Many moons ago I started collecting postal stamps, stamps for brevity, and although I never bought a stamp for the collection, I did ask for them from friends and travellers and of course during my trips, many during more than 50 years, I sent myself all the stamps I could, some beautiful, others not so, but always interesting and for me a pleasant way to learn history and geography as well as sometimes cultural traits of different countries.
Along all these years I learned that with few exceptions, the poorer the country the most beautiful stamps they issued, as if the stamps were the window to the country, and somehow they were. Of course almost all countries have philatelic offices and issue special stamps to commemorate specials dates or events but unless you live there, it is very hard to follow all the novelties.
Getting the stamps, by mail or through friends is only the beginning of the adventure, as the stamps have to be washed, dried flat, classified and then collected in albums where you can enjoy them and maybe even share them if you find someone interested in this matter.
I have several thousands stamps, from rather old – some older than I, to very recent but nowadays it is ever more difficult to collect them since today a big chunk of communications all over the world are done via electronic means and sending letters or postcards is loosing popularity, and on top of that some of the modern stamps are glued with some kind of substance that cannot be eliminated with the washing and tend to destroy it, although some countries still issue the normal paper with the regular glue.
I moved from my house in relative countryside to my present lodgings almost four years ago and during all that time my stamps collection, as well as many of my books and reading material had been just pushed and shoved from one bookshelf to a box and back to the bookshelf, with the idea that I would put some order soon. Of course the soon never really materialized but I kept buying nice Swiss stamps and receiving them from other countries and at one point I wanted to put them all together and in certain order – big mistake!
As we all know, when you open a box, shelf or container of any kind looking for something specific most of the time you find everything but. I started opening the bookshelves looking for my loose stamps and discovered I have sufficient books to open a bookshop, stickers, gadgets and trinkets of all kinds and on all subjects and of course a lot of stamps, but by the time I found the stamps all my shelves were in such a state of chaos that I had to put aside the stamps and reorder the books, some are good for the flea market, town library or the like, with the problem that at least close by most of the second hand shops and flea markets have such a number of books that unless you have the first version of Goethe’s Bible or Moses Tablets, they will not take them and then you have to find suitable recipients that would put them in an open free-for-all book shelves and take as you wish. Of course an alternative is taking them to the central rubbish dump, to be burned but… and a BIG but, I was always told that throwing away food and books was a mortal sin and although I am not terribly religious and hell is not what worries me the most, the idea of burning books horrifies me so I will try to find a suitable place for them.
Back to the stamps, I found one of the several hiding places for my washed but not yet well organized cache of stamps, I know there are others but do not know where so it is either redo the undoing of the shelves in order to find an envelope with stamps or hope and pray that when I am gone someone finds them and enjoys them. I tend to go for the second alternative and now devote some of my time to wash, arrange and display my stamps.
As I am writing this we have the first and wishful thinking last snow of the season. So far where I live it has been very decent weather, even too good to believe and even the snow did not stay longer than 5 minutes on the ground that is not sufficiently cold to hold it. I personally write this story about the snow not as a complaint for me the snow is beautiful in postcards and pictures or so high in the mountains that the chance of my being there is very very slim. I have been there, actually my first encounter with snow was when I was 6 or 7 years old, in Mexico, at the volcano Popocatepetl, but as enjoyable as that may have been, I never got the knack of it.
For the moment I stop here, I am going to wash some stamps and continue putting order in the bookshelves, if at all possible.
(February 2020)
Mementos of my life 