I’ve been away these past few days, visiting family back in Texas.  So today, just a quick note to let you know that the Smithsonian NPM has made a selection of papers on postal history available online, for free!  The Winton M. Blount Postal History Symposia: Select Papers, 2006–2009 (PDF) can be downloaded from the [...]

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“Macaque with Banana” in Stella Hwang’s Flickr Stream.
Licensed via the Creative Commons.
Animal Crackers
Douglas Woodsum
Running through a forest
in my bedroom
I pass a lion
sweet golden brown.
A gorilla hangs on a vine
near my closet.
I eat his bananas.
I rhinoceros chases me
under my bed.
I bite off his head.
Crisp gazelles crunch lightly;
giraffes slide down my throat.
Teeth-snapping alligators
and tasty tigers
get the better [...]

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Yesterday’s “Book Bench,” a blog at the New Yorker, includes a gem of a book review for philatelists.  The Englishman Who Posted Himself and Other Curious Objects by John Tingey is available this month (Amazon says Sept. 22 but Powell’s doesn’t list a date).  Until I read this review I’d never even heard of W. [...]

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I would love to send each and every one of you gorgeous notes arranging rendezvous at various restaurants, coffee on Sunday morning, and sundry affectionate greetings.  Sadly, we no longer have twice daily mail delivery and, even if we did, I imagine that the iPhone and its ilk would still win out over Victoriana. (I [...]

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Meet Me at Mike’s window display.

Okay, I don’t want to brag (again) but… I kind of won a share of the super sweet stuff collected for the Meet Me at Mike’s Envelope Project.  I wanted to sit on this news until my box of goodies arrived (because bragging is more fun with pictures, you know) [...]

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I meant to post about this a while ago (ahem like 4 months).  My partner, Jonathan Murphy, and his friends made a movie for the NYC 48-Hour Film Festival and WON!  Their film (above), “A Feline Between Love and Hate,” won audience choice, best writing, and best film.  It will be screened at the “Filmapalooza” [...]

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“Closure” in David Goehring’s Flickr Stream.
Licensed via the Creative Commons.

Yikes, so I haven’t been checking the BashfullyDesigned email account for quite a while… sorry to those of you who’ve asked me questions, tried to send me corrections, or generally get back in touch.  I’m doing my best to dig out from ahem several months of [...]

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“Empty Stadium at Night” in Sarah Quinn Armitt’s Flickr Stream.
Licensed via the Creative Commons.
Why I Might Go to the Next Football Game
by Denis Johnson
sometimes you know
things: once at a
birthday party a little
girl looked at her new party
gloves and said she
liked me, making suddenly the light much
brighter so that the very small
hairs shone above her lip. [...]

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Every year about this time I have to fight the urge to acquire more school supplies, stock up on fresh notebooks, and buy a fancy new lunchbox.  The lunchbox is one of those things that I could spend hours looking at and, if I had a zillion dollars lying around, would probably own 50 of.  [...]

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What’s going on in the Playmobil Post Office?  Reports are coming in of all sorts of strange activity, what could be causing all the ruckus?  Is it a hold-up?

No…

Just a friendly reminder, folks, you can mail eggs, you can mail bees, but you cannot mail sharks.  Who is this clown who thought he was the [...]

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