Monthly Archives: May 2019

Russian stamps of the 1930's have always fascinated me. They are beautiful and well designed with friendly, internationalist themes and yet they were issued by a vicious regime that was systematically exploiting its citizens and was highly militaristic in orientation. Another aggressive state of this period, Germany, at least was more honest about its goals and had a highly nationalistic stamp issuing policy. In the exaltation of the Volk and the Fatherland its easy to see the factors that led to WWII. But as George Orwell explained so well in Nineteen Eighty-Four, the pathological hypocrisy of the Soviet communist system

In 1954 Roger Bannister accomplished a feat that many sports observers had never thought was possible. He ran a mile in under 4 minutes. Within six weeks Bannister's own record was broken. Running faster than a four minute mile became the norm among world class runners though previously the record had held for centuries (the record is now 3:43 - though the mile is not run as much in the metric era, it is actually the only non-metric record recognised by the IAAF). Does anyone think that Roger Maris would have broken Babe Ruth's home run record in 1961 if Micky Mantle hadn't been pounding homers right behind him. The point is that in most activities we are stirred on by what others are doing and this defines for us the possible. The philatelic point here is that with the decline of stamp shows and competitive exhibitions and with the decline of stamp clubs where collectors got together