Letter Writers Alliance

The Honor Flight Mail Call

Honor Flight Chicago's mission is to fly World War II veterans to Washington DC to see their memorial (and the other memorials) and to honor and thank them in the most amazing way. Once or twice a month from April-October, we fly 80-90 veterans and a group of volunteer "guardians" out of Midway Airport to Washington DC. In DC, they get on chartered buses, see the memorials, sometime see a museum, or Arlington Cemetery and then they fly back. On the flight home, the veterans are surprised with a military-style "mail call" announcement, and they each are presented with an envelope of letters written to them (in secret) by their families, friends, neighbors, strangers, school children & community leaders. Most of the veterans say that Mail Call was the most meaningful part of the day for them.

Our L.W.A. member Kimberly been volunteering with Honor Flight since 2009, and this year they didn't have anyone to do Mail Call. In the past, the mail was collected in offices but Kimberly doesn't have an office, so she offered her apartment as the Mail Call Center. They have a team of volunteers that reaches out to a family contact for each veteran. The contact then spreads the word about Mail Call to all of the veteran's family and friends and then those people write a card or letter of thanks to the Veteran, send it to her and she--like the mailman she's always wanted to be--collects the mail and doles it out into a big envelope for each veteran.

Some veterans get a TON of mail. "So far," she says, "I have a couple guys with 50+ pieces of mail, and there are 2 more weeks before the flight, but some veterans don't have any family left and get very little."  We spread the word about these guys and volunteers jump in and make cards or write letters so everyone gets a nice packet of mail.

"My mailbox has never seen this much action, and somehow, I don't even mind that none of the mail is for me. If any LWA members want to write letters, I'd be happy to accept them!"

The Honor Flight Chicago Mail Call

c/o Kimberly A.

211 Elgin Ave. Unit 2K

Forest Park, IL  60130

For those of you sending in letters about what you need to do to earn Inklings, this is a wallopping good example. Kimberly, your Inklings (because this is worth more than one) are in the mail, along with some honor flight letters from me.

The Vanishing Post Office

Heads up, Post Office fans in the Chicago area! A Twitter tip from LWA member Kimberly alerted us to this free event at the Oak Park Public library tonight. From their website:

Oak Park resident and life-long photographer Jim Krysan will make a presentation about his photographic essay, “Small-town Post Offices in Eastern South Dakota: A Photographic Odyssey,” on Monday, March 26 at 7 pm at Oak Park Public Library, 834 Lake Street. The photo essay was recently published in the annual Historic Preservation Issue of South Dakota History, a journal of the South Dakota State Historical Society. The program, cosponsored by the Oak Park Photography Club, is free and open to the public.

Jim Krysan said “The buildings in small towns attracted the photographer in me, and I came to see post offices as a common denominator among the towns. Among the hundreds of buildings I had photographed in South Dakota towns in the mid 1970s, 57 were post offices. We left South Dakota for the West Coast, then the East Coast, and in 2002 we settled in Oak Park – only a day’s drive from Eastern South Dakota. I decided to photograph the post offices again.”

As always, if you attend the event and send us some photos and review, we'll send you an Inkling. Inklings are for things you do above-and-beyond just writing letters!

Mrs. Easton's Finds

I happened across Mrs. Easton a couple of months back. I like all of the old tools photos and the documentarian style she uses. It feels like a time capsule with photography. Plus, sometimes there's some mail or stamp stuff!

Did you know there were so many different types of perforations? She also has up a lovely set of her French stamp collection and some examples of Cutler Mail Chutes. Of course, it'd be best if it were all postal themed all the time, but that's what you come here for, right?

Oregon Zoo Mail Train

There is awesome mail stuff hiding everywhere. I wouldn't know even a quarter of the cool postal facts and things that I post about here without the help of our members. For example, did you know that the Oregon Zoo has the last functional mail train in the U.S.? I didn't, but our member and friend Sugene of the Valentine's giveaway did and she sent me this great picture of it.

From the Oregon Zoo website:

Until the late 1970s, most mail in the United States was carried on trains. While in transit, mail was canceled on these trains using rubber stamps denoting the railroad.

In 1961, the Washington Park and Zoo Railway became one of the first recreation railroads to have its own cancellation stamp. With the demise of the Railway Post Office, the zoo railway is the last operating United States railroad with its own authorized railway postal cancellation to continuously offer mail service.

Mail deposited in mail boxes on the zoo grounds or on the locomotives is hand-canceled with the Washington Park and Zoo Railway stamp. It has become quite a collector's item. Mail comes in from and goes out to all parts of the globe.

