This ad card promotes the annual Vegas Valley Comic Book Festival, celebrating the illustrated world that takes place on the first Saturday in November every year. In 2019, it will be held at the Clark County Library on November 2, 2019 from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m, featuring publishers, vendors, film screenings, panels and workshops, special comic and animation guests, live music and cosplay.
Outgoing postcard US-3368775 to Ohio shows the Peking University Library at the Peking University's main campus in Beijing, China. Its predecessor, the Imperial University library, was founded in 1902. Peking University, along its library, moved from downtown to the former Yenching University campus during the university re-grouping in 1952. The main building opened in 1975 at the center of the campus. A new building, shown on the postcard, was added in 1998. It holds 5.3 million books, among of which are 1.5 million ancient books and 170,000 rare books and special collections.
Peking University, a major research university and the first modern national university in China that was founded as the "Imperial University of Peking" in 1898, celebrates its 117th anniversary and the Homecoming Day on May 4th, 2015.
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.
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.
Postcard CZ-594777 from Czech shows Ferda Mravenec (Ferda the Ant), a popular Czech animated character illustrated by Ondřej Sekora. It was first published on January 1, 1933 in the Lidové noviny, the oldest daily newspaper published in Prague, the Czech Republic.
The character have appeared in many Czech children books, including Ferda the Ant (1936), Ferda the Ant in the Foreign Service (1937), and Ferda Anthill (1938). It is popular in Czech as much as Micky Mouse in the U.S.
Postcard NL-1761372 from the Netherlands was a promotional postcard "Zoek de Stilte" for the book the Yogi's Clothes and Other Stories about Silence, an inspiring collection that contains 32 stories on the theme of silence from all over the world, collected and retold by Wim van der Zwan. The title story, of Indian origin, is about a poor yogi who meditates in silence all day. With a begging bowl and a loincloth accounting for all his possessions, his desire for a second piece of clothes leads to an untenable situation that involves a cat, a cow, a wife and a child.
Once again, Camp NaNoWriMo opens on April 1, 2015, kicking off a month-long writing event in a form of virtual camps. Coincidentally, April is also known as National Card and Letter Writing Month, an annual effort to promote literacy and celebrate the art of letter and postcard writing. To commemorate the occasion, USPS issued a colorful Forever stamps panel "From Me To You" with decorative stickers first time ever for personalizing envelopes, letters and greeting cards.
Postcard US-3223060 to Germany was an advertising card for a Writer's Workshop presented by Maxwell Alexander Drake, an award-winning Sci-Fi/Fantasy author, at the Nevada State Museum in Las Vegas on February 21, 2015 from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Maxwell is teaching free writing classes hosted by the Clark County Library District. His next classes "Character Creation – Who is that masked man anyway?" are scheduled at Centennial Hills Library on Sunday March 1, 2015 at 3:00 p.m. and Monday March 2, 2015 at 8:00 p.m.
As part of the CNY in the Desert 2015 celebration, Fighting United hosts a free "Dance 4 A Cause" event, the largest Dance a thon on the Las Vegas strip to celebrate Chinese New Year while getting fit, under the backdrop of the High Roller at the LinQ parking lot on Saturday February 21, 2015.
Participants are asked to bring a gently used or preferably new K-12 book for donattion to Spread the Word Nevada and Clark County School District. You can also select your very own cause by choosing fighting for AUTISM, HUNGER or CANCER by donating $25 or $50, to get an event T-Shirt and dance in your own special "Pick Your Cause” or VIP Section.
Postcard US-3038661 to Germany shows one of the 28 passenger capsules on the High Roller, which weighs 44,000 pounds or 20,000 kilograms each with a diameter of 22 feet or 6.7 meters and an area of 225 square foot or 20.9 square meters. It can host 40 passengers each with a total capacity of 1,120 passengers for a full ride. Each capsule is individually rotated by electric motors to maintain a stable horizontal cabin floor throughout the rotation.
Outgoing postcard US-3038777 to China was an advertising card that promoted a benefit event for the Vegas Valley Book Festival. A program of Lost and Found schemes, scenes and stories by authors and performers was presented in the Clark County Sahara West Library at 7 p.m. Friday October 17, 2014.
The annual festival in its 13th edition, held from October 16 to October 18, 2014, was a three-day celebration of the written, spoken and illustrated word. Past keynote speakers included Dennis Lehane in 2010.
Secret Agent 23 Skidoo family band played Gotta Be Me at the Children's Main Stage on October 18, 2014, combining hip hop funk music with a message of self assurance and diversity appreciation.
Postcard US-2869236 to Germany was the product of a joint effort of Barnes & Noble and Anti-Defamation League (ADL) that was designed to use education to help break the cycle of prejudice and hatred. The campaign kicked off in September 2000, with thousands of people involved around the country.
Kofi Annan, the seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations from January 1997 to December 2006, once said: “Ignorance and prejudice are the handmaidens of propaganda. Our mission, therefore, is to confront ignorance with knowledge, bigotry with tolerance, and isolation with the outstretched hand of generosity. Racism can, will, and must be defeated.”
