Barely three weeks ago on January 14, 2022, a huge eruption on Hunga-Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai, an uninhabited volcanic island, and submarine volcano and accompanying tsunami of the Tongan archipelago in the southern Pacific Ocean, began. The eruption climaxed powerfully the next day. Hunga Tonga is 40 miles north of Tongatapu, Tonga’s main island, which suffered enormous devastation.
Located in Oceania, Tonga is an archipelago in the South Pacific Ocean, directly south of Samoa and about two-thirds of the way from Hawaii to New Zealand. It consists of 169 islands, 36 of them inhabited, and cover a 500-mile-long north–south line.
The volcanic eruption and accompanying tsunami severed an undersea fiber-optic cable and communications are still limited. Crops and water supplies were contaminated with volcanic ash. Buildings, vehicles (including precious farm equipment) and boats connecting Tonga’s remote islands to its mainland were damaged or destroyed. Amazingly the death toll seems to be limited to five.
Most banks and money-transfer services were forced offline. This crippled aneconomy characterized by a heavy dependence on remittances from the more than half of the country’s population who live abroad. These remittances to Tonga are the equivalent of 37 percent of the gross domestic product, the highest figure of any nation in the world.
Tonga is home to some 106,000 people, but more than double that number liveoverseas, mainly in the U.S., New Zealand, and Australia. Over 70% of the Tongan inhabitants live on its main island, Tongatapu. Although an increasing number of Tongans have moved into the only urban and commercial center, Nukuʻalofa, the nation’s capital.
While reports of the disaster have largely vanished from the news, tens of thousands of Tongans in the diaspora are dealing with the supply chain crisis in their ongoing efforts to help their people in the homeland.
Philatelicly, Tonga was one of the originators of shaped stamps, which were largely derided as gimmicks when first issued in the early 1960s. Today, more collectors value these early groundbreaking stamps. Shown at the beginning of this post is a philatelic souvenir cover with the complete set of the 1963 Gold Coin issue commemorating the first gold coinage of Polynesia. The stamps show the head of Queen Salote Tupou III as well as the Queen standing, which are the obverse sides of the koula coins, and the reverse side showing the coat of arms. Shown below is a registered letter from the Vava’u island group in Tonga to the capital of Nuku’alofa featuring pineapple-shape stamps of 1978. Also shown is a cover from Tonga to the U.S. marked “Return to Sender” (quite a round trip) partially franked with a five-sided stamp, also issued in 1978, featuring King Taufa’ahau IV.
Sometimes it’s what’s inside an old envelope that means more than the stamps and other markings on the outside. Inside this registered letter to Albert Grant is a letter from his young son, Arthur W. Grant, that was a true labor of love as the hand-drawn lines, careful printing and dots between each word indicate. Arthur is writing to his father from the town of Bridgeville. His father is working in the iron mines in the region.
Writing and addressing a postcard home left insufficient space for the stamps on hand. The top half of an unfortunate commemorative was attached to the bottom edge of the card. The bottom half was left dangling!
One of the most challenging—and beautiful—achievements in U.S. postage stamp artwork is the “50 State Bird and Flower” stamps issued in 1982. The imagery is exquisite, with each stamp deftly composed and different from every other. Each bird/flower combination has a naturalness of appearance that seems inevitable. And each is beautifully silhouetted with white space.
U.S. stamps created by a Father and Son artist team: Arthur (1917-1990) and Alan (1950- ) Singer.
And yet looking at the sheet of 50 stamps, those multiple renderings of bird or flower aren’t noticed because each presentation is unique.
artistically good as well as accurate.”
and then proceeded to greater detail, at times using pastels for color. When they deemed their sketches satisfactory, the drawings were transferred to art board in paint. The process was smooth, with each artist achieving his vision.
The result: 50 beautiful and engaging miniature works of art—a high point in U.S. postage stamp creativity.
Heat-activated imagery on stamps, once unique, has been seen frequently in recent years. On 7 October 2020, Ross Dependency issued a set of four stamps using this printing technique to present a unique visual approach to the four 
seasons. Since Scott Base is a New Zealand research facility on Ross Island in the Antarctic, you might wonder about what would appear on a set of four stamps themed “Seasons on Scott Base.” The fact that the stamps have to be heat activated to reveal the underlying imagery only adds to the mystery, but the real thrill for me was seeing the photographic imagery.
I got to thinking about birdhouses on stamps. Were there any? I explored a bit and found two (Denmark and Great Britain). That’s a small number compared to the many, many birdhouses in my neighborhood, but it’s a start. Perhaps you know of more and can let me know.
One of the highpoints of the early morning walks my wife and I take is a stretch of chain link fence that hosts Morning Glories in different shades. The 
fence bounds part of the scenic school property I mentioned in a 
Wikipedia
Summer slips into Autumn, nights and mornings are growing cooler. The photos shown above were taken about three weeks ago, and now the blossoms are turning in on themselves. I’ll miss that abundance of color we saw on Summer mornings.
And did you know the pecan isn’t a nut? It’s a member of the hickory genus and is a drupe, a fruit with a single pit surrounded by a husk.
there (on stamps), but unexpectedly there is one near me, though without any nesting goats—at least none that I’ve seen.
Many people, including stamp collectors, find the stamps of the Netherlands a bit too avante-garde, but I’ve always admired how their designers push “the boundaries.” This sheet from 2006 contains five stamps for ordinary mail use within the Netherlands. It would’ve been easier to put multiple copies of the stamp on a sheet side-by-side, and certainly more economical. The Netherlands, however, chose to do more by making a sheet whose title “Beautiful Netherlands” (Mooi Nederland) is composed of perforated letters. And in addition to the playful Eurasian Spoonbill (Platalea leucorodia) with a camera around its neck on each stamp, other images of the wildlife and natural beauty of 
