Alcatraz is Spanish for Pelican

Forty five years ago on June 11, 1971, the U.S. Government forcibly removed the last holdouts to the Native American Occupation of Alcatraz that lasted 19 months.

This Alcatraz Island postcard shows the weathered and deteriorating laundry facility used when Alcatraz was a Federal Penitentiary. It was sent in for a pictorial postmark dated on August 8, 2015 at Alcatraz Island Station in San Francisco, CA that commemorated the 81st anniversary of the opening of the infamous penitentiary in August, 1934.

A unique Alcatraz Alumni reunion was held at Alcatraz  between former prison guards and former "residents" on Sunday August 9, 2015.

Water Level in Lake Mead Drops to Record Low

Extended droughts has resulted in the lowest water level at Lake Mead since the largest reservoir in the U.S. was filled in the 1930s when Hoover Dam was built. Lake Mead declined to 1,074 feet above sea level on May 19, 2016, below a previous record set on June 25, 2015.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) recorded a high water line of 1,229.0 feet but considers the lake as “operationally full” at 1,219.6 feet elevation. The minimum water level to generate power at Hoover Dam is defined at 1,050 feet, below which the lake becomes an “inactive pool.” When water level goes down below 895 feet, the lowest water outlet at Hoover Dam, the lake is a “dead pool” as nothing would flow downstream from the Hoover Dam.

Lake Mead's water level reached a record high of 1225 feet in the summer of 1983, and has been in steady declines since 2000.

Lake Mead supplies water to 20 million people in California, Nevada, and Arizona. With the prospect of water levels dropping further, water managers in the above three states are under pressure to work out a plan to temporarily cut back water withdrawal from the lake.

Postcard US-3482775 to New Jersey shows Lake Mead with 'bathtub rings' on its shores and islands, which indicate the devastating effects of water level declines.

Lake Mead as seen on July 4, 2015

Moominppapa at Sea

Postcard FI-2342261 from Finland shows an illustration of Tove Marika Jansson (August 9, 1914 – June 27, 2001), a Swedish-speaking Finnish author and illustrator from Moominppapa at Sea.

With her first book of the semi-autobiographical Bildhuggarens dotter (Sculptor's Daughter) in 1968, she had published six novels and five books of short stories for adults. However, in the PostCrossing world, she is best known for the Moomin cards with illustrations from her Moomin books for children.

The first Moomin book The Moomins and the Great Flood was published in 1945. However, it wasn't until the next two books, Comet in Moominland (1946) and Finn Family Moomintroll (1948), when Moomins gained a great deal of popularity.

Moomins had lived in Moominvalley for a while, until the family decided that they needed a change and moved to a lighthouse on a tiny island. In this Volume 7 of Moomins, "they find space to grow, and to do things they couldn't in their comfortable, cluttered valley home. As they discover their new home, the family also discover surprising, and wonderfully funny, new things about themselves."

Tove Jansson won the Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 1966 for her contribution as a children's writer.

Mont Saint-Michel, France

Postcard US-3133043 from Texas was a French postcard the sender collected during a trip to
Mont Saint-Michel in Normandy, France. Located 1 kilometer  or 0.6 miles off shore at the mouth of the Couesnon River, the tidal island is 100 hectares or 247 acres in size with only 44 official residents in 2009. However, as part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site, it has more than 3 million visitors each year.

Ten thousand visitors to the island got to see a supertide this Saturday on March 21, 2015, caused by the so-called supermoon effect coinciding with Friday’s total solar eclipse on March 20, 2015. Said to rise at the pace of a horse’s gallop, the unusual high tide turned the Mont briefly into an island fully surrounded by the English Channel Saturday. Normally, at a low tide visitors could walk on the vast flat seabed, while at high tide visitors could still travel to/from the mainland by a narrow causeway. The rare phenomenon supertide occurs every 18 years.

In Mount's Bay, Cornwall, United Kingdom, St Michael's Mount was a Cornish counterpart of Mont Saint-Michel in France, with the same tidal island characteristics and a similar conical shape,

Daylight Saving Time Starts in 2015, But Not in Hawaii

Daylight Saving Time (DST) starts today at 2 a.m. on March 8, 2015 in most parts of the U.S. except in the states of Arizona and Hawaii, and the overseas territories of Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the United States Virgin Islands. As clocks "spring forward" one hour, spring is in the air.

