Interview with the U.S. Postal Service about Postcrossing

Wow, it's been a shockingly long time since I last shared a post with you! I'll update you on some of the exciting news in my life in a forthcoming post (SPOILER: I've got a solo album of original songs coming out soon, from my other life as a musician!), but I wanted to check in and let you know of a very special conversation I just had.

I was just interviewed for an article about Postcrossing in the U.S. Postal Service employee newsletter! Be proud of me, U.S. Postcrossers: I put in a big plug for an official Postcrossing stamp here in the USA! I don't know if it will happen or not, but I couldn't resist the opportunity to make the pitch to an official representative of the US Postal service.

The gentleman with whom I spoke was also very interested in my personal history with the Postal Service, about my grandpa, a career postal worker, and how much he influenced my life and my love of snail mail.

The article is still a work in progress, but once it's online, I'll be sure to share it with you.

Because of the demands of work and career, I completely missed out on participating in InCoWriMo during the month of February, but things are a little less crazy for me now and I'm picking my snail-mail habits back up.

Hmmm, all this talk of Postcrossing makes me want to shuffle off and send a postcard...

U.S. Postage rate increase in January 2012

I blogged recently about the upcoming international first-class postage increase, and I (and other blog readers) have been curious about which other postage rates are going up, and by how much.

So here's the skinny.

As of January 22, 2012, the new rates are as follows:

Letters (up to 1 oz.) – 1-cent increase to 45 cents

Letters additional ounces – unchanged at 20 cents

Postcards – 3-cent increase to 32 cents

Letters to Canada or Mexico (up to 1 oz.) – 5-cent increase to 85 cents.

Letters to other international destinations – 7-cent increase to $1.05

Source: Postal Service Adjusts Mailing Services Prices for 2012

It is important to note that the U.S. Postal service "Forever" stamps will reflect the current first-class rate. So, if you are using a numbered stamp, or a Zazzle-bought stamp etc and it says 44 cents, you'll need to make sure you add a 1-cent stamp. However, if you're using a Forever stamp, it becomes worth 45 cents so you don't need to add extra postage.

All postage released at first-class rate in 2012 will be Forever, and all of the later releases in 2011 were Forever stamps. As much as I miss the numbers, and combining old/vintage stamps to provide the proper face value, I have to admit that the Forever designation is handy and a good value.

Use up your 98-cent international and your 29-cent postcard stamps while you can!

I ♥ U.S. Postal Workers!

I was inspired by the Send the Love campaign to draw a little something special on a recent outgoing order from my etsy shop. Nothing fancy, just a little something that I hope showed some appreciation to all the mail handlers on the way.



Soda often helps me package up orders, and this one was no exception. Since she was posing so nicely, I had to grab a shot of her with the little package, too. Hooray for the Feline Postal Brigade!

Orange printed "Save the Postal Service" postcard

So this is one of those awesome free printable "Save America's Postal Service" postcards that I blogged about a couple of days ago. The savvy designer recommends cream card stock, but I don't have cream card stock. I do have glaring bright orange card stock! So, I printed on that, jazzed it up with some washi tape, and taped it to some paperboard, as my card stock felt a bit flimsy for the mail processing machines. It makes me smile to think of any postal worker than handles this, and notices it.



I made this little doodle of appreciation on the back.

Official White House petition to for the U.S. Post Office

I guess Twitter is good for some things. I just learned about this official petition from the U.S. White House to save the postal service. Yes, you have to create an account in order to "sign" the petition, but I see the validity in that. This probably does not have the power of a personal contact to your legislators, and it definitely doesn't have the power of a handwritten letter to your government officials, but it seems like a good idea to make our voices of support for the U.S. Postal Service heard in myriad forms. As of my signing it, it had 63 signatures, with 4937 needed by October 26.

For my international readers, thanks for your patience with all my posts that concern only the U.S. Postal Service.

Send the love: show support for postal workers

Thanks to a comment on my last post about saying no to a bad postal bill, I learned from The Creative Beast about another wonderful little campaign called Send the Love. This one is more about good energy than politics, but gratitude is a powerful thing, and letting our postal workers know we appreciate them has to brighten their day. So this idea is all about "sending messages of support and gratitude for our postal workers during this time of crisis."

My favorite option is the "make a mark" suggestion:

Next time you put something in the mail, on the back of the envelope, make a mark of support to show postal workers that you value what they do. Just draw a simple heart with a P.O. inside. If you’re more creative, make a drawing or write a note. The postal workers who handle the mail, from the person who takes it out of the blue collection box to the people who do the sorting and processing to the person who puts it in your box — they will all get the message. So many postal workers make sure your mail gets where it’s going. Send them some thanks.

Post office politics: say no to a bad bill, and yes to 6-day delivery

I recently blogged about the current woes of the U.S. Postal Service in my post, Is the postal service really in trouble?.

