Received from from Gilberte Vermeulen - September 2012

Gilberte Vermeulen http://iuoma-network.ning.com/profile/gilbertevermeulen sent not only a mail-art envelope with 

a front AND a back-side

created according to completely different approaches: 

* the front side made from a very nice fabric

* the back-side made up by a collage of a great diversity of clippings from various sources;

she also included 

* a photo, about which, at the back side, she asks a very relevant question, completely understandable for me as a Dutch woman: "Vlaanderen? Nederland?" (by the way, is the photo not a photo of a painting, which might explain Gilberte's hesitation, which I share totally: the painter might have created an ambiguous landscape...)

* a copy of an old print (a postcard, cf. the stamp) representing "une créole", a creole woman, with a particular graceful carriage of the head with her beautiful dark eyes, expiring a certain melancholia (I do my pseudo-interpretation)

and, last but not least at all,

* some very informative excerpts from (a French version of) Pope Pius XI's "Encyclique sur le Mariage" (Casti Connubii %). In France, with the current plans of the government concerning legalisation of the same-sex mariage, these elements are more than wellcome as a contribution to the discussion!

[% Casti Connubii (Latin: "of chaste wedlock") was a papal encyclical promulgated by Pius XI on December 31, 1930. It stressed the sanctity of marriage.]
THANK YOU VERY MUCH, Gilberte! I might continue on the theme of the mariage!