Henry Clay Stamp Notes - Henry Clay Philatelic Society

Henry Clay Stamp Notes
Henry Clay Philatelic Society, Inc of Lexington Kentucky
Dec 2011
About Us
2
December 19th Meeting will feature a Yankee Christmas
swap. Please bring a wrapped gift (see notes in Linda’s
column).
Upcoming
About Us
2
Upcoming
Meeting & Events
2
What You Missed
3
Wayne’s Words
5
Member Spotlight
7
ANNUAL AUCTION: MISSION MIXTURE
For many years, we’ve had a special auction every December to sell the Mission
Mixture collected for us by the Presbyterian Women throughout Eastern Kentucky.
Two years ago, the women of Gethsemane Lutheran Church in Lexington joined in
for the first time.
This month, we’ll be auctioning off Mission Mixture from both the Presbyterian and
Lutheran Women. Money from the sale of the Presbyterian Mission Mixture is used
to support the local and international programs of the Presbyterian Hunger Program.
Money from the sale of the Lutheran Mission Mixture is used to buy food for lowincome children in Lexington.
The sale of these Mission Mixtures is a great cause, and a special opportunity for our stamp club to make a
difference in the world!
Please plan to do your part at our meeting. You don’t need to do much: just raise your hand high and keep it there!
We meet at 7:00p.m. the third Monday of every month
At
Broadway Christian Church, 187 North Broadway Lexington KY
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About the Henry Clay Philatelic Society
E-Mail addresses w/* add
@henryclayphilatelic.org
The Henry Clay Philatelic Society is a 501c3 non-
1st Vice President
Don Sproule
(859) 225-4542
(email: 1stvp*)
profit organization dedicated to promoting philately
in central Kentucky. We meet monthly on the third
Monday of every month at 7:00 PM at Broadway
Christian Church, located at 2nd & Broadway in
Lexington, Kentucky. Annual membership dues are
$15.00 and help defray the cost of services provided
to our membership, including this monthly
newsletter and monthly membership programs.
2nd Vice President
Jim Kulwicki
(859) 245-5591
(email: 2ndvp*)
Contact information for our elected officers and
appointed staff is on the left-hand sidebar of this
page.
President
Wayne A. Gnatuk
(859) 294-7272
(email: president*)
Executive Secretary
Linda Lawrence
(859) 293-0151
(email: secretary*)
Treasurer
Joan Anderson
(859) 272-6798
(email: treasurer*)
Program Director
Glenn Shields
(859) 523-4058
([email protected]
om)
We also offer an informational web site at
www.henryclayphilatelicsociety.org.
Upcoming Meeting Program Schedule
Glenn Shields –
Dec 19th – Yankee Swap
Auctioneer
Don Sproule
(email: auctioneer*)
Youth Director
Del-Rita Pemberton
(no - E-Mail)
Editor: Kim Belcher
Stamp Notes
Share the gift of philately with a
new
generation!
The APS Youth Philately fun page
can
be found at
http://www.stamps.org/KIDS/
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Henry Clay Stamp Notes
What You Missed Nov 14th 2011
By Linda Lawrence
Our November meeting was held one week early, due to the Thanksgiving baskets being given
away at the church on our normal meeting night. The date seemed to work out for most folks,
as we had a crowd of twenty-nine.
We were delighted to have Don Hassall in attendance. Now that he has retired he says he
hopes to come more often.
Glenn Shields and Jay Peter announced that we now have 4 additional exhibit frames in our
storage unit, thanks to a donation from the stamp club in Louisville.
President Wayne A. Gnatuk asked for a moment of silence for Dale Farabee. Several members
shared their remembrances of him.
It was announced that an effort is being made to hold a joint stamp show for Louisville,
Frankfort and Lexington in the fall of 2012. We were reminded that Louisville will host an APS
show in January of 2013..
We auctioned another 25 lots for a church in Owsley County. Sales totaled $252, with 10% to
the club. Treasurer Joan Anderson reports that the church has netted $2,367.10 for their
outreach programs due to our efforts. There is more to come.
