Postage Stamp Mosaics

Source: Chinanews
On 30 August 2005, Hong Kong Post unveiled a gigantic stamp mosaic to commemorate the 10th Anniversary of the 'Post Office Trading Fund.'The mural portrays Victoria Harbor and the Hong Kong skyline. Over 1000 staff members of Hong Kong Post helped create the mosaic.

Source: Hong Kong Post
The mural contains over 69,000 used postage stamps. The Guiness Book of World Records has recently recognized it as the largest stamp mosaic in the world. It measures 6.45 meters [21 feet] wide and 3.97 [13 feet] meters high.

I wondered what other stamp mosaics may be on the web, and I found this photo gallery at the National Postal Museum. I have selected two images from this gallery for Ghost Town Orange. They feature my favorite postage stamp topic: the Statue of Liberty:

After me Mattheus was tortured; he named his house and the street in which we live, and said it was in a gate; however, I am of the opinion that there are no longer any gates on that street. Hence, move away altogether, if you have not done so yet; for I think the lord will find his way there. Let therefore no one who stands in any danger go into the house. He also named R. T.'s house, and the street where F. V. St. lives. Do herein immediately the best you can. He is very sorry for it.
--from the second letter of Christian Langedul to his wife, written while he was in prison in Antwerp, 12 August 1567

[The Bloody Theater; or Martyrs Mirror of the Defenseless Christians, compiled by Thieleman J. van Braght, 1660.]

Hitmap changed location

...and doesn't recognize Ghost Town Orange, so the Hitmap has been removed from the template.

Fortunately, Sitemeter can show a map of the most recent visitors too.
The map is a fairly good representation of the English-speaking Web--prosperous parts of the world, with more access to the Internet.

Looking more closely at Sitemeter, I discovered that the post on the Statue of Liberty on Postage Stamps attracted visitors from Taiwan, the Netherlands, and Iran. It also was viewed by students in public schools in Illinois and Michigan, and by someone at usmc.mil! [Semper Fi!]

[A digression in honor of our Marine visitor: from what I've read [I hope it's not just propaganda] the Marines have done a much better job than the Army with winning hearts and minds in Iraq. I could be wrong, but have any Marines been implicated in torturing prisoners or shooting unarmed wounded enemies? This pacifist Christian thanks Marines [and all decent, human-rights observing American soldiers] for your service to our country--I condemn the misguided and evil civilian and military leaders [i.e. politicians and 'brass' at the Pentagon] who continue to put you in harm's way for no discernable purpose.]

In honor of this interest in the Statue of Liberty, Ghost Town Orange is preparing another big post about the Statue of Liberty on US postage stamps. I hope to post it on January 8 to commemorate the new rate change Statue of Liberty stamps.

A good thing about collecting the Statue of Liberty on US postage stamps is that most of these stamps are common, easy to find, and cheap. Everyone with an interest can have a 'complete collection' of them. The only exceptions are unused examples of the early 15 cent stamps. Ordinary letter postage was 2 cents--a 15 cent stamp would be the equivalent of a stamp costing $2.75 to $2.95 today. So not as many were used on mail; not as many were saved in unused condition. I'll have more to say about that Sunday afternoon.

In all our cares about worldly treasures, let us steadily bear in mind that riches possessed by children who do not truly serve God are likely to prove snares that more grieviously entangle them in that spirit of selfishness and exaltation which stands in opposition to real peace and happiness, and renders those who submit to the influence of it enemies to the cross of Christ.
--from the Yearly Meeting of the Society of Friends, held at Philadelphia in September 1759, quoted in John Woolman's journal.

More Statue of Liberty Postage Stamps

Click image for larger view
Some of the most popular posts at Ghost Town Orange have been ones about the Statue of Liberty and postage stamps. For those new to Ghost Town Orange, here are a few posts that continue to attract visitors and may be worth a second look:

• The Statue of Liberty on Postage Stamps [May 2004]
• Even More Statue of Liberty Images [June 2004]
• New 'Old Bridge' at Mostar, Bosnia [July 2004]

The new rate change postage stamps will add another page to my collection. The stamps will be available in a variety of formats: coil, panes, and booklets. The most difficult to find on mail will be the lick-'em-stick-'em gummed ones. Self-adhesive stamps are understandably more popular.

The US Postal Service will probably issue the same design denominated '39 cents.' So I will be checking my mail after January 8 to see how many different varieties I can identify.

