a weblog of whereabouts & interests, since 2010
It’s the last Monday of May, and Memorial Day in the United States— the day for honoring and mourning the U.S. military personnel who died while serving in the United States Armed Forces.
Here are the other South Africans that came with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa to the White House today.
John Steenhuisen: South Africa’s Minister of Agriculture, who clarified political affiliations of individuals featured in a video presented by President Trump.
Ernie Els (nickname “The Big Easy”) and Retief Goosen: Professional South African golfers who were part of the delegation and contributed to the discussion during the meeting.
Johann Rupert: A prominent South African businessman who emphasized the broader issue of violence affecting all South Africans and proposed technological solutions to improve safety.
Zingiswa Losi: A trade union leader who stressed that crime in South Africa affects all demographic groups, not just whites.
Here’s Erica L. Green and Zolan Kanno-Youngs writing for the New York Times:
The encounter in some ways echoed the February visit to the Oval Office by President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. Mr. Trump and Vice President JD Vance berated Mr. Zelensky in front of TV cameras, cutting short a visit meant to coordinate a plan for peace.
The meeting with Mr. Ramaphosa on Wednesday was also striking because of the ways in which Mr. Trump dismissed attempts to push back on his fringe claims by those who knew most about them.
Mr. Trump scowled and dismissed Mr. Ramaphosa and his delegates during the meeting, including a Black woman who tried to explain that brutal crimes happen to Black people in the country as well.
By contrast, Mr. Trump joked around and listened attentively as Mr. Els, Mr. Goosen and Johann Rupert, a white South African billionaire, said crime was prevalent across the board in the nation, not just against white farmers.
Mr. Ramaphosa entered the meeting seemingly optimistic about maintaining a cordial conversation with Mr. Trump. He offered olive branches to Mr. Trump, including a book about golf. He complimented Mr. Trump’s décor in the Oval Office.
He even tried to joke with the president, who had become irate when a reporter asked him about a free plane from the Qatari government.
“I am sorry I don’t have a plane to give you,” Mr. Ramaphosa said to Mr. Trump.
“I wish you did,” Mr. Trump replied. “I’d take it. If your country offered the U.S. Air Force a plane, I would take it.”
Mr. Trump seemed more intent on relaying the talking points from leaders of Afrikaner lobbying groups, who have traveled to the United States repeatedly over the years to gather support for their claims of persecution. When one of those groups met with Mr. Trump’s top aides this year, the White House identified them as “civil rights leaders.”
These stamps were on the envelope that landed in my mailbox today, mailed from the suburb of Northwood to the northwest of London.
(The Trump tariffs do not seem to affect my purchases of stamps on Ebay from overseas vendors. These are just envelopes with stamps in, though. I’m not sure what will happen if I order new albums and pages from overseas that come in a proper package).
These days, stamps from Japan is one of my favorite searches on EBay.
I couldn’t resist this beautiful postcard and stamp from 1921 that was offered for just a few dollars.
VATICAN CITY — Habemus Papam! The world’s 1.4 billion Catholics have a new leader — Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, the first American-born pope.
Prevost, 69, is originally from Chicago and has chosen the papal name Leo XIV. He was most recently the head of the dicastery responsible for the appointment of bishops and the archbishop emeritus of Chiclayo, Peru.
– Senior Reporter Alexander Smith writing for NBC News
I updated this page in my stamp album today.
I added a new line of ½ penny springbok stamps, from 1947.
Only a very finely calibrated ruler will show the ¼ mm size difference between the printed designs of the stamps issued in 1937 (18½x22½ mm), in August 1947 (18¼x22¼ mm) issue and in November 1947 (18×22 mm).
A quarter mm is only one one-hundredth of an inch!
The postal authorities tried to squeeze in a little more white space between the stamps in the 1947 printings, for the perforation machine.
*The “Drommedaris” was a Dutch ‘jaght’, a type of sailing vessel, built in 1645. It was operated by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) from 1645 to 1661. The Drommedaris played a significant role in the establishment of a halfway stop for VOC ships on the trade route between Europe and the East Indies.
Ultimately, the Drommedaris’s voyages to Table Bay led to the establishment of a crucial trading post and settlement at the Cape of Good Hope, in what would become the Mother City— the city of Cape Town, South Africa.
It was beautiful outside today (68°F/ 20°C).
I walked down to Capitol Hill library to return two books, where I found the latest issue of The Atlantic on the magazine rack, with some unsettling writing inside (see below).
In the upside-down place we find ourselves with the Trump administration, it’s almost a positive that his 42%-or-so approval rating after 100 days in office is the lowest of any modern US president.
