Happy Birthday, Natalie Portman, born Natalie Herschlag, in Jerusalem, Israel! You are a very successful "co-production" of your Jewish ancestors from Austria, Russia, Poland and Romania. Your beloved Romanian-born great-grandmother was a spy for British Intelligence during World War II, so acting might be in your genes...I show you maximum cards with Natalie Portman's character Padmé Amidala in the Star Wars prequel trilogy

I like Natalie Portman: she has it all! 

Smart, beautiful, talented, opinionated...

The USPS got away on a technicality from its own rule of non-portraying living persons on stamps.

They claim that those stamps portray her movie character, not the private citizen Natalie Portman, still alive today.

USPS wants a person to be "maggot food" for 5 years before even considering issuing a stamp to honor him/her (1 year for US presidents).

Natalie, if you want to create personalized stamps with YOU, the real person, you can do it even NOW.

Choose from USA, ISRAEL and some 20 more countries who currently issue such stamps.

Explore my blog for ideas and examples.

I have already designed such stamps, from several countries.

Email me, if you have any question.

:)

"Natalie Hershlag^[1][2] (Hebrew: נטלי הרשלג‎; born June 9, 1981), better known by her stage name Natalie Portman, is an actress with dual American and Israeli citizenship. 

Her first role was as an orphan taken in by a hitman in the 1994 French action film Léon, but major success came when she was cast as Padmé Amidala in the Star Wars prequel trilogy.^[3] 

In 1999, she enrolled at Harvard University to study psychology while still working as an actress.^[4] 

She completed her bachelor's degree in 2003.

In 2001, Portman opened in New York City's Public Theater production of Anton Chekhov's The Seagull.^[3] 

In 2005, Portman received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress as well as winning the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture for the drama Closer. 

She shaved her head and learned to speak with a British accent for her starring role in V for Vendetta (2006), for which she won a Constellation Award for Best Female Performance, and a Saturn Award for Best Actress.

 She played leading roles in the historical dramas Goya's Ghosts (2006) and The Other Boleyn Girl (2008). 

In May 2008, she served as the youngest member of the 61st Annual Cannes Film Festival jury.^[5] Portman's directorial debut, Eve, opened the 65th Venice International Film Festival's shorts competition in 2008.^[6]

In 2011, Portman won the Academy Award, the Golden Globe Award, the Screen Actors Guild Award, and the BAFTA Award for her lead performance as Nina in Black Swan."

Her paternal ancestors were Jews who moved to Israel from Poland and Romania. Her paternal grandfather, whose parents died at Auschwitz, was an economics professor in Israel, and her Romanian-born great-grandmother was a spy for British Intelligence during World War II.^[14][15]"

"Portman, a dual citizen of the United States and Israel,^[16] has said that although she "really love[s] the States... my heart's in Jerusalem. That's where I feel at home."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natalie_portman

It's refreshing to speak your mind. I respect that. :)

"Natalie Portman at the TIFF 2009-01 at the premiere of "Love and Other Impossible Pursuits", directed by Don Roos, during the Toronto International Film Festival, 2009."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Natalie_Portman_at_the_TIFF_2009-01.jpg

"Owing to her scientific publications, Portman is among a very small number of professional actors with a finite Erdős–Bacon number"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erd%C5%91s%E2%80%93Bacon_number#Table

"A person's Erdős–Bacon number is the sum of one's Erdős number—which measures the "collaborative distance" in authoring mathematical papers between that person and Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős—and one's Bacon number—which represents the number of links, through roles in films, by which the individual is separated from American actor Kevin Bacon. The lower the number, the closer a person is to Erdős and Bacon, and this reflects a small world phenomenon in academia and entertainment."

Read about the fascinating personality of this "Pal": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erd%C5%91s

Paul Erdős, "The Man Who Loved Only Numbers", is one of the very few men in history who never liked sex, of any kind. Although he tried it, he NEVER liked it.

Sex is nothing, mathematics is everything - for him, I might specify.

"Paul Erdős (occasionally spelled Erdos or Erdös; Hungarian: Erdős Pál, pronounced [ˈɛrdøːʃ ˈpaːl]; 26 March 1913 – 20 September 1996) was a Hungarian mathematician."

"Throughout his career, Erdős would offer prizes for solutions to unresolved problems.^[30] These ranged from $25 for problems that he felt were just out of the reach of current mathematical thinking, to several thousand dollars for problems that were both difficult to attack and mathematically significant."

If YOU solve such a problem, you could get paid, in a PayPál transaction...:)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erd%C5%91s

=============

Time for another stretch (of imagination)...

Let's say that the third maxicard from top-down is the charm.

That duel maxicard shows, in my twisted imagination, an inverted heart shape (kind of) laid down on the floor, under the warrior from the left side, with the tip of heart in the background, towards a galaxy far, far away...

Please visit and join The Guest Heart Thursday meme!

http://clytie-randomhearts.blogspot.com/

Welcome to Guest Heart Thursday -
A place to share YOUR hearts!