Don Sproule donated items for our door prizes. Glenn Shields won a package of hinges, and
Buddy Coleman won a packet of stamps. Robert Yokel would have won $20 had he been
present. Since he was not, the December monetary prize will be $25.
Thanks to all present who made the meeting run smoothly: Buddy Coleman for providing us
the church facilities, Paul Hager and Jim Kulwicki for handling the auction, Del-Rita Pemberton
for delicious snacks. Tim Barnes for our web site, Kim Belcher for the newsletter. Glenn for our
programs – and for the many others friends in attendance who make this a special club: Bill
Marshall, Dana Stephens, Linda Lawrence, David Mills, Tom Clark, Russell Paquin, Zachary
Geiger, Don Hale, Charles Helfrich, Jim Stull, T.C. Christopher, Terry Taylor, Millard Beatty,
Tom Krill, Ron Belcher, Charles Hultman and Pete Tropoulas. We had much to be thankful for
this November.
Our Dec 19th meeting will feature a game we call “Yankee Swap". Everyone is asked to bring a
gift, preferably philatelic. But we have seen gifts of candy, fruit etc. and anything is welcome.
Wrap it or camouflage it in some way. If you forget to bring a gift, come anyway. Several of us
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will bring more than one. (If we end up with extra gifts they will be used for future door prizes.)
The game involves a lot of swapping, so you never know what you will be taking home until the
last minute. This is an entertaining game that we repeat each December. We hope to see you
there.
Congratulations Doug
Member news: Doug Rigsby sent an email explaining why he would not be at the Nov meeting.
Seems he was to be married and would be honeymooning in St. Lucia! (He hoped to pick up
some new St. Lucian stamps while there) Congrats Doug!
Some time ago Breck Pegram shared a page from an old publication called Weekly Philatelic
Gossip. In his reading of this paper, he found a mention our club. I mentioned it to a few
members, but I can’t remember if I have ever included it in this newsletter. For the sake of
including it in our club history, I will repeat it here. It is dated August 20, 1932.
Henry Clay Philatelic Society
Lexington, Kentucky, now has a full-pledged (sp?) Society of stamp collectors, the recently
organized Henry Clay Philatelic Society. The Society as named for Henry Clay because that great
Kentucky statesman was himself a devoted stamp collector. Officers are: Mr. Kepper, Pres; Mr.
Staff, Vice-Pres.; and Mr. Gulley, Secy-Treas. This is an adult organization and visitors are
cordially invited. Meetings are held at the Y.M.C.A. building.
Many thanks to Breck for uncovering a bit of the mystery as to when our club was organized. If
anyone else has information to share about our club please let us know.
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Wayne’s Words: The President’s Column
By Wayne A. Gnatuk, President • December 2011
I’ll start this month by mentioning that I hate email. Passionately. Yeah,
yeah! I know it’s fast, it’s convenient, and blah blah blah, but I still don’t
like it. At work, I get dozens of the darned things every day, sometimes
running into the three figures. Yes, I answer the ones that need answered. But I still hate email.
I remember the good ol’ days, when a letter came to you in the mail: You opened it, sometimes
so curious you could hardly wait, and then read it. I remember handwriting a response when I
was young, and then, years later, as a young professional, I thoroughly enjoyed dictating a
response into my handheld Dictaphone (handheld, yes, but which nevertheless had a base unit
that had to be plugged into the wall with an eight foot spiral thingy cord that ran from the base
unit to the handheld control/microphone. And then I bought a handy dandy little unit that was
self-contained, and I could even – tsk! tsk! – dictate while I drove. Oh! how my secretary
Sharon loved it when I came back from a long trip and handed her several tapes of dictation. But
I digress. Sorry)! Sharon would bring me the typed letters, I’d sign them, and off they’d go to
the post office. A week later a reply would arrive, and the process would repeat itself. Those
were the days!
I digress again: I actually remember the days when the epitome of modern technology was a
new-fangled twelve foot long telephone cord. You could buy one for a whopping $5.99, which
seemed like a lot of money at the time, and you’d now be the envy of all your friends and
neighbors because you could now wash dishes and talk on the telephone on the same time.
