Philosateleia
Kevin Blackston
PO Box 217
Floresville TX 78114-0217
United States of America

Philosateleian Blog

Ohio mail carrier shot and killed

A mail carrier in Ohio is dead after being shot while making his daily rounds.

According to news reports, 53-year-old Daniel Kondas was delivering mail in Maple Heights—a suburb of Cleveland—on Thursday morning when someone shot him in the head.

So far the police haven’t said why Mr. Kondas was shot, or who’s responsible. One person was apparently taken into custody, but there’s no official word on any arrests.

A quick search shows Mr. Kondas is hardly the first mail carrier to be killed in the line of duty, but it’s still a sad story. And while I have no reason to think his family reads this blog, I do want to express my condolences to anyone who may have known him.

Fall update for The Philosateleian

If you’ve been waiting for a new update for The Philosateleian U.S. Stamp Album, the wait is over. The Fall 2009 supplement (257 KB, 5 files, 17 pages) is now available for download.

This update does not include spaces for the 2007–09 Liberty Bell stamps nor the 2009 U.S. Flag stamps. I still don’t have complete information on perforation and format varieties on those stamps, but I should be able to update the applicable pages later this year.

Don’t forget, downloading and printing updates on a regular basis prevents your stamp album from getting out of date.

Free Brazilian stamp album pages

You probably already know about Philosateleia’s free U.S. stamp album pages, but other Web sites offering free pages are also coming online.

One such site is BR Stamp, which offers free album pages for stamps of Brazil. As of this writing, the pages cover 1950–72 and 1980–2008, and the site owner promises more pages are on the way.

BR Stamp is written in Portuguese, but the site’s simple layout makes downloading the PDF files a snap even if you don’t know the language.

Other sites exist that offer free stamp album pages for international collections, and I’ll work on listing some more of those here. Do you use any sites that should be included in the list?

Web site notes

Just a quick update to let you know I’m still around and working on material for the Web site. Sometimes “real life” gets in the way of our hobbies!

At any rate, updates for The Philosateleian should be available in mid-September. If you haven’t signed up to receive e-mail notifications when I release new supplements, head on over to the album pages landing page and sign up!

A couple of people have asked in the past how they can help support the work I do here. There are several ways you can contribute, one of the most important of which is linking to Philosateleia on your own Web site or in your e-mail signature. In addition, I can now accept online donations via PayPal.

Is there anything else that you would like to see on Philosateleia? Leave a comment or send an e-mail and I’ll see what I can do!

Closed for business

The big news here in the U.S. is that the USPS is considering closing nearly 700 post offices around the country. The Postal Regulary Commission has a full list of the branches that could be shut down [PDF].

The proposal comes as the USPS continues to lose money in a big way due to reasons ranging from health care and pension obligations to a drop in mail volume blamed in part on the sluggish economy.

Many, if not most, of the offices that could be affected are in metropolitan areas, so it’s not as though people will suddenly have no mail service. If they live in areas served by the offices in question, however, they might find themselves with a longer drive or walk when they want to mail a package or buy stamps.

Is your post office of choice on the list? Do you think the USPS is making the right move, or is there a way they can save enough money to keep these post offices open?

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