Attention, postal workers from around the world! As you sort the mail, please look at the whole mail piece, not just at the apparent destination country. Here's a cover from Ukraine, misdirected to Cuba, instead of USA! Here's how the tunnel vision worked, between alphabets

This is a very nice cover (now is special!) sent to me in April 2011 by my philatelic/partner "Prott", from Ukraine, as part of the Maxicard Round Robin at http://www.forum.postcrossing.com.

Here's how the tunnel vision worked, between alphabets

Her "mistake" was that she added the destination country abbreviation, USA, 

in the Cyrillic alphabet: США.

http://translate.google.com/#auto|uk|USA

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrillic

My postal forensic explanation is that an Ukrainian postal worker has interpreted 

 США as CUBA!!!

So what if, right above США, the cover is inscribed 

United States of America?

"I don't know.

I don't care.

I just work here, at the post office."

Was that the attitude? :)

So, off it went to Cuba!!!

Fidel Castro was too tired to deal with it personally, so he gave it to his brother Raul, the present ruler of Cuba.

Looking at the writing on the cover addressed for The Empire of Evil (USA), Raul thought that he deciphers, between the lines: "I'll be bak!".

So Raul sent it bak to Ukraine, then Ukraine sent it to USA.

What Correos de Cuba did was to postmark it: REVUELTO AL REMITENTE (Return to sender) and send it back (to Ukraine, I guess).

Then it finally arrived to me, in USA, two days ago.


One of the (if not THE) most passionate collectors of RETURN TO SENDER covers, either "sent for real",  or "sent intentionally to a fake address, to be returned with postmarks and postal markings from that exotic place", is my fellow blogger Riccardo Amarante (Italy) http://coverspostcards.blogspot.com/
Please explore his fascinating collection, and learn from his experience.
Notice how he mentions, sometimes, on the cover:
 "Please return to sender if undeliverable", or so.


You, too, can send and receive back such items from the most godforsaken exotic places on earth.
Is THAT the greatest thing?
No - the greatest thing would be to find a real person/partner/friend in every such place, who could exchange with you a cover, postcard, etc.
But, if that is not possible, then you can always resort to a mailing of a cover or postcard to a fake address, so that it will be RETURNED to you, as undeliverable, with all those local postmarks and postal markings of RETURN, etc.

Attention, postal workers from around the world! As you sort the mail, please look at the whole mail piece, not just at the apparent destination country. :)

Inside the cover, besides a Chinese maxicard, was this Ukrainian maxicard:

"Ukraine (ⁱ /juːˈkreɪn/ ew-krayn; Ukrainian: Україна, transliterated: Ukrayina, [ukrɑˈjinɑ];Russian: Украи́на; Crimean Tatar: Ukraina) is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the largest contiguous country on the European continent.^[7] Ukraine borders the Russian Federation to the east and northeast, Belarus to the northwest, Poland,Slovakia and Hungary to the west, Romania and Moldova to the southwest, and the Black Sea and Sea of Azov to the south and southeast, respectively. It was formerly known as The Ukraine.^[8]"

"The Swallow's Nest; the Crimea hosts many seaside resorts and historic sites".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine

https://picasaweb.google.com/annakaisa.karppelinsiltaoja/MapCardsMyCollections?feat=content_notification#5615395525428624674

See some nice stamps from Ukraine:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/78/Stamp_of_Ukraine_S959970_-_Traditional_Head-dresses_of_Ukrainians_-_set.jpg

http://poshta.kiev.ua/nishop.php?act=shcomm&gid=1&id=12448

http://www.postbeeld.com/en/stamps/view/sokb0728-tradional-marriage-costumes-12v-ms/

============

"Cuba has a 99.8% literacy rate,^[12][13] an infant death rate lower than some developed countries,^[14] and an average life expectancy of 77.64.^[12] In 2006, Cuba was the only nation in the world which met the WWF's definition of sustainable development; having an ecological footprint of less than 1.8 hectares per capita and a Human Development Index of over 0.8 for 2007.^[15]"

"Beach on Cayo Largo del Sur in the Canarreos archipelago"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuba

==============

"The United States of America (also referred to as the United States, the U.S., the USA, or America) is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its forty-eight contiguous states and Washington, D.C., the capital district, lie between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the south. The state of Alaska is in the northwest of the continent, with Canada to the east and Russia to the west across the Bering Strait. The state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific. The country also possesses several territories in the Caribbean and Pacific.

At 3.79 million square miles (9.83 million km²) and with over 308 million people, the United States is the third or fourth largest country by total area [there are still disputed lands between China and India, in the Himalayas], and the third largest both by land area and population. It is one of the world's most ethnically diverse and multiculturalnations, the product of large-scale immigration from many countries.^[6]"

"Through the 19th century, the United States displaced native tribes, acquired land from France, Spain, the United Kingdom, Mexico, and Russia, and annexed the Republic of Texas and the Republic of Hawaii."

"Wooden walkways allow visitors to closely approach the Grand Prismatic Spring."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Grand_prismatic_spring.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usa

=================

U, as in Ukraine, and USA.

Please visit and join the ABC Wednesday meme!

http://abcwednesday-mrsnesbitt.blogspot.com/