Philatelic Fury

Philately may seem a gentle avocation, but Postmaster General Larry O'Brien knows better. After he approved a 5-c- stamp to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Henry David Thoreau's birth, furious collectors complained that the Post Office Department was making the Walden Ponderer look like a thug, a Communist, a hippie or "a beatnik suffering from withdrawal symptoms." One fan even threatened civil disobedience. "If you bring a blown-up poster of this hideous thing into Concord, Mass.," he wrote, "you'd better send along a contingent of the National Guard." Fortunately no one had to call out the troops last week when Assistant Postmaster General Richard Murphy formally issued the stamp--bearing a rugged, brooding likeness of Thoreau by Artist Leonard Baskin--before a well-behaved crowd of 400 in Concord.

Suggestion Box. Every Postmaster General takes a pasting over stamps. This year the Bureau of Engraving will roll out some 24 billion of them, in 51 varieties, including 24 new issues. A good many are sure to come right back on letters from pressure groups, cranks, philatelists and historical groups.

Currently, members of the John Birch Society and other right-wing organizations are complaining that the Post Office is cottoning to subversive types with a 25-c- stamp portraying Negro Leader Frederick Douglass, a $1 issue honoring Playwright Eugene O'Neill, an 8-c- Albert Einstein number, and others of Philosopher John Dewey and Revolutionary War Pamphleteer Tom Paine. Last spring the Protestant-dominated Americans United for Separation of Church and State filed suit in U.S. district court to prevent the 1967 reissue, in a slightly larger version, of last year's Christmas stamp, a Madonna and Child portrait by 15th century Flemish Artist Hans Memling. The suit charged that O'Brien, a Roman Catholic, is, in effect, proselytizing for his faith.

The department is also besieged by oddball nominations, including recent proposals for the commemoration of mothers-in-law, the ten most wanted men, the Texas longhorn, the pretzel industry, the hamburger, the 100th anniversary of the first daylight bank robbery in the U.S. (a heist on Feb. 13, 1866, in Liberty, Mo.), and the 4,000th anniversary of the pickle.

Shadows & Warts. Sometimes the Post Office does heed its mail. When last year's 5-c- George Washington brought protests, the department agreed that "the stamp needs a bit of face lifting." Last month it doctored the shadows and warts in the design.

All stamp designs (for which commissioned artists receive $1,000) are reviewed by the Postmaster General's eleven-member Stamp Advisory Council, which is trying to avoid turkeys like the 1948 stamp celebrating the poultry industry. Still, the department must occasionally wince and yield to pressures from Capitol Hill. In 1966, Louisiana's Representative Jimmy Morrison, chairman of the House postal-rate subcommittee, wanted a stamp commemorating the Great River Road that runs from Canada to New Orleans along the Mississippi--and right through his district. Larry O'Brien, needing Morrison's support for a parcel-post reform bill, ordered ,the stamp. O'Brien got his bill and Morrison got his stamp--but when the Congressman came up for re-election last fall, his constituents voted him out of office. As for his stamp, a poll run by Linn's Weekly Stamp News, the philatelist's bible, elected the Great River Road design the ugliest of the year.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.