Image via Catoctin Creek Distilling’s website.
I spent Sunday touring the Catoctin Creek Distilling Company based in Loudon County, VA. Not only was it fun, I learned a lot and sampled some great liquor.  Did you know, for example, that there is a federal law that says distillers can only use their barrels one time?  It’s [...]

[Read more →]

I loved the book jacket description of Alan Bradley’s The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie: “A dead bird is found on the doorstep, a postage stamp bizarrely pinned to its beak. Hours later, Flavia finds a man lying in the cucumber patch and watches him as he takes his dying breath.”  I picked [...]

[Read more →]

Mark Twain left a comment about Huckleberry Finn, in his copy of The Pen and the Book by Walter Besant.
Image via the New York Times.
I discovered this poem after reading an interesting piece in the New York Times, “Book Lovers Fear Dim Future for Marginalia.”  Although I do not agree with some of the author’s [...]

[Read more →]

Jordan Crane’s graphic novella The Last Lonely Saturday arrived in my life wrapped up as a Christmas gift (thanks Jon).  By the end of the book I was just about sobbing– and any graphic novel that brings me to tears in 4 panes/spread is doing something great. In addition to the incredibly touching story line, [...]

[Read more →]

This weekend I attended a book talk and signing at the National Postal Museum here in DC.  Philip Rubio, a former USPS letter carrier, discussed his new book There’s Always Work at the Post Office: African American Postal Workers and the Fight for Jobs, Justice, and Equality.  I attended the event because it’s a nice [...]

[Read more →]

My copy of John Tingey’s The Englishman Who Posted Himself and Other Curious Objects finally arrived!  While I’m happy that the New Yorker’s book blog picked up on this mail art gem, it also meant the title was back-ordered for ages a few weeks.  Completely and utterly worth the wait.  I simply loved, loved, loved [...]

[Read more →]

“Mailsters on Parade” from the Smithsonian’s ‘People & the Post’ set on Flickr.

There were lots of things I was very excited about a week or so ago… I don’t want to leave you hanging, so let’s revisit shall we?

I haven’t been able to get my hands on a copy of The Englishman Who Posted Himself [...]

[Read more →]

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 [...]

[Read more →]

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. [...]

[Read more →]

The writing gets 3 stars, the illustrations 5.  I figure splitting the difference is fair.
I picked up Charles Bowden’s “Dreamland: The Way Out of Juarez” after hearing him on a recent episode of On the Media.  This is *not* a book about Juarez or drug cartels. This is a long meditation on [...]

[Read more →]