Stamp of the Day: Ett skepp kommer lastat
These days stamps are all multicolored and fancy, but this is what stamps used to look like in the old days. One color, often bleeding into the paper, fuzzy details, but still great design and fonts, and a piece of history. Here is a steamship and mail tender in a harbor, maybe New York city? It does have skyscrapers. PP can probably tell us what kind of steamship it is. Is the little boat the mail tender or a tug boat? I wonder when it cost 10 cents to mail a letter, today it is 41 cents. Imaging when a regular letter took 4 months across the Atlantic - last week it took only 3 days from New Jersey to Sweden. Nowadays everything is so fast, back then you could take your time. I think it affects our brains, this rush-rush about everything.
5 comments:
"Slow travel", maybe it´s the follower to "slow food".
I prefer trains to cars and planes, you get a nice thinking atmosphere in trains, and probably boats if it´s not stormy weather. Train are faster than cars, true, but the feel is different.
Walking is also a good slow travel as is horseriding, especially in the scandinavian mountains "swe. fjällen".
Sure, it affects our brains, but faster travel/communications makes the world shrink which is a good thing in my opinion.
Technology frees up a lot of time for us, the question is what we do with this time. If we only rush on to the next thing all the time it's value can be questioned.
Well, most people waste their free time on TV instead of blogging, listening, and reading...
I am going to go out on a limb and say that the shrinking of the world is about the least good thing possible. It is what has directly led to all the places in the world losing their uniqueness and individuality. It is what led to more powerful countries taking over natural resources of other countries. It makes journeys less special and something to be "endured" like the flight from Sweden to the US, instead of long relaxing adventure on the seas. How many of us for example, will ever have the experience of taking a long ocean voyage.
I somewhat agree with PP, but there is the aspect that more travel and internationalization leads to greater understanding and less conflict, at least in theory. Considering the current war I am not so sure that is true. A lot of native indigenous cultures are becoming extinct, and with that knowledge from centuries back are lost forever. I am not sure globalization in general is a good thing at all. Peace and understanding among cultures is what we should strive for, but today's business model is all built on exploitation and competition, short-term sighted goals.
On the other hand, fast travel with airplanes makes it possible to see more of the world than in the past, and to a lesser cost. In the past, most people could only dream about visiting another continent, and here we are, flying about. Still, I like trains better. How about 'a slow train to China'?
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