We’ve reached the end of my philatelic alphabet with yesterday’s post on Zimbabwe. I don’t (yet) have any stamps from Zululand but will put together an article once I obtain one.
Does this indicate the end of A Stamp A Day? After all, my initial goal was to cover a stamp from each different entity I had in my collection in a more or less alphabetical format. I began on July 2, 2016, with Abu Dhabi.
Along the way, I have also covered a number of holidays (primarily American and Thai) as well as historic events and profiles of people (and objects) portrayed on stamps. In the last year and a half, I regarded these as breaks in the routine and were often easier to put together than the stamp-issuer profiles. I already had stamps in mind before choosing a particular subject; many were discarded as I didn’t have appropriate stamps in my collection.
This is the future of A Stamp A Day (I like to refer to it as ASAD): the biographies and historical anniversaries will predominate with the rare stamp-issuer profile as I add “new countries” to my collection.
However, this will make it a bit more difficult as my collection here in Thailand is not near as extensive as I would like. I do run into anniversaries I would like to cover but cannot for the lack of a stamp to use. For example, there were a number of interesting occurances in the past on November 29 such as the founding of San Jose as the first pueblo in Alta California, Thomas Edison demonstrating the phonograph for the first time, Admiral Richard Byrd leading the first expedition to fly over the South Pole, and Atari releasing the first commercially successful video game (Pong). All of these have been commemorated on stamps (in fact, I believe all have been on U.S. stamps). I have none of those stamps in my collection. I suppose there is always next year…
What I really need to do is to go through my entire stamp collection and assign dates to those stamps I would like to profile on ASAD. I suppose I could choose random stamps, perhaps those fitting a different topical each week, but I like the idea of the “On this day…” format. I will keep to that for as long as I can.
I also need to start buying more stamps! I’ve been concentrating on Thailand lately but really want to expand my collections of United States and Great Britain, among other countries. I also need to get back on track of adding entities to my “Stamps From (Almost) Everywhere” project (the “almost” gets me off the hook from feeling I need any of the early U.S. or Confederate States postmaster’s provisionals, for example). Zulaland has just been ordered…
As you can tell, this blog is a labor of love for me. I have managed at least one entry per day for almost a year and a half, never missing a single day. It has become my primary “To Do” each day and my other blogs have fallen by the wayside). Any down-time at work (and, lately, there has been a bit more of that) tends to be consumed by ASAD-related tasks.
It hasn’t always been easy: poor/slow Internet connections, work committments, and pure laziness being the main hurdles to leap from time-to-time. Currently, I am without a computer at home and the one I use at work cannot connect to the Internet. Thus, many of my recent entries have been written on my tiny mobile phone. Editing text on the tiny screen leads to eye-strain, muscle pains, and curses as the keyboard and formatting bars tend to cover the textbox causing endless frustration (it’s much better than the blogging platforms native app, however). It’s not ideal, but it gets the job done.
I will soon order a new computer — the holidays and annual work-permit/visa renewal fees always take a big bite out of my budget at this time of year — and writing will get easier.
Once I do have a new computer, I also plan to go back and re-do a number of the earlier articles to fit the format I’ve developed over time (that being the “kitchen-sink” approach). Those early articles on Abu Dhabi, Aden, and all the rest will grow! More text, more photos, more, more, more!
Yes, ASAD will continue. I just don’t know what I will write about tomorrow…
A Stamp A Day 