Britain is said to be a nation of animal lovers, so it’s no surprise to see the 150th Anniversary of Battersea Dogs & Cats Home celebrated on a new set of commemoratives released by Royal Mail today.  Established in 1860 by Mary Tealby as the Temporary Home for Lost and Starving Dogs, in Holloway, north London, the charity moved to its present home in Battersea in 1871, and in 1883 started taking in cats. Its motto is simple – “We aim never to turn away a dog or cat in need of our help” – and every year 12,000 animals are taken in by the Home’s three centres in London, Kent and Berkshire. The 150th…

Last month, Curtis Roosevelt toured Delivering Hope: FDR & Stamps of the Great Depression with National Postal Museum Director Allen Kane and exhibit curators Cheryl Ganz and Daniel Piazza. According to a post on the NPM website, “The oldest grandson of FDR and Eleanor, Curtis Roosevelt lived with his grandparents in the White House from 1933 until the president’s death. Though Roosevelt now lives in France, he was back in the U.S. on a six-week tour to promote his book, Too Close to the Sun: Growing up in the…

An article on the New Canaan, Connecticut Advertiser website leads with, “With a quarter of a century of United States Postal Service experience under her belt, Nancy Cornelio is ready to be the first female postmaster at the New Canaan post office since the position was first created in 1818.” Reporter Carrie Schmelkin pens, “In addition to her daily tasks of overseeing retail windows, customer services and day-to-day operations, Cornelio said she is ready to continue to build on the relationship between …

Postmaster General John Potter announced yesterday the appointment of Janet Klug, the former president and current member of the board of directors of the American Philatelic Society, to serve on the Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee (CSAC). According to a USPS press release , Janet, a lifelong stamp collector who says she “never met a stamp she didn’t like,” is the current chair of the New Initiatives Committee on the Smithsonian National Postal Museum’s Council of Philatelists. Postmaster Potter is quoted as saying, “Janet brings a wealth of expertise and …

by Terry Kirkman, Hon. Secretary, Ferndown and West Moors Philatelic & Postcard Club With the support of the Bournemouth Library we at the Ferndown and West Moors Philatelic & Postcard Club are putting on a changing display of stamps and postcards from Monday 15th March to Saturday 10th April 2010 in the exhibition area of the Bournemouth Central Library . One of the postcards to be on display: …

As some of my single country collections have lately reached over 50% completion level, I’m beginning to approach the situation where I have to start making some major decisions about the final storage and output of these collections. Should I continue to keep them on stock book, or transfer them to pre-printed stamp

Today is International Women’s Day (IWD), a global day celebrating the economic, political and social achievements of women past, present and future. The theme for IWD 2010 is “Equal rights, equal opportunities, progress for all”, so in celebration here’s a look at how female equality campaigners have been represented on British stamps.  50th anniversary of Votes for Women stamp (1968) Fittingly, the …

“Plane crashes are today’s headlines, but train wrecks were the major newsmakers 100 years ago,” writes reporter Matt Surtel on New York’s Daily News website. According to Matt, local resident Mark Milcarek came across four old postcards that documented a train wreck that happened more than a hundred years ago. “The resulting impact was horrific. It left locomotives, train cars and wreckage strewn over the countryside. Photographs taken the next morning were quickly made into postcards,” pens Matt. Mark, who found the images online, is quoted as saying, “I just came across them and because they had a date and some information with them, they were something you could trace.” After …

Patricia Raynor writes on the National Postal Museum blog, “If your vacation destination this year happens to include Walt Disney World® in Florida, try playing the game of who can spot the most mailboxes. From Main Street U.S.A. in the Magic Kingdom® to the international pavilions at Epcot,® careful observers will discover a variety of mailboxes scattered around the many park attractions.” According to Pat, “If you begin your park journey at Main Street USA, you will be transported to the turn-of-century-the 20th-century American small town with a lamp-…

Tom Buckham writes in the Buffalo News about a “serendipitous convergence of business and art.” Tom reports, “When Ashton Potter USA Ltd. in Amherst bid last year on a contract to print a series of postage stamps commemorating the art movement known as abstract expressionism, no one there realized that Albright-Knox Art Gallery owned four of the 10 featured paintings.” The printer, Ashton Potter, the world’s largest producer of postage stamps with secure printing plants, and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery are both located in and around Buffalo, New…

Carol suggested in a recent blog comment that I should write a piece about the stamps you see on the blog’s header image. Tough each of the stamps has been covered thoroughly on the blog during year 2009, newer readers of the blog might not be familiar with them. A common nominator for all these

The following blog was written for us by Mary Jeffery, Manager of the Rowland Hill Fund. The Rowland Hill Fund is a registered charity founded in 1882 as a memorial to the great postal reformer and founder of the modern postal service Sir Rowland Hill, who retired as Secretary to the Post Office in 1864. Sir Rowland Hill Rowland Hill adapted the postal system of the 1830s from one which was slow and inadequate to…

As some know I’ve been having my winter holidays this week. Although things didn’t go quite as planned (I got some heat/fever for few days), I still did have a quite enjoyable week with my family and some stamps. Here’s my youngest kid playing with her own stock book and some stamps. Though the stock

“James” writes on his Everyday Correspondence blog about visiting the lobby of National Postal Museum in Washington, D.C. He points out that,”Originally the main post office serving the District, the museum building was designed in the Beaux Arts style, and was completed in 1914…On one side of the grand hallway are post office boxes, and on the other, mail windows where clerks would receive outgoing mail. And, in the middle of the grand lobby, wonderful…

A post on the USPS Inspector General’s blog asks, “Could Longer Lines Be Coming to Your Local Post Office…Lottery Lines?” It goes on to report, “According to a representative on the Postal Regulatory Commission’s staff, a Postal Service-run lottery ‘could offer the potential for substantial profits for the Postal Service and utilize its current retail infrastructure with its 36,000 retail outlets.’ Popular lottery formats in many states include drawings and instant lottery tickets. The claim