kottke.org posts about USPS
The US Postal Service recently released a partial list of the stamps it’s putting out in 2027. One of the sets is Mythical Creatures, featuring five cryptids.1
The legend of Mothman has endured for more than six decades, but of the creatures encountered on these stamps, this flying, man-sized, red-eyed being emerged the most recently. The cryptid was first reported in West Virginia in 1966. Several nights after a gravedigger reported a winged, human-sized creature swooping above, two couples on a midnight drive in the rural outskirts of Point Pleasant reported being chased from overhead at great speed as they fled back to town. Newspapers dubbed the creature “Mothman.” After a year of eerie sightings was followed by a local tragedy, some interpreted the appearances as harbingers of disaster. In the years since, a lighter side of Mothman has been embraced by festival attendees, many in “spooky-cute” costumes that evoke this increasingly popular cryptid.
Unlike most of the creatures on these stamps, the Jackalope has been spotted by a great many Americans. It has multiplied rapidly, especially in the West, since first appearing in the 1930s in Douglas, Wyoming. This antlered rabbit was the creation of two young brothers studying taxidermy by mail who, in a moment of inspiration after a hunting trip, crafted the hoax. When the masterful mashup was displayed at a local inn, the Jackalope quickly sprang into regional folklore. Today, Jackalopes are found in gift shops in the Great Plains and Western states — on postcards, stickers, and T-shirts, and as plush toys and mounted specimens. The fanciful hybrid endlessly inspires the imaginations of those who encounter it, and who add to its lore with their own stories, songs, and artworks.
The Squonk hides away in northern Pennsylvania’s dense hemlock forests, so distressed by its own appearance that it cries constantly. This piglike animal, wrinkled, blemished, and self-conscious, was first described in print in a 1910 collection of lumberjack folklore, Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods. The book — recounting tales often spun and re-spun by the fireside in remote logging encampments of the 19th and early 20th centuries — relates an episode of a Squonk captured in a bag: As the hunter carried his prey, its weeping faded and the sack grew lighter. Investigation revealed that the Squonk had melted into “nothing but tears and bubbles.” In recent years, the melancholy character has been revived as a darling mascot of introverts and anyone else who relates to the Squonk’s social anxiety.
Sasquatch captures the American imagination like no other cryptid. Nobody, though, has captured Bigfoot, as this large hairy hominid is commonly called, nor even retrieved a confirmed strand of hair from its notoriously stinky, shaggy fur. In the Pacific Northwest, ancient Indigenous tales of mysterious, hairy humanoids encouraged caution in the wild and mindful custodianship of forest habitat. By the late 20th century, reported sightings of Sasquatch and similar regional creatures had taken hold and spanned the nation. In fact, tales of huge bipeds are told worldwide, almost anywhere shadowy terrain could conceivably conceal such elusive beings. Hoaxes abound, including blurry films and casts of outsized human-like footprints, but the most notable impression Sasquatch makes is its lasting mark on American popular culture. Even if our most famous mythical creature is nowhere to be found, Sasquatch is everywhere.
Champ, as the Lake Champlain monster is affectionately known, is said to dwell within the nation’s sixth largest lake, which defines more than 100 miles of the New York–Vermont border. A glacial lake reaching 400 feet deep and 14 miles wide is bound to contain mysteries — over the last few centuries, hundreds have claimed to see the serpentine organism. Cryptozoologists have tried to determine what it could be: perhaps a descendant of an aquatic, dinosaur-era reptile or whale, as found in fossils? Skeptics point to more mundane possibilities: sturgeon and other large fish that inhabit the lake, swimming deer, waves, mirages, and tree trunks riding currents. While a living specimen has proven elusive, Champ is ever-present as a beloved mascot of the region, celebrated in business logos, and in festivals and museum exhibits.
The stamps feature the artwork of tattoo artist Nat Power and will be available next year.
Every so often, the US Postal Service reissues old stamps. This time around, they polled the public about which past stamp they’d like to see reissued and the results were decisive: the people love Mister Rogers.
The Mister Rogers stamp, originally released in 2018, is new again in 2026!
In national Stamp Encore polling, the stamp honoring the television host beloved by generations rose to the top spot from a varied ballot of 25 previous stamp issuances. Americans were asked to celebrate 250 years of postal delivery by choosing among favorite stamps of the last few decades. By the deadline last fall, the Postal Service was flooded with nearly 600,000 total ballots.
The Mister Rogers stamps are out now — you can check out a list of the available purchases here. There’s even a set of Field Notes notebooks.
Mister Rogers is a natural fit for a postage stamp; he was a “prolific letter-writer”.
Fred Rogers had a great appreciation for communication by mail, so the popularity of his stamp in 2018 and the esteem reflected by Stamp Encore ballots seem especially fitting. A prolific letter-writer, sometimes replying to 100 letters per day, Rogers never resorted to form-letter responses. He expressed his sentiments in simple terms: “There is still a place for the written letter.”
In a book recalling mail he had received and sent, Rogers wrote, “One of the first things I do each day is to work on the letters that have arrived from the children and adults who have written to us. I care deeply about sending a personal response.” Rogers added, “It gives me a way to know my television neighbors as real people and to make a more personal connection with them. Just as our program is a ‘television visit,’ “the mail is a ‘letter visit.’ A personal note is still far more valuable than shooting off an email or text,” he said.
(thx, caroline)
Speaking of new stamps, these Bruce Lee stamps are pretty great too:
The US Postal Service released a sneak peek at some of the stamps they’re going to release in 2026. Among them are these lowrider stamps:
Five models grace the stamps: a blue 1946 Chevrolet Fleetline named Let the Good Times Roll/Soy Como Soy; a blue 1958 Chevrolet Impala named Eight Figures; a red 1963 Impala named El Rey; an orange 1964 Impala named the Golden Rose; and a green 1987 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme named Pocket Change. The Gothic-style typography and the pinstriping on the stamps and pane evoke the detailed decoration that is a hallmark of the most celebrated lowrider cars.
