At the risk of coming off like the Ebenezer Scrooge of a different holiday, I have to say: I really don't like Halloween and never have. Even as a kid, the idea of dressing up and going from house to house to collect candy struck me as enormously unpleasant. I did it a few times when I was young because it seemed to be expected of me…but I never enjoyed it. I felt stupid in the costume and when I got home, I had a bag of "goodies" I didn't want to eat. In my neighborhood, you got a lot of licorice and Three Mouseketeers bars and Jordan Almonds, none of which I liked.

And of course, absolutely no one likes candy corn. Don't write to me and tell me you do because I'll just have to write back and call you a liar. No one likes candy corn. No one, do you hear me?

My trick-or-treating years were before there were a lot of scares about people putting razor blades or poison into Halloween candy. Even then, I wound up throwing out just about everything except those little Hershey bars. So it was wasteful, and I also didn't like the dress-up part of it with everyone trying to look maimed or bloody. I've never understood why anyone thinks that's fun to do or fun to see.

I wonder if anyone's ever done any polling to find out what percentage of Halloween candy that is purchased and handed-out is ever eaten. And I wonder how many kids would rather not dress up or disfigure themselves for an evening if anyone told them they had a choice. Where I live, they seem to have decided against it. Each year, I stock up and no one comes. For a while there, I wound up eating a couple bags of leftover candy myself. The last few Halloweens, I've switched to little boxes of Sun-Maid Raisins, which are a lot healthier if I get stuck with them. Maybe I ought to switch to candy corn. That way, I wouldn't have to worry about anyone eating it. And if no one comes, I could just keep it around and not give it out again next year.

Over at Comic Book Resources, Budjette Tan is beginning a series on the Filipino comic book artists who flooded into the U.S. industry in the seventies. Here's a link to Part One.

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

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…

Michael Kinsley writes a rebuttal to the rebuttal.

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.

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

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

If you're interested in the art of lettering comic books, there are a number of articles and interviews over at Richard Starkings' Balloon Tales site. Of particular note should be this roundtable discussion in which a number of industry professionals discuss whether comics should be lettered in upper and lower case or ALL CAPS.

According to this report, there are people out there who are complaining that the new Looney Tunes DVD doesn't include such fave WB cartoons as One Froggy Evening and What's Opera, Doc? This is a silly criticism, and one that I suspect is not as widely-held as the news report would have us believe.

Here at news from me, we wander from topic to topic. We started talking about the new Dr. Seuss postage stamp and now I'm printing the following from my pal, Rick Scheckman…

Another non-President who did not wait ten years to be on a postage stamp was Dag Hammarskjold. Dag was at the time of his 1961 death in a plane crash in the Congo, Secretary General of the United Nations. Very shortly after the crash, in 1962, The United States issued a stamp honoring Hammarskjold, however one sheet went in backwards for the second color resulting in a rare sheet of inverted stamps. Stamp collector Leonard Sherman purchased the sheet for $2 at the post office. When he announced the find, the government decided to print millions of the stamp error.

I remember this. Below, we have the stamps in question. The one at top is the way the stamp looked when printed correctly. The one below is the "error" stamp with the yellow plate inverted…

But I just dug up a copy of the most memorable version, which is the one drawn by Al Jaffee for MAD Magazine…

A couple of folks have written to remind me that the U.S. Postal Service made an exception to their rule that a non-president had to be dead ten years to be on a stamp. The exception they all mention was Walter Elias Disney, who passed away in 1966 and had his mug on a 6-cent stamp just two years later. But actually, Disney hasn't been the only one. In 1948, the U.S. Post Office issued a stamp to honor the "Four Chaplains" who perished in 1943 aboard the ship, The Dorchester. Here's a link to a website that will tell you the story of this stamp. And here, we have a page on the procedures involved in deciding on a stamp, including the "ten year" rule.

Harry McCracken, whose website should be of interest to anyone interested in this one, also informs me…

Then there's the only person (as far as I know) who appeared on a stamp while he was still alive — legendary circus clown Lou Jacobs, whose clown face graced a circus-themed stamp in 1966. Apparently, the fact it was in makeup justified an exception. And no, I'm not a stamp collector — I'm just fascinated by this sort of thing.

So, obviously, am I. I wonder what the thinking was behind waiving the rule for Disney. They waited ten years for Robert Kennedy. They waited eleven for Dr. Martin Luther King. But Walt had to be right away?

In the matter of Terry Schiavo, the lady in Florida who may or may not be in a "persistent vegetative state" depending on who you believe, I earlier linked to a page that made the case for keeping her alive. This other website doesn't attempt to take the opposite view, but it was compiled by a Florida attorney who lays out what seems to be the situation. And that presentation seems to make the opposing case. So I don't know what to think.

I haven't seen the new Looney Tunes DVD yet but a reader named "Booksteve" informs me that the documentary narrated by Stan Freberg and included on the DVD has an error in it. There's a photo of voice actress Bea Benaderet, he says, that is identified as June Foray.

Booksteve writes, "Stan should be incensed!" He's right. A few years ago, the Rhino Records people put out a boxed set of comedy CDs that included one of the records that Stan did with his sometimes-sidekick, Daws Butler. In the accompanying booklet, there was a photo of Daws identified as Stan. Mr. Freberg says he called Rhino and told them about it and the response was, "Are you sure?"

A lot of folks on message boards seem to be confused or concerned about where all the big fires in Southern California are located. This map may be of help.