Save The Post Office - Send Letters To Family, Friends, Teachers, Strangers, Legislators

The US Post Office is losing lots of money because of the COVID-19 closings.    It's reported that Trump threatened to veto the relief package if aid for the Post Office was included.  Trump has been at war with the Post Office at least since 2018 when he wanted them to charge Amazon more for their  postal deliveries.  I'd note that Amazon owner Jeff Bezos also owns the Washington Post, one of Trump's many perceived media enemies.  And now people are saying Trump's opposition to the funding is related to suppressing voting-by-mail.

Our first post master was Benjamin Franklin who pushed hard for a postal service.  He was also a printer and newspaper publisher and having a post office made distributing the news a lot easier.  But at this point I'm backing Ben Franklin over Donald Trump.  

So I'm pushing for everyone to start sending letters.  Letters mean more than a phone call or an email or text.  They say you cared to spend a little more time to think about what you wanted to say and to get an envelope and mail it.  And they can be easily read long in the future.  My only connections to my grandparents, for instance, are letters they wrote long before I was born.  

So, who should you write too?

• Grandkids - they love getting mail
• Grandparents
• Parents
• Kids
• Aunts and Uncles

Let them know you're thinking about them.  Who else?

• Let favorite teachers know how much they meant to you
• The same for other people who had important influences on you that they may not realize
• Write your members of Congress to tell them to make sure the Post Office survives
• Find names and addresses at random on line and write a stranger
• Pay your bills by mail

But in these lockdown days, you don't want to expose yourself to a post office crowd to buy stamps.  No problem.  You can register with the post office online  and order stamps for home delivery. Here are some of the stamps available right now.  

Feel daunted by writing a letter?  Here's a link with how to do it.  And since must people are home, there's lots more time to write.  And show your kids how to send a letter.  

The Post Office is an important way for people to be connected.  Even with email and texting, a letter is something personal.  You touched the letter, your handwriting is on it.  You can slip in something - a drawing, a photo, stickers, a four leaf clover, a cartoon you cut out of the newspaper.  

In rural areas, where it's not economical for UPS to go, the Post Office keeps people connected.  And the post office connects people all around the world.  Imagine, three or four short lines on an envelope, and the post office will get it to the right person anywhere in the world in a week or two.  

And voting by mail means that attempts to suppress the vote by limiting polling stations, making people wait in long lines, any time, but especially during a pandemic like what happened in Wisconsin last week, doesn't have to happen.  Greg Palast is someone who tracks voting problems.  Here's a link to one of Greg's recent posts.

There are potential problems with mail-in voting like with any other type of voting.  But there are recountable paper ballots when you vote by mail.  

So, support the Post Office;  surprise a friend or family member, let your Members of Congress know what you think, pay your bills, using an envelope and stamps to support the post office.  

Mom Leaves Her Stamp(s)

There are several drawers of stamps - cancelled stamps from all over, first day covers, loose stamps, unused US stamps in blocks.  And there are several stamp books.

Should I take them to a stamp store?  Give them to my grand children?  Put them on E-Bay?  The second option is my preference.  I think (ah the memory is such a malleable faculty) that stamp collecting was one of the ways I got interested in geography - learning the names of foreign countries and finding them on the map.

And looking at the cancelled stamps, many still on envelopes, I can't help thinking about the people or events or places or things depicted on the stamps.  And I wonder about how the letter writer chose the stamp - purposely or just because that's what the post office sold her?  And, of course, who were the people corresponding?  What was the nature of the correspondence?  In some cases my mom's collection affords the opportunity to find out more because the letter is still inside.  And I'm ever so distractible that I could spend a year just pursuing that.  Others have already written novels based on letters they found.

But we're just back home with lots to do and this wasn't supposed to be a long post, just some pictures of stamps. (Click on any of the images to enlarge and focus. They're really SO MUCH better if you do that.)  But, as I said, I'm infinitely distractible.

So looking through the box of stamps I brought home - these are unused US stamps that mean I won't have to buy stamps for a long time - I thought I'd just post some that I thought were visually strong.

