Thursday, October 30, 2003

Recommended Listening

Over at the N.P.R. site, we find an interview with Gary Larson, cartoonist of The Far Side.

• Posted at 11:13 PM · LINK

Still More on Stamps

Here are two more messages on this subject of whether you have to be dead to get on a postage stamp and if so, for how long. This first one comes from someone who signs his message, "MichaelRbn"...

I think the reason for the timing of the ten year rule is actually pretty simple. If you read the information provided in the Postal Service website to which you previously linked, it appears that it was part of the transition that occured circa 1970 when the old Post Office Department was converted into the new U.S. Postal Service. Part of the reasoning for that change was an attempt to remove some of the worst aspects of political patronage from what was considered an antiquated Cabinet Department and have the Post Office become an efficient modern corporate entity. Now, it is not my intent to defend that thesis here and now. It's fairly irrelevant to the question at hand. But a side benefit of the change was supposed to be to minimize the situation which existed where often times Congress would pass resolutions (or even laws) requiring the Post Office to print stamps for a favored industry, cause or person. And there are often instances where the ten year rule is used to fend off campaigns for stamps to be issued immediately after some momentarily popular individual's death. I doubt very much anyone deliberately created the rule to slight Martin Luther King, Jr. (who was honored along with RFK with a stamp right after the ten year period elapsed in 1979).

And this one comes from David Goehner...

Yep, there are kids pictured on the "Great Depression" stamp from the 1930s "Stamps of the Century" set who were indeed alive when the stamp was issued in 1998. The stamp uses the famous 1936 picture taken by Dorthea Lange of Florence Owens Thompson with three of her children. Through some brief online searching, I located a fellow named Roger Sprague, who is a grandson of the woman pictured and apparently offers himself for lectures about the Depression. He confirmed that two of the children were still alive when the stamp came out (but didn't specifically clarify whether or not they are still alive, although since he mentioned the date of death of just one of the children, it seems reasonable to assume that the other two are still alive today). Roger also offered some insight regarding how the stamp people got around the "people who are still alive" issue. Here are a couple of lines from his message to me this morning:

At the time the stamp was issued, both Katherine and Norma were living. If you look at the photo again, you will see a baby in my grandmother's arms near the lower right. This child is my aunt Norma, age 1 year. Katherine is the child on my grandmother's right shoulder, and my mother Ruby is on her left shoulder. My grandmother, Florence, died in Sept. 1983 at age 80, my mother, Ruby, died in Feb. 1990 at age 60. Congress was lobbied to allow for the photo to be turned into a stamp even though two of the persons were still living. Actually, the only living person whose "face" appears in the photo is my aunt Norma's, and no one, I'm sure, would recognize her from it.

So it looks like the score is now one clown and two kids who have appeared on a U.S. postage stamp while they were still alive.

Not much to add to this except that I continue to be amazed at how much info comes in when I post a question here. Thanks to all who wrote. And now I have to go mail some bills using stamps with a picture of an eagle on them. Wonder if that eagle is still alive...

• Posted at 1:49 PM · LINK

Recommended Reading

Michael Kinsley writes a rebuttal to the rebuttal.

• Posted at 12:57 PM · LINK

Stamp Stuff

I'm getting a lot of e-mail about this stamp thing. Here's a message from John Hedegor who seems to know what he's talking about...

I have been reading with interest your items concerning postage stamps that seemed to represent waivers to the rule that people have to be dead for ten years before their likenesses are allowed on stamps (Presidents excepted). However, I must clear up a misconception here: the "ten years" rule was not adopted by the CSAC (Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee) until some time in the late 1960s. Until then, there were no limitations concerning a person's appearance on a postage stamp (so long as that person was deceased). During the 1950s and early 1960s, the U.S. issued many memorial stamps to those who had recently died; besides Disney and Hammarskjold, these included Philippine President Ramon Magsaysay (1957), Ernst Reuter, mayor of (West) Berlin (1959), former Senators Robert Taft and Walter George (1960), Secretary of State John Foster Dulles (1960), Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn (1962), Eleanor Roosevelt (1963), and in 1965, Winston Churchill and Adlai Stevenson.

Unfortunately, I do not know precisely when the "ten years" rule went into effect, but since no memorial stamps for non-Presidents have been issued since Disney's in 1968, I will assume it was around 1968 or 1969, when the Post Office underwent a series of reorganizations. Surely King and Robert Kennedy would have been honored had the rule not been in effect then.

Also, Harry McCracken is quite correct that the likeness of circus clown Lou Jacobs was used for the American Circus stamp of 1966. But since his face was used a symbol of circus performers in general, and not as a commemoration of Lou Jacobs specifically, it was acceptable. Many living people have posed, or had their likenesses used for, postage stamps. Other examples include the Drug Abuse prevention stamp of 1971 (a young woman slouched in agony), and, going much further back, the Arbor Day stamp of 1932 (a little boy and girl planting a tree) and a Los Angeles Olympics stamp of the same year (a runner on his mark).

Unlike McCracken, I do collect stamps (as you can tell!) and I hope the above helps to clarify things somewhat.

Yes, it does. And I suppose my lingering curiosity is what it was that prompted someone to say, "We need a ten year rule." Now that you mention it was enacted in the sixties, I seem to remember someone once charging that they instituted the policy to avoid the controversy that would might have erupted had they issued a Martin Luther King stamp then. I'm pretty sure that wasn't the case but I wonder what it was.

• Posted at 12:52 PM · LINK

Recommended Reading

Kenny Ausubel discusses how certain politicians spin anti-environmental policies to make them seem pro-environment.

• Posted at 12:16 PM · LINK

Recommended Reading

Here's a rebuttal to Michael Kinsley's earlier article on stem-cell research.

• Posted at 12:00 AM · LINK