A Postcard A Day - Tuesday 22 March 2022 - T for

 Hello lovely ladies! 

The week has flown by and here we are again on Tuesday, ready to join the T-gang for the T-Party hosted by Elizabeth and the handsome Bleubeard. 

I have a rather fun card to show you today:

It was sent to me by Laura from Pensacola in the USA. The photo is called 'Bathers' and is by Frederic Lewis, copywritten 1990, but it looks like a much older photo. I haven't been able to find out much about the photographer other than he is known for his Times Square photos from the 1930s.

Laura herself is a divemaster (scuba diving), and a lawyer and a volunteer for the hospice. She has no time for TV and consequently doesn't have one! This is the first time I have 'met' someone who (like us) doesn't have a TV. Hurray for Laura.

The stamps, you will agree, are spectacular!

I had great fun researching these people. My American friends will know most if not all of these people. But I have not learned much about American history, so I'm finding this fascinating. Please feel free to skip all the info you already know!

On the left is Tom Sawyer.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is an 1876 novel by Mark Twain about a boy growing up along the Mississippi River. It is set in the 1840s in the town of St. Petersburg, which is based on Hannibal, Missouri, where Twain lived as a boy. In the novel, Tom Sawyer has several adventures, often with his friend Huckleberry Finn. A fun-loving boy, Tom skips school to go swimming and is made to whitewash his aunt's fence for the entirety of the next day, Saturday, as punishment. 

Originally a commercial failure, the book ended up being the best selling of any of Twain's works during his lifetime. Though overshadowed by its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the book is considered by many to be a masterpiece of American literature. It was one of the first novels to be written on a typewriter.

The commemorative stamp from 1972 shows Tom whitewashing the fence.

Then there is a portrait of Chief Joseph, (ca. 1840–1904) by Cyrenius Hall (1830–1904) / Oil on canvas, 1878 / 22 x 18 1/8 in. (55.9 x 46 cm) / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.

Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt , popularly known as Chief Joseph, or Joseph the Younger (March 3, 1840 – September 21, 1904), was a leader of the Wal-lam-wat-kain (Wallowa) band of Nez Perce, a Native American tribe of the interior Pacific Northwest region of the United States, in the latter half of the 19th century. He succeeded his father Tuekakas (Chief Joseph the Elder) in the early 1870s.

Chief Joseph led his band of Nez Perce during the most tumultuous period in their history, when they were forcibly removed by the United States federal government from their ancestral lands in the Wallowa Valley of northeastern Oregon onto a significantly reduced reservation in the Idaho Territory. A series of violent encounters with white settlers in the spring of 1877 culminated in those Nez Perce who resisted removal, including Joseph's band and an allied band of the Palouse tribe, to flee the United States in an attempt to reach political asylum alongside the Lakota people, who had sought refuge in Canada under the leadership of Sitting Bull.

At least 700 men, women, and children led by Joseph and other Nez Perce chiefs were pursued by the U.S. Army under General Oliver O. Howard in a 1,170-mile (1,900 km) fighting retreat known as the Nez Perce War. The skill with which the Nez Perce fought and the manner in which they conducted themselves in the face of incredible adversity earned them widespread admiration from their military opponents and the American public, and coverage of the war in U.S. newspapers led to popular recognition of Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce.

In October 1877, after months of fugitive resistance, most of the surviving remnants of Joseph's band were cornered in northern Montana Territory, just 40 miles (64 km) from the Canadian border. Unable to fight any longer, Chief Joseph surrendered to the Army with the understanding that he and his people would be allowed to return to the reservation in western Idaho. He was instead transported between various forts and reservations on the southern Great Plains before being moved to the Colville Indian Reservation in the state of Washington, where he died in 1904.

Chief Joseph's life remains an iconic event in the history of the American Indian Wars. For his passionate, principled resistance to his tribe's forced removal, Joseph became renowned as both a humanitarian and a peacemaker.

Then there is Harvey Milk. I had never heard of him and looking at the photos, I thought he was a comedian. But that was far from the truth. I enjoyed reading about him. An amazing man who died much too young. (I got the info from the Britannica Encyclopedia).

Harvey Bernard Milk, (born May 22, 1930, Woodmere, Long Island, New York, U.S.—died November 27, 1978, San Francisco, California), American politician and gay-rights activist.

Milk served in the U.S. Navy during the Korean War and received an “other than honorable” discharge in 1955 for having engaged in sexual acts with other enlisted men. 

In 1972 he moved to San Francisco, where he opened a camera store and soon gained a following as a leader in the gay community. His popularity grew when he challenged the city’s gay leadership, which he thought was too conservative in its attempts to gain greater political rights for homosexuals.

In 1973 Milk ran for a seat on the city’s Board of Supervisors but was defeated. After another unsuccessful bid in 1976, he was elected in 1977, becoming one of the first openly gay elected officials in U.S. history. The following year Milk and the city’s mayor, George Moscone, were shot and killed in City Hall by Dan White, a conservative former city supervisor. 

Last but not least Sally Ride.

Sally Kristen Ride (May 26, 1951 – July 23, 2012) was an American astronaut and physicist. Born in Los Angeles, she joined NASA in 1978, and in 1983 became the first American woman and the third woman in space, after cosmonauts Valentina Tereshkova in 1963 and Svetlana Savitskaya in 1982. She was the youngest American astronaut to have traveled to space, having done so at the age of 32. After flying two missions on the Space Shuttle Challenger, Ride left NASA in 1987.

Having been married to astronaut Steven Hawley during her spaceflight years and in a private, long-term relationship with former Women's Tennis Association player Tam O'Shaughnessy, she is the first space traveler known to have been LGBT. Ride died of pancreatic cancer on July 23, 2012.

After all these famous Americans, lets come down to earth in little old Andalusia. What have we been up to?

Last Tuesday we drove to Granada (an hour and a half by car). 

 There was a dust storm going on and it was not a very nice drive:

It also rained and there was a yellow fog (Sahara dust). This is what our car looked like when we got back:

Hubby got seen by the radiologist and has an appointment for today to go into the machine for a simulation. He has to follow a low residue diet.

The next day the sky cleared and the clean-up operation started:

The little patio first.

Then the terraces (We have three).

After two terraces the power washer broke down with a bang. So hubby spent the evening trying to fix it.

Of course he succeeded in fixing it and on Thursday he tackled the outside of the house:

And our house (or at least part of it) is white again.

Now let me not forget what I'm here for: the T-Party .

This is our scrambled egg breakfast with a cup of herbal tea.

I know I promised more photos of the murals or my walk, but this post is already too long, so I am posting another mural  by (I think) the same artist as last week. This time it is an insect. Bee or wasp? Or a non-existing creature?

I'll leave it at this. 

Happy T-Day everyone!

Take care,

Hugs,

Lisca