Loving Day

Today is Loving Day, an annual celebration held on June 12 each year, marking the anniversary of the 1967 United States Supreme Court ruling "Loving v. Virginia" that struck down all anti-miscegenation laws remaining in sixteen U.S. states. Citing "there can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the equal protection clause," the ruling invalidated U.S. state laws banning interracial marriage, mainly forbidding marriage between non-whites and whites.

Postcard US-3284982 to Russia features a pair of beautiful swans forming a heart shape with red flowers. It was purchased at Zazzle.

World Oceans Day

World Oceans Day, celebrated on June 8 every year, was originally proposed by Canada at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1992. It was officially recognized by the United Nations in 2008. The 2015 Theme is "Healthy oceans, healthy planet."

The United Nations Postal Administration issued three panes of 12 stamps on May 31, 2013 to raise awareness for World Oceans Day. The artwork by Yoshito Hirano on Postcard JP-240233 from Japan illustrates the important relationship between human settlements and the ocean.

Woman in a Fur Hat

Outgoing postcard US-3224039 to Belarus was sent on February 8,2015 and had expired since. The card shows an oil on canvas Woman in a Fur Hat, circa 1915, by Gretchen Woodman Rogers (1881 - 1967), an American painter associated with the Boston School.

The painting was said to be reminiscent of Girl with a Pearl Earring, circa 1665, by Johannes Vermeer. By referring to the Dutch artist’s most mesmerizing painting in her image of a contemporary woman, "Rogers links past and present, projecting an exquisite and timeless impression of strength and confidence."

The postcard was purchased at the gift shop of Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art during the annual Bellagio Museum Day in 2014, when the exhibition “Painting Women: Works from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston” was on display.

Manarola, Italy

Postcard IT-250393 from Italy shows a view of Manarola, a small town in the province of La Spezia, Liguria, Italy.

The second smallest of the five famous Cinque Terre towns, Manarola, along with Monterosso al Mare, Vernazza, Corniglia, and Riomaggiore, is part of a 1997 UNESCO World Heritage Site on a rugged portion of northern Italian coastlines. It could also be the oldest of the towns in the Cinque Terre, with the cornerstone of the church, San Lorenzo, dated from 1338.

On June 2 each year, Italy celebrates its National Day Festa della Repubblica (Republic Day) to commemorate the institutional referendum held by universal suffrage in 1946, when the Italian people went to the polls to decide what form of government they preferred, following World War II and the fall of Fascism. The result was 12,717,923 votes for a republic and 10,719,284 for the monarchy.

Code the Road

Google Maps APIs is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. Since Google Maps released its APIs to developers 10 years ago, developers have been able to integrate maps and location service to online and mobile apps. It was interesting to hear that a member of a band playing at the 2015 Google I/O Afterhour at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on May 28, 2015 shouted out to Google Maps, among all the Google services, when they recognized the host.

Departing tomorrow afternoon from Google I/O, Google's annual developer conference, at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, a 1959 GM tour bus, powered by bio-diesel, is hitting the road for a 14-stop cross-country trip called Code the Road to meet application developers and map creators along the way. The bus will make its first scheduled stop at the iFit ICON Heath and Fitness 5K treadmill run in Logan, Utah on June 2, 2015. From there, the bus will stop in Colorado, Wisconsin, Illinois, New York, Virginia, and Georgia, with the final destination at the Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, showcasing many map and location applications developed using Google Maps APIs from iFit, Harley-Davidson, Lyft, Hilton Hotels, The Weather Channel and Walt Disney World.

Outgoing postcard US-3373238 to Germany was sent from the bus when it was parked at the north-east corner of 4th Street and Howard Street, across from Moscone West during Google I/O.

Free Comic Book Day

Postcard US-3139091 to the United Kingdom an advertising card for the Alternate Reality Comics, one of several Las Vegas comic bookstores that hosted the Free Comic Book Day events earlier today.

Free Comic Book Day, first started in 2002 and taking place on the first Saturday of May, is an annual promotional effort by the North American comic book industry to help bring new readers into independent comic bookstores. In 2005, it coincided the movie release of Avengers: Age of Ultron this weekend.

