Home Means Nevada

Postcard US-3038783 to Latvia shows a maxi card that has a big-letter "NEVADA" rubber stamp imprint and a Nevada Statehood Forever stamp with a first-day-of-issue cancellation.

As part of the Nevada’s Sesquicentennial celebration, more than 500 groups around the state participated #NevadaSings to sing the Nevada State Song "Home Means Nevada" at 10 a.m. today, attempting to set a record for people singing one state song at the same time, with one group singing from as high as 25,000 feet or 7,620 meters in the sky. For those who had participated, video or photo proof are still accepted on www.Nevada150.org web site.

Written & Music by Bertha Raffetto, the lyrics of the official song of the State of Nevada are:

Way out in the land of the setting sun,
Where the wind blows wild and free,
There’s a lovely spot, just the only one
That means home sweet home to me.
If you follow the old Kit Carson trail,
Until desert meets the hills,
Oh you certainly will agree with me,
It’s the place of a thousand thrills.Home means Nevada
Home means the hills,
Home means the sage and the pine.
Out by the Truckee, silvery rills,
Out where the sun always shines,
Here is the land which I love the best,
Fairer than all I can see.
Right in the heart of the golden west
Home means Nevada to me.

Whenever the sun at the close of day,
Colors all the western sky,
Oh my heart returns to the desert grey
And the mountains tow’ring high.
Where the moon beams play in shadowed glen,
With the spotted fawn and doe,
All the live long night until morning light,
Is the loveliest place I know.

Home means Nevada
Home means the hills,
Home means the sage and the pines.
Out by the Truckee’s silvery rills,
Out where the sun always shines,
There is the land that I love the best,
Fairer than all I can see.
Right in the heart of the golden west
Home means Nevada to me.

Bicentennial Celebration of the Star-Spangled Banner

Two hundred years ago, Francis Scott Key, a Maryland-born lawyer and amateur poet, wrote a poem "Defence of Fort M'Henry" after witnessing the bombardment of Fort McHenry by British ships throughout the night of September 13-14, 1814 during the War of 1812. The Star-Spangled Banner, the then American flag with 15 stars and 15 stripes, was seen still flying the next morning. The poem made into the lyrics of "The Star-Spangled Banner" which became the national anthem of the United States.

On September 11, 2014, Fort McHenry hosted a ceremony where the National September 11 Flag, a patchwork stitched onto the flag that flew above the rubble at the site of the World Trade Center attacks, was raised. Threads from the original Star-Spangled Banner that soared above Fort McHenry in 1814 were sewn onto a patch and attached to the National September 11 Flag in June 2012.

The featured postcard shows the present flag of the United States, hoisted by two firetrucks at the annual Las Vegas Firefighters 9/11 Tribute and March in downtown Las Vegas on September 11, 2014.

Today on September 13, 2014, USPS issued a The War of 1812: Fort McHenry forever stamp, the third in the series, to commemorate of the bicentennial of the War of 1812 that ultimately helped forge our national identity and gave us our national anthem “The Star-Spangled Banner.”