Back to the main thread: Email, wonderful as some of you find it, has (I’ll admit) changed our
world, mostly for the better. But it’s also done a number on ye olde faithful post office. Snail
mail is now close to a quaint concept, and the USPS is financially reeling, partly because all the
email has taken the place of most personal mail and a lot of business correspondence.
(Unfortunately, ye olde faithful mail carrier does still trudge /drive through the proverbial ice,
snow and rain to deliver up too many bills, legal notices, etc., and more junk mail than our
environment can tolerate).
I know there are lots of other reasons for the post office’s financial distress, but email has
certainly taken its toll these last fifteen years or so.
Here’s the lead paragraph from the front page of the December 6, 2011 Lexington HeraldLeader: “WASHINGTON – Already mocked by some as “snail mail,” first-class U.S. mail will
slow even more by next spring under plans by the cash-strapped U.S. Postal Service to eliminate
more than 250 processing centers, including one in Lexington on Nandino Boulevard. Nearly
30,000 would be laid off as the post office struggles to respond to a shift to online
communication and bill payments.” The article goes on to explain that first class mail volume is
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down “from a peak of 98 billion pieces in 2006” to only 78 billion pieces this year. “It is
projected to drop by roughly half by 2020.” And, the Herald-Leader reports, “The cuts would
close 252 of the nation’s 461 mail-processing centers beginning next spring. They would result
in the elimination of roughly 28,000 jobs. It would eliminate roughly 184 jobs at the Nandino
Bouldevard site in Lexington, with a net loss of 103 jobs.” Ouch!
“The plan,” according to the news story, “technically must await an advisory opinion from the
independent Postal Regulatory Commission, scheduled for next March. But that opinion is nonbinding, and only substantial pressure from Congress, the business community or the public
might deter far-reaching cuts.” (Have you contacted your member of Congress about this yet? If
not, please do)!
We all have noticed that it’s getting harder and harder to find used commemoratives, but it
sounds like it’s going to get worse. Not to mention that your mail will probably begin arriving a
day later than it does now. Maybe we should start calling it “slower snail mail.”
The December 9, 2011 issue of the Lexington Herald-Leader brought yet another story about the
woes of the USPS: “Some Christmas Postmarks Likely To Be Among Budget Casualties,” read
the headline. (Note the way in which I have suddenly made this month’s column seasonally
relevant). The post office in Bethlehem, Indiana is on the list of planned closings, as are the ones
in Snow, Oklahoma, Antler, North Dakota, and Chestnut, Illinois. If you collect Christmas
cancels, grab ‘em quick! This is probably your last chance.
Good news on the Christmas cancels, according to the newspaper article: There are post offices
in the North Poles of both Alaska and New York, and neither is slated for closure. Nor is Santa
Claus, Indiana. And there are Bethlehems in six states besides the one in Indiana; again, none
are slated for closure. For us Kentucky philatelists, this is especially good news, because the
post office in Bethlehem, Kentucky will continue to exist.
The major problem, of course, persists: The USPS is in a financial crisis. This month, says the
December 6 paper, “The Postal Service faces imminent default…on a $5.5 billion annual
payment to the Treasury for retiree health benefits and expects to have a record loss of $14.1
billion next year.
There’s not much you and I can do about any of this. But be aware. Hold the Postal Service in
your kind thoughts, and say a friendly word to any of the USPS employees you know or do
business with at the counter. And please: call your members of Congress. They can help!
Hope to see you at Club this month! Happy holidays, dear friends!
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Member Spotlight
MAMMOTH CAVE, KENTUCKY
By Mike Strother
Mammoth Cave, KY post office was established December 23, 1842 with Archibald Miller as its
first postmaster. The post office has served not only the visitors to Cave, but the residents in the
local area. The post office is still in operations today.
Post Offices such as this one, located in the National Park are fairly easy to collect because of all
the used post cards that are available. Just check out eBay. Of course early cancels before the
popularity of post cards is still a challenge. I am still looking, Early covers show are from other
collections.
The earliest covers have manuscript postmarks. The one shown is dated June 28 (1847).
Cover from Cave Post Offices by Thomas Lear.
