An anti-Stamp Act image: “O! The fatal stamp”

While visiting the Congressional Stamp Exhibition last week, I overheard someone mentioned that the “US was started because of a stamp.” And that’s true to an extent. The Stamp Act of 1765 was a real thorn in the side of colonists, imposing as it did a tax on all sorts of printed matter and a variety of paper goods. The stamps colonists were required to buy are in a class called revenue stamps and are not really the same thing as postage stamps.  In fact, since the Penny Black wasn’t issued until 1840 the idea of postage stamps probably didn’t even really exist to Colonists.

It wasn’t until 1847 that Congress approved the issuance of stamps to pre-pay postage.  The US issued postage stamps just 7 years after the UK issued the world’s first postage stamp: the famous Penny Black.

Of course, this is a really small thing I’m quibbling about.  After all, stamps of almost all kinds signify that someone has already paid for something, be it a service or a tax.  Philatelists collect revenue stamps much like they collect postage stamps.

I’m hesitant, however, to suggest that the stamps at the center of the Stamp Act are somehow equivalent to postage stamps; they symbolized very different things– governmental authority v. governmental service– and as such occupy very different places in the public’s imagination (or mine, at least).

One of the perks of living in Washington, and I know I’ve mentioned it before, is access to the truly incredible National Postal Museum.  Just last week I took a morning off work to visit the Congressional Stamp Exhibition at the US Capitol, well– very near the Capitol in one of the House office buildings. Several members of congress collect stamps, including U.S. Representatives Joe Pitts (R-PA), Robert Aderholt (R-AL), Silvestre Reyes (D-TX), Gary Ackerman (D-NY) and Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI).  I’m so glad this is a bi-partisan hobby… though it’s awfully male.  Where are the female stamp collectors?

Perhaps the most unique collection belongs to a fellow Texan, Rep. Silvestre Reyes.  He specializes in anti-US propaganda stamps issued by North Korea!

More images and information after the jump…

President George W. Bush is (in)famous for giving nicknames to nearly everyone.  Apparently he referred to Rep. Gary Ackerman Sen. Levin as “Stamp Dude!”  I suppose there are far, far worse things to be called by the (then) leader of the Free World…  I also hear that Sen. Levin is considered one of the most serious collectors in Congress.

The collection of Gary Ackerman highlighted his efforts surrounding the commemorative 9/11 stamp the USPS issued in 2002.  Representative Aderholt’s collection emphasized Alabama themes.  Additionally, Rep. Sessions contributed an exhibit on the new scouting stamp.  I picked up a special cacheted and Capitol Hill-cancelled envelope at the exhibition.

A major perk at the NPM’s events is the huge vats of stamps they just give away!  I picked up quite a few for my collection and for a Swap-Bot swap I’m participating in.  I really need to decide if I want to try to collect stamps and covers… Both are so appealing and for such different reasons.  However, I fear that if I don’t pick I could easily spend a lot of time and money– er, more time and more money than I would if I just picked one.  Decisions, decisions.

*My apologies re: the quality of these photos.  All the stamps were, obviously, behind glass and the glare was just terrible thanks to some really large windows… the natural light was lovely though.  I did my best, but I assure you that these stamps are, in fact, rectangles with right angles not the weird parallelograms they might look like in these images.

Jon and I enjoyed a lovely Saturday afternoon at the National Postal Museum this past weekend.  I knew very, very little about the 1970 postal strike, that began in New York but eventually included over 200,000 postal employees! At one point they had to lock closed some collection boxes because they were full– mail just piled up and it was only a week-long strike!

The program included the perspectives of three men: Vincent R. Sombrotto (president emeritus of the National Association of Letter Carriers and member of Local 36), William Burrus (president of the American Postal Workers Union), and George Gould (former Staff Director of the Subcommittee on Postal Operations and Services).  Although it was nearly 2 hours long, if you’re interested in postal history it’s well worth watching the program when you’ve got the time.

