Will stamps become a thing of the past?

A little bit of philatelic history this morning. The first US commemorative stamps were issued for the 1893 Columbian Exposition. It was an impressive set of stamps for an impressive World's Fair, but the combined value ($16.34 or about $400 adjusted for inflation) of the commemorative set was too much for the average American. Of course, if you looked at it as an investment, the full set is worth about $18,000 today in mint condition. You can still find lower denomination stamps like the one above for reasonable prices. The 2-cent "Landing of Columbus" goes for about $30.

Stamps have become an indelible part of our history. I've often thought that a fun way to teach history would be through stamps, but in this day and age most kids wouldn't have any idea what stamps are for. The US Postal Service has experimented with electronic stamping, however there isn't really any need for it, at least not yet. Who knows with net neutrality currently under debate in Congress, we could soon see higher rates for Internet usage? Our e-mails aren't safe from prying eyes, as it is. Maybe with e-stamps there would be greater privacy in correspondence, at least that was the USPS selling pitch at one point.

Since the Penny Black, first issued by Great Britain in 1840, stamps have been a form of assurance that your mail will be delivered untouched to your chosen address, and for the most part postal services have delivered on this promise world wide. I've come to greatly appreciate that living overseas. It wasn't long after, 1847, that stamps were first used in America, which fittingly honored Benjamin Franklin, who had been the first US Postmaster General before the advent of stamps in 1775.

Perhaps the most famous postal carriers were the Pony Express, spurred by the threat of Civil War in 1860 to provide fast reliable service to the Western territories. The route stretched from St. Louis, Missouri, to Sacramento, California, covering a distance of roughly 2000 miles in an astonishing 9-11 days, eastbound being a little slower than westbound. However, it was an expensive service, charging $5 per half-ounce in 1860. The price came down to $1 by 1861, but it was no competition for the telegraph, which brought an end to this rapid service only 19 months later. It was the Internet of its day, although it didn't stop "snail mail" all together.

Unfortunately, the meter has replaced stamps for the most part, and with the US Post Office once again in serious financial trouble you can expect to see e-postage become the norm for metered mail. It is a pre-paid service where you print out the postage yourself, rather than go to the post office. But, you can still buy commemorative stamps, although they no longer carry a denomination, simply marked "forever." It would be nice to think so.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...

Team of Rivals Reading Group

''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005

The Searchers

You are invited to join us in a discussion of The Searchers , a new book on John Ford's boldest Western, which cast John Wayne against type as the vengeful Ethan Edwards who spends eight years tracking down a notorious Comanche warrior, who had killed his cousins and abducted a 9 year old girl. The film has had its fair share of detractors as well as fans over the years, but is consistently ranked in most critics' Top Ten Greatest Films . Glenn Frankel examines the origins of the story as well as the film itself, breaking his book down into four parts. The first two parts deal with Cynthia Ann Parker and her son Quanah, perhaps the most famous of the 19th century abduction stories. The short third part focuses on the author of the novel, Alan Le May, and how he came to write The Searchers. The final part is about Pappy and the Duke and the making of the film. Frankel noted that Le May researched 60+ abduction stories, fusing them together into a nar...

Dispatches from Vilnius

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