Sent and received fronts and backs

[For future references, all, or almost all, #backside, sent posts:
#1, #2 (for kids), #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, #11, #12, #13, #14, #15, #16]

     Sending postcards is so much fun, maybe that's why I'm less worried about receiving postcards through official site, than when sent postcards get lost on the way. The backside on the left is on the postcard with oil pipes from big swap. It has 'monsters' tape [I checked how long it goes before repeat - two long sides of big size postcard] and tanker ship 'Mikhail Ulyanov', and two oil-themed 'pirozhki'-poems [absurd four lines poems without punctuation]. "The lair of morlocks is near here :: Or maybe it is the human's lair :: The ground stinks the crystals are rotting :: And all the oil is poisoned" and "For fourth day from under the fault (rock fracture) :: The stubborn earchnaut is crawling :: And his drinking oil flagon :: is nearly almost empty".

left - backside of a postcard, sent to vegerle, Russia (direct swap); right - sent to azuregoza, Russia (direct swap)

     The right postcard is my drawing inspired by the drawing about joint Universe of 'Gravity Falls' and 'Rick and Morty' [I added the Ice King from 'Adventure Time' too], sent to azuregoza. The handmade wooden response for the second card revealed that azuregoza does not know 'Rick and Morty'! [well, knows but didn't enjoy, happens] But all friends liked it xD

wooden front side (left) and paper backside (right), received from azuregoza, Russia (direct swap)

Soviet space illustrations: The flight continues [part #9]

[This is a series of posts, see part #1 'Report from Oceanus Procellarum', part #2 'The man stepped into the space...', part #3 'Red landscapes', part #4 'Red planets', part #5 'Near-Earth space', part #6 'Exploration Space vehicles', April, 12, 2017 post, part #7 'Lift-offs', part#8 'Space inhabitants']

     This postcard is by A. Leonov, #2 from the set, named "Above the Black Sea". Text on the back says: 'The cosmonaut first time in the history of humanity left the space ship and went to the 'open' space. The Earth expanded below him. Swimming in zero-gravity on the height of 400 km cosmonaut recognized the familiar from maps shapes of the Black Sea, Crimean penisula, Azov Sea and Caucasian Mountains.'

received from fossko, Russia (direct swap)

     The text on the lower left one is: 'The flight continues the first stage of rocket carrier is gone - four of the side blocks. through the certain time after passing of the dense layer of atmosphere the nose cone, which covers the ship will be dropped too Moscow', printed in 1971, painting by V. Victorov. The postcard has written on the back 'ushina <- this is my signature', because Polina always forgot to sign sent cards and i didn't recognize from whom I receive them.

     The right one is #14 from the set, called "Transporting of the asteroid" [very very contemporary topic - just recently Luxembourg legalized the space mining companies, so mining asteroid will happen]. The text on the back says: 'Little planets which are considered the wrecks of big planet Phaeton between Mars and Jupiter. First of them was discovered very recently - less than 200 years ago. Now hundreds of them were observed and we know much more about them. It's considered that they have almost all Mendeleev's table in them, and pure elements. And scientist have the idea of using the asteroids and their matter for building in space and to mine minerals for earth needs. And even though it's distant future already scientists consider different wats of transporting asteroids to the earth. One of the ways is shown on the picture. In the body of asteroid some shafts are drilled with explosives. Command - and asteroid is turned into a giant rocket which flies to the earth.'

left - received from ushina, Russia (direct swap); right - received from hikarisuikawa, Russia (direct swap)

[Read next: Part #10 'The future of space']

Weird postcard: Two first trypophobic patterns

     I started a new collection - trypophobia! Trypophobia is a fear of irregular patterns of clusters, canonical image to be triggered of is a lotus seedheads [which are actually used in dry bouquet decorations quite a bit!]. This condition is not recognized as a disorder, and I suppose is mostly an internet phenomena. But anyway - a lot of Ikea's patterns are trypophobic and I noticed, that actually instead of avoiding I'm prone to buy these even when having more than adequate choice [all our bed linens, for example]. Long story short - I've already received two cards to that wish: one from Germany with text on the back written in German, the postcard is 'Deconstructed Knit', 2010, by Brittany Keats Cerullo, a postcard from the 100 set of contemporary patterns designers. Another one is from Australia, it's aboriginal art 'Autumn (Fish - Mussels - Pippies)' by Yirra-Kurl (Deborah Newenham-Coertse), 1999.

left - DE-6506965, from JuniaJakob, Germany; right - AU-582853, from kathiemt, Australia

Two industrial corners of one-time-one-country

     Industrial are desirable postcards, and since ntk-kak also has a collection of industrial postcards [I gave the link to her Dam collections in some of the posts below], she has some to send others too. The left one is a Iron and  Steel Works in Yenakiieve, Ukraine, ntk_kak says she doesn't have 'random' cards - this one is from where her family lived when she was a kid. Her parents were builders and they left sunny Torez, Ukraine, to work in the Russia's High North, in Nadym. That's how two industrial corners of once one country ended up in the same envelope and brought me the story of one construction/mechanic family, who worked in extreme cold, when the machines broke, but people, proud of their career, kept working.

both received from ntk_kak, Russia, left postcard is from Ukraine (direct swap)

     Another story is about how the postcards with industrial landscapes get to me through 'secondary handshake', whether it was something husband of postcrosser, Hope79, brought from the business trip, or a postcard that was brought by friends of the family, waited for me to be sent. The story of this postcard is the following: In 1942 during the try of breaking the Siege of Leningrad young sergeant B. was missed in action. 74 years later, his relatives finally learnt where their grandpa got killed, and they succeed at getting him recognized and added on the plaque with names on the Memorial of battles for Sinyavino's Heights. In 2016 they came from Surgut, oil industry city in the Siberia, to visit the Memorial and the place of grandpa's death. GoneGirl's husband was giving them a private tour around, and they thanked him with set of postcards with Surgut's views. On the back of the postcard: "The oil is on the boring head! It is a favorite phrase of the drilling people. Because you can reach the oil only once the wellsite is drilled and the equipment is built. So naturally the drilling people are the discoverers of the underground horisonts".

RU-5246892, from GoneGirl, Russia

Weird postcard: Old journal covers

     Two mock journal covers from beginning of XX-th century, when art society was into weird things - political satire mostly, journals were appearing and disappearing constantly. The left one is journal 'Leshy' [=forest spirit] - the definition publisher, E. Zarudnaya-Kavos, give to the journal is 'Agency of Satirical Thinking', contained illustrations, small stories, poems. #1, 1906 cover is illustrated by N.N. Brut. The right one is 'Sprut' [=Octopus], #8 from February 16th, 1906. The illustration is called "The view on the Earth from the Moon", and as azuregoza mentioned, they foresaw the Red Scare and put it on the globe. To match the eyes of the forest spirit on the first postcard, azuregoza recommends creepy hard rock song 'Our icons are the most beautiful' [link, extremely creepy, I warned you!]

both received from azuregoza, Russia (direct swap)

Soviet space illustrations: Space inhabitats [part #8]

[This is a series of posts, see part #1 'Report from Oceanus Procellarum', part #2 'The man stepped into the space...', part #3 'Red landscapes', part #4 'Red planets', part #5 'Near-Earth space', part #6 'Exploration Space vehicles', April, 12, 2017 post, part #7 'Lift-offs']

     I think the base's structure on Moon or some planet are nicely shown in recent sci-fi movies 'The Marcian' and 'The Moon', all modern ideas are around light inflatable modules. The retro illustrations usually are showing a bit different approach, like left #11 from the picture of A. Sokolov 'On the interplanetary highways', photo by V. Babaylov, from the set 'To the stars', (c) publushing house Planeta, issued in 1985.

     Another view on how future ISS should look like - a transparent dome with green eco-system by A.K. Sokolov, it is a #16 'The living quarters of the space settlement (artist's impression)', issued by 'Izobrazitel'noe iskusstvo' (=visual art), Moscow, 1982.

left - received from Dolena, Ukraine (direct swap); right - received from kiskanik, Russia (direct swap)

[Read next: Part #8 'The flight continues']

Soviet space illustrations: Lift-offs [part #7]

[This is a series of posts, see part #1 'Report from Oceanus Procellarum', part #2 'The man stepped into the space...', part #3 'Red landscapes', part #4 'Red planets', part #5 'Near-Earth space', part #6 'Exploration Space vehicles', April, 12, 2017 post]

     First postcard is #15 - "Ready for lift-off" from set with both picture and photo postcards 'To the stars', issued by Planeta publishing house in 1985. The right one is #14: the A. Leonov picture 'In the Outer space', photo by V. Babaylov, from the same postcard set.

both received from Dolena, Ukraine (direct swap)

     This one is not getting ready to lift-off, but certainly made to seem that way. It is a Memorial Complex of the Carrier Rocket 'Soyuz' in Samara, Russia. The monument was opened in October, 1st, 2001, to memorize the jubilee of Gagarin's flight and R-7 rocket, which was being produced in Samara since 1958. Even though R-7 is originally an intercontinental ballistic missile, it was also used to launch many early sputnik's and people's flights.

left - received from demnat, Russia (direct swap); right - received from Rina_bis, Russia (direct swap)

     The height of the monument is 68 meters and it weights full 20 tons. Interesting that there are five monuments of R-7 rocket: in Moscow, in Korolev, a city in Moscow region named after the chief constructor, in Kaluga, and in Baikonur.

[Read next: Part #8 'Space inhabitants']

Science from UK: Comets, woman-scientist, and crystals

     Since changing my wishlist a little bit, I started to receive more and more scientific postcards. These two pieces are amazing and I should immediately write about them [somehow UK shows up more frequent recently on my received list and I'm very happy about it, because of perfect stamps and genuinely nice postcards].

     First one is from the big set of postcards with UK stamps - PHQ postcard, you can always recognize them by the Queen's head silhouette [some research shows that it was a revolution in the commemorative stamps design and Queen's head was quite more visible before this cameo silhouette; and there was a 50 years anniversary of Queen's Head stamp design this year]. The postcard is PHQ 90(b) 2/86 - Halley's Comet (Giotto spacecraft entering the Comet's tail), reproduced from a stamp designed by Ralph Steadman and issued by The Post Office on 18 February 1986 [wow, didn't notice it when received, - a day after my birthday! what a special card].

left - GB-919542, from Leo9Ely, United Kingdom; right - GB-919541, from rvalkass, United Kingdom

     The second postcard shows a scientific equipment - sample mount and detector array on Diamond's microfocus MX beamline I24, photo by Andrew Brookes. The sender works as patent examiner, all day looking at people's cool new ideas, and coming to the end of his PhD in Physics.
     The stamps of the first postcard is yet another special story - first the stamp with same face value as 1986's stamp on the front, and a stamp with woman-scientist! It is Dorothy Hodgkin, Nobel Prize Winner in Chemistry in 1964, she is beautiful. Leo has more wonderful postcards in his sent gallery: the one with Charles Darwin, for example [GB-939458]. Oh, and one postcard came from Cambridge, another one issued by company residing from Oxford, oldest University cities, all-time rivals! [I've been only to Oxford, but hope, I will check out Cambridge too some time]

stamps of GB-919542, from Leo9Ely, United Kingdom

#battlekitten: Black Knight

     When I wrote about recent received battlekitten from Ejderha in LJ postcrossing community and got lots of nice comments, my handmade penpal mondschein said, it's very cool, and she was thinking of making a kitten for me, but now comparing to the Dutch kitten feels insecure about her skills. But she has awesome Moscovian Godzilla in her handmade sent collection - RU-916382!

     My surprise and delight went beyond, when I received this adorable one from her. It reminds me of Black Knight from Monty Python and some Game of Thrones reference - just because it's everywhere and kittenknight is black and red with triple sigil on the shield - Targaryen's triple dragon's heads.

received from mondschein, Russia (direct swap)

P.S. Since the Ejderha's kitten, I sent her a big envelope of thanks of course, and she drew the second version of battlekitten as part of Inktober - Fierce!

Perks of instant memory: Bears and bottles

<Let's hope, I'll return to more or less regular publishing in the blog again, because the amount of absolutely stunning received postcards have never ever gone down>

     Simple, but nice, - a postcard with Polar bear, postcards with them, deserve a separate post of course. It is a cover of one of three books by Bill Martin Jr and Eric Carle [other two is Panda Bear and Brown Bear]. Anniekie has many more from the same illustrator in her sent gallery: NL-3933289, NL-3920416, NL-3916131, NL-3920358, NL-3929399 etc. The second postcard is just a nice ad card from my favorites. Frankly, I've never tried this sort of beer, but looks good, isn't it?

left - NL-3946681, from anniekie, Netherlands; right - CH-364406, from Egni, Switzerland

#anthropology: Caves of Balkans

     Two interesting caves from Balkans, both from countries which use Cyryllic letter to write - they languages somewhat close to Russian. First one is from Bulgaria, prehistoric drawings of Magura Cave [I really like the boner of the human figure, second on the right at top line xD]. Second one is from Serbia [we swapped cards after that, I'll show them in one of the latter posts], Resava Cave, this one is without drawings but still looks very cool. Also, Vladimir, Voljara, wrote his message in Serbian, which I understood 99%! Well, later it appeared he chose easy and words which are similar to Russian, but great experience anyway!

left - BG-103661, from adrianark, Bulgaria; right - RS-31100, from Vojkara, Serbia

P.S. Recently I encountered another cave-lover on official site with the immense collection of caves from all over the world. It is zuzulik from Slovakia, here is her caves' collection, and here is the card I sent her - RU-5877463 [card got stuck on its way in the August most likely because of incompetence of Russia Post, so I resent it].

Weird postcard: For all programmers - document it! [and lots of personal blabber]

     This year the major event in my life happened - I changed my job! I think I'm started to getting this typical Dutch way to look at my job - it completely defines who I am and what I think of myself [sad, but true].

     Working in the University stepped in the next degree of absurd and bizzarerie, with ridiculous amount of paperwork, no time for proper teaching and proper science, and the salary was beyond any reasonable level [while they were putting more workload on me while telling how important and useful I am (manipulation from bosses who were earning 10x), or directly creating toxic environment (some psychopath Ukranian PhD collegue, who does nothing, but wants more money, he was bullying pregnant colleague as well)], then my huge promotion was blocked for some silly reason [I'm so happy that happened, that was not what I wanted for my career in hindsight].

received from azuregoza, Russia (direct swap)

     Then my granma died - who worked in science in the same University her whole life, - and I just realized that I can be better professional and better person somewhere else, continuing to do science and designing real products, without useless ego-maniacs who overtop me in position and salary [because they remain same in any academic environment at all times anywhere - can't work or do anything? go teach]. 

     Anyway, when I started to look for a job, I realized that I was at the edge of burnout and depression at the late job, - it was immense joy to feel like proper specialist, who gets calls from largest companies in the industry couple hours after placing the CV. Now I'm excited about what I do again, have more energy [started finally proper learning of Dutch and a course at edX], and so on [still teaching in the University though - can't leave students in the middle of semester, and to be fair, I like it and I'm good at it].

     Now, this postcard I received from one of my dearest penpal - azuregoza. Who also quit her job! She was maintaining documentation for large software design company - making things proper, hard work and without any substantial reward. I feel, our reasons to quit each job were somehow very similar. The postcard, she printed for all her colleagues [programmers, I suppose], reads: "When you create chthonian monsters - document it!"

Weird postcards: Ad cards from miomy

     Here is my first post from mobile phone [eh, who would have thought?! And, actually, blogspot has decent mobile version of the blog]. The envelope of ad cards from miomy contained: (1) the Emily Blunt's character from Edge of Tomorrow - she was perfect in this decent sci-fi movie, what a triceps!; (2) British themed snickers store ad card [it's Fab Store boots shop in Saint Petersburg]; (3) the ad for some Spanish play from February, 2013.

all received from miomy, Russia (direct swap)

Russian regions: Chukotka

     Here is interesting take on Arctic collection - ingenious people and their crafts from Russian Far East North, Chukotka. Left one is amazing and unique postcard from a girl from Barnaul, who works in Coal industry, her husband brought it from a business trip to Anadyr. It is a card from Museum center 'Chukotka Heritage' [chukotka-museum.ru] and shows sculpture group 'Catching the deer' by Andrey Seigutegin, it's carved from walrus' tusk, photo is made by Arkady Sukhonin. Right one is young boy from Vankarem; jolly_ro remastered her profile in postcrossing to show people around the world beauties of different regions of Russia, and Chukotka is quite present in her sent gallery: RU-5064308, RU-5034033, RU-5372649, RU-5154503, all from set 'Chukotka: Cities and people'.

left - RU-5486667, from Hisaren, Russia; right - received from jolly_ro (beauty_of_russia in postcrossing), Russia (direct swap)

60 years from 1st sputnik launch!

     Today is a nice date of beginning of space exploration: from the Baikonur cosmodrome 60 years ago  on 4th October, 1957, the first artificial Earth satellite was launched - Sputnik-1 [it's funny that this post is 58th of #space posts in this blog]. I think, I have only one postcard with Sputnik-1 itself and I already wrote about it here. So for this post I want to share two nice cosmonauts pictures instead. First one is weird and looks like a mix between cosmonaut and deep water diver, especially considering he's touching something which looks like a starfish. The second one is from Latvia from Pauls Stradins Museum of History of Medicine [www.mvm.lv], an exhibition featuring outer space biology and medicine [I think that similar exhibition was in Moscow Museum of Cosmonautics this year too].

left - received from feltra, Russia (direct swap); right - received from na_talie, Russia (Happy Birthday RR)

Working people [Finland and Belarus]

     Two wonderful postcards telling about professions back in the day. Left one is 'Sammon taonta' [='The forging of Sampo'] by Akseli Gallen-Kallela, 1893 [Romantic Finnish painter, I think most famous of his paintings is this one and most 'famous' postcard by him is this one: FI-3036149; his museum]. Right one is illustration by Vasil Sharangovich to the poem of Yakub Kolas "New Land" [there are more of these postcards: BY-1627653, BY-1438845].

left - FI-2931623, from daphner2d2, Finland; right - BY-2075351, from Marfa_Vasil, Belarus

     Besides nice front sides of blacksmithing and beekeeping, both postcards had nice stamps. Finnish cheered me with wonderful Signs of the Sky stamps [see on WOPA] - stamps of weather and astronomic events and objects you can put eyes, mouths, clothes on, there was Finnish stamps with funny vegetables of the same kind. Belorussian cheered me with text in native language, bus ticket and kitten stamp.

top - backside of FI-2931623, from daphner2d2, Finland; bottom - backside of BY-2075351, from Marfa_Vasil, Belarus

#barbarian: Vikings and pirates

     I think, that closest to the 'barbarians' from fantasy are early medieval pirates and seafarers, vikings. Here are three postcards received through official postcrossing on barbarian profile: Baltic Sea pirates, Scottish King Fergus from 'Brave' [somehow I've always mix up him and Stoick the Vast from 'How to train your dragon'], and Ragnar Lothbrok from TV series 'Vikings'. First postcard shows Klaus Störtebeker famous pirate from second half of 14th century, the area shown in the picture was famous for pirates for hundreds of years. Second one is a character sketch made by Tony Fucile, pencil, 2007, part of the concept art from Brave created by Steve Pilcher, 2006.

left - DE-5374910, from Gabriele11, Germany; right - US-4349898, from Vilkiene, USA

     The last card shows main character [I suppose, haven't watch the show] from 'Vikings'. I saw the actor, Travis Fimmel, in recent 'Warcraft' movie, it was good. The card even though with Russian ID came from France, and was a little bit damaged from traveling.

RU-5483140, from Valentine_InLove, Russia

     P.S. When I register postcards, received by Kaye-the-Barbarian, I always wish 'Good hunting!' in the end. And recently I was asked why I say so by mteresaentrego: "Is it a joke? is it a greeting? Could you give me some hint?". I copy my answer here: "It is just formal 'good buy' barbarians use. It is originated from 1893 short story by Rudyard Kipling 'Kaa's hunting' featuring Kaa and Mowgli. They were wishing each other Good hunting. And as I see it, it is good way to wish someone luck in all business which the person is involved. Maybe we are not hunting animals anymore to survive, but we are hunting happiness, luck, love, wealth by different means in order to be a fulfilled human beings."

     P.P.S. I'm replaying Bethesda TES IV Oblivion now and I noticed that Khajiits, cat-people, there use this greeting too, For me it came from Mowgli and Soviet cartoon, maybe there are more sources.

#barbarian: Barbarians!

     First card came from Czechia - the cover for the book 'The First Chronicles of Druss the Legend' by David Gemmell - illustration by Luis Royo [www.luisroyo.com]. The second one is Warhammer's card, Eva, myliu_Lietuva borrowed from her 11 years old son, who loves computer games. True barbarian!

     As an useless statistical remark to myself: somehow Lithuania is represented in postcrossing wider than Latvia or Estonia, which are also Baltic countries, I suppose, same prices for stamps, same wages, same culture, four times more postcrossers with only twice more population. So far in 2017 I received 3 cards from Lithuania, 1 from Estonia and zero from Latvia.

left - CZ-1126561, from Daydreamer_, Czechia; right - LT-553535, from myliu_Lietuva, Lithuania

Sci-Fi: Red Dwarf

     Simple, rare, and notable postcard - heroes of the British 'Red Dwarf' [www.reddwarf.co.uk] sci-fi comedy series [more chamber comedy than sci-fi]. The show was running since 1988, had a few mini-series and actually still on air as Red Dwarf XII. Of course, when you receive a postcard like that, you want to immediately rewatch all the episodes! xD

received from IreneBP, Norway (direct swap)

Rare countries: Long traveled postcard from USA

     Why the post is labelled both rare country and USA? Of course, US postcards are not from rare country, even though they are usually splendid, but simple official postcrossing card from USA can accidentally... split into THREE postcards, from which one will be from Bangladesh.

     This summer there was a postal hiccup, which resulted in tens of delayed postcards, somehow mostly from USA. Sarah, slothy, wrote me whether her card, sent in March, arrived yet and suggested to resent from her trip, either from Dubai or Bangladesh. I answered that sadly, it haven't yet and suggested in turn to swap to compensate additional cards. She checked on the whether card arrived couple times, report of receiving my postcard, but hers were still on the way... Until the 15th of July, when I received all three cards. Firstly, the Bangladesh one showing the fishermen netting fish in the river in Bangladesh with no stamps on the back, just two cancellations - one seems to be the payment and another date of acceptance. This year we have master student from Bangladesh and he tells a lot about his country: it's relationship with India and Pakistan, the government program to accelerate the technical development of the country - all PC, laptops, smartphones cost little there.

front side (left) and stamps (right) on the resend of US-4560141, from slothy, while visiting Bangladesh

     The Bangladesh postcard I waited for, but other two were a surprise! First it was cute and marvelous postcard with puffins from Maine. Before, for me puffins were mostly seen on the Irish postcards, didn't know USA also has them [after reading wikipedia, it seems there are even Pacific puffins!]. And, as main part of the surprise, original postcard with old mill near Boston arrived as well, after more than 4 months of travel!

the resend (left) and original (right) postcard of US-4560141, from slothy, USA