Mr. Burrus brought copies of a scan of the May 1970 The Union Postal Clerk & Postal Transport Journal.  The image depicts President Nixon as he signs P.L. 91 231, legislation that increased postal employee pay and removed the political patronage aspects of the upper postal service management.  Although the strike came after lots of work on the legislative level, the events in March 1970 greatly contributed to the signing of this postal reform legislation.  I feel very lucky to have a copy of the cover (and apologies for the scan here– it’s a scan of a scan ).

By the way, the Postal Museum has a blog and a YouTube channel– why I didn’t know about this months ago I’ve no idea.  Clearly, I’m slow on the uptake.

In honor of women’s history month, issue number 6 of Vile Magazine features mail art by many, many women artists.  This issue includes a substantial essay from Anna Banana in which she reflects on her position as a female artist in the 1970s, postal art’s accessibility to marginalized artists, and her perspective on the sub-genres within Mail Art (postal art, correspondence art, and post card art). I’ve scanned the 8-page essay and turned it into a PDF (2 MB, let me know if you require a higher quality scan).  It is also available on Flickr.

More images on Flickr and after the jump…

p.37

p. 56

back cover

VILE magazine, International Double Issue, p. 91

We all know the difficulties it causes to receive the lot of mail we do every day.

That postal authorities have managed to get any item from one address to another is of course not intolerable, but the items themselves derived from and deprived of the postal reference must concern everybody.

To the end that minimize the implications brought abut by these items Eric Andersen offers you a mail-box.

You are requested to fill up this box with mail addressed to you, undelivered mail returned to you, mail you have received by mistake, etc.

If you return the box to Eric Andersen the content will then be redistributed to the 4000 persons on his address-list.

Eric Andersen – Copenhaguen [sic]

Vile, “International Double Issue” 2/3 Summer 1976

I’m going to continue scanning pages this weeend, please check my Flickr collection for more images over the next couple of days weeks.

p. 44

p. 100

Back Cover

Several years ago I received five issues of Vile Magazine as a gift from a colleague.   He packaged up all 5 copies he owns (the complete volume 3) and a few other things which I’ll share later.  Honestly, it was one of the most generous, kindest gifts I’ve ever received.  Exactly the kind of thing I adore: mail art, art history, documents, and newspapers.  Getting that gift in the winter of 2005 was like Christmas coming early.  Over the years I’ve flipped through them, read them, looked at them for inspiration, and keep them on a special bookshelf.

A bit of Internet research turned up very little on this incredible and influential magazine produced by Anna Banana and her (then) husband Bill Gaglione.  Over the next few weeks I plan to scan as much of the magazines as I can and post them on Flickr.  A warning, many images are marginally NSFW (unless you work in a museum).  The Internet isn’t totally bereft of Vile information (sorry, couldn’t resist).  This essay, “Misreading Mail Art” by  Matt Feranto, is useful and I quite like the writer who noted that, “[These Magazines] demonstrate  a much more strategically engaging recipe for institutional critque than the work of Hans Haacke, currently on view in a solo show at X [sic]; the jouissance of mail art makes Haacke’s strategies look remarkably didactic by comparison.”

I’ll post a few choice images on this blog too.  Click through to see more of Vile’s “Christmas Special 1975.”

A note on the scanning quality: 1. I’m doing these on my home scanner, so it wont be the highest quality.  Apologies.  2. There is going to be some gutter shadow, I’m unwilling to push down too hard bc the paper is getting quite brittle and I’m afraid to break the spine on the perfect bound issues or risk tearing the paper near the staples on the staple-bound issues.  3.  You can click through to Flickr to download the full-size images.

page 29

I’m also going to do a bit of research into Anna Banana and refresh my memory when it comes to Mail Art.  Years ago I delivered a paper at an art history conference called “The Mailbox Is the Museum: Mail Art and the Avant Garde.”  Of course, that was several hard drives ago and now I cant find an electronic format of the paper to share with you all.  I’ll re-type it… maybe.

page 30

page 41

page 42

If you haven’t yet, I hope you’ll rent How to Draw A Bunny an incredible documentary about Ray Johnson (who some call the “father” of Mail Art).

