personal notes. Ah, the warm and fuzzy feelings I get when I receive hand-written personal notes in my mailbox!

And I certainly felt very warm and fuzzy the other night, when I went to my special "I heart post" post box and found the following amazing card waiting for me, from Carla at 365 Letters; not least of all because this was my first piece of post directly from the blogosphere.

There are so many things that I love about the card, that I feel it warrants a list:

1) Check out the awesome vintage-ness of the colours, the rounded corners and the image. BRILLIANT.

2) This came from Carla's holiday in June 1980... and she labellled the back of the card with that information when she bought it. Swoon. I love a bit of historical record-keeping.

3) THE STAMPS ARE AMAZING (and worthy of an exclamation in capitals). Click on the image above to check them out properly. They are worth it.

4) Did I mention it was the first piece of mail from a random fellow blogger?? 

Yep, I am feeling all warm and fuzzy just looking over it again. Thank-you Carla, you made my day (slash week)!

My parents are travelling at the moment, and they sent me the above lovely postcard from Austria featuring a Gustav Klimt painting... and the Wiener Werkstätte logo on the reverse, with a very nice stamp indeed. And they also sent me a Swedish map postcard. Thank-you parents! Three of my favourite things!

The thing is, with this blog, I have been thinking alot about why I like post so much. The correspondence part is definitely an element. And with that in mind, I recently joined the Letter Writers Alliance, because, I feel like with all this banging on about post that I do, I really should be sending some!

 

And my membership card arrived in the mail last week... and the envelope was enough to make me happy (I am a girl of simple pleasures, it is true).

I can tell you that I do plan on using my "Letter Writers Alliance" membership/superpower for good and not evil. And they have a Latin motto: Plura Scriptum Epistola. I did a Latin major at university, and the only thing I really remember is "Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus". Yep. That is the Hogwarts motto. Never disturb a sleeping dragon. In muggle idiom that would be, "let sleeping dogs lie".

Anyhow, I am all for Latin mottos, and I am very happy to be part of an organisation that has one. So, Plura Scriptum Epistola. I am going to take this on as a personal motto forthwith; and I shall, I shall, write more letters. They probably won't be in Latin.

Thankyou Laura!

Thankyou Sandra - a postcard AND stamps. Yippee!

Oh yes, my friends do know that I love a bit of royal kitsch!

Thankyou Sandy

Thankyou to all the lovely people that have sent me things in the post recently. I do so love post. xx

And last but not least, just in, vintage-post Post from Jaz!  Yay!