Letter Writers Alliance

Veteran's Day

Today is a mail holiday in the U.S. in honor of Veteran's Day being observed. Yesterday marked the 100th Anniversary of Armistice Day, the day when the Great War officially ended.  The Postal Museum Twitter account has been posting really excellent postcards, pieces of stationery, and wartime letters that are part of their current hashtag curation #StoriesofService. The mail piece I was most surprised to see was this phonograph record audio recording that was mailed home from troops. You can listen to it here. 

The Silent Service

Postal Inspectors are a fascinating bunch but there doesn't seem to be that much razzle-dazzle about what they do, and they do a lot. The caught the Unabomber, for example. There was a CBS show you could watch: The Inspectors. Anyone seen it? (I don't have a television, but I do watch things through the internet sometimes. Let me know if it's worth my time.) They tend to be a part of the post office that I just forget about until reminded that they are actually a really powerful branch of law enforcement. 

Recently, I read this article on Vice about how Postal Inspector Frank Oldfield brought down The Black Hand mafia in the early 1900s. It's promoting a book co-written by one of Oldfield's descendants, William Oldfield, and Victoria Bruce. I liked this summary by Victoria Bruce a lot:

"Each inspector was given the authority to investigate any crime committed using the mail system. This allowed a post office inspector to utilize all forms of commercial and private transportation at a moment's notice to peruse a criminal involved in violating the trust of the mail. From train robbers to safe crackers to extortionists to fraudsters, an inspector was responsible for solving those crimes. As the federal government grew in the 1920s through the 1950s, the FBI and U.S. Marshalls became more prominent. Unlike the post office inspectors, who were told to be very secretive about their cases, the FBI began to make headlines.

The postal inspectors today continue to call themselves “The Silent Service” because they continue to work on cases that seldom get them big headlines, although they have just as much power and jurisdiction as they always have. It’s not well known, but post office inspectors broke the Unabomber case, the anthrax case and are constantly on the lookout for international and domestic sex and drug trafficking which utilizes the internet, electronic banking, and the traditional U.S. mail."

So, while it isn't an L.W.A. Book Club pick (yet), I'm gonna pick up a copy. It seems like a good read! Funny, I'm a lot more willing to take a chance on a bad book than I am on bad television. 

Prize Papers Project

The National Archives in England is currently working on digitizing a treasure trove of letters seized from captured ships during war times. The letters, known as the Prize Papers, date from the 17th to 19th centuries. That covers the American and French Revolutionary wars as well as Napoleonic conflicts.

Jeff James, Chief Executive and Keeper at The National Archives, said: ‘This is a collection of truly global importance and the sheer wealth of research opportunities this project will provide is breath-taking." These letters were all undelivered and some contain some pretty sad stories, as described in this CBC radio article. Efforts to digitize and catalog the letters began in May and are expected to take twenty years to completion. You can follow the project's progress at their website, The Prize Papers Database. 

The Story of Japan Post's Logo

I'm sort of embarrassed to admit that I never considered why the logo for Japan Post looks the way it does. I honestly think I that I assumed it was from a kana involved in the name. While that is probably partially true, this post over on Spoon & Tamago has a concise rundown on where the iconic red "T" with its extra crossbar originated. "[T]o summarize the various theories, the original T was likely taken from the first letter of the ministry’s name: Teishinshou. However, this was problematic for several reasons. It was too simple and, more importantly, the letter T was already a universally accepted postal code for insufficient postage. So the T needed to be changed." You can read the full article here.

P.S. Thanks to Member Kimberly for the tip about this tidbit of postal history. 

The Office of Presidential Correspondence Under Obama

This article in The Atlantic describes how letter writing was a part of the Obama Administration and focuses on Kolbie Blume, the "director of writing for sampled correspondence." The majority of the average 10,000 letters a day received form responses, but sorting teams would select 10 letters each day for personal review by the president.  Some he would respond to by hand, but others he would notate "Reply" upon; and then it was Blume's job to compose a response.

"(P)residents still approached replies in their own way: Richard Nixon refused to read anything negative, Ronald Reagan wrote replies on weekends, George W. Bush read already answered letters. Obama, however, was the first president to establish such a large OPC staff and to prioritize reading 10 constituent voices each night. (The OPC’s process under the current administration remains undisclosed.)" Somehow, I can't find myself surprised by that parenthetical.

"When crafting replies, Blume often searched Obama’s prose and was fastidious about citing sources in colored comments along the margins of her drafts, particularly when using phrases in new contexts. Sometimes, Obama would write notes on the letters (“We’re working on it”), highlight paragraphs, underline sentences, or add exclamation marks. In those cases, Blume would build an entire reply off of the president’s cues. But most of the time, on popular topics like immigration, the structure and content of Obama’s words already ran easily through Blume’s mind." The article is an interesting look at the craft and skill of writing on someone else's behalf, and, yes, does make me nostalgic for a time when civility was a frequent guest in the White House. 

P.S. Kolbie Blume is still working with the art of words, but now as a calligrapher and artist. 

David Rumsey Stamp Maps

I love maps. I might not love them as much as I love stamps, but when you put stamps on my maps, it's like you've designed my favorite thing. Delightfully, the David Rumsey Map Collection archive has a number of fascinating postage stamp map mash-ups which you can examine in extreme close-up online and even order prints of, should you feel inclined. Here's a detail from the map above. Look how the edges of the states are crenelated like perforated stamps in this one! How cool! Tons of internet amusement here for the philatelically disposed. 