While I normally keep politics off of this blog (though on a personal level, I'm a pretty political kinda gal), this is a very important political issue for supporters of the U.S. Postal Service, postal workers, and 6-day delivery, so I'm going to stand on my soapbox for a minute.

I just read this excellent and informative post from the Letter Writers Alliance about a nasty new bill that's reared its ugly head in the senate called the Issa-Ross bill. The LWA quoted one of their members, post worker Carol C., who said it so well that I'm going to quote her again right here:

"I need to put out an all points bulletin! Perhaps you are already aware of a very mean-spirited bit of legislation which is aimed to dismantle the USPS. It passed in the House and John McCain introduced it into the Senate this past Friday. It is called the Issa-Ross bill which will eliminate Saturday delivery, cut jobs, services, close more offices than previously anticipated and ruin the unions. And it is completely unnecessary. They are using a scare tactic by saying the USPS will need a taxpayers bailout- this is completely false...However, it is gathering them support. The fact is there are sufficient funds in other postal accounts to cover the under funded one. Congress needs to authorize the transfer of money. HR1351 would do just that and keep our Saturday deliveries. But common sense is overshadowed. Time is of the essence- please spread the word to have everyone contact their Senators ASAP and vote NO to the Issa-Ross bill. Ask that they preserve Saturday delivery and support HR1351 instead! Sorry, to be so political, but it is crucial. They are trying to push this through before Friday. Yikes!!!

Thank you! Visit writealetter.org for more info."

The links above should point you in the right direction to take some action and contact your legislators. I like this one, too: Ask your representative to co-sponsor HR1351. It's pretty egregious that they're trying to push this through on such last-minute notice, but I admit that I don't entirely understand how these political games work.

I DO vote, though, and I voice my opinions to the lawmakers: I urge you to do the same! Stand up for our mail!

Is the U.S. Postal Service is really in trouble?

Image: cover of the Sept 19, 2011 issue of The New Yorker, with a parody of the unofficial postal service motto. We subscribe to the magazine, and the covers are always witty, but this one is a favorite, and relevant to this post, so I hope I'm not blowing the cover surprise for any subscribers who haven't received it yet.

A lot of folks have been talking about what trouble the U.S. Postal Service is in these days. Dropping Saturday delivery? Going bankrupt? Defaulting? It's a complex story - and our postal service is a complex institution, being an odd mix of a mandated public service/agency that is expected to generate its own private revenue - and I am the first to admit I don't understand the details of it. So I've tried to refrain from posting some of the "doom and gloom" news stories, which I'm sure most of you have read or seen, until I can really get a handle on my own opinion on it.

Of course I support the U.S. Postal Service, I believe in its value and necessity, and I want to see it thrive - but that doesn't mean I have blind faith with how it is run. Still, I wouldn't want to run it myself, so...

I've found a few links that I think are really valuable and I'd like to share, for those who really want to know more.

The best compilation of facts I've yet found is at savethepostoffice.com. The Consolidating processing network map post has some insightful analysis of the numbers, and some musing on what these closures would mean for mail delivery time. I'm still exploring other areas of the site, including an excellent indexed news table with links to stories of post office closings.

I'd also like to highlight Save America's Postal Service because it is from the perspective of postal workers - letter carriers, mail handlers, postal workers union, and the people who really know what's going on from the inside out. I gather that the very nature of the budgetary issue right now has become tangled up in politics (sigh, what hasn't these days?), but I found their background explanation of the situation to be most illuminating. (In their words, "a congressional mandate is killing the U.S. Postal Service.") Whatever your thoughts on the matter, it's worth reading for perspective.

A great source of insider postal service information is Your Postal Blog, pithily written in the voice of "Benny the Blogger," aka our first postmaster, Benjamin Franklin. I've had this blog linked from mine for years and am a regular reader, as it's not only well written, but full of good, current, accurate information from those in the know - and not those in the business of sensationalized conjecture.

So what can WE do? Well, write letters, buy stamps (vintage stamps are fun, and I buy them, too, but I always make sure to buy new issues just to support the postal service), and send mail, of course, but beyond that, I really don't know.

I do think the McCaskill Mail idea pitched by Melissa of Viva Snail Mail is a lovely one, though, and certainly can't hurt anything.

On blizzards and mail delivery

My husband and I were among the lucky few travelers who were able to reach our destination (home!) on Sunday, December 26. Our flight from the midwest landed in Baltimore late morning, just before the snow started, but when panic had already set in. Our flight to Providence from Baltimore was the last Providence-bound flight that left that day. (All subsequent Providence-bound flights were canceled, which made our flight a standby zoo. We were so glad to have our seats on that early flight!) We later learned that our flight was one of the last to leave Baltimore (at noon!) and possibly the very last one to touch down in Providence around 1pm.

