Holiday Postal Greetings

The Smithsonian's National Postal Museum features an exhibit on U.S. Postal Service employees that includes a 1915 holiday postcard left by a letter carrier. It's a brief entry, only one part of an impressive online exhibit about U.S. postal employees, but it is quite interesting.

No US Mail today - It's Veterans Day

Today is Veterans Day in the United States, a day when we honor military veterans.  Some other countries  also celebrate a similar holiday today, Armistice Day or Remembrance Day.

In honor of the holiday, our post offices are closed and regular mail service is discontinued for the day.

If you're not getting mail today, take some time to visit the Smithsonian's National Postal Museum online.  Of special interest today may be the Victory Mail exhibit. It is all about how the U.S. dealt with the great volumes of mail during World War II. If you don't already know about it, the V-Mail story may surprise you.

You might also be interested in the War Letters: Lost and Found exhibit, which I discussed in an earlier blog post. Be sure to click through to the exhibit; it is fascinating with copies of the letters and the stories to go along with them.

Roosevelt's Stamp Collection

U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt started collecting stamps as a child and continued with the hobby throughout his life.

During his years in the White House (1933-1945), he was greatly involved in the design of about 200 stamps that were issued, according to the Smithsonian Institution.

There's a great video, The Stamp Collector in Chief, that you can watch online. It's an interesting story.