The second cover from Nov 4, 1863 the pin is still be used to cancel these early postage stamps
and for the manuscript city postmark. From the Nashville collection.
The earliest cancel is a circular cancel with the date is center. This July 15, 1886 cover used a
separate tow line killer bar to cancel the stamp. From William Holiday collection.
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The Private Mailing Card sold at the park has Circle with date in center cancel with a three ring
separate killer used to cancel the stamp. Next is first canceling device with the killer attached to
the city and date circle is shown on this post card with a Sept. 24, 1904. Circle city with date
center and oval lined killer.
The previous cancel is a Doane cancel with a 3 in the killer bars, used on a post card Aug. 20,
1907.
The first of six different hand cancels with four killer bars appeared about 1914. Others which
vary in size and killer bars are seen in 1915, 1930, 1931, 1964, 1991, and 2002.
The first machine cancel appeared in the 1940’s. This type of cancel is still seen today with
minor variation in the wavy lines over the years.
Previous Aug. 21, 1953 hand cancel has the killer as an oval with the number one in the center of
the killer bars of the oval.
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The Louisville and Nashville Railroad (L&N) used a special Mammoth Cave meter in 1954 to
help promote Special excursion trips to the cave.
I have in my collection two double circle cancels, the smaller from 1998 and the larger in 2002.
The small cancel was for counter use like money orders and receipts. The larger was used for
parcel post.
This is a private meter used produced by stamps.com,
The oval cancel on the Postal Commemorative Society cover can only be found on this
Mammoth Cave National Park cover form the America the Beautiful series.
A special cover and cancel were produced to commemorate Mammoth Cave being named a
World Heritage Park in 1982.
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A special cancel and meter were produced for the fiftieth anniversary of the park in 1991.
What appears to be a postal cancel dated May 13, 1993 is actually a cancel used for the National
Park Passport series. Note there is no zip code on the cancel. Mammoth Cave passport stamp
also shown.
Finally illustrated are two first day covers for the Wonders of America commemorative for
Mammoth Cave. The Washington, D.C. circle cancel, official site for the issue and a special
Mammoth Cave Park cancel. The Mammoth Cave station was actually in the caver for this
special occasion.
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___
___________________________________________________________________________
Collectors of Christmas Island stamps will be delighted, once again, with these festive designs to celebrate
Christmas. The stamp issue takes a light-hearted approach to Christmas, integrating symbols of Christmas with the
island's natural environment in a humorous graphic manner
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New Christmas Stamps from Norway
This year's Christmas stamps by Norway Post are dedicated to old postcards.
Anyone who has had the pleasure of sifting through piles of old postcards will have noticed the great variety in this
pictorial material.
The oldest Norwegian postcards date back to the 1880s and even then Christmas cards were predominant. Norway's
Christmas gnome was an important feature then and he has been a familiar figure on Norwegian Christmas cards
ever since. Children are the subjects of the postcards on this year's Christmas stamps. Children are often
part of the scene, especially when it comes to Christmas preparations or opening parcels. Parcels are of
course another frequent Christmas card motif - before, during and after opening
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APS Chapter 140420
The First Christmas Stamps
Mail used to be sent free; the delivery was paid for by the recipient. But in 1837, an English
schoolmaster named Rowland Hill noticed that the post office lost out too much by recipients
refusing delivery. He proposed prepaid stamps in a pamphlet called The Post Office Reform. On
1 May 1840, the first stamps went on sale in Britain. (The Christmas card was invented 3 years
later.) They were the One-Penny Black and Twopence Blue stamps, featuring Queen Victoria. In
1870, the British Post Office introduced a half penny stamp for sending cards.
No provision was made for separating the stamps one from another. To do so required a knife or
a pair of scissors. In 1847 an Irish engineer named Henry Archer submitted a plan to the British
Post Office for perforating stamp sheets. By 1854 Archer’s machine was sufficiently perfected to
produce the first perforated stamps. The United States began using a perforating machine in
1857.
The first Christmas stamp
Canada issued a stamp with the Mercator map “Christmas 1898″ inscribed. Post offices in
England and the Netherlands also issued stamps with Christmas-related themes. In the US,
postcard artist Ellen H. Clapsaddle designed Christmas themes for stamps. However, none were
special Christmas issues. The first postage stamp for Christmas was issued in 1937 in Austria:
the Rose and Signs of the Zodiac stamp.