Just imagine the challenge of creating an image that fits on a postage stamp.  There are a lot that are awfully busy and you have to look very closely to see what's in them.  Those that focus on one thing seem to come out best.

First, some portraits.  I think I like these because they're big and bold.  And I noticed that four of them are basically black and white drawings.

The Pulitzer stamp is the exception, but the quote is big and drew me in.  And the message - "OUR REPUBLIC AND ITS PRESS WILL RISE OR FALL TOGETHER" - is as important important today as when Pulitzer said it.  Here's more context from Pulitzer.org:

In May 1904, writing in The North American Review in support of his proposal for the founding of a school of journalism, Pulitzer summarized his credo: "Our Republic and its press will rise or fall together. An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery. A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself. The power to mould the future of the Republic will be in the hands of the journalists of future generations."

The media coverage of the current presidential race doesn't seem to me to be living up to Pulitzer's expectations for the press.

Here are a few stamps heralding events.  The Spirit of 76's power comes from our familiarity with the image and the post office's willingness to use three stamps to zoom in on the three characters.  The American Revolution tells us:

"Despite the near universality of this image as synonymous with Americanism and its instantaneous recognition in the iconography of the Revolution, the world of art has never considered it to be Art with a capital "A"."

And the picture on the stamp doesn't quite match up with the picture on their site.   But they add that painter (not artist according to the critics) Archibald McNeil Willard, made several different versions of this picture that was featured at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition of 1876.

The First Man On The Moon stamp says it all in a relatively simple illustration, that, I think, is also aided by images we've all seen before.

Finally, I like the image on the Mayflower stamp.  The Pilgrims are a little small, but the boat stands out and you can work a bit to see the Pilgrims.  My assessment is of the image, not, by the way, of the event itself.


I love these images of plant life.  I like the cacti particularly.  Do I really have to say any more?

Getting the details of buildings and places onto a tiny stamp would seem to be a bit of a challenge.  Here are some of the more successful ones in the box.  I particularly like the architecture ones and the lighthouse on the lower right.  The historic preservation stamp had to, apparently, highlight the theme and identify what was being preserved in each stamp.  They did the latter in tiny letters, which, when I blew up the image, showed how out of focus it was.  But they're challenging to my old eyes in the original.  For those who need to know the images are a) The Decator House, b) The Charles W. Morgan,  c)  San Francisco Cable Car, and d) San Xavier del Bac Mission.   (The links are well worth following.  I figure most people already know about the cable car.)

There have to be over a hundred different images in the box I found.  Some pretty dramatic and others almost looking like advertising.  I could do weeks of posts on these stamps.  And who knows, maybe I'll come back to them for future posts, but for now one more set - animals.

I really do like the top set - the 125th anniversary of the Berlin Zoo.  It's the only block of non-American stamps I've come across in the box.  And it's interesting that the German stamps in the set are different denominations.  I haven't noticed that among the US stamps.

The role of stamps

The little stamp has a role much bigger than one originally thinks about.  This should be obvious by the popularity of stamp collecting over the years.  The Art of the Stamp conveys a little of this, better than I can, in a description of the an exhibit at the Smithsonian's National Postal Museum in 2003-4:

"Few works of art enjoy as vast an audience as American stamps. At their most basic, stamps are simple proofs of postage, but with the addition of graphic designs that honor national heroes and commemorate historical events, they become something much greater: compelling works of art that serve, in the words of W.B. Yeats, as “the silent ambassadors on national taste.” Each year, award-winning graphic artists bring their talents to a broad range of U.S. stamps. Working on unusually small canvases, these artists surmount truly unique design challenges to create superb miniature encapsulations of American culture and history."

Stamps II

I got a beautifully addressed envelope from Geeno thanking me for the big envelope of stamps I sent him. His letter was very appreciative. Geeno's the guy (click here for the previous post with picture)) we met in Kumarakom who collects stamps. So, again, take out an envelope, put his address on it, and when you throw away envelopes, tear off the stamps and put them in the envelope. When you have a good bunch of stamps in there, take it to the post office and send it. Remember to ask for nice stamps to send it, not the automated strip. You can click on the picture and enlarge his address, print it, then tape it onto an envelope.