At the Alternate Reality Comics, greeters were dressed in costumes and helped to direct customers to free selections where a customer could get up to 4 free comic books. The store also hosted local artists who would draw for you.

International Workers' Day

International Workers' Day, celebrated on May 1, is an annual holiday to celebrate the achievements of workers. Also known as Labor Day in many countries, it was related in the labor union movement, specifically the eight-hour day movement that advocated eight hours for work, eight hours for recreation, and eight hours for rest in one day. In Canada and the United States, it is celebrated on the first Monday of September, marking the end of the summer holiday when most students return to school.

The featured postcard was purchased from the National Geographic store at zazzle.com, showing construction workers on beams at the top of the Stratosphere Tower in Las Vegas. Copyright: Paul Chesley / National Geographic Stock.

A View from the top of the Stratosphere Tower

World Book Day

World Book Day is an annual event organized by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to promote reading, publishing and copyright on April 23 every year. It was celebrated for the first time on April 23, 1995.

Postcard US-1828687 to Germany shows people reading books at a park in Portland, Oregon.

Flower Market, Guangzhou, China

I just got this postcard from a private swap showing a pair of kids in traditional Chinese costume at a flower market in Guangzhou, China. The Guangzhou Flower Market, held annually during the Spring Festival, is a city-wide street fair where the public can purchase all kinds of flowering and decorative plants as part of the Chinese New Year celebration. As vendors literally line up the streets, the Flower Market is also known to locals as the "Flower Streets" where you can go shopping flowers by "walking the Flower Streets." The tradition can be traced back to the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644). Peony, orchid, and related arts, crafts and supplies are popular items in the market.

Chiang Mai, Thailand

Postcard TH-191063 from Thailand shows an elephant with texts of "Chiang Mai" forming as in circles as rays from the sun. Located 700 kilometers or 435 miles north of Bangkok, Chiang Mai is the largest and most culturally significant city in Northern Thailand. Surrounded by the highest mountains in the country, the city sits astride the Ping River, a major tributary of the Chao Phraya River. The location helped Chiang Mai to gain historic importance due to its close proximity to major trading routes associated with the river.

Today marks the first day of the Songkran festival (潑水節) that is celebrated in Thailand as the traditional New Year. The festival lasts from April 13 to April 15. It coincides with the New Year of the Buddhist and Hindu solar calendar used in South and Southeast Asia. The traditional water pouring during the festival symbolizes a ritual of washing away all of the past evils and sins.

Cherry Blossoms About to Reach Peak Bloom in D.C.

The National Cherry Blossom Festival is a spring celebration in Washington, D.C., commemorating the gift of 3020 cherry trees from Tokyo, Japan to the city of Washington D.C.  First Lady Helen Herron Taft and Viscountess Chinda, wife of the Japanese ambassador, planted the first two trees on the north bank of the Tidal Basin in West Potomac Park on March 27, 1912. This weekend, the cherry blossoms are projected to hit peak bloom while the Annual National Cherry Blossom Festival Parade and the 55th Annual Sakura Matsuri Japanese Street Festival will attract a large crowd.

Earlier today, USPS and Japan Post jointly issued the Gifts of Friendship Forever stamps on April 10, 2015, featuring cherry blossom trees and flowering dogwood trees, celebrating the enduring bond between U.S. and Japan on the centennial of the thank-you gift of flowering dogwood trees from the United States to Japan in 1915.

Outgoing postcard US-3263842 to Japan shows the Washington Monument with cherry blossoms in the foreground. It has one of the Gifts of Friendship stamps in the front featuring the Lincoln Memorial with vibrant cherry trees.

Earth Hour

Earth Hour is an annual event to promote reduced energy consumption for the planet Earth by turning off non-essential lights for one hour from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m. on the last Saturday in March. It was first organized by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) as a lights-off event in Sydney, Australia in 2007. Since then, 7,000 cities, 1,200 landmarks and 172 countries and territories have joined the action to raise the awareness of climate change.

