Brigus, Zeeland, 230.G.353, Joensuu,Island of Sri Lanka

Hello again, time for another update. It's a long weekend here in Canada, so that means no mail on Monday. It's Canada's Thanksgiving on Monday.   Thanksgiving Day here occurs on the second Monday in October, and is an annual Canadian holiday which celebrates the harvest and other blessings of the past year.
I'll try and get an update in on Thanksgiving Day with a traditional Thanksgiving postcard- read turkey there.

I want to start today with a card from Brigus, Newfoundland.It's # 26 in my Towns of Newfoundland Postcard Collection. Brigus is a small fishing community located in Conception Bay, Newfoundland and Labrador , Canada.  Brigus was home to Captain Bob Bartlett and the location of his residence Hawthorne Cottage. The town , with a population of just over 790 people dates back to 1612 and Captain Bob Bartlett is its most famous son. I could write a whole blog on him and it still wouldn't be enough. Go ahead, Google him and you'll see he was a real Hero and he came from Brigus. My postcard shows a few of the local images of Brigus, including Bartlett's Hawthorne Cottage in the upper right corner.

 My card arrived with 2 special cancellations. Thanks Shari. The one actually canceling the stamp celebrates the Annual Blueberry Festival held in the town and the other cancel celebrates the Canadian postage stamp featuring Bartlett that was issued by Canada Post in 2009. The stamp used here is a Year of the Dragon stamp issued in 2012.

Card 2 for today comes from Rotterdam, Netherlands. It shows the Oosterscheldekering or the eastern Scheldt Storm Surge Barrier in Zeeland , the westernmost province of the Netherlands. We also see a couple of the giant wind turbines, in the area . They are becoming quite common in my province of Alberta. There have been 752 turbines erected here since 1993. Maybe Prince Charles wasn't all that wrong when he described them as "a horrendous blot on the landscape ". Even Prince Philip said  of them " absolutely useless, and an absolute disgrace ". Not quite sure I agree that they are absolutely useless, though. I'll leave it to you my readers to decide the merits of these giant monsters.  Anyway I didn't mean to get off track here, so her's the Zeeland card.

    Jetske , a Postcrosser from Rotterdam used all semi-postal stamps on this card. The one on the left was issued back in 1987 . It is 1 of 3 in a set with the surtax used for the National ( Dutch ) Red Cross.
The other stamp  was issued in 1985 , 1 of a set of 4 , with the surtax going to Child Welfare organizations.

Ana who hails from Portugal , but now lives in Dublin, Ireland sent my next card. It's locomotive 230 G 353 departing on 7 May 1977 . It's  Special train F.A.C.S. Paris-Pithiviers-Orleans departing the railway station of Paris-Austerlitz May 7th, 1977.

Ana used a number of stamps, including on the left a  2008 Wild Flowers  stamp from a set of 3. The long stamp on top is from a set of 3 issued August 22, 2013 commemorating the Centenary of the General Lockout.  Her last stamp features the Spiny Seahorse and was issued in 2012 and is from a set of 12 self-adhesives  featuring Irish Animals and Marine Life. I'm not saying it too loud, but I do like these.

Two more cards to go.

Here's a card from Joensuu, Finland. It's of a bronze statue located in the city center, Joensuu. It is a work created by artists Henna Onnela and Eija Hanninen. It's either called "Wolf , Going to Pop the Question " or "The Wolf, Offering a Place ". Take your pick. The young lady looks quite comfortable although we don't know if she said yes or no.  .

 

  
I don't know much about this stamp other than it commemorates Ilosaarirock, an annual rock festival held in Joensuu.

 

My last card for today is from Sri Lanka. The multi-view card gives us a look at toddy tapping.  Clambering between high trees carrying a knife in the search for sap to brew alcoholic drinks is a young man's game -- and Sri Lanka's ageing toddy tappers say the craft is dying.

In a typical day, a skilled tapper collects the milky white sap from 75 to 100 palms that are linked by a network of ropes that he walks along, just one slip away from falling onto the hard ground far below.
The job requires toughness and balance, and was passed down through the generations providing a basic living through harvesting coconut palms for "toddy" to make a local alcoholic brew, coconut syrup or exotic palm sugar.

Dr. Mikram used 3 great stamps here. Two of them , the one on the left and the one in the center both commemorate World Post Day, 2011 and 2010. World Post Day 2013 was just a few days ago on Oct 09th. The large stamp on the right is from a 2010 set featuring Sri Lanks's Beaches.

That's all for this time. Thanks for cards going out to Shari, Jetske, Ana, Dr. Kikram and Simera. Thanks for reading , and if you have any comment, please leave one. Take care.