In other Ghost Town Orange news, Sitemeter statistics report that recent visitors have come from the following countries:

• 80% United States
• 3% United Kingdom
• 3% Germany
• 3% Canada
• 2% Netherlands
• 1% Taiwan
• 1% Islamic Republic of Iran
• 1% Ireland
• 1% Hungary
• 1% Greece
• 1% France
• 1% Switzerland
• 1% Bulgaria
• 1% Australia

I have started stamp albums for many of these countries: United States, Germany, Canada, Netherlands, Greece, and France. It's only a matter of time until I add Hungary and Switzerland. My wife and sons have albums for Australia and the United Kingdom. Ghost Town Orange has not attracted many visitors from Latin America, but I collect several Latin American countries too. I'll probably never have a visitor from St. Pierre et Miquelon, but I collect stamps from there. My wife collects Israel, and one of my sons collects Arab Trucial States.

A little man in black, an officer of the Inquisition, who was sitting beside Pangloss, turned to him and politely said:

'It appears, Sir, that you do not believe in original sin; for if all is for the best, there can be no such thing as the fall of Man and eternal punishment.'

'I most humbly beg your Excellency's pardon,' replied Pangloss, still more politely, 'but I must point out that the fall of Man and eternal punishment enter, of Necessity, into the scheme of the best of all possible worlds.'

--Voltaire, Candide, or Optimism, 1759. [Translated by John Butt]

Vacation

We're going on vacation for a while. We wish everyone a happy Independence Day.
The 'Statue of Liberty' in Lawton, Oklahoma [click picture to enlarge]
At this web-site, you can download a flyer with quotations for the 4th of July. They suggest distributing these flyers at Independence Day celebrations:

May these quotes serve to remind us all of the ideals and values upon which the United States was founded.

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

Even more Statue of Liberty images

I'll post some more tomorrow. Visit Ghost Town Orange or be square!

UPDATE 5 June 2004

Here are the promised images of Lady Liberty!

In January, 2004, French schoolchildren competed in a cartoon festival at Carquefou, France. The theme of the contest was the United States. The editorial cartoonist of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, David Horsey, was a guest at the festival. The other American political cartoonists there included Kal (Kevin Kallaugher) [Baltimore Sun]; Steve Benson [Arizona Republic]; and Ted Rall [Universal Press Syndicate.] Here is Mr. Horsey's description of the children's drawings from his article on the festival:

They drew obese Americans devouring Coca-Cola and McDonald's hamburgers. They drew the Statue of Liberty with fangs or in chains or being run over by a wicked Uncle Sam on a motorcycle. And they drew George W. Bush: Bush riding a tank to war; Bush taking over the world; Bush as a liar; Bush as a monster.

I am most interested in images of the Statue of Liberty, so I was thrilled to find a French web-page featuring Lady Liberty cartoons from this contest:

La statue de la liberte et ses multiples facettes
La statue de la liberte reste une figure emblematique des Etats-Unis. La vision des jeunes des Etats-Unis se traduit par cette statue symbole de la liberte sur plusieurs thèmes : malbouffe, guerre surconsommation, inegalites. Utilisee comme un support pour faire passer un message, c'est une base efficace pour representer les Etats-Unis.

On la retrouve autant chez les plus petits que chez les plus ages. Meme si les autres themes ont beaucoup marque les participants comme les Twins, un theme recurent, nous avons choisi ce theme car il a souvent ete repris par beaucoup de participants et que les representations de la statue de la liberte sont variees et interessantes.

Here is the theme the young artists were attempting to illustrate:

Etats-Unis, entre mythes et realites
Berceau de la liberte, de la democratie, symbole d’un mode de vie, d’un brassage culturel, la realite des Etats-Unis est aussi moins idyllique: inegalites sociales et raciales, sort des clandestins, couloirs de la mort, interventionnisme exterieur, rejet des accords internationaux... Prenez vos crayons et vos couleurs pour nous transmettre votre image des Etats-Unis.

As you can see, the deck was stacked against Lady Liberty, but this is a typical European view of the United States.

