4/19/2008: Meet Amelia

Actress Mary Ann Jung brought Amelia Earhart’s story to life with the show “Amelia Earhart: Dreams Take Flight.” Jung re-enacted Earhart’s night at the White House with help from audience members playing Eleanor and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Amelia and Eleanor went for a night flight on April 20, 1933, a time when few people in the world had flown—especially at night. Participants drew pilots’ views of Washington, DC at night to celebrate this historic flight.

Image: Visitors help re-enact the story of Eleanor Roosevelt asking the president if she could learn to fly under Amelia’s instruction. The President said no but Eleanor and Amelia did enjoy one flight together.

4/12/2008: Jazz Appreciation Month Celebration

On Saturday, April 12th, visitors enjoyed the Postal Museum’s Jazz Appreciation Month Celebration. One of many events across the Smithsonian, the program featured live jazz music by the James Zimmerman Trio, art activities, an exploration of the new Latin Jazz stamp, and stamp collecting.

Participants explored US stamps featuring jazz musicians and voted on which had the best “jazz nickname.” (Jelly Roll Morton and Dizzy Gillespie beat Count Basie.) Adults and children also donned their own jazz nicknames. Among the best: Exquisite Katherine, Speedy Simone, Z-Bop, Sugar Bear, and Jumpin’ Jester.

Visit www.smithsonianjazz.org to learn about other jazz events!

Image: The James Zimmerman Trio plays jazz while a family digs into an activity—creating scratchboard art inspired by a children’s book about Duke Ellington. Vocalist Zimmerman, guitarist Nick Lipkowski, and bassist Wes Biles shared their love of jazz music and spoke about the history of jazz.

4/2/2008: Greetings from Hometown Washington, DC: Postcard Slide Talk

Jerry A. McCoy, special collections librarian at the DC Public Library’s Washingtoniana Division and Peabody Room, took visitors on a tour of Washington, DC’s local attractions through historic postcards. Looking past the tourist attractions, monuments, and federal city, McCoy focused on the historic sites long part of the local experience. Postcards of diners, piano shops, churches, and other historic sites illuminated the DC that has often been torn down or renovated as the city changed.

This program was featured in the “Around the Mall” blog on Smithsonian Magazine. Read the feature here:
aroundthemall.smithsonianmag.com/archives/238

3/27/2008: Collection Connections Family Day

About 200 visitors enjoy activities related to Rarity Revealed: the Benjamin K. Miller Collection. The participants, many of which were out-of-town visitors, created stamp collections, made their own “Inverted Jenny” stamps, and followed scavenger hunts in the exhibit. “It was much more interesting than I had anticipated,” one teenager wrote on her evaluation form. “Stamp collecting is very cool!”

Image (left): Education Aide Susan Bergner helps a young visitor vote in the Stamp Beauty Contest. Benjamin K. Miller’s collection includes the intricate “Cattle in the Storm” stamp, often judged the most beautiful by stamp collectors. The two other stamps, selected by Assistant Curator of Philately Daniel Piazza were the 10-cent Ocean Liner Stamp (this little girl’s favorite) and the 5-cent dark blue Ribault Monument stamp. Almost 50 visitors cast votes, with the Ocean Liner coming in first place. Visitors were surprised that philatelists “like the cows best.” This activity proved popular with adults and children and helped explain what is so special about Miller’s stamps.

3/15/2008: Nuestra Quinceañera: a Celebration of
Our 15 Years

The National Postal Museum celebrated its 15th anniversary in the fun and festive fashion of the Quinceañera, a special birthday for Latina and Hispanic girls. Visitors first decorated their own coronas (tiaras or crowns) to get into the spirit before moving on to other activities.

The first hour of the program featured the opportunity for young women and their families to chat casually with Latina professionals Alta Rodriguez of the United States Postal Service and Magdalena Mieri of the National Museum of American History about education, careers, and dreams. Visitors wrote in “All About Me” journals and shared them with the two women and each other.

Later in the day, visitors joined dancer Eileen Torres in a dance lesson, learning steps to salsa, merengue and cha cha, dances featured on the Latin Dance Stamps released in 2005. Music and dance are important parts of the Quinceañera tradition.