P.S. The US stock market held up surprisingly well this week, and April’s jobs report showed a gain of 177,000 jobs, exceeding expectations. Unemployment remains steady at 4.2%, and average hourly earnings rose modestly.
Three of us went down to Cal Anderson Park at noon, to protest in support of workers’ rights, and those of immigrants. (A panoply of other protestations were depicted on the posters that people had made). We joined the march to downtown that started at 2 pm.
The crowd that marched was not huge— reportedly somewhat over 1,000 people— and the protesters spanned two to three blocks as they walked.
We stepped out of the march by the Seattle Convention Center to look at the crowd and the rest of the protest signs. The marchers went further on down Pike Street, and turned on First Avenue to reach the Henry M. Jackson Federal Building.
Congratulations to Prime Minister Mark Carney and to the people of Canada with their election results.
P.S. There was this post on Truth Social (read: anti-truth, anti-social) from the President of the United States this morning. Illuminating. Hallucinating.
Good luck to the Great people of Canada. Elect the man who has the strength and wisdom to cut your taxes in half, increase your military power, for free, to the highest level in the World, have your Car, Steel, Aluminum, Lumber, Energy, and all other businesses, QUADRUPLE in size, WITH ZERO TARIFFS OR TAXES, if Canada becomes the cherished 51st. State of the United States of America.
No more artificially drawn line from many years ago. Look how beautiful this land mass would be. Free access with NO BORDER.
ALL POSITIVES WITH NO NEGATIVES. IT WAS MEANT TO BE!
America can no longer subsidize Canada with the Hundreds of Billions of Dollars a year that we have been spending in the past. It makes no sense unless Canada is a State!
I touched up my stamp album pages for Namibia today, and noticed that there is a mineral on the R5 stamp named after me*: Willemite.
*Actually, it is named after King William I of the Netherlands 😁.
Willemite is a silicate mineral (Zn2SiO4), discovered in 1829 in the Belgian Vieille-Montagne mine. Mineralogist Armand Lévy was shown samples by a student at the university where he was teaching, and he named it after William I. It is occasionally spelled villemite.
[From Wikpedia]
I completed a few more pages with stamps from Japan for my ‘world travels’ album.
I bought these sheets of stamps at the post office museum shop high up in Skytree tower in Tokyo in 2018.
These pages will go into my ‘World Travels’ stamp album.
Although stamps for railway parcels and newspapers have been in use in this country for over a century, they have received scant attention from philatelists.
— From the preface to the book ‘Railway Stamps of South Africa’, published by The Philatelic Federation of Southern Africa in 1985.
My spectacular* book about South Africa’s railway stamps arrived today (from South Africa, of course).
*Spectacular, because almost none of the information in it is available online, nor in any of the standard stamp catalogues.
The clay court season (April to June) in men’s tennis has started with ATP 250 tournaments (smaller tournaments) this week in Houston, Texas, in Bucharest, Romania, and in Marrakech, Morocco.
Here is Nuno Borges (28, 🇵🇹) being interviewed after beating the Belgian Raphaël Collignon (23, 🇧🇪) in a closely fought match on the red clay in Marrakech. It ended in a third set tie-break in which Borges iced out Collignon 7-0, though.
Afterwards the announcer addressed the remaining spectators in French.
A bit of history [from Wikipedia]: The French conquest of Morocco began with the French Republic occupying the city of Oujda on 29 March 1907. The French launched campaigns against the Sultanate of Morocco which culminated in the signing of the Treaty of Fes and establishment of the French Protectorate in Morocco on 30 March 1912.
There is a 1977 song by Mike Batt, The Ride to Agadir, from the album Schizophonia, about the Rif War— an armed conflict fought from 1921 to 1926 between Spain (joined by France in 1924) and the Berber (Amazigh) tribes of the mountainous Rif region of northern Morocco.
I must have played The Ride to Agadir a hundred times or more, while driving in my car in the late 80s and early 90s.