Hawaii is in the Hawaii-Aleutian Time Zone; Hawaii-Aleutian Standard Time (HST) is equivalent to GMT/UTC - 10h Standard Time. When the United States enacted the Uniform Time Act in 1966, Hawaii opted out in 1967, mainly because there is not a large variation in daylight hours from summer to winter due to Hawaii's proximity to the Equator. The Territorial Legislature enacted a bill placing Hawaii on daylight saving time in 1933, but the law was repealed three weeks later. According to Wikepedia, during World War II between February 9, 1942 and September 30, 1945, Hawaiian Standard Time was advanced one hour to so-called "Hawaiian War Time." That was the only period when Hawaii was effectively placed on year-round daylight saving time.

Postcard US-3230216 from California shows a NASA image of the entire Hawaiian Island chain as seen from the Space Shuttle. Niihau and Kauai are in the foreground followed by Oahu, Molokai, Lanai and Maui, with the Big island in the distance. The curve of the Earth and the black of outer space can be seen on the top of the card.

Jhaorih Hot Spring, Green Island, Taiwan

Postcard TW-1496923 from Taiwan shows Jhaorih Hot Spring (朝日溫泉), located on the south-east part of Green Island (綠島), in Taitung County, Taiwan.  

Green Island, a small volcanic island in the Pacific Ocean 33 kilometers or 21 miles off the eastern coast in Pacific Ocean, is the 4th largest island in Taiwan. It was known for its prisons and penal colonies for political prisoners during the martial law period between the late 1940s and the late 1980s. The prison was later closed, and the island is now open to the public.

Jhaorih Hot Spring gets its name because it faces the Pacific Ocean to the east. Bathing in the morning in one of the three ocean-side spas, or one of the five terrace-like hot-water and lukewarm-water pools will guarantee a magnificent sunrise view in a sunny day. All pools and spas are fed by spring water from under the ocean floor with a temperature of 53°C or 127°F and a pH value of 7.5.

North Cape, Norway

Postcard NO-102992 from Norway shows North Cape (Nordkapp in Norwegian), located on the northern coast of the island of Magerøya in Northern Norway and shown as a red pin in the following map. It is often mistakenly regarded as the northernmost point of Europe.

However, the neighboring Knivskjellodden point, shown as a green pin on the map below, is 1,457 meters or 4,780 feet farther to the north, which is sometimes considered the northernmost point of the entire continent of Europe.

Nonetheless, both of above points are located on an island. Cape Nordkinn (Kinnarodden in Norwegian), located on the Nordkinn Peninsula and shown as a yellow pin on the map, is the northernmost point of mainland Europe.

Regardless, North Cape is a popular tourist attraction with a 307-meter or 1,007-foot high cliff where visitors can watch the midnight sun or the panoramic views of the Barents Sea, part of the Arctic Ocean, to the north on a large flat plateau. The midnight sun can be seen from May 14 to the July 31 during which the sun reaches its lowest point above the horizon from 12:14 to 12:24 a.m.

Previously, I have featured the north cape in New Zealand in this blog.

Boracay, Philippines

Postcard PH-72332 from Philippines shows Boracay Island, 315 kilometers or 196 miles south of Manila, Philippines. It's a small 7.2-kilometer or 4.5-mile -long island, 2 kilometers off the northwest tip of Panay Island in the Western Visayas region.

The island is known for its white sand beaches, such as Puke Beach shown on the left on the postcard. On the bottom of the right side, you can see Willy's Rock at Station 1 where you can walk or swim to this huge coral rock or use it as background for pictures. The insert on the left side of top right panel shows Bulabog Beach where kiteboarding is popular; on the right side from top to bottom are a view of paraw sailing around the island and a beach scene along White Beach.

Sunset Over Sabang Bay, Indonesia

Postcard US-2293197 to Michigan shows a beautiful sunset view over Sabang Bay in Aceh Province, Indonesia. It was one of those postcards I bought when I was volunteering in Banda Aceh, Indonesia in 2005. A similar card was featured in this blog last year for the International Day for Disaster Reduction, which was designated as October 13 by the UN General Assembly in 2009, replacing the International Day for Natural Disaster Reduction that was part of the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction in the 1990s. The theme for 2014 is "Resilience is for Life."

Best known for snorkeling and diving, Sabang Bay is located on the north side of Pulau Weh, an island north of Banda Aceh on the northern tip of Sumatra. On the sidebar of the postcard, Rubiah Island, Ulee-Lheu Beach, Lhok Seudu Beach, and Lhok Nga Beach are shown from top to bottom.