Back Cover

March is Women’s History Month.  Yes, I missed nearly all of it working on my thesis, going to NYC, and getting hit by that d*mn flu.  However, today is still technically March.  So, I thought I’d hop on the Women’s History Month train and share five women who I find deeply inspiring, motivating, and a little under-appreciated.

1. Nellie Bly: “an American journalist, author, industrialist, and charity worker. She is most famous for an undercover exposé in which she faked insanity to study a mental institution from within. She is also well-known for her record-breaking trip around the world.”  Bly was probably my first girl-hero.
2. Michele Gregg, and all the other abortion counselors in the 1960s.  Plus the women fighting the good fight today in SD, ND, TX, and all the other states.
3. Mothers, mommies, and moms everywhere: working moms, God Mothers, stay-at-home moms, accidental moms, adoptive moms, and foster moms.  Especially my mom, a quiet feminist who has never been afraid of a challenge.
4. Susan Kare, who was instrumental in developing GUI for computer systems.  I’m also a huge fan of women in tech (via Feministing) generally both because I’m jealous of their skills and because they’re breaking into what is too often thought of as a boy’s club.
5. Liz Claiborne: although I don’t personally care for her clothes, I recognize that she was the first woman to found a Fortune 500 company and that by making office clothing affordable she served a lot of women very practically.

There are more, of course, lots more.  I thought about including a few of my favorite authors, some political figures (like Madeline Albright, a personal hero), a couple more historical figures (the suffragettes, hello?), some media figures (Rachel Maddow), poets, artists, doctors… well, the list goes on and on.

By the way, Feministing has a great women’s history month quiz.  I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t quite get as many right as I’d like…

Today, I thought I’d share a list of the podcasts I’ve subscribed to in the last year or so.  I love, love, love podcasting.  Yes, I recognize that 2003 would like to let me know this is old news but I feel like, as someone who spends 90+ min on the bus in a given day, the podcast is a critical link to the news.  Honestly, I spend almost all my time listening to podcasts now.  It is patehtic in a “who actually listens to podcasts” way.  So, without further ado:

• NPR’s Planet Money: Convincing me, about a half hour at a time, that I can and do understand the financial news.  Really.  These guys also contribute to This American Life (below)
  
• Craft Sanity: Because it is nice to hear hour long interviews with women (and sometimes men) who’ve made crafting their life’s work.  Often inspiring, usually interesting, seldom dull.  This podcast is not “professional” in that it isn’t a part of NPR/Conde Nast/NBC etc. and the production value does show…
• The New Yorker’s Fiction podcast: I can’t quite bring myself to subscribe to the New Yorker, I don’t know why.  Especially since I really, really like this podcast of short stories followed by a 5-10 min discussion with a contemporary author.
• NPR’s On the Media: Fact checking, analysis, and watching the guys who are supposed to watch the politicians and CEOs.
• This American Life: Does this even need an explanation?  Who doesn’t listen to this podcast?
• CBC’s Search Engine: unpacking the Internet, technology, and censorship every week from a Canadian perspective, so you’ll sometimes learn a bizarre amount about Canadian telecom policy.
• Poetry Off the Shelf: Contemporary poems read and discussed by people who are much more qualified than I’ll ever be to “understand” and explain poems.

Aint she a beaut?  Meet my new bicycle– a 21″ vintage Peugeot, complete with cargo rack and adorable horn.  The French woman who sold it to me called it a ringer.  It is basically rust-free (just one tiny little spot on the front) and in working order.  God bless Craig’s List.  I’ve been waiting for what feels like forever for the perfect bike to fall into my lap and, last Friday, it did.

So, I suppose I should add to that list of New Year’s resolutions I put up last week: I will bike more, drive less.  That is the hip thing to do after all, isn’t it?  Plus, since I have a cargo rack I really, really don’t have an excuse.

Just a quick post today, I’m feeling sick, swamped with work, and generally busy.  Wanted to share these snaps from my weekend at the Cedar Creek reenactment with you.