New to stamp collecting—I’ve inherited some stamps from my grandfather (a common story, right), but most of them were war booty taken during the Allied invasion of Germany — as far as I can tell, from a stamp and paper dealer called Wester & Wiehler in the town of Gotha, in Thuringia. Can’t imagine these gentlemen left any of their really valuable stuff around for a 19-year-old American soldier to grab, but there is plenty for me to go through — including many stamped (North German?) letters from the 1870s, covers and letters from around the world from 1860s – 1940s, and lots of loose stamps. Today I found these stamps that look pretty cool – looks like some Thurn and Taxis, Saxony, and Prussia. From what I've found online so far, the Hamburg is a private postal stamp, and the Leipzig stamp is a locally issued one. I know nothing about these but I'm going to learn -- any info or pointers appreciated!
https://preview.redd.it/npg069lqy3571.jpg?width=5100&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=57b22a36d7d26fe347f1240504de0f5c4a999b8d
Rilke wrote the Duino Elegies, a series of poems about angels whose imagery and ideas are scattered throughout Gravity's Rainbow, while a guest of the Thurn und Taxis Family. Interesting trans-novel connection.
Is this just a coincidence, or are there deeper subtexts to Rilke references in Gravity's Rainbow that I have missed?
Please post any Rilke thoughts or feelings in the comments. I'm grappling with the Duino Elegies at this moment and welcome any help in unpacking them.
Pictured: Duino Castle, property of the Thurn und Taxis family. Duino, Trieste, Italy.
https://preview.redd.it/laqn81ndusn61.png?width=1200&format=png&auto=webp&s=20848b71f7a84e0bfe93ceb669f95182f3cfe6c9
Found Pynchon via The Crying of Lot 49 and I can't get over how I feel, or lack of feel I have from this piece of work. It really left me speechless and wanting more Pynchon. I immediately purchased three more of his including Gravity's Rainbow and am waiting to mentally heal from The Crying before I delve into them.
This week's game is Thurn and Taxis
- BGG Link: Thurn and Taxis
- Designers: Andreas Seyfarth, Karen Seyfarth
- Publishers: Hans im Glück, 999 Games, Albi, Bard Centrum Gier, Hobby World, Lautapelit.fi, MINDOK, Rio Grande Games, Schmidt Spiele, Smart Ltd
- Year Released: 2006
- Mechanics: Card Drafting, Hand Management, Route/Network Building, Set Collection
- Categories: Renaissance, Transportation
- Number of Players: 2 - 4
- Playing Time: 60 minutes
- Expansions: Thurn and Taxis: All Roads Lead to Rome, Thurn and Taxis: Power and Glory, Thurn und Taxis: Der Kurier der Fürstin
- Ratings:
- Average rating is 7.12277 (rated by 15732 people)
- Board Game Rank: 337, Strategy Game Rank: 247, Family Game Rank: 60
Description from Boardgamegeek:
In Thurn & Taxis, players build post office routes across Bavaria and the regions around, collecting bonus points in various ways. The board shows a map of all the cities, with roads leading from each one to some of its neighbors. There are various colored regions around the board, most with two or three cities, and a large region with all the Bavarian cities in the center.
Players build postal routes from city to city to city so that each city is adjacent to the next city on the route and there is a road connecting these two cities. Each route must consist of at least three cities. Players may only build one route at a time. Routes are represented by melded city cards arranged in the order of the route.
Players start with a supply of 20 post offices in their color, a carriage house card and a player aid card. The board is populated with bonus tiles, carriage cards and city cards. On a turn a player will draw a card from a display of six, face up, city cards (or the top of the face down deck) and meld one card, either starting a new route or adding to the current one. If after adding to the route, the length of the route is at least three cities, the player may declare it finished and score it. The player may, depending on the length of the route and which cities are in the route, place post offices in the cities, collect bonus tiles, and acquire a higher value carriage. Optionally, the player may receive support from one postal official in the form of: drawing a second card, melding a second card, refreshing the six city
... keep reading on reddit ➡>Though Gloria was also an aristocrat – a countess by birth – her family wasn’t wealthy. But growing up without money didn’t seem to impair her ability to spend it. She and her husband bought huge amounts of art, traveled the globe, and became fixtures of tabloids and glossy mags the world over. They threw wild parties that lasted days; his birthday fete was just one of many held at their massive castle in Bavaria, a stately pile that Gloria once said “makes Buckingham Palace look like a hut.”
>In 1985 an interviewer for Vanity Fair magazine dubbed Gloria “Princess TNT, the dynamite socialite” – the name stuck and Gloria more than lived up to it. She barked like a dog on Late Night with David Letterman and got busted for possession of hashish at the Munich airport. She wore sweaters made out of teddy bears and received Holy Communion wearing a witch’s hat. She dyed her hair every hue of the rainbow, wore it in a Mohawk, or teased it up like the plumes of a peacock, earning her the additional sobriquet “Punk Princess,” She rode Harleys and horses, partied with Prince and princes, danced on tables in a Paco Rabanne chainmail minidress, and dressed as a cowgirl for fancy balls.
Source:
McRobbie, Linda Rodriguez. “Gloria von Thurn und Taxis, The Punk Princess Who Went Corporate.” Princesses Behaving Badly: Real Stories From History-- Without the Fairy-Tale Endings. MJF Books, 2013. 202. Print.
Further Reading:
Prince Rogers Nelson: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_(musician)
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Someone (I don't see their name on the page) created a subway map of the ancient Roman road system.
https://sashatrubetskoy.github.io/romanmap/
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sashatrubetskoy/romanmap/master/Rome_III-01.png
or
https://imgur.com/4Ozk1tF
I could see this acting as the basis for a Ticket to Ride or Thurn and Taxis type of game.
I threw some Forsaken Champions into my Skeletons deck and on two occasions I've had Abnur Tharn come out with the Forsaken Champion in play. Abnur choose to use the Summon ability of Forsaken Champion...I was then prompted to select a creature type (at which point I'd click on a skeleton and then......nothing.
No minions get +1/+1. I figured maybe I didn't select a skeleton or something silly like that but when the situation came up again the next day the same thing happened.
Is a this a misunderstanding of how these cards summon abilities are worded? Or is it a bug?
Getting rid of some older and unplayed games and tired of spamming people on BGG. Prefer trades but PayPal is fine. Buyer pays shipping from 75211.
[H]
Gen7 - $40 - punched but never played. Made foam organizer tray for chits.
Taj Mahal (2000 edition) - $30 - NIS
Thurn and Taxis - $20 - very good condition. All pieces accounted for
On the Underground - $50 - great condition. All pieces accounted for
[W]
Coimbra, GWT and N&F are high on my list but open to any offers
Thanks for looking.
