Kansas Stamp In The Middle Where It Should Be!

The USPS has just issued a new series of Forever stamps commemorating "Earthscapes".  The cool thing about this series is that all the stamps are pictures taken from the air - all the way from an ultralight craft to satellites orbiting earth. Another cool thing is that one of them is from Kansas. 

The pictures are themed in this new series of stamps - with the top row being scenes from "Nature", the middle row showing "Agriculture" scenes and the bottom row representing "Urban" views.

The middle stamp is from Kansas, and shows about a 25 square mile area of Grant County, Kansas - north and east of the County seat of Ulysses.  How do I know that?  I looked and found this quite distinctive pattern of pivots on Google Earth.  This picture was taken by the Landsat 7 satellite, but it's an older one - because the current Google Map shows 5 new pivots in this same tract of land.

According to the USPS the agriculture row depicts the growing or harvesting of salt, timber, grain, cherries and cranberries - all requiring water I might add.  And actually, water plays a role in most of the natural and urban scenes as well.  Most notably in the upper right stamp called "Inland Marsh", taken by Cameron Davidson.  This picture is part of the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge in Maryland.

USPS art director Howard E. Paine designed this unique series of stamps, which were issued just days ago to kick off National Stamp Collecting Month.  Leave it up to the USPS to have Mr. Paine create the newest pane of stamps.  With a little luck this unique set will also help mitigate the current fiscal pain of the USPS - I'm going to buy several sets!

Water Conservation Message is Important!

Kudos to the U.S. Postal service for the new water conservation stamp in their Go Green series (2011).  The message of water conservation needs to be everywhere, all the time and this certainly helps.  I guess I'll have to eventually add this to my earlier article on US postage stamps and water (here), but not just yet.

I also like the fact that it is a forever stamp, so it just might be around for a while.  I'm going to buy it for as long as I can.

Water & US Stamps

The good old US Postal Service over the years has memorialized just about everything "American" - from presidents to volunteerism to you-name-it.  In case you were wondering, they have even from time to time captured "water" on stamps in its various nuances.

While the post office has existed in some form or another since 1775, it has only officially printed stamps since the late 1840's.  Between 1847 and 1990, I have counted 16 stamp issues that speak to water directly.  The first of my list is the 1922 issue on Niagra Falls - a 25 cent stamp, which incidently is valued at well over $15.00 today if it's unused.

 Since 1922 water stamps have included:  the Ohio River Canalization - 1928; Mirror Lake (Mt Ranier) - 1934; Old Faithful - 1934; Crater Lake - 1934; Two Medicine Lake (Mt Rockwell) - 1934; Panama Canal - 1938; Everglades National Park - 1947; St Lawrence Seaway - 1958; Water Conservation - 1960; Great River Road (Mississippi River) - 1966; Arkansas River Navigation - 1968; Anti-Pollution (Save our Water) - 1970 (pictured above); Soil & Water Conservation - 1984; St Lawrence Seaway (again) - 1984; and Preserving Wetlands - 1984.  Sorry, but my reference book only goes through 1990 - there could be more!

What amazes me is that out of all the people displayed on stamps, no water manager has yet been so honored!  BUT...they say there's a first time for everything!