Friday, January 1, 2010

The Post Office

A helpful pen pal sent me a list of potential articles that Letters & Journals can consider in future publications. I thought she had some great ideas and was wondering if others feel the same. Possibly this list sparked other ideas for you.

1. The history behind the zip code system
2. Favorite stories about post offices and workers
3. Obscure rules and regulations (US and others)
4. List of books written about or by postal workers
5. Inspiring stories of actions taken by postal workers
6. Economics of the postal system
7. History of their uniforms and/or postal vehicle design
8. History of postmarks

6 comments:

The Missive Maven said...

I love them all! 1, 2 and 8 are my favorites.

Anonymous said...

These are great!

Geo_Bradshaw Esq. said...

Hi Jackie

The Daily Telegraph has a column called 'Quite Interesting', and a few weeks ago they covered the postal system (from a British perspective obviously, but you may find some inspiration in the content):

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/qi/6729316/QI-quite-interesting-facts-about-keeping-in-touch.html

The part about Post Office cats is especially appealing, and I love the quote from Sir William Preece, chief engineer, British Post Office, 1876:

"The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys."

Which we did at the time; 7 deliveries per day...

Best wishes,

Kevin

Jackie Flaherty said...

Thanks for the feedback! And thanks for the recommendation and links, Kevin! This is great! I will check it out. Thank you.

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Karen said...

These are great ideas. Perhaps you could do an ongoing feature about commemorative stamps -- why they were chosen and the significance of particular stamps.