Letter from a dear mail friend

It has been a long time since I posted here. Most of my online time nowadays is captured by instagram.
Today I heard sad news: a dear mail pal, a mail friend to many people, has passed away last weekend. We so much will miss him!
And I realized I never had posted this piece of mail here, of which both John and I, and many (snail)mail lovers with us, thought it is an amazing and funny coincidence.
John started to blog in the early years. As blogger might be more accessible than instagram, I copy my instagram post from 2019 to this blog:

John brought a lot of humour, wisdom, thoughtfulness, post-related postcards (and in my case also cute critters on postcards and stamps) and mail art, into many mailboxes. He will be dearly missed, not only by his dear family who he loved so much, but also by me and many mail friends.
Thank you for all joyful mail you sent to me and to so many people.
May you rest in peace, dear John.

Sunday Stamps: Trees

It's been a long time since I posted stamps for Sunday Stamps. I'm happy to finally share these stamps, matching this Sunday's theme 'Trees' (click to enlarge):

These Dutch stamps have been issued as a serie of 4 sheets containing 10 stamps each and representing the four seasons: spring-, summer-, autumn- and winter trees. They were issued in 2007 when € 0.44 still was sufficient for mail within the Netherlands (since 1-1-2023 it is € 1.01).

The stamps show (in Dutch, English and scientific name):

top rows:
Zaad van noorse esdoorn: norway maple seed (acer platanoides)
Bruine beuk: brown beech (fagus sylvatica atropunicea)
Zwarte els: black alder (alnus glutinosa)
Schietwilg: white willow (salix alba)

bottom rows:
Hollandse linde: common linden / european lime (tilia x vulgaris / tilia x europaea)
Knop van witte paardenkastanje: bud of a horse chestnut (aesculus hippocastanum)
Schors van een plataan: bark of a plane tree (platanus)
Zomereik: common (also pedunculate or European) oak (Quercus robur).

See more tree stamps at and via Sunday stamps!

Black minus red is blue and yellow

Today's Sunday Stamps' theme is 'Dark, colour or theme'. When I saw this theme announced last Sunday, I immediately had an atmospheric, nice dark / sunset stamp in mind. Not knowing what would happen later this week.
Thursday morning, 24 February, a horrible news shook the world. How can one man even think of attacking a country, and then let his bad saddening thoughts come true by letting the army of his country invade the neighbouring country...

Thanks to our stamp hobby on instagram I've learned to know kind and thoughtful people from both countries. While the woman in RU feels guilty and sad and supports the UA people, the UA woman is hiding in shelter due to the bombing...

Both you, dear visitor, and I know how real mail can connect real people in a positive way, and I wished that this agressive president would have been sending postcards and drink tea and make music with the neighbours instead of causing pain and loss by starting a bad, sad war.

Instead of the dark sunset stamp I originally had in mind, I chose two specific bright colours for today. The connection with the theme, dark/black: Painters know that the three primary colours together make black (or at least a dark grey).
So if we pull the red out of this black, the remaining colours form the bright colours of the flag of the country we are supporting in these hard times.
And I chose these stamps (coincidentally from other countries) to have these Blue and Yellow always keep on shining bright.

Last but not least, I dont know if KR Post did issue this yellow umbrella stamp intentionally to support the people in HK, but anyhow I think these people, whose freedom has been taken away by an other mighty country, deserve attention and support, too.

Let us not forget that many other countries have been invaded and even stolen by other countries (also in 'our' past via colonialism) and still today many more people in many countries suffer from war and agression.
Hopefully peace will gain victory all over the world very, very soon.

See more stamps on the theme, supporting Ukraine and peace, at - and in the comments to - today's Sunday Stamps post.

Sunday Stamp: Nella Larsen

It has been a long time since I posted for Sunday Stamps, and I am happy to add a stamp for today's theme: 'N'.

My late mom was named Nelly, and the woman on this stamp is named Nella, so her name is dear :-)
I found some more information about Nella Larsen on the internet, and her career is matching to this Sunday Stamps' theme also: she was both a nurse and a novellist.
I didn't know her books so far. But now that I was searching for more information, I found out that her novel 'Passing', first published in 1929, still is available (and even has been translated into my language, Nederlands / Dutch). As it is about two women from mixed families (which is a dear theme to me) I just ordered it, to read it more than ninety years after Nella has written the book.

Nella's stamp was accompanied by a stamp of an other writer, plus a matching postmark of the Harlem Renaissance movement (many thanks to FinnBadger for these stamps and postmark):

See more stamps on today's theme on and via the comments on today's Sunday Stamps.

Food for thought

Beautiful drawing by Eva and matching stamps, thank you very much!

Lighthouse postmark and physicists

A beautiful postmark and a wise physicist arrived today. Thank you very much, FinnBadger!

Sunday Stamps: F is for Feathers and Fountain pens

Today's Sunday Stamps theme is the letter 'F'.

I found some good old writing tools. The feathers might be hardly used anymore nowadays, in contrary to fountain pens, who have a lot of new fans.











See more stamps showing an object or name starting with an 'F' at today's Sunday Stamps.