Lyrics: The Ride to Agadir
We rode in the morning
Casablanca to the west
On the Atlas mountain foothills leading down to Marrakesh
For Mohammed and Morocco
We had taken up our guns
For the ashes of our fathers and the children of our sons
For the ashes of our fathers and the children of our sons
In the dry winds of summer
We were sharpening the blades
We were riding to act upon the promise we had made
With the fist and the dagger
With the rifle and the lance
We will suffer no intrusion from the infidels of France
We will suffer no intrusion from the infidels of France
We could wait no more
In the burning sands on the ride to Agadir
Like the dogs of war
For the future of this land on the ride to Agadir
Though they were waiting
And they were fifty to our ten
They were easily outnumbered by a smaller force of men
As the darkness was falling
They were soon to realize
We were going to relieve them of their godforsaken lives
We were going to relieve them of their godforsaken lives
We could wait no more
In the burning sands on the ride to Agadir
Like the dogs of war
For the future of this land on the ride to Agadir
We rode in the morning
Casablanca to the west
On the Atlas mountain foothills leading down to Marrakesh
For Mohammed and Morocco
We had taken up our guns
For the ashes of our fathers and the children of our sons
For the ashes of our fathers and the children of our sons
Here are the three sets of South African revenue stamps that followed on to the two sets that I had posted about earlier in March.
The last of South Africa’s revenue stamps were issued in 2008.
The use of revenue stamps on contracts and other legal documents was discontinued in March of 2009.
Revenue stamps are stamps used to designate collected taxes and fees. They are issued by governments, national and local, and by official bodies of various kinds. They take many forms and may be gummed and ungummed, perforated or imperforate, printed or embossed, and of any size.
[From Wikipedia]
A little background first:
South Africa was officially the Union of South Africa until May 31, 1961, when it gained independence from the United Kingdom and became the Republic of South Africa. The currency system for the Union of South Africa was changed a few months prior, on Feb. 14, 1961.
On this day, the South African pound was replaced by the rand at a rate of one £SA = two Rand.
My sets of revenue stamps from South Africa for the periods 1954-60 (when it was still the Union of South Africa) and 1961-68 (the Republic of South Africa) are almost complete.
(Several other sets of revenue stamps were issued, but South Africa stopped using revenue stamps altogether in 2009).
Revenue stamps are similar to the postage stamps issued in South Africa during this time: printed on watermarked and gummed paper sheets, perforated and with increasing denominations in the set.
A big difference:
the highest denomination for a postage stamp issued for the time was
10 shillings (1954-60) or
R1 (1961-68),
while the highest denomination of a revenue stamp issued for the same period was
£100 (1954-60)— 200 times more, or
R200 (1961-68)— also 200 times more !
A perfin is a stamp that has a name or initials perforated into it.
The word “perfin” is short for “perforated initials” or “perforated insignia”.
Perfins are used to prevent theft and control how the stamp is used for mail.
How are perfins created?
Individuals, organizations, or government agencies add perfins to stamps after the production process.
The holes are punched into the stamp’s design to create a pattern.
Source: Google Search Labs/ AI Overview
1961 First Definitive Issue (New Design), South Africa
Issued Jan. 20, 1969
Perf. 13½x14 |Phosphor frame |Wmk. RSA tête-bêche
SACC282 |1c |Rose-red & sepia |Coral Tree Flowers (Erythina lysistemon)
Perfin initials “D.C.”
1982 Fourth Definitive Issue (Architecture), South Africa
Issued Jul. 15, 1982
Perf. 14 |Design: A.H. Barrett |Engraving: Arthur Howard Barrett |Litho. |Phosphorized paper |No Wmk
SACC524 |10c |Carmine brown |Pietermaritzburg Town Hall
Perfin insignia “C C C” (or possibly “V V V”)
1923 United States of America (U.S. Presidents and prominent Americans)
Issued Jan. 15, 1923
Perf. 11×10½ |No Wmk
Scott 562 A165|10c |Orange |James Monroe (5th U.S. President)
Perfin insignia “WFH”
Pre-cancelled “Chicago IL”
[Sources: stampworld, South African Colour Catalogue 2023-25, Scott 2003 Standard Postage Stamp Catalogue Vol. 1]
Here is the final installment of the batch of Danish stamps on my envelope!
1987 The 100th Anniversary of the Danish Cooperative Bacon Factories
Issued Jun. 18, 1987
Perf. 12¾ | Design: Bente Olesen Nystrom | Issued in sheets of 50 | Engraving: Arne Kühlmann | No watermark
841 A289 3.80Kr Multicolored | Domesticated pigs (Sus scrofa domesticus)
1992 EUROPA Stamps – The 500th Anniversary of the Discovery of America
Issued May 7, 1992
Perf. 12¾ | Design: Niels Winkel | Issued in sheets of 50 | Litho. & Engr. | Engraving: Martin Mörch | No watermark
959 A342 3.50Kr Brown & green | Potato plant* (Solanum tuberosum)
*I’m not 100% sure why the potato is significant to this anniversary. The first permanent potato patches on US soil were established in 1719 near Londonderry, New Hampshire by Scotch-Irish immigrants.