So we drove home to Newport in a lovely blizzard (all was safe), only to learn that the main bridge onto our island (yes, Newport is on an island) closed later that night due to high winds. The Pell Bridge doesn't close very often! But hey, the NJ turnpike doesn't close very often, either, and it closed that night.

It was still snowing Monday morning, but lightly. This is New England. We are used to snow. So what if there's a foot of it? Roads were plowed, life seemed fairly normal. But when I went to pick up my mail at our local UPS store, I got only one package. What? On a Monday? After Christmas? One package and NO personal mail? Apparently local trucks were delivering, so that package must have made it to the Newport sorting station before Dec. 25. The pros at my UPS store told me that local mail trucks were on the road, but the trucks from Providence didn't make it down to us. (Rhode Island is the tiniest state, as many of you know... mail for the entire state is sorted in our capital city of Providence.)

But here's the kicker: UPS trucks weren't even on the roads that day! I have that from an official UPS employee. Goodness! Our own underdog postal service is more intrepid than UPS! Who knew?

Though the apocryphal post office creed, "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds," clearly doesn't hold when getting mail from Providence to Newport, they at least moved the mail around on the island. Yay U.S. Postal Service!

Anyone else have any fun blizzard-related mail delivery stories?

Parcel post toddler

This fantastic postcard came to me via a Sendsomething correspondent. I've seen and admired the image before; it is in the collection of the National Postal Museum at the Smithsonian. You can find out more about the original image here, but here's the gist:

"This city letter carrier posed for a humorous photograph with a young boy in his mailbag. After parcel post service was introduced in 1913, at least two children were sent by the service. With stamps attached to their clothing, the children rode with railway and city carriers to their destination. The Postmaster General quickly issued a regulation forbidding the sending of children in the mail after hearing of those examples."

Express package meets with fowl play

I've really been enjoying this postal blog lately - great inside look at our mail service - and just HAD to share with you this story that I just read:

Express package meets with fowl play, but employees flock to save contents

Oooh! Look at the chicken in the box!!!

If you were a chicken in the mail, wouldn't you want to be cared for this well?

Mail art thank-you

My amazing little package full of mailbox postcards from Carolee of PodPost begged a mail-art-licious thank-you response, so I had fun putting this puppy together, with all the meta-postal goodness I could muster. Only the Shakespeare stamp doesn't really fit the theme, but he's the bard and I love him, so he gets to join the party.



The envelope is vintage 1971, from my grandfather's days in the post office, commemorating the official change of name from "post office" to "U.S. Postal Service," complete with new logo. I love that this envelope shows both the old and the new logos.

I am feeling rather clever for putting my return address in the wavy lines of the "please hand cancel" rubber stamp image.



As is typical, I don't think the glimmer mist spray glitter is really showing up very well in this photo, but I tried to showcase it here.



On the back is a vintage air mail label (I found it on eBay, for anyone who's wondering), whose glue tastes so awful I have to prepare myself to lick it. But that's part of the fun, saying pTOOey and swishing around a tasty beverage as I affix the label... which is cool enough to merit the distaste, in my book.

I feel rather some pressure to make something quite amazing, these times I have sent mail/mail art to the fine authors of the fabulous Good Mail Day book, but it's a fun challenge.

Dialing for stamps

I am so excited to share this find with you.

If you've been following my blog for at least a month, you have probably heard that my beloved grandfather passed away recently. He was a casual collector of stamps, and his collection was fueled by his 40 years working for the Post Office (as it was called then: "U.S. Postal Service" came later).

In going through his effects after his death, my mother found this wonderful newspaper photo of him demonstrating the newfangled stamp-dialing machine. (Does anyone else think "That is so 1955?" I do.) I can't believe how awesome this is. I would love the idea of postal history involving a stamp-dailing machine anyway, and probably share that with you for the coolness factor, but the fact that the photo shows my dear grandfather (with hair! I never saw him with hair!) just makes my day. It was such a joyous thing, to come across this in our grieving. My mom mailed the clipping to me (along with a letter, of course!), and I scanned it. This appeared in the Kansas City Star on July 3, 1955.



My favorite quote from the article:
"The customers seem to like it," one of the postal clerks said, "but they're sure surprised at seeing anything efficient at a post office."
HA! My grandfather so could have been the one who said that. I can just hear his laugh after making a crack like that.

For anyone who has trouble viewing this small size, I am experimenting with a new way to download documents. I don't know if this will work for you or not, but here is a link to view the PDF of the scan.

Aerogramme with meta mail stamps

Here's another look at the Chinese Sun & Clouds design from the International Girl aerogrammes. I used some of my favorite stamps. Let's have a closer look at those stamps:



Oh yeah. Super postal. How much do I love those U.S. Postal Service 8 cent stamps, with the big old 70s car? They look a little out of focus here, but that's just the way the artwork looks.



And finally, the lovely posterior of the aerogramme.