Happy Friday and Happy belated Valentine’s Day (the day is done).
Here is what I am working on: a complete set of the 1977 Third Definitive Issue of South Africa. All the stamps in the series depict proteas*, and there will be a second and a third page as well.
*Protea is a genus of South African flowering plants, also called sugarbushes (Afrikaans: suikerbos). It is the type genus of the Proteaceae family.
About 92% of the species occur only in the Cape Floristic Region, a narrow belt of mountainous coastal land from Clanwilliam to Grahamstown, South Africa. [Wikipedia]
In 1977, the standard postage rate was all of 5c, and that is why there are four versions of the 5c stamp. The have different perforations, and were printed on different types of paper. I will explain all of it when I post the completed set!
I’m catching up on yesterday’s US inflation report. The pundits say it’s now 50-50 that we get one interest rate cut by mid-2025.
(As of today, the federal funds rate is 4.33%. This is within the target range of 4.25% to 4.50% set by the Federal Reserve).
Reporters Alan Rappeport and Colby Smith write for the New York Times: Inflation figures released on Wednesday showed that consumer prices ticked up unexpectedly, rising at an annual rate of 3.0 percent in January. Core inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, jumped 3.3 percent on a yearly basis. Prices also rose 0.5 percent on a monthly basis. … As of January, a dozen eggs averaged $4.95, up from less than $3 several months ago. Egg prices are up nearly 53 percent over the last year. And that’s likely to worsen amid an outbreak of avian flu, which has led to an egg shortage as farmers cull their flocks to prevent the disease from spreading.
Employees at the federal Board on Geographic Names have formally changed the name to the Gulf of America per one of President Donald Trump’s first executive orders. The change doesn’t affect what other countries call it, and Mexico’s president has promised to ignore the order and asked others to do the same.
-Trevor Hughes writing for USA Today, Feb. 11
Call it whatever the hell you want.
It’s still the Gulf of Mexico.
And if you can ‘change’ the name that easily, it going to be ‘changed’ right back to Gulf of Mexico in 2028.
P.S. The name “Gulf of Mexico” (Spanish: golfo de México; French: golphe du Mexique, later golfe du Mexique) first appeared on a world map in 1550 and a historical account in 1552. [Wikipedia]
I stocked up on a fresh pack of Freshpak rooibos tea* to keep me warm at night. I steep it for 5 minutes to get it really strong, and then I add milk and a little honey.
P.S. The cold weather has been relentless here. The temperature outside will drop down to 22 °F (-5°C) tonight, which is record-low territory for February here in the city.
*Not a true tea, but rather an herbal tea. It’s made from the leaves of the Aspalathus linearis plant, which is native to South Africa.
– from Google Search Labs | AI Overview
Congrats to the Philadelphia Eagles with their victory over two-time defending champion Kansas City Chiefs.
I thought it was a dullish, one-sided game, though.
As for the half-time show that featured rapper Kendrick Lamar: it was mystifying— the way pretty much all rap music songs are to me.
I don’t understand the words, the references or the message, of most rap songs. Oh well.
Cartoon from today’s edition of South African newspaper Die Burger (“The Citizen”).
Yes, there is such a thing as a ‘special government employee’ (18 U.S.C. § 202) ..
but is it OK to be a special government employee and CEO of SpaceX, CEO of Tesla and CEO of X (formerly Twitter)*— all at the same time?
*Over the past 16 years, Elon Musk’s business deals with the government total nearly $20 billion, according to federal contracting data.
– Rachel Barber reporting for USA Today on Nov. 15, 2024
“Boys, I am trying to hijack a democracy. Any tips?” (On speakerphone: Ajay, Atul, and Rajesh “Tony” Gupta, brothers famous for their vast corruption of South Africa’s government and theft of billions of South African rand from the state coffers and state-owned companies. The portrait on the wall behind them is of disgraced South African president Jacob Zuma that was in office 2009-2018 and played a central role in enabling the crimes of the Guptas— now widely known as ‘state capture’.) Side comment from the angry hippopotamus: “Seems to me tariffs do not apply to state capture as export product”.
Happy Friday.
Welcome to today’s South African stamp project.
I culled the set of stamps on this page from a thousand or so that I had removed from envelope paper clippings.
(A lot of work, done earlier this week: dunk them in water, carefully separate the stamp from the paper, dry on paper towel, and press under a stack of books).
My Scott stamp catalogue confirmed that these stamps are all worth hardly-anything.
One exception: there is a Standardised Mail stamp (the first one on the page), with the fine black text double-printed, that is listed for US$136. (I found no such stamp in the ones I had).
Postmarks and shades of South Africa’s fifth definitive issue. These are all multicolored, and my catalog does not list any shaded varieties, even though it seems to me it could: say— 7c bright colors and 7c dull colors; 21c olive-green and 21c blue-green; 35c blue-gray and 35c gray; R1 brownish-green and R1 green.
