13th Annual Montana Pro Rodeo

The 13th annual Montana Pro Rodeo Hall and Wall of Fame Scholarship Fundraiser, Banquet and Gathering will be held today on January 30, 2016 at the Holiday Inn Grand in Billings, MT. It is the largest state high school rodeo scholarship program in America.

Holiday Inn Grand, one of the largest hotels in Billings, was recently sold for 7.85 million dollars at an auction and is in the process of conversion to Radisson.

I picked up this event card at the 2015 National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas.

Update: the card was later sent as US-3934044 to California.

Cobb Hall at the University of Chicago

On January 23, 1992, USPS issued a stamped postal card with a 19-cent pre-printed stamp to commemorate the Centennial of the University of Chicago. The card features the first building completed on campus in 1892 - Cobb Hall, named after benefactor Silas Cobb. Designed by Henry Ives Cobb (not related to Silas Cobb), the building was modeled after the Gothic style featured prominently on the Oxford University campus in England. It currently hosts the humanities and social sciences, as well as the Center for the Study of Languages, and the Renaissance Society Contemporary Art Museum.

The first-day-of-issue postmark, cancelled from the city of Chicago, IL, also features an outline of Cobb Hall.

Update: the card was later sent to Belarus as US-3841631.

America the Beautiful -- Sonora Desert

The second postal card in the America the Beautiful series was issued January 13, 1989 in Tucson, Arizona. The design features an eagle soaring over the Sonora Desert in the golden glow of sunset. The 15-cent stamped card was the first philatelic item of 1989 by USPS.

Buffaloes, Custer State Park, Black Hills, South Dakota

Postcard US-3761486 to Germany is a vintage card showing Custer State Park, a state park and wildlife reserve in the Black Hills of southwestern South Dakota. On the back of the card, it reads: "Custer State Park is one of the largest State Parks in the U.S.A. It contains 128,000 acres of wonderful scenery, consisting of mountains, picturesque gorges, beautiful lakes and streams. 90,000 acres are under fence, and roaming unmolested within this enclosure are Buffalo, Elk, Deer, Big Horn Sheep, Rocky Mt. Goats and Antelope."

Wikipedia lists the park area as 71,000 acres. Founded in 1912 and named after Lt. Colonel George Armstrong Custer, the park has an annual buffalo roundup and auction in September, where buffaloes are rounded up, with surplus sold at auction so that the remaining number of animals can be sustained by the rangeland forage. However, those "buffaloes" are actually American Bison as shown on the card.

Woman with a Yellow Necklace by Picasso

Outgoing postcard US-3620822 to Thailand shows Pablo Picasso's 1946 painting Woman with a Yellow Necklace. It was a portrait of Picasso’s partner Françoise Gilot with overlaid geometry. The portrait, along with 42 other original works by Picasso from 1938 to 1962, is on exhibit at Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art. Opened on July 3, 2015, “Picasso: Creatures and Creativity” focuses on Picasso’s fascination with the human form.

Winnie Mae: Lockheed 5C Vega

Outgoing postcard US-3755619 to Canada shows "Winnie Mae", a seven-seat monoplane Vega 5C, on display at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. It was made by Lockheed in 1930 with modified tail surfaces for higher gross weight operations. Flew by famed aviator Wiley Post, it set many records, including around the world flight in eight days by Wiley Post and navigator Harold Gatty in 1931; the first solo flight around the world in 1933; the world's first flight using pressure suit in 1935 that reached the stratosphere at 547 km/hr or 340 m/hr. The "Winnie Mae" was named for the daughter of F. C. Hall, the original owner and a close friend of Wiley Post.

Today it is the 112th anniversary of Wright brothers' first powered flights. According to USPS Postal Bulletin 22430 published on December 10, 2015, Kitty Hawk, NC Post Office is offering a pictorial postmark to commemorate the occasion. I am sending the card, along with several others, to get this special postmark. Such requests must be postmarked no later than 30 days following the requested pictorial postmark date.

Jupiter, Venus and the Moon Forming a Triangle

Postcard UA-1182470 from Ukraine shows a space image with stars and planets in a nebula.

If you have looked towards the western sky at dusk today, you would see the pair-up of Jupiter (top left) and Venus (middle right), with the waxing crescent Moon below, forming a distinct triangle.
Venus and Jupiter will be at their closest approach on June 30.