A Postcard A Day - Tuesday 19 July 2022 - T for volcanoes

 Hello lovely ladies. Today is T-Day, but it is also the day that hubby should have had his operation.   Friday afternoon we got a telephone call from the hospital saying that the operation has been cancelled. The tumor has been deemed inoperable! That was a blow! We are now seeing the oncologist on Thursday to see where we go from here. We were both disappointed as hubby had pinned all his hope on this operation. I, being a nurse, knew this was a possibility of course, but I was hoping for a good outcome. We both have a strong faith and we have each other. So we will make it through together.

My postcards for today are both volcanoes. The first one comes from Russia and features two volcanoes in the Kamchatka area:

It was sent to me by Anna, who lives in Zelenograd, which means Green City. It is in the greater Moscow area, 20 km from Moscow center.

Kamchatka is a peninsula in the far east of Russia:

On this map the peninsula is bottom left. 

An interesting anecdote I found:

On 21 May 1865, the American Civil War came to the area: the Confederate States Navy steamer Shenandoah sailed past the southern end of the Kamchatka Peninsula on its way to hunt United States whaling ships in the Sea of Okhotsk. As a commerce raider, the CSS Shenandoah aimed to destroy Union merchant shipping and thus draw off United States Navy ships in pursuit, thereby loosening the US Navy blockade of Confederate coasts. The ship spent almost three weeks in the Sea, destroying only one ship due to the dangerous ice, before moving on to the North Pacific, where it virtually captured or bonded 24 whalers, sinking most of them.

The mountain on the left of the postcard is called Klyuchevskaya Sopka, and on the right is Kamen (which means 'stone'). 

The stamps are very pretty and feature fruit. You can tell by the cancellation stamp that it was posted last year. I know, but I wanted to pair this postcard with the other volcano I have lined up.

The top-right stamp has Bogatyr apples on it. 'Bogatyr' is a group of apple cultivars that ripen in late fall or early winter with a strong acid taste that have been popular in Russia .

This second postcard of course shows the famous Mount Fuji in Japan. This is art by Tsuchiya Koitsu.

Wikipedia tells me:

Tsuchiya Koitsu (土屋光逸) was an important artist in the Shin-hanga movement.  In 1931, at the age of 60, he began work for Shōzaburō Watanabe and his art publishing establishment which also published the work of artists like Kawase Hasui and Yoshida Hiroshi. His later work incorporated light effects to increase the emotional impact of his art.

Born on September 23, 1870, in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka, Japan. His birth name was either Koichi or Sahei. He moved to Tokyo at age 15. He first had an apprenticeship for the woodblock carver Matsuzaki, but soon became a student of ukiyo-e master Kiyochika Kobayashi. He worked for Kiyochika for 19 years and lived in his house. He initially published prints made during the First Sino-Japanese War, before developing his skill with dramatic light effects, learned from Kiyochika. Koitsu published through the Watanabe publishing house after Watanabe and Koitsu met at an exhibition commemorating the 17th anniversary of Kiyochika's death.

The postcard was sent to me by Eileen in Harrisburg. She uses beautiful stamps:

Some forever stamps with typical American subjects and a Celebrate! stamp. I love them.

Today is T for Tuesday, hosted by Elizabeth and Bleubeard and we all bring a drink in our blog. Let me see what I can contribute.

Last Wednesday we drove to Albox, (70 km in the direction of the east coast). For some reason a lot of English ex-pats have settled there and there are English shops, English bars and this English restaurant called Chapman's. They serve a fantastic fish & chips. Their fish is impressive:

Hubby loved it (as did I), and there are a good few drinks in the picture to qualify for the T-Party hosted by Elizabeth and Bleubeard.

I was having Strongbow cider (hard cider  for those in America), hubby was having ice tea.

What else have we been up to? On Sunday (after church) we went to see our friends Antonia and Eusebio at their ice cream shop. Eusebio makes his own delicious ice cream made with all natural ingredients. I have no photo of  him as he was working flat out in this weather.

We both had an ice cream to eat there and then, and hubby wanted to take some home too.

He chose tutti-frutti (with pistachio in it)

Antonia is filling a tub for him.

There is the tutti-frutti (with the red maraschino cherries) and the white tub next to it to keep it cool while we were still catching up with our friends.

I have a video which shows you the ice cream shop and in which Eusebio explains the process. It's all in Spanish of course, but at least it shows you the shop and the ice cream (and our friends who make it). The other people in the video are the Mayor of Baza and two of his councilors. I hope the link works:

If it is very warm where you are, I hope the sight of all this ice cream has cooled you down a bit.

Happy T-Day all!

Hugs,

Keep smiling,

Lisca