No U.S. mail service on Monday

The U.S. celebrates Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday on Monday. It's a federal holiday, and there will be no mail service. If you were planning to mail something on Monday, you might want to put it in the mail on Saturday, instead.

Share Your Canceled Stamps

At our house, we already save Box Tops for the school, and we save a variety of other things for re-using and recycling, as well as for just collecting. I often save brightly colored envelopes for papermaking projects.

I used to save stamps for a stamp collection, but I haven't done that in many years. Now, there's another reason to save used stamps. The Foxborough Regional Charter School in Foxborough, Massachusetts, is collecting canceled stamps for use in a project to honor the memories the 11 million Holocaust victims and to celebrate the lives of those who still survive today and bravely share their powerful personal memories and stories.

They are trying to collect 11 million stamps, one for each person killed. They still need more than 10,500,00 stamps.  If you'll click on the Foxborough link above,  you'll get all the details on where to send your old stamps.

I found the story on Dana's Save Snail Mail blog, and she found it on Lucas Johnson's Lucas Writes blog. Those are great blogs, and the Foxborough project is a great class project.

New Land of Enchantment Stamp

Last week, the U.S. Postal Service honored New Mexico with a Forever stamp commemorating the state's 100th birthday.

The stamp art shows a landscape in northern New Mexico, about 65 miles northwest of Albuquerque. High desert, junipers and piñon pines grow in the foreground. In the middle distance, the Rio Puerco courses through an arroyo, while in the background, two peaks known as Cerro de Santa Clara and Cerro de Guadalupe are silhouetted against a vast sky.

According to the U.S.P.S. news release, when Spanish missionaries arrived in present-day New Mexico in the 1500s, they found a region already settled by Pueblo and Navajo people. The flags of both Spain and Mexico flew over the land before it became American soil. Northern New Mexico was ceded to the U.S. in 1848 at the end of the U.S.-Mexican War. Two years later, Congress established the New Mexico Territory. English-speaking cattle ranchers, cowboys, and miners mingled with the earlier Native American and Hispanic residents to create the unique cultural diversity that characterizes New Mexico today. Even after it became a state in 1912, New Mexico retained much of its frontier and Old Mexico flavor, and Spanish and English are both widely spoken.

A resident of New Mexico for more than 35 years, artist Doug West is best known for his southwestern landscapes and skies. Art director Richard Sheaff selected one of West’s existing oil paintings for the stamp art.

New Mexico Statehood is being issued as a Forever stamp. Forever stamps are always equal in value to the current First-Class Mail one-ounce rate. What that means, is that if you buy the stamps before Jan. 22, 2012, they'll cost you 44 cents each. But, on Jan. 22, the price goes up to 45 cents each.

Elvis Letter Makes the News

The San Antonio Express-News recently featured a story about a letter written by Elvis Presley. The story explains that the letter was written by Elvis when he was in the U.S. Army and stationed in Germany. It's written to Master Sgt. Bill Norwood, who lived at Fort Hood in Texas.

Presley had been stationed at Fort Hood, and Norwood had mentored him.

To read the story, click here. Be sure to look at the photos. If you look over on the left side of the screen there's a little header for "More information," where you can click to see close-ups of the letter's two pages.

National Letter Writing Week

I'm sure it's not an official designation, but many people celebrate this week, the second week of January, as "National Letter Writing Week." And, I'm always happy for any reason that encourages people to write more letters.

Even the U.S. Postal Service mentioned it on their Stamps Facebook page!

If you haven't written a letter in a while, take this opportunity to join in on the fun and write a letter today!