Postcard US-1630412 to the Netherlands shows New York-New York Hotel & Casino before and during Earth Hour in Las Vegas on March 26, 2011. It features a quote from a Senegalese forestry engineer Baba Dioum: "In the end we will conserve only what we love. We will love only what we understand. We will understand only what we are taught." Sent before and received on Earth Day, April 22, 2012, it also highlighted the theme for Earth Day 2012: Mobilize the Earth.

For Earth Hour 2015 on Saturday, March 28, Las Vegas City Hall and the properties from MGM Resorts, Caesars Entertainment, and Boyd Gaming all dimmed their exterior lighting, signage and marquees from 8:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. In addition to dimming the lights, Venetian and Palazzo had put on a candlelight display at Doge's Palace Plaza in front of Venetian.

Candlelight display for Earth Hour 2015 at Venetian with Mirage dimming its lights in the background.

Earth Hour 2016 will be on Saturday, March 26, from 8:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. local time.

Water and Sustainable Development

The United Nations designated March 22 as the World Water Day in Agenda 21 at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1992. The first World Water Day was observed on March 22, 1993. 22 years later, the theme for World Water Day 2015 is Water and Sustainable Development.

With a tag line "a day to celebrate, a day to change, a day to prepare," World Water Day is a day to celebrate water; a day to make a difference for the members of the global population who suffer from water related issues; and a day to prepare for how we manage water in the future.

Postcard US-2680017 to Australia shows a swamp view of the Everglades, a tropical wetlands ecosystem in South Florida. Sustainability was a major component in the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan approved by Congress in 2000. A first-of-its-kind economic impact report has detailed the benefits of Everglades restoration that results in an increase in job creation, real estate values and water quality.

The theme for 2014 World Water Day last year was Water and Energy.

Happy St Patrick's Day

In celebrating St. Patrick Day, the annual Las Vegas Valley Firefighters St. Patrick's Day Parade and Fun Challenge was held at the Downtown Las Vegas Events Center (DLVEC) today.

The parade started at the Main Street Stage at noon. Led by Grand Marshal Terry Murphy, Honorary Irish Consul to Nevada, uniformed firefighters, honor guards, bagpipers and step dancers made its way along the Fremont Street under the Viva Vision canopy. Then the Firefighter Fun Challenge took place between 1 p.m. and 5 p.m. where firefighter teams from around the country competed in a tricycle race, wheel barrel race, midnight equipment run, tug of war, hose bowling and garden hose efficiency contest. winners would donate their prize money to the charities of their choices.

Outgoing postcard US-3263675 to Hong Kong shows a vintage "Horse and Cart" poster "Lovely day for a Guinness", one of the most popular of all the Guinness beer advertisements, circa 1949, by artist John Gilroy. 

Step dancers perform at the Las Vegas Valley Firefighters St. Patrick's Day Parade.

π and the Great Pyramid

It is Albert Einstein's (March 14, 1879 – April 18, 1955) birthday today. A German-born theoretical physicist who won the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics, Einstein developed the general theory of relativity and was best known in popular culture for his mass–energy equivalence formula E = mc².

March 14, or 3/14 in the month/day date format, is also known as “Pi Day,” an annual celebration of the mathematical constant π (pi), due to its resemblance to the first three digits in the decimal expansion of π. Pi Day in 2015 is very special because the corresponding date 3/14/15 represents the first five digits of π (3.1415), which only comes once a century. In addition, at 9:26:53 a.m. and 9:26:53 p.m. the date and time of the moments represents the first 10 digits of π (3.141592653).

English publisher and writer John Taylor (1781–1864) argued in his 1859 The Great Pyramid that the numbers Pi and the golden ratio may had been deliberately incorporated into the design of the Great Pyramid of Khufu at Giza. The original height of the Great Pyramid was 146.5 meters or 481 feet with a base of 230.4 meters or 756 feet in length. By dividing the perimeter (4 x base length) of the Pyramid by its height, one obtains 6.29 which is a close approximation to 2π. Since π is defined as the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter, John Taylor suggested that the Great Pyramid was intended to be a representation of the spherical Earth, with the height corresponding to the radius from the center of the Earth to the North Pole and the perimeter corresponding to the Earth's circumference at the Equator. However, such significance has been discounted in recent years.