In Michael Jackson's music video "Black or White" I mentioned yesterday, it did not include the last four minutes of the original music video where a black panther walked out of the studio and morphed into Jackson. He went on to perform some of his most physically challenging dance moves, which contained sexually suggestive and violent scenes. That resulted in MTV and other music video networks' censorship of the last four minutes from subsequent broadcasts. The censored video ended with a "Prejudice is Ignorance" title card.
In the background of the recent unrest accompanying the protests in Ferguson, Missouri against police shooting of unarmed Michael Brown, it occurred to me that Michael Jackson's visionary video had not lost its significance after 23 years. The campaign "Close the Book on Hate, Open Your Mind and Read," started 14 years ago by Barnes & Noble Chairman Leonard Riggio and Abraham Foxman, ADL National Director, offered "101 Ways to Combat Prejudice." Those methods remain valid and effective today.
Bitcoin for the Befunddled is a book published by No Starch Press, covering every thing you need to know about Bitcoin: what is is, how it works, and how to acquire, store, and spend bitcoins safely and securely. The advertising card was distributed at DefCon 22, held in Rio Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas from August 7 to August 10, 2014.
DEFCON 22 "DISOBEY" Stamp
A week or so earlier, the first Bitcoin ATM "Bitcoin Bodega" by Robocoin was installed on the Las Vegas Strip at the end of July 2014, located inside the Viva Vegas souvenir shop south of Harmon Avenue and across from the Crystals at City Center.
The arrival of Bitcoin ATM indicates increasing popularity of digital currency as an alternative to cash and bank cards. It also highlights Las Vegas as an early adopter for the trending technology and emerging e-commerce.
"Amazing Las Vegas Comic Con" returns to Las Vegas for the second year from Friday June 20 to Sunday June 22, 2014. South Point Casino is hosting 300 exhibitors, an international artist's alley with more than 200 artists, and a video game arena, showcasing the best and brightest in comic book and pop entertainment. Enthusiastic fans dressed as their favorite fiction characters, and a costume contest was on Saturday tonight, Tomorrow is Sunday Kid’s Day; admission for kids 10 and under are free with paid adults.
Outgoing postcard US-2813945 to Malaysia shows some Marvel Heroes, fictional characters by Marvel Comics.
Postcard PL-766352 from Poland shows a stack of books. Many aspiring and experienced writers are familiar with National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), if have not actually participated one themselves. Organized every year in November, the 30-day-deadline-imposed event attracted more than 500,000 authors in 2014 and had produced a number of best selling books both traditionally and self-published.
To accommodate the participants' requests of flexibility in timing and the word counts, Camp NaNoWriMo, offered in April and July, is a month-long virtual writer’s retreat with a camping theme. Writers can choose to join a virtual cabin that consists of 11 other cabin mates from around the world. Unlike the typical high pressured NaNoWriMo, camp participants can write other type of projects, including poetry, screenplays, short stories, in addition to novels. Rather than the NaNoWriMo's mandatory 50,000 word counts, camp writers can also set their own targets.
Postcard US-2545772 from Virginia, USA shows a Little Free Library that the sender set up in front of her house. A Little Free Library is a “take a book, return a book” gathering place where neighbors share their favorite literature and stories. In its most basic form, a Little Free Library is a box full of books where anyone may stop by and pick up a book (or two) and bring back another book to share.
It started in 2009 when Todd Bol of Hudson, Wisconsin, built a model of a one room schoolhouse as a tribute to his mother, a former school teacher who loved reading. He filled it with books and put it on a post in his front yard. It now grows into a network of more than 10,000 registered Little Free Libraries in the world.
The concept of Little Free Library is unique as real people are sharing their favorite books in their community with a carefully curated collection, and the Library itself is a piece of neighborhood art.
The Vegas Valley Book Festival just concluded a three-day celebration of literature and imagination from October 30 to November 2, 2013. Founded by Nevada Humanities in 2002, it has featured authors from around the globe participating in a full schedule of panel discussions, book signings, readings, workshops, poetry, children's literature, and special events.
Postcard US-1920289 to the Netherlands shows Dennis Lehane as the closing keynote speaker of the 2010 festival at the Clark County Library on November 7, 2010. Dennis has written several novels, including A Drink Before the War, Mystic River, "Gone, Baby, Gone", and the latest Moonlight Mile. My favorite quote of Dennis came from his book Shutter Island: “Which would be worse, to live as a monster or to die as a good man?”
National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is an annual novel writing project that, running its 15th year from November 1 to November 30, 2013, brings together professional and amateur writers from all over the world.
If you are not writing a book this month, please at least try to read one. Postcard NL-2096226 from the Netherlands shows an illustration for the book "De gevleugelde kat" by Isabel Hoving. The book is the winner of the Netherlands’ most prestigious children’s book award. Its English version "The Dream Merchant" was translated by Hester Velmans and published by Candlewick Press, Cambridge, MA in 2005. You can find a copy from Amazon.