ASCII Art from the 1800s

The Atlantic ran a fun article by Jacob Harris about his adventures through the advertising archives. He was surprised to find some ads composed of designs made of text, resembling the ASCII art we see today popping up in our Twitter feeds or in forwarded email. These ads predate those works by over a century. He's tried to pin-point the origins of such art and also theorizes on its use. 

 

 

Sanitary Stamps & "Stamp Tongue"

I came upon a photo of an old stamp vending machine in my feed. The photographer openly wondered why it is that vintage stamp booklets and machines advertised their stamps as "sanitary." That's weird, right? My friend Carolee mentioned that we should look into "stamp tongue." EVEN MORE WEIRD! Here we go, in selected sections from an article by Allison Marsh from the Smithsonian Postal Museum:

“THE DEADLY STAMP,” warned The Washington Post headline and announced that “Postage Stamp Tongue is a new disease.”  The ailment was characterized by a sore tongue covered with red spots.  Without treatment, it would likely develop into a bad sore throat.  The short article concluded with simple advice for its readers: “Never lick a postage stamp with your tongue…It shows a great lack of cleanliness and hygienic knowledge.”

The Washington Post article, which ran November 22, 1896, was similar to stories in The Los Angeles Times, The Atlanta Constitution, the New York Times, The Boston Budget, and the (London) Daily Mirror at the turn of the twentieth century.  These articles warned that the lowly postage stamp was threatening the nation’s public health because it was the breeding ground for virulent germs.

Newspaper articles ran images of the microscopic bacteria that were found on the backs of stamps and reported on the varying levels of germs depending on where the stamps were bought.  Stamps bought at the corner drug store fared the worst because they were often kept in drawers with loose change, another terrible harbor for germs.  Stamps bought directly from postal clerks might be a little safer, but they still “boasted whole colonies of such deadly germs as tuberculosis, diphtheria and typhoid.”  The best option was to buy “sanitary stamps” that were sealed in packets and had minimal contact with human hands.

Joseph Schermack is generally credited with producing the first practical stamp vending machine.  In 1910 he introduced a “profit-sharing” model where he sold two two-cent stamps or four one-cent stamps for a nickel, and in 1926 he formed the Sanitary Postage Service Corporation.  Labeling the machine as a vendor of “sanitary stamps” differentiated the machine from competitors while attracting a clientele that feared the spread of germs. 

Of course as scientists and doctors continued their research and refined their understanding of germs and the transmission of disease, the link to postage stamps as a threat to public health lessened. Doctors continued to recommend using a stamp moistener rather than the tongue, but assured people that there was little risk in handling stamps themselves."

So there you have it. That's why old stamp machines tout "sanitary stamps." Fascinating! It's all down to science and marketing. Heh, I suppose it's "viral" marketing, but for a different definition of the word. 

Vindolanda Tablets

Over coffee a few Sundays ago, my husband starts reading me an article. Since we're digital natives, instead of the paper, we read the internet. 

He said, "There are over 400 tablets, made from thinly cut slivers of wood between one and three millimeters thick, about the size of a modern postcard, on which the correspondent wrote in ink before folding the leaf in half and writing the address on the back."

"Send me that link!" I said.

And lo, I read all about the Vindolanda tablets. Discovered at the Roman fort, Vindolanda, which is just south of Hadrians Wall, the tablets date from around the 1st to 2nd century AD. When they were discovered, they were the oldest recorded documents found in England and the first known surviving examples of the use of ink letters in the Roman period. According to Wikipedia, the tablets "record official military matters as well as personal messages to and from members of the garrison of Vindolanda, their families, and their slaves. Highlights of the tablets include an invitation to a birthday party held in about 100 AD, which is perhaps the oldest surviving document written in Latin by a woman."

Today, some tablets are on display at the British Museum and at the Vindolanda Museum. What really speaks to me is how like postcards they are, and that's why I shared them. Hope you think they are as interesting as I did.

P.S. Also interesting, they found over 200 pens at the site, made of a wooden body and iron nibs.

Letterlocking

Letterlocking is a technique of folding a letter so that it becomes its own envelope. The letter is often secured with a wax seal and is designed so that it cannot be easily opened and resealed. To read the letter, seals must be broken and/or some paper must be torn. This provided security to correspondence long before the advent of micro-printing and obscuring envelopes.

The expert of letterlocking is Jana Dambrogio, a conservator at MIT Libraries. She's found examples from Queen Elizabeth I, Machiavelli, Galileo, Marie Antoinette and others. There are numerous ways to lock a letter, and many can be found at the well-researched and resource rich Letterlocking.org. Additionally, there's a YouTube channel featuring different styles, including ones from the Harry Potter movies.

Letters locked this way always remind me of notes that we used to pass in school, with their elaborate ways of folding to keep our secrets safe. I've gotten a few letters mailed to me like this and it always hurts me a little to rip into them. I was reminded of this art by pen pal and book artist Sara, whose photo illustrates this post and who sent me a great recreation of a Butterfly Lock. Don't they look lovely? Have you sent or received a locked letter? Do you have a favorite technique?