Forward it to my Palm Pilot

Postcard US-2776605 to Germany shows a plane taking off from tropical islands. The caption under the palm tree stamp on the bottom left reads "Margaritaville", indicating it is a Jimmy Buffett-themed merchandise associated with Jimmy Buffett's casual dining American restaurants and chain stores, named after his hit song "Margaritaville".

In Las Vegas, a Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville restaurant opened at the Flamingo Hotel and Casino in December 2003; a Margaritaville "minicasino" inside the Flamingo opened in October 2011. The postcard was purchased at the gift shop there.

São Miguel, Portugal

Postcard PT-357733 from Portugal shows São Miguel Island, named for Saint Michael, the largest and most populous island in the Portuguese archipelago of the Azores. Also referred as "the Green Island," it has a Special Protection Area containing the largest remnant of laurisilva forest on the island, habitat to the endemic and critically endangered bird, the Azores Bullfinch.

It is also the hometown of Pauleta (Pedro Miguel Carreiro Resendes, born April 28, 1973), a football player for the Portuguese National Team. Pauleta scored 47 goals in 88 matches for Portugal, a national record at the time of his retirement. He played in two World Cups and two European Championships.

In a Group G match against the United States during the 2014 FIFA World Cup at Arena Amazonia in Manaus, Brazil today, Silvestre Varela of the Portuguese National Team scored his team's second goal in the last minute, keeping Portugal alive with a 2:2 draw on June 22, 2014.

#451062278 / gettyimages.com

St Michael's Mount

Postcard GB-537114 from UK shows St Michael's Mount, a tidal island off the Mount's Bay coast of Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. The island's history can be traced back thousands of years ago as a busy trading port in Europe. According to Wikepedia, St Michael's Mount was a Cornish counterpart of Mont Saint-Michel in Normandy, France, given to the Benedictines, religious order of Mont Saint-Michel by Edward the Confessor in the 11th century. It became a major destination for pilgrims. In 1659, St Michael’s Mount was purchased by Colonel John St Aubyn, the last military governor of the island’s garrison. It became his private home and his descendants are still live there today. The Mount was gifted to the National Trust in 1954.

366 meters or 1200 feet across the town of Marazion, St Michael's Mount is one of the 43 unbridged tidal islands that can be walked to and from mainland Britain, by a man-made causeway.

West Lake Cultural Landscape of Hangzhou

Postcard CN-1291364 from China shows West Lake (西湖), a freshwater lake in Hangzhou, eastern China, that has inspired famous poets, scholars and artists since the 9th century. There are numerous temples, pagodas, pavilions, gardens and ornamental trees, as well as causeways and artificial islands.

It was inscribed on the UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 2011 as the West Lake Cultural Landscape of Hangzhou, comprising the West Lake and the hills surrounding its three sides, described as having "influenced garden design in the rest of China as well as Japan and Korea over the centuries" and reflecting "an idealized fusion between humans and nature."

The Bahamas

Postcard CA-417264 was sent from the Commonwealth of the Bahamas (The Bahamas), an island country consisting of more than 700 islands in the Atlantic Ocean southeast of Florida. With a warm and winterless tropical climate, and only a 6.7°C or 12°F difference between the warmest month and coolest month, it is indeed a vacation destination all year round. It currently costs 0.50 Bahamian Dollars (BSD) to send a postcard from the Bahamas to anywhere in the world. The price varies for letters.

Prince Edward Island

Postcard CA-406670 from Canada shows Prince Edward Island, one of the three Maritime provinces in Canada. It is also the smallest province in Canada in terms of both land area and population. The island has a nick name of "Garden of the Gulf" referring to the pastoral scenery and lush agricultural lands throughout the province. It is hard to imagine that it produces 25% of Canada's potatoes.

Hawaii, the Aloha State

Postcard US-2413163 to Japan shows a beautiful map of Hawaii, the only state in the U.S. made up entirely of islands. Hawaii, joined the Union on August 21, 1959, is the most recent of the 50 U.S. states.

The Aloha State made the headlines today by leapfrogging Illinois to become the 15th state to recognize same-sex marriages after Governor Neil Abercrombie signed the marriage equality bill into law during a ceremony at 10:00 am local time. Before signing, Abercrombie stated that “those who have been invisible will now be visible to themselves and the whole world.” 

Neil Abercrombie signs the marriage equality bill

Same-sex ceremonies are set to begin December, 2, 2013, boasting Hawaii's claim as a wedding destination.