Postcard US-2543275 to India shows a replica of Great Sphinx of Giza and the pyramid-shaped tower of Luxor Las Vegas, a hotel and casino on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada that opened in 1993 and was named after the city of Luxor (ancient Thebes) in Egypt. The reflecting pool is gone now after renovation and a tram station is in its place.

Run Away with Cirque du Soleil

My visit to the Springs Preserve in  Las Vegas today in the monthly Bank of America Museums on US weekend was cut short as they are hosting a special event Mardi Gras Vegas that features Cajun and Creole cuisine, music and culture from 3:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. The access to the Nevada State Museum was not affected. Before I left, I picked up an advertising card for a running event "Run Away with Cirque du Soleil" on March 28, 2015. Participants can run 5K or walk 1 mile with Cirque du Soleil cast members on the Springs Preserve ground at this annual event. All proceeds support the educational and environmental-sustainability programs at the Springs Preserve Foundation and Cirque du Soleil Foundation. You can register online at active.com.

Scale the Strat

Scale the Strat is one of the Fight for Air Climbs fundraising events for the American Lung Association. The Fight for Air Climbers climb up prominent skyscrapers, observation towers, stadiums and arenas in so called "vertical road race." 

In the 7th Annual Scale the Strat today, competitive teams and individual stair climbers, race up 1455 steps inside the Stratosphere Tower core to reach the Level 108 observation deck, raising funds to provide life saving education, research and advocacy in Southern Nevada. Sproule Love from New York won the men's division with a 7'22" time. Stephanie Hucko from Charlotte, NC was the first woman to reach the top in 8'52".

Postcard US-2371131 to Poland shows the Stratosphere Casino, Hotel & Tower at 2000 S Las Vegas Blvd, Las Vegas, NV 89104.

Make Some Noise

Las Vegas honors 2015 Martin Luther King Jr. Day with its 33rd annual parade that attracted thousands visitors and locals lining up Fourth Street downtown to watch more than 100 floats, bands, dancers, politicians, classic cars, motorcycles and people from various organizations marching in honor of Dr. King.

The theme of this year's parade was "Living the Dream: Where do we go from here?" It highlights the reflection and debate resulted from the racial tensions exposed after multiple police killings of black men last year. It is also a reminder that the struggle for equality is continuing and there are a lot to be done ahead.

An elderly spectator watches younger marchers streaming by at the 33rd annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade in downtown Las Vegas on January 19, 2015.

The featured postcard was a maxi card featuring a self-portrait of me in front of the Newseum in Washington D.C. on August 28, 2013 with a USPS March on Washington Forever Stamp and its first-day-of-issue postmark.

#ShopSmall

Between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, it is Small Business Saturday on November 29, 2014. Launched in 2010 by American Express, it is the 5th year for a growing number of people to think and shop at local small business and independent retailers. President Obama and his daughters went to an independent book store Politics and Prose in Washington D.C. to buy books today as a way to show his support.

Postcard US-2941533 to Russia was shaped Guinness Beer Glass card purchased at the Guinness Store at the Shoppes at Mandalay Place in Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino, next door to the Rí Rá Irish Pub, a participating small business where Guinness beers are served and traditional Irish music bands are playing.

LOSAC

Reddit is a social networking and news website where registered users can submit contents to be voted "up" or "down" by other users, so that the contents' positions on the site are determined by their popularity. Content entries are organized by areas of interest called "subreddits."

Reddit Gold is its premium membership program with extra features such as turning off ads as well as special benefits from gold partners for promotional products and services. The membership costs US$3.99/month, or US$29.99/year.  You can also send a postcard for a free one-month Reddit Gold membership.

Postcards 3579, sent to Reddit for a free one-month Reddit Gold membership, shows a parody photo made via Adobe's Photoshop from the Biggest Little City in the World sign in Reno, Nevada. One of my projects LOSAC - Lake Okeechobee Stage-Area-Capacity System - won the 2004 Exemplary System in Government award at the 2004 URISA Annual Conference in Reno during November 7-10, 2004. The parody photo was used for the opening of a slide show introducing my project.