Here are some of the cartoons [Each can be clicked to enlarge]:

by Julie Escure


Chercher l'erreur by Emmanuel Sergent

by Romain Guereau

by Audray Blin
Others found wandering this website:


by Pierre-Damien Pays

Go West! by Marina Le Sugou (spelling of name uncertain)
Now, my favorite, a cartoon that gives me hope:

Je veux etre libre comme elle! (I want to be free like her!) by Amelie Chevillard
Adults also competed. Here is an uncredited image from the contest:

by an unidentified adult competitor

If you think that many of these images of the Statue of Liberty are unfair to us Americans and our ideals, try to imagine the reaction of people around the world to these lyrics by Toby Keith:

Hey Uncle Sam
Put your name at the top of his list
And the Statue of Liberty
Started shaking her fist
And the eagle will fly
And there's gonna be hell
When you hear Mother Freedom
Start ringing her bell
And itll feel like the whole wide world is raining down on you
--from the Angry American

What poetry! What literature! What a stinking pile of manure!

Events of the past few years have unfortunately given lots of ammunition to our enemies. Lady Liberty used to be a peaceful torch-bearer for ideals of freedom and the rule of law; she was the welcomer of immigrants from oppressive countries all over the world. Now, under the Bush Administration, she has evolved into a jingoistic, blood-thirsty, fist-shaking tyrant with a voracious appetite. Can we Americans bear to look at our reflections in the mirror?

Conservatives used to criticize liberals of being naive utopians attempting to achieve impossible dreams with the power of government. Do they realize they have fallen into the same trap?

By the way, here's a link to a webcam featuring the Statue of Liberty.

A recent shot from the Liberty Cam. The webcam is located in an office building about 2 miles away from the statue. From this angle, Lady Liberty is in front of a busy dockyard. The large cranes in the background unload container ships.

UPDATE 2 January 2006

I removed the accents from the French copy above--it was not displaying correctly, and I have forgotten how to get the proper characters to display.

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

More Statue of Liberty images

The more I look for images of the Statue of Liberty, the more I find. Here is another of that Iraqi wall painting:

Amnesty International has released its annual report on human rights around the world. This cartoon emphasizes one of the themes of this year's report: the 'war on terror' has become a 'war on human rights.'

Amnesty International -- Danziger/Cartoon Arts 
[Click picture to enlarge]
Next, we have a quartet of promotional photos advertising the new movie [opening today, by the way] The Day After Tomorrow:


Horizontal icicles? [Click picture to enlarge]



From The Day After Tomorrow
Tsunami hits the Statue of Liberty
[Click photo to enlarge] 
An unknown blogger [Update: Ponderance] watched a preview and says:

I'm starting to wonder if it's the mark of truly great disaster films to have some sort of mutilated but still-standing version of the Statue of Liberty to gawk at; this one encases her in 15 metres of snow and ice.

I should take better notes . . . I'll update this post to give proper credit for this quote, and I'll throw in a Planet of the Apes picture of the Statue of Liberty too.

UPDATE

Here are the promised Planet of the Apes pictures:


This [lower] image is not up to our usual high standards. It looks like one of those garish 1940s postcards where the colors don't quite line up correctly.

Bless the LORD, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name.
Bless the LORD, O my soul, and do not forget all his benefits.
. . . For as the heavens are high above the earth,
so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him;
as far as the east is from the west, so far he removes our transgressions from us.
. . . The LORD has established his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all.
Bless the LORD, O you his angels, you mighty ones who do his bidding,
obedient to his spoken word.
--Psalm 103:1-2, 11-12, 19-20

Statue of Liberty on Postage Stamps

With my sons, I am preparing a presentation on the Statue of Liberty on postage stamps for the local stamp club. Of course, we are concentrating on stamps from the United States. But I am curious about which other countries have had the Statue of Liberty on their stamps. Here are some examples from the last couple of years--
First, here is a stamp issued in February of this year by France:

This stamp was issued to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the death of the sculptor of the Statue of Liberty, Auguste Bartholdi.

And here is a set of two, issued by Romania in 2002:

But what exactly is that thing in the right stamp? The problem with this photoblogging software is that sometimes I want 2 pictures in one post. So much cutting and pasting should not be necessary...

On News Fasts

On Thursday, I ran across the New York Times article on the CIA and coercive interrogation (aka torture.) I attempted to write a post about it, but Blogger was down at the time. So I spent some time de-cluttering the garage...

Thursday evening we went to the stamp club meeting. For the first meeting in June, I volunteered (with my boys) to make a presentation on the Statue of Liberty on postage stamps, a topic I've been compiling information on for a while. So, yesterday I read no news at all; no newspaper, no blogs (gasp!), no television news. I went on a news fast. My web-browsing time was spent looking for information on the Statue of Liberty. The best single source I found was the 1954 booklet prepared for the National Park Service, which has been put on-line at the Statue of Liberty National Monument website.