1988-1993 Fifth Definitive Issue (Succulents), South Africa Issued Sept. 1, 1988 Perf. 14×14¼ |Design: Hein Botha |Phosphorized paper| Lithography |No Watermark 903 Standardised Mail (45c) (’93) Multicolored Stapelia grandiflora 782 1c Multicolored Huernia zebrina 783 2c Multicolored Euphorbia symmetrica 784 5c Multicolored Lithops dorotheae 785 7c Multicolored Gibbaeum nebrownii 786 10c Multicolored Didymaotus lapidiformis 787 16c Multicolored Vanheerdea divergens 809 18c (’89) Multicolored Faucaria tigrine 788 20c Multicolored Conophytum mundum 833 21c (’90) Multicolored Gasteria armstrongii 789 25c Multicolored Cheiridopsis peculiaris 790 30c Multicolored Tavaresia barklyi 791 35c Multicolored Dinteranthus wilmotianus 792 40c Multicolored Frithia pulchra 793 50c Multicolored Lapidaria margaretae 794 90c Multicolored Dioscorea elephantipes 795 R1 Multicolored Trichocaulon cactiforme 796 R2 Multicolored Crassula columnaris 832 R5 (’90) Multicolored Anacampseros albissima Note: this set includes a 1c, 2c, 5c and 10c coil stamp, which is not listed above. Interestingly, of all the hundreds of mail pieces I had, none had a coil stamp on. (Coil stamps are sold in a long strip that is rolled into a coil). [Source: Stampworld.com]
There were 2 more inches of snow this morning (most of yesterday’s had melted by last night).
I know it’s not a lot of snow compared to the Midwest or the Northeast, but even so, I went out and took a few pictures. Snow on the ground is not something I ever had while living in South Africa!
There were 2 inches of snow on the ground by 8:30 a.m. here on Capitol Hill this morning—just enough to prompt the city to send out an alert that my garbage pickup has been rescheduled for tomorrow.
Looking at these projections, this week’s garbage pickup may have to be postponed to next week.
Tesla is famously owned by billionaire Elon Musk, who was once admired by liberals for helping to popularize the electric vehicle. But in the last few years — in particular since he purchased the social media platform Twitter (now X) in October 2022 — Musk has become something of a villain among the left. He’s often expressed conservative views and backed Donald Trump’s successful presidential bid last year.
And that’s put some Tesla owners in the Seattle area, where most people tend to vote Democrat, in an awkward position, especially since the car is so closely associated with Musk himself.
Even so, it doesn’t seem to have hurt Tesla ownership rates here — or if it has, it’s too soon to be reflected in the data. And there’s been a significant increase in Tesla households in the Seattle market over the past few years. For example, in Nielsen surveys conducted from December 2020 to April 2022, only around 22,400 Seattle-area households owned a Tesla.
(My note: by the end of 2024 that number had increased threefold, to 66,700).
– Seattle Times columnist Gene Balk
‘You can tell South Africa they can have Elon Musk back‘, quipped my neighbor, after I had told him of my recent trip to South Africa.’ Yeah, I know. Some days I think he can have my car back’, said I.
(.. but thinking afterwards: I really did not buy my Tesla because I was an Elon Musk fan. It’s an electric vehicle— with zero emissions, as a reminder— and a lot of fun to drive. So why should I not drive it?)
What is meant by overrepresented? From the report in the Seattle Times: In the Seattle market area, a projected 311,000 households had at least one Subaru. That pencils out to 16.8% of the 1.86 million households that had at least one vehicle. The nationwide Subaru ownership rate was just 7.8% of households. A projected 66,700 Seattle-area households had at least one Tesla, which represented 3.6% of local households. The national average was only 1.6%.
A perfin is a stamp that has a name or initials perforated into it.
The word “perfin” is short for “perforated initials” or “perforated insignia”.
Perfins are used to prevent theft and control how the stamp is used for mail.
How are perfins created?
Individuals, organizations, or government agencies add perfins to stamps after the production process.
The holes are punched into the stamp’s design to create a pattern.
Source: Google Search Labs/ AI Overview
These are the only perfins I have found so far (among the thousands of stamps I have amassed for my collection and for my philatelic ‘research’ ). The U.S. stamp bottom left is also pre-cancelled. Pre-cancelled stamps were used for mass-mailings, making it unnecessary for the post office to cancel them, and expediting their processing.
1961 First Definitive Issue (New Design), South Africa Issued Jan. 20, 1969 Perf. 13½x14 |Phosphor frame |Wmk. RSA tête-bêche SACC282 |1c |Rose-red & sepia |Coral Tree Flowers (Erythina lysistemon) Perfin initials “D.C.”
