Japanese New Year's Stamps for 2006
50 yen Akita dog postage stamp designed by Hoshiyama Ayaka
80 yen Sadowara clay doll 'dog' postage stamp designed by Kaifuchi JunkoI hereby resolve to
update my blog frequently spend more time with my stamp collection in 2006.
A year ago, I purchased a nice lot of postally used stamps from Japan but I have not created an album for them yet. I print out pages from the CD-ROM disc I obtained from
Stamp Albums Web. I'll be able to identify most of the stamps with the help of a used 1992 Scott catalog I recently found at a thrift store and the
New Issues of Japan website for stamps after 1997. That may leave a big chunk of the 1990s a mystery unless I buy a more recent catalog.
Things to do at Ghost Town Orange:
- Summer vacation series needs to be continued for another 2 1/2 weeks worth of entries.
- Template needs to be tinkered with--why link to the NYT editorial writers who are behind the subscription wall?
- The archive needs to be tested for dead links, missing pictures, etc.
The soul in this body has two principal impediments.
First, it is drawn into many activities and much agitation, and its different activities weaken and obstruct each other, for it is very hard to apply the mind to different things at the same time.
Secondly, the soul is engaged in inferior activites much earlier, more attentively, and more often than in higher ones, not only because of the condition of its abysmal dwelling but also because of the corporeal service assigned to men for a time by God. . .
But whenever the actions of eating, accumulating, feeling, or imagining either entirely cease or are greatly reduced, then the vision of the mind will be correspondingly sharpened, so that whatever is observed by the mind is observed more clearly under the power of this light.
--Marsilio Ficino [1433-1499], from Meditations on the Soul: Selected Letters of Marsilio Ficino, translated by members of the Language Department of the School of Economic Science, London.
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