1989 Nordic Cooperation Issue
Issued Apr. 20, 1989
Perf. 12¾ | Design: Birgit Forchhammer | Issued in sheets of 50 | Litho. & Engr. | Engraving: Arne Kühlmann | No Watermark
868 A312 3.20Kr Multicolored | Woman from Valby
1984 “Plant a Tree” Campaign
Issued Jan. 26, 1984
Perf. 12¾ | Design: Tage Stentoft | Issued in sheets of 50 | Litho. & Engr.|Engraving: Arne Kühlmann | No Watermark
749 A234 2.70Kr Red & green | Shovel and sapling
1982 The 500th Anniversary of the University Library
Issued Nov. 4, 1982
Perf. 12¾ | Design: Lisbeth Gasparski | Issued in sheets of 50 |Engraving: Arne Kühlmann | No Watermark
731 A221 2.70Kr Multicolored | Library Seal
[Sources: stampworld.com, Scott 2012 Standard Postage Stamp Catalogue, Vol. 2]
1981 EUROPA Stamps – Folklore
Issued May 4, 1981
Perf. 12¾ | Design: Palle Pio | Issued in sheets of 50 | Litho. & Engr. |Engraving: Czeslaw Slania | No Watermark
680 A208 1.60Kr Brown red | Tilting at a Barrel on Shrovetide
1985 The 300th Anniversary of the German and French Reform Church in Denmark
Issued Jan. 24, 1985
Perf. 12¾ | Design: Mads Stage | Issued in sheets of 50 | Litho. & Engr. |Engraving: Czeslaw Slania | No Watermark
769 A249 2.80Kr Magenta | Reformed Church (Reformert Kirke) in Copenhagen
1982 EUROPA Stamps – Historic Events
Issued May 3, 1982
Perf. 12¾ | Design: Jane Muus | Issued in sheets of 50 |Engraving: Czeslaw Slania | No Watermark
723 A215 2.00Kr Magenta | Abolition of Adcsription*
*Adscription means the state of being added, bound, or annexed.
[Sources: stampworld.com, Scott 2012 Standard Postage Stamp Catalogue, Vol. 2]
1983 EUROPA Stamps – Inventions
Issued May 5, 1983
Perf. 12¾ | Design: Lars Klint | Issued in sheets of 50 | Engraving: Czeslaw Slania | No Watermark
739 A227 3.50Kr Blue/ greenish blue | Proposal for Øresund Bridge, across Øresund strait to Sweden (the Sound)*
*Ideas for a fixed link across the Øresund strait were advanced as early as the first decade of the 20th century. Almost a century later, a cable-stayed bridge was finally constructed (from 1995-1999), opening in Jul. 2000.
1985 United Nations Decade for Women
Issued Jun. 27, 1985
Perf. 12¾ | Design: Hans Bendix | Issued in sheets of 50 | Lithography & Engraving |Engraving: Arne Kühlmann | No Watermark
779 A257 3.80Kr Multicolored | Cyclist
1983 Nordic Cooperation Issue
Issued Mar. 24, 1983
Perf. 12¾ | Design: C. Achton Friis | Issued in sheets of 50 |Engraving: Czeslaw Slania | No Watermark
735 A225 2.50Kr Brown & red | Egeskov Castle (opened 1554), Kværndrup, Denmark
[Sources: stampworld.com, Scott 2012 Standard Postage Stamp Catalogue, Vol. 2]
The Ebay seller in Denmark that mailed my latest acquisition of South African stamps, pasted a whole mini-collection of Danish stamps on the envelope.
Here are the first ones.
I will post more tomorrow.
1982 EUROPA Stamps – Historic Events
Issued May 3, 1982
Perf. 12¾ | Design: Jane Muus | Issued in sheets of 50 | Engraving: Czeslaw Slania | No watermark
724 A215 2.7Kr Blue | Women’s Suffrage 1915*
*Women in Denmark gained the right to vote on 5 June 1915.
1989 Tourism Industry
Issued Feb. 16, 1989
Perf. 12¾ | Design: Ponsaing | Issued in sheets of 100 | Engraving: Arne Kühlmann | No watermark
865 A309 3.20Kr Dark green | The Little Mermaid, sculpture by Edvard Eriksen
1988 Individual Speedway World Motorcycle Championship in Denmark
Issued Jun. 16, 1988
Perf. 12¾ | Design: Jørn Fabricius | Issued in sheets of 50 | Lithography | No watermark
856 A302 4.10Kr Multicolored | Motorcyclists at Vojens Speedway Center
[Sources: stampworld.com, Scott 2012 Standard Postage Stamp Catalogue, Vol. 2]