So great. Go to the zoo and mail more letters!

World War I Through Everyday Objects

David in Germany, who informs us that he is yet to be a member {get on that, David!}, keeps sending us really great links to share. His latest find is the Europeana/Great War online archive. They are collecting pictures, letters, postcards, and stories from 1914-1918 to add to their online archive of life in Germany during World War I.

From their website: "The First World War archive is based on an initiative at the University of Oxford where people across Britain were asked to bring family letters, photographs and keepsakes from the War to be digitised. The success of the idea, which became the Great War Archive, has encouraged Europeana, Europe’s digital archive, library and museum, to bring the German National Library into an alliance with Oxford University to roll out the scheme in Germany. The collaboration will bring German stories online alongside their British counterparts in a 1914-18 archive."

You can spend days exploring the archive, but David specifically pointed out this message in a matchbox.

He says, "This stuck in my mind particularly.  A letter doesn't have to be long or tidy to be touching and serious."

How right he is.

Oldest Postbox in England

L.W.A. member and pen pal Terry sent me this photo of the oldest postbox in England. He took this photo on a recent trip to Dorset. He says, "The Post Box is totally original and dates back to 1799, it appears to be solid Oak and is inserted into a wall of the old post room in a tiny back lane in Lyme Regis. Very near to where John Fowles the author (my favorite) used to live. The Post Box isn’t protected from the elements at all; it is just as it always was; a hole in a wall."

He sent it to me because he found it fascinating and hoped I would like it. He was right. It is fascinating! And I do like it! Thanks Terry!

P.S. If you find mail slots and post and letter boxes as fascinating as Terry and I do, consider snapping a photo and posting it to the L.W.A. Flickr group. I'm collecting photos of members' mailboxes. Just tag your photo "LWA mailbox".

The Case of the Secret Spacemen

Not only is this envelope neat because of its design and awesome stamp, it may also be the evidence needed to identify China's taikonauts. China keeps this information secret, but the sharp-eyed curators over at collectSPACE spotted this cover* and noticed that it is "signed by seven Chinese pilots. The group included two women, one of whom may soon become China's first female astronaut, or "taikonaut," to reach space.

"The names of the military pilots selected in 2010 to form China's second group of taikonauts – which have been a closely guarded secret for the last 18 months – appear to have been released [as the result of] a possible philatelic blunder," said Tony Quine, an Isle of Man-based space memorabilia collector and contributing writer for the British Interplanetary Society's "Spaceflight" magazine.

Quine worked together with Russian space industry expert Igor Lissov to confirm the cover's autographs since finding it listed for sale on a German space dealer's website two days ago. The two also elicited the assistance of Chinese space enthusiasts to verify the signatures' translation.

The stamped envelope was postmarked in China on May 10, 2010, the same day that the country's space program reportedly appointed the candidates to its astronaut corps."

More information is on the collectSPACE sight. I love that stamp collecting may have leaked a state secret. It's just so very pulp fiction! *A "cover" is a philatellic term for a stamped and postmarked envelope.

Your Present from the Postal Museum

The National Postal Museum just announced a new online exhibition called "Systems at Work". You can use the interactive site to explore how your mail gets around the world using the U.S.P.S. from 1808 to today.

From the About the Exhibit page:

"You drop a letter in a mailbox and then what happens? You receive mail at home or the office-- how does it get there? The answer to these questions unfolds in Systems at Work, a new permanent exhibition at the Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum.

Those pieces of mail join roughly 700 million others that are sorted and delivered to 150 million addresses six days a week. The service depends on an astonishing network of people and technology that collects, transports, processes, and delivers the mail.

The exhibit uses objects, graphics, multimedia, and interactives, to guide you to the heart of the matter--the people and machines whose daily work keeps the mail moving."

 

There are lots of real treasures in this exhibit. Films and stories abound. Make a cup of tea and stay a while. Learn all about mail and mail history! Thanks NPM!

BBC Limited Series: The Peoples Post

Sharp-eyed {and eared} member Alice S. alerted me to a fantastic series going on right now at BBC 4. It's a 15-part program called The Peoples Post which will only be available for a limited time. There's aditional information from the British Postal Museum and Archive as well as on their blog, where the image above is from.

Happy Postal Listening,

Advertising Cameos

L.W.A. member and artist Leslie runs Words & Eggs, a fantastic blog for the illustration and design of yester-year. She found these great advertising cameos as part of a collection on Sheaff Ephemera. There's more to see at her site. Great finds, Leslie!