The first official US Christmas stamp was launched in 1962. This year, the US Post Office will
print more than 4 billion Christmas postage stamps. They can even be bought at some ATMs
(Automatic Teller Machines) using a bank card: 18 stamps are printed out on a sheet the size of a
$1 bill.
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Christmas seals
The Christmas stamp on your Christmas card may be accompanied by a
Christmas seal, an idea conceived by a Danish postal clerk and first issued by
Denmark in 1904 to raise money for tuberculosis. In the same year, Sweden and
Iceland followed with their versions later in the same year. In 1907, American
Red Cross worker Emily Bissell followed the Danish Christmas seal success
with a simple red and white seal to raise money to save her local TB sanatorium. It was so
successful that in 1908 the American Red Cross ran the campaign national wide. Since 1973, the
Christmas seal campaign has been organized by the American Lung Association.
“Christmas” towns
You might want to use your Christmas stamps, and Christmas seals, for letters you want to send
someone in a town called Christmas in the USA. In fact, there are 140 “Christmas” place names
in the US, including Merry Christmas Creek, Alaska; Christmas Gift Mine in Pinal County,
Arizona; and Merrie Christmas Park in Miami-Dade County, Florida.
You’ll even find 11 towns called “Santa Claus” in 8 US states: Alaska, Arizona, Georgia,
Indiana, Minnesota, Nevada, Oregon, and Utah. And 50 “Noel” place names, including
communities named Noel in Colorado, Missouri, and Virginia. You’ll find Noel Lake in Spencer
County, Indiana, near the community of Santa Claus.
Christmas factoids
John Grossman, noted California collector/designer and long-time member of the Ephemera
Society of America, has a collection of 200,000 Victorian Christmas stamps. He has licensed the
stamp designs to the US Post Office via his business, The Gifted Line, John Grossman, Inc.
The word philately was coined in 1864. It comes from two Greek words that mean “the love of
tax free things.
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UK Christmas stamps 2011 from Royal Mail
On December 7, 2011, the Marshall Islands Postal Service Authority issued ten new stamps commemorating
America's involvement in World War II. Issued on the 70th Anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor which plunged
America into the war, this special issue is the first in a five-year series.
The 2011 World War II 70th Anniversary: 1941 Issue commemorates ten key events and important aspects of the
year in which the United States officially entered World War II: the Burma Road, the Allies' vital supply route into
China; America's first peacetime draft; Roosevelt's "Great Arsenal" speech; the Lend-Lease Act, which provided
billions of dollars' worth of U.S. materials to Allied forces; the Atlantic Charter, calling for the destruction of Nazi
tyranny; the sinking of the destroyer U.S.S. Reuben James by a German U-boat; the formation of America's civil
defense program to prepare the U.S. population for possible attack; the mass production of Liberty ships to carry
supplies across the ocean to the battlefields; the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor; and America's
subsequent declaration of war on Japan
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Australia Post commemorates Barack Obama's visit to Australia
This stamp issue commemorated the State Visit to Australia of Barack Obama,
President of the United States of America, on 16-17 November 2011. President Obama
visited Canberra, where he addressed Parliament, and became the first sitting US
President to visit Darwin.
The stamp shows the military representatives of the ANZUS countries gathered in
Honolulu for the first meeting in 1952: Lieutenant General SF (Sydney) Rowell (left),
Australian Chief of General Staff, is greeted on his arrival at the airfield by Admiral
Arthur Radford, US Commander in Chief Pacific (right), and Major-General Gentry, New
Zealand Chief of General Staff
Australia and the United States enjoy a strong partnership in many areas including trade
and investment, science and technology collaboration and security cooperation. This
year marks the 60th anniversary of the Australia-United States Alliance under the
ANZUS Treaty which was signed by Australia, New Zealand and the United States in
San Francisco in 1951 and entered into force in 1952. This is a time of great strength
and growth in the Alliance, which rests on a broad and enduring community of interests
and values.
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