My son Joe is going camping with the Boy Scouts this weekend (working on the fishing merit badge, apparently.) So my other son Tim and I watched Jason and the Argonauts on Turner Classic Movies last night. (Joyce was half-watching and trying to read at the same time!)

This morning, I have just spent about 45 minutes browsing at Project Gutenberg for e-texts about the Argonauts. Good old stuff. But I wonder why I can't find anything by Euripedes?

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

Statue of Liberty Stamp Album Pages

I've been putting together a group of stamp album pages for stamps portraying the Statue of Liberty. I'm just including United States stamps for now, except for an issue by France for Statue of Liberty's centennial. I promised to reward Joyce and the boys for completing these pages--20 dollars! (But they will have to spend some money to get the high values of the 1922 set and possibly the Liberty and Americana sets too!) I plan to include pages about the history of the statue, its symbolism, and also Emma Lazarus's poem The New Colossus.

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

Contest in France: design the new Marianne postage stamp

From the AP story:

For the first redesign of this century, amateur artists will have a chance to take a crack at it - the first time the public has been invited to create a new Marianne stamp.

The contests only guideline is that the new postage stamp must show a Marianne who "supports the environment and the fundamental values of the country".

A few sketched examples provided by the national postal service, which oversees the effort, show an innocent, childlike Marianne in the countryside with a flower in her mouth, or a seductive, doe-eyed Marianne.

A jury will select 100 finalists after next year's March 15 deadline.

The public will then weigh in, narrowing the choice to three by July 4. President Jacques Chirac will then select the winning design, which will be printed at an annual rate of three billion, starting in 2005.

La Poste, the French post office, has a website about the contest (in French, of course)--dessinez le nouveau timbre Marianne

UPDATE

I thought it would be fun to try my hand at this. A few years ago Laetitia Casta (super-model) was selected by French mayors to be the "new" Marianne (Brigitte Bardot and Catherine Deneuve have been other celebrity Mariannes.) But no Marianne stamp was creating using her image. So I thought I'd start with a bust of Casta as Marianne, using different colors for each denomination, except for the red liberty cap, which remains the same:






Here's some more about the iconography of Marianne, [and how well Laetitia Casta fills the bill: beauty and breasts] from the Brunswickian (the University of New Brunswick's student paper.)

Until Bardot, the common image of Marianne was of a lowly peasant girl leading the lowly peasants towards a greater ideal. After Bardot, and later Catherine Deneuve, it became a symbol of the well-groomed upper class.

According to Debra Ollivier, a writer for Le Monde and Salon.com, everything about Marianne is iconic.

"Her red bonnet symbolizes left-wing radical spirit. The beehive she often carries represents work and industry. The shackles and yoke at her feet evoke emancipation. Her hands are crossed in fraternity.

Ollivier underlines, however, the image of Marianne is, above all, about the bosom.

"It is undoubtedly Marianne's breasts -- flush, freewheeling, insolently raised in protest or subdued in a state of heraldic order, that have the most symbolic weight," she writes.

"The Republic prefers an opulent, more maternal breast, with its promise of generosity and abundance," explains writer/historian Maurice Agulhon, who adds that a pair of identically sized and shaped breasts are "an additional symbol of the egalitarian spirit."

When asked to explain how Casta, a model whose claim to fame is popularly expressed as 5' 7" and 36C beat out all other possible candidates, a spokesperson for the Association of Mayors of France let the truth slip out.

"Well," suggests Catherine Doumas, "perhaps because she's the prettiest. And Marianne, is of course, usually represented as a bust [i.e. a statue]. Casta obviously has the nicest bust of them all."

Well, the original Marianne was shockingly bare-breasted: see the painting La Liberte guidant le peuple by Eugene Delacroix:

I thought it would be neat to have the red Phrygian cap for every differently colored denomination of the stamp. But then I noticed the rules:

Couleur de la maquette ;
Le timbre de la serie courante est monochrome et imprime de diverses couleurs selon les valeurs faciales pour permettre de constituer les differentes valeurs deaffranchissement.
En consequence, le dessin de la maquette sera obligatoirement en noir et blanc.
Cette clause est imperative.

So, back to the drawing board. I thought Marianne should be more 'outdoorsy' and a supporter of the environment (although, not as 'busty')--


And now the results, using La Poste's TPP website:


The picture of Casta in the last stamp reminds me of this stamp from French Polynesia: