MAANLANDING: Our global celebration of achieving what's impossible

This stamp only cost 6F but it cost the US government's Apollo program $25B and employed 400,000 people to register 1st place getting mankind to the moon. As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo Mission's moon landing, the backdrop of climate change and political polarization tint the anniversary with a new black and white: so many ostensibly impossible solutions await our communal acumen. But can we? Will we?

To me, pictures of the US flag on the moon mean more in 2019 than they did to me 10 years ago. Some of us have come of age in a time with few reasons to feel patriotic, rather plagued by the opposite disappointment in the realities of today's America. And yet back then, we did it, and not to claim US territory, but to illustrate US' prowess through smarts, through science, and through grit. 

 I picked this stamp to commemorate the lunar landing because it was not just Americans who seem to have felt, and marked, this moment in time: it was a victory for ingenuity, engineering, economic commitment to see mankind realize a quest as old the first named constellations — to touch this near cousin to our Earth. To touch it with our feet and hands. Evidently 600 million people watched thost first steps on the black and white surface of the moon, through grainy black and white footage on the surface of family room televisions. 

I can do no better to comment on any aspect of this anniversary than the Christian Science Monitor editorial writer has in this piece, Why the moon landing still inspires. What inspires me in the editorial's observerations, as in the spirit I read within depiction of the astronauts of this Belgian stamp, is thus, "Writer Norman Mailer wrote that the project set engineers and computer programmers to dram of 'ways to attack the problems of society as well as they had attacked the problems of putting men on the moon." May this generation's best somehow abound to be the forces of good who are smart, competent and driven just as those NASA engineers of the space race of the 60s.

Transcendency of trains

Even before you can discern the purpose of this stamp, the sparkling blue and brilliant red of its features, fenced by a geometric arch, fetch the heart!  The Høhe Tåstrup Station commemorated in by Denmark in 1986 is a train station 15KM from Copenhagen. Train stations across the world have done well by the architects that design them. In turn, we who visit — from us train-impoverished American tourists from the land of automobiles, to the European and Asian commuters for whom such spaces are literally quotidian — can’t help but be flagged and found illuminated by those high ceilings, transcendent light, and urgent pace. Transcendenthas facets of definition – it means several things, but the version I call on is that “of God, existing apart from and not subject to the limitations of the material universe.”

Stepping from the train station onto the train is a portal into yet more expansive moments. I dwell on rich memories of train riding across Europe for work in earlier chapters of my life, with the sweetest feelings of independence, perspective, and gratitude unfolding in my heart as the landscape rolled out the window. Several weeks ago we had the joy of watching our 15month old experience and voice this same exhilaration, as we sped across a short span of Norway’s landscape — her chirps and chippers exactly in tune with the joyful child in our all of our train-appreciating hearts.  

Circus! The Greatest Show on Earth!

The circus is in town! You heard it right! I said, The Circus!
The Ringling Brothers C I R C U S! 

The Greatest Show on Earth!

Come and see it all! Fire breathers, sword swallowers, knife
throwers, lion tamers, biking bears, trape-eeze flyers, high wires,
tightrope walkers, human cannons, stilt men, big cat acts,
human pyramids, balancing elephants . . . bee-dazzling,
spell-binding, trans-fixing!

Daddy, can I sit on your shoulders?

Yes, Siree, Ladies and Gents and all you kids, we even got the
snake girl, the midgets, the fire-breathers, carnival clowns-
and a strong man you gotta see!

That big red clown scares me!

Step right up! Get your tickets ‘fore they’re gone! All for a buck!
I don’t wanna holler, but it’s just one 

dollar! Get your cracker jacks, candy corn, popcorn, corn dogs,
cotton candy – no empty hands or stomachs under our Big Top!

Oh, pink cotton candy, Daddy, p l e a s e !

This way! This way! Fascination, palpitation, gyration- all under one Big Top!  Step right up!
That’s right, folks, we got a show to stop all shows tonight!  Bring out the snake girl, the vanishing act, 

the fire jugglers, the midgets, the fat lady – even the freaks! Mesmerizing, hypnotizing, magnetizing

– see it here! Don’t miss a moment! It’s about to begin!

Look, two seats in the front row just for us!

It’s SHHHOOOWWW TIME!

This week's Guest Blogger, Melissa Foster, has vivid memories when recalling the thrill of the circus.  Growing up in Omaha, 

she went every summer with her family  to the Ringling Bros Big Top Ak-Sar-Ben arena. 

She loved every part — but not the clowns, which scared her. Circuses travel the country by rail. 

In its heyday, the Barnum and Bailey and Ringling Brothers circus was 100 traincars long and 

employed 1200 people.  The circus is considered a tradition 250 yearsold, and was a primary 

venue for entertainment in an age before theatre, movies television, and ultimately, personal 

digital media. The circus was born in Europe in the mid 1700s. These stamps come from the 

US in 1966 and Monaco in 1978. The US Postal Service issued a commemorative set of circus stamps this May, available here. Melissa plans to attend the circus this summer with her family 

when it comes to Colorado.

Anders Zorn and the Woman from Mora

It’s the everyday normalcy about this woman, despite exertion in the midst of rowing, that I love. En route home from a field, perhaps to visit a grandchild, maybe to collect a basket of something useful — I wonder where she heads? Clearly, she is not out for sport. But our heroine rather is navigating the waterways of a country with channels as pedestrian as highways. The talent of the engraver makes the water unquestionably real. Look at the paddle of the oar as it slices from the canal! In the background, a boat full of people contrasts with our protagonist who rows alone. I’ve never tried rowing, let alone for transportation in a cold climate, yet her confident familiarity with the endeavor makes the boat, the oars, the motion look quotidian. This image is taken from an oil panting by Anders Zorn, the Swedish artist who completed this piece “Old Woman from Mora” in 1879. Maybe the image springs from his childhood, for his grandparents raised him on the family farm in Mora. The stamp was etched onto copper plate for reproduction by Arne Wallhorn, one of two eminent engravers responsible for a host of Swedish stamps. Whatever we are striving for, let the effort be as graceful and patient as that depicted here.

Even without a magnifying glass, the labyrinthine detail of a postage stamp calls your name.

What story do you whisper, secret cache of memory?

What distances you’ve traveled, dear delicate square inch!

Within your intaglio rests a rare intersection of history, currency, and design.

This blog is a forum to explore the art and delight within the detail of stamps. Muse, ponder, reflect, comment… Stamps are a stage on which history, biography, art, memorials, sport, and cultural values are memorialized. I invite your observations on the international heritage embodied in stamp collections.