Image (left): Three friends model their tiaras. 86 people participated in the tiara activity.

3/8/2008: Women in Aviation Day

About 1,900 Girl Scouts, parents, and visitors participated in three National Postal Museum activities at Women in Aviation Day at the Air and Space Museum Steven F. Udvar Hazy Center. Collecting women’s history stamps was a very popular activity as was designing a stamp to commemorate each girl’s future accomplishments. Assistant curator Lynn Heidelbaugh and her mother helped girls map the flights of aviatrix Amelia Earhart by examining her cover collection.

The goal of the event was to encourage young women to pursue science, technology, and math. Of the 44 organizations with booths, girls often told museum staff that our activities were “the coolest.”

Image (left): Surrounded by planes, Girl Scouts learn about important women by creating women’s history stamp collections. Inspired by stamps they found as well as images of the Bessie Coleman, Juliette Gordon Low, and Gerty Cori stamps, girls then designed themselves on stamps as pilots, zookeepers, and other careers.

2/23/2008: Black History Family Day

Black History Family celebrated three small communities that have made a big impact on American culture—literature from the Harlem Renaissance, quilts from Gee’s Bend, Alabama, and the blues in the Mississippi Delta. All are featured on stamps.

Image (left): The Delta Players lead visitors in singing “Lift Every Voice and Sing” before dramatically presenting poems by Harlem Renaissance author Langston Hughes, who was commemorated on a 2002 stamp.

2/9/2008: Sundman Lecture: The 100 Greatest Stamps

Nearly 100 people attended the Sixth Annual Maynard Sundman Lecture, 100 Greatest American Stamps by Donald J. Sundman and Janet Klug. Sundman began by speaking about his father, Maynard Sundman, founder of Littleton Stamp Company, who had passed away in 2007. The authors shared their favorite stamps, like the Elvis stamp and “Inverted Jenny.” Within the top 100 were historically important stamps, beautiful stamps, and rare stamps—all with interesting stories. They also discussed their selection and ranking process as well as stamps that didn’t make the cut. Many of the authors’ stories elicited chuckles from the audience and the post-lecture reception featured lively discussion.

Image (upper left): The authors sign their book, which was so popular that the Museum Shop sold out! The shop will re-order the book.

Image (lower left): The large crowd included many members of local stamps clubs, and many who traveled from far away to attend.

1/29/2008: Postal History is Cool: the Polar Post Curator Talk

Assistant curators Lynn Heidelbaugh and Allison Marsh shared their research on the polar post with museum visitors. Marsh discussed the nuclear submarine USS Nautilus and its journey in the North Pole, an event commemorated by stamping letters with a special cachet. Usually not on public view, the stamps used were shown to visitors during the program. Heidelbaugh shared the story of postal workers at the US post office in Little America, Antarctica.

Image (upper left): Heidelbaugh talks with a family about a stamp designed by Franklin D. Roosevelt to commemorate the Byrd Antarctic Expedition.

Image (lower left): Usually not on view to the public, stamps used to commemorate the passing of the USS Nautilus beneath the North Pole on August 3, 1958 were on view during the program.

1/19/2008: Rarity Revealed Family Day

Benjamin Franklin’s 302nd birthday was a big hit with visitors young and old. At one popular table, visitors updated Franklin’s inventions and solved a problem Franklin faced as postmaster—moving the mail faster. (Some popular suggestions: mail delivered by robots, horses with roller-skates, and mail by underground tubes.) At other activity tables, participants added birthday candles to Franklin’s “cake” and wrote letters in secret codes to get a sense of correspondence during the Revolutionary War.

Image (upper left): American University students and a museum staff member have an energetic discussion of how to speed up mail delivery.

Image (lower left): A young visitor (sporting an updated version of Franklin’s bifocals) enjoys “Ben’s Broadsheet Beat,” a journalism and mail-themed scavenger hunt.

1/12/2008: Philatelic Films: Charade

60 people watched Charade, a 1963 film starring Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant. After the screening, National Postal Museum Research Chair Daniel Piazza discussed the film’s fascinating philatelic connection to an audience of serious collectors, movie buffs, and many first-time visitors.