The never-ending story as told in stamps

Celebrating 100 years of the restoration of Lithuanian independence, 2018

I find myself collecting stamps again.  I kind of gave up after the US went to "Forever" stamps and Lithuania switched to the euro.  However, a lot of cool stamps have been issued in the years since, at least in Lithuania.  I like first day issue covers as well.  The only problem is that I ran out of pages to put them in, so they stay in folders.  Fortunately, it is quite dry up in the attic so no chance of the stamps sticking together.

The Lithuanian post office has made some interesting choices over the years, including honoring Arafat with an envelope.  I couldn't believe it when I saw it, and bought one for my collection.  Of course, the ill-advised envelope got the country in a lot of trouble with the local Jewish community, but Lithuania has long had a soft spot for unrecognized nations.  

When I first came to Vilnius 1997 there was even an honorary consulate for Chechnya, although the post office steered clear of the ongoing conflict.  I see the Chechen post office did issue some stamps during their brief independence.  Not bad prices at Peterstamps.  Half tempted to pick up a few to add to the collection.

The Lithuanian post office tried to make amends with the Jewish community by issuing a commemorative stamp in 2017.  A friend of ours designed it, who in turn got in trouble for combining the Jewish menorah with the Lithuanian Columns of Gediminas, but we thought it was quite clever in distinguishing the Jewish-Lithuanian community.

Most of the stamps honor Lithuanian independence, nature and the various important figures that have arisen over the years.  It was interesting to see the post office issue commemorate stamps for Fluxus founders Jurgis Mačiūnas in 2016 and Jonas Mekas in 2022, celebrating his 100th birthday.  It seemed fitting given how Fluxus liked to play with stamps themselves.

I don't know what it is about stamps but I've always loved them.  I remember getting quite a lecture from my mother when I tore off one of the Walt Disney stamps from a block to mail a letter to my grandmother.  Stamps have more value in numbered blocks, she told me.  She had no idea how she was going to replace it, as the local post office no longer carried these stamps.   My favorites were the stamps commemorating space.  I think we had pretty much all of them, but I thought grandma would like Walt Disney better.

Many years later my mother's house was hit by Hurricane Opal and her entire stamp collection was ruined.  Fortunately, I was there at the time, and managed to get her to safety in a neighboring house as we were standing in a meter of brackish water using the kitchen bar to break the waves.  I knew how much those stamps meant to her and went to a philatelist in Fort Walton Beach with the damaged stamps and asked if he had replacements.  He was able to match almost all the stamps, including the Disney block, which brought a smile to my mother's face in the wake of all the damage her house had suffered.  

The soiled stamps still had face value, so I used them to mail letters and packages to Daina, putting scores of stamps on the boxes until no more would fit and the post office clerk would make up the difference with a metered stamp. 

It really isn't the cost but the story stamps tell.  When we were in Ukraine some years ago, I ransacked one of the post offices in Lviv for stamps.  The clerk kept trotting out stamps from the back room for me to look at, happy I was buying so many.  They were such beautiful stamps but they too sit in a folder waiting for me to put them in protective pages.  

I wish I could be the proud owner of a Snake Island stamp like this lucky guy, but I wasn't fast enough in getting a stamp online from the Ukraine post office when they were briefly available.  Now, there are a whole lot of forgeries on the market in the wake of this stamp's phenomenal success, so you don't know what you will get on the internet.

There is also an envelope with a whole bunch of Japanese stamps in my drawer. We were in Spain with the kids in 2000, staying at the Parador de Cardona, a lovely castle that sat on a hilltop not far from Barcelona.  We were having dinner when a Japanese tour guide interrupted us to ask if her tour group could take pictures of us as they thought we were the perfect European family.  Needless to say we were quite flattered.  They were all teachers and had saved up for years to go on this trip, their translator told me.  One of the men said he would send me a picture and he did months later, along with a letter, translated into English, welcoming us to Tokyo if we ever got the chance.

It's too bad post offices don't put stamps on letters or packages these days.  Of course they will if you ask the clerk nicely, saying the person on the other end collects stamps, but you can only get away with this if there is no one else in line.  Meters make things easier, that's for sure.  Still, commemorative stamps continue to be printed as there will always be a market for them.  Vilnius is celebrating its 700th anniversary but I'm not overly thrilled by the block.  I will buy it just the same to add to the ongoing story in my collection.