1982 Fourth Definitive Issue (Architecture), South Africa Issued Jul. 15, 1982 Perf. 14 |Design: A.H. Barrett |Engraving: Arthur Howard Barrett |Litho. |Phosphorized paper |No Wmk SACC524 |10c |Carmine brown |Pietermaritzburg Town Hall Perfin insignia “C C C” (or possibly “V V V”)
1923 United States of America (U.S. Presidents and prominent Americans) Issued Jan. 15, 1923 Perf. 11×10½ |No Wmk Scott 562 A165|10c |Orange |James Monroe (5th U.S. President) Perfin insignia “WFH” Pre-cancelled “Chicago IL” [Sources: stampworld, South African Colour Catalogue 2023-25, Scott 2003 Standard Postage Stamp Catalogue Vol. 1]
We had just under an inch of snow on the ground here in Capitol Hill today. There might be more snow tomorrow.
The flakes are coming down nicely, this is at 9.53 am.I measured 20 mm (0.8 in) after the first round of snow. A little more fell later, bringing the day’s total to an inch or so.
There was a little bit of thunder at noon today, followed by a spell of freezing rain.
An hour or two later, there was blue sky. Today’s high was 40°F (4°C).
There might be a dusting of snow on the ground tomorrow here in the city, say the meteorologists.
There was rain last night and today, a welcome break in the dry weather of the last few weeks.
The snowpacks across Washington State are lagging from their normal levels, but there is still time to make up the deficit. The snowpacks on the mountains peak at around April 1.
Snowpacks (that melt during spring and summer) are a significant source of water for reservoirs around the state, for agriculture, and for hydroelectric power generation.
The map at top left shows the latest snowpack numbers. Worse than where we were in December, and on Jan. 1, but somewhat better than a year ago in Jan. 2024.
There was mail today, with a new Year Of The Snake forever stamp on, issued by the US Postal Service.
2025 Lunar New Year—Year of the Snake Issued Jan. 14, 2025 Perf. 11 Serpentine Die-cut | Self-adhesive | Design: Camille Chew | Engraving: Banknote Corporation of America | Issued in sheets of 20 6376 FOREVER (73c) Multicolored | Lunar New Year – Year Of The Snake [Sources: stampworld.com, USPS]
Happy Lunar New Year— the Year of the Snake.
It sounds a little ominous, but I guess every year cannot be the Year of the Dragon.
The public art installation at the corner of Madison Street and 14th Avenue here on Capitol Hill is complete. (The installation is not specifically related to the Lunar New Year. The artist is Seattle resident Ben Zamora.)
ASTER = aster, the flower TROEF = to trump VREET = to eat (used for animals), or to eat like an animal
How strange, I thought this morning, after completing my Afrikaans Wordle, that there really is no English word for VREET.
In Afrikaans, humans ‘eet’ (eat) and animals ‘vreet’ (eat).
Example: Ek eet die appel. (I eat the apple). Die vark vreet die appel. (The pig eats the apple).
If someone eats voraciously or sloppily, you might use the ‘animal’ word for eat to ask the person: ‘Wat vreet jy?’ (What are you pigging out on?),
meaning the person eats like an animal/ a pig.
Advances in artificial intelligence by Chinese upstarts rattled U.S. markets on Monday, with the threat of greater competition prompting a slide in shares of the biggest technology companies.
The Chinese A.I. company DeepSeek has said it can match the abilities of cutting-edge chatbots while using a fraction of the specialized computer chips that leading A.I. companies rely on. That’s prompted investors to rethink the heady valuations of companies like Nvidia, whose equipment powers the most advanced A.I. systems, as well as the enormous investments that companies like Alphabet, Meta and OpenAI are making to build their businesses.
On Monday, the S&P 500 index fell 1.5 percent, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq dropped 3.1 percent. Nvidia was hit hard, plunging 16.9 percent and losing roughly $600 billion in market value. Falling tech stocks also dented market indexes in Europe and Japan.
-Jason Karaian and Joe Rennison writing for the New York Times
Laura Bratton writes for Yahoo Finance: Nvidia (NVDA) stock dropped nearly 17% Monday, leading a sell-off across chip stocks and the broader market after a new AI model from China’s DeepSeek raised questions about AI investment and the rise of more cost-efficient artificial intelligence agents. Nvidia’s decline shaved $589 billion off the AI chipmaker’s market cap, the largest single-day loss in stock market history. My comments: It is an eye-popping decline in market cap for the day, but this stock has rocketed up twentyfold (that would be 2,000 %) over the last five years— and then some. It was at $6 in Jan. 2020 and at $149.43 (let’s say $150) Jan 6, 2025.
I sifted through a shoebox of envelope clippings to put together this set of postmarks from South West Africa*.
Windhoek is the capital, and the postmarks also show Keetmanshoop, Outjo, Koes, Maltahöhe, Okahandja, Oranjemund, Walvis Bay, Okaukuejo, Tsumeb, Kalkrand, Mariental, Swakopmund, Grootfontein, Karibib, Leonardville, Lüderitz, Omaruru, Otjiwarongo, Usakos, Aus and Stampriet.
*South West Africa became Namibia after its independence from South Africa in March 1990.