Graphic artist Chris Ware has created a set of 20 stamps for the US Postal Service’s 250th anniversary in his iconic style.
The pane of 20 interconnected stamps show a bird’s-eye view of a mail carrier’s route through a bustling town. Laid out in 4 rows of 5, the stamps depict the story through the 4 seasons from top-left to bottom-right. The artwork also contains numerous icons representing the Postal Service.
The stamps will be available in July but you can pre-order them now from the USPS Store. (thx, caroline)
The USPS has announced that they will be issuing stamps based on the children’s classic Goodnight Moon, written by Margaret Wise Brown, illustrated by Clement Hurd, and first published in 1947.
The Postal Service notes that “these designs are preliminary and may change”. Goodnight Moon was the very first bedtime book for our kids — we read it to them so so so many times. I will be buying some of these stamps for sure.
Update: These stamps are now available from the USPS online store and at your local post office.
The USPS is honoring longtime Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek with a stamp that cleverly mimics a blue Jeopardy! answer — and the whole sheet of stamps looks like the game board. The text of the answer reads:
This naturalized U.S. citizen hosted the quiz show “Jeopardy!” for 37 seasons
And the question is, of course: “Who is Alex Trebek?” You can buy your Forever 73¢ Trebek stamps from the USPS website.
The US Postal Service is set to release a sheet of 16 stamps featuring the legendary photography of Ansel Adams.
Ansel Adams made a career of crafting photographs in exquisitely sharp focus and nearly infinite tonality and detail. His ability to consistently visualize a subject — not how it looked in reality but how it felt to him emotionally — led to some of the most famous images of America’s natural treasures including Half Dome in California’s Yosemite Valley, the Grand Tetons in Wyoming, and Denali in Alaska, the highest peak in the United States.
No pre-order links yet, but the stamps will be available on May 15. (via @anseladams)
P.S. I was just poking around the official Ansel Adams site and ran across this photo I’d never seen before of a woman behind a screen door. Really wonderful.
A day late, but there’s room for love every day here at kottke.org: from the Portland Stamp Company, a history of LOVE stamps issued by the US Postal Service from 1973 to the present.
There are some heavy hitters amongst the designers of these stamps, including Robert Indiana, Sister Corita Kent, Jessica Hische, and Louise Fili. In looking at the designs over the years, it seems like things got noticeably pinker and redder over the past 10-12 years…I wonder what that’s about?
Also, “Chief Perforation Officer”. 😂
The USPS is coming out with a collection of stamps honoring the efforts of 10 Americans who were part of the Underground Railroad.
The U.S. Postal Service is honoring 10 courageous men and women who helped guide enslaved people to freedom via the Underground Railroad, network of secret routes and safehouses in use before the Civil War.
Love the design. The stamps honor Catherine Coffin, Frederick Douglass, Thomas Garrett, Laura Haviland, Lewis Hayden, Harriet Jacobs, William Lambert, the Rev. Jermain Loguen, William Still, and Harriet Tubman. They go on sale March 9th and if you want, you can attend the first first-day-of-issue event at the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center in Church Creek, MD.
The USPS has released two new Priority Post stamps featuring imagery captured by the JWST: Pillars of Creation (NASA original) and Cosmic Cliffs (NASA original). From the USPS press release:
Captured by the James Webb Space Telescope, this extremely high-definition infrared image shows the magnificent Pillars of Creation formation within the Eagle Nebula. By assigning color to various wavelengths, the digitized image allows us to see a landscape otherwise invisible to the human eye. Red areas toward the end of the pillars show burgeoning stars ejecting raw materials as they form, while the relatively small red orbs scattered throughout the image show newly born stars.
This remarkable image from the James Webb Space Telescope is a digitally colored depiction of the invisible bands of mid-infrared light emitted by the Cosmic Cliffs of the Carina Nebula. Red and yellow flares scattered throughout the cliffs show developing and newly born stars. The orange-and-brown clouds in the lower third of the image are swirls of dust and gas. Additional stars, in our Milky Way and in distant galaxies, appear in the blue and black regions above and beyond the nebula.
I’d missed that the USPS released a set of stamps commemorating Ezra Jack Keats’ The Snowy Day back in 2017. From the Smithsonian National Postal Museum:
It was the first full-color picture book to have an African American protagonist. Keats received the 1963 Caldecott Medal for his illustrations.
This book was solidly in the regular reading rotation when my kids were little and I remember it fondly from my childhood as well.
Last month, the US Postal Service revealed some stamps that are due to be released in 2023. Alongside a stamp honoring John Lewis and some cool microphotography stamps are a series of four stamps featuring the Art of the Skateboard.
Antonio Alcalá designed the stamps, which feature skateboard decks created by four different artists:
Di’Orr Greenwood is a member of the Najavo Nation who does pyrographic art, burning images into the wooden decks of some of the boards she designs. Greenwood also carves cedar wood flutes and teaches skateboarding. From her Instagram, one of decks she’s designed recently:
William James Taylor Jr. is a prolific self-taught artist from Virginia. You can check out his work on Instagram and buy a bunch of decks with his designs — here are just a few of them:
Crystal Worl is “Tlingit Athabascan from Raven moiety, Sockeye Clan, from the Raven House” who currently lives and works in Juneau, Alaska. Her Instagram is here and here’s a recent deck from her website:
Federico Frum is a street mural artist from Colombia who is based in Washington DC; he operates under the name MasPaz. From his Instagram, a recent desk design:
I’m excited to get some of these stamps when they come out later in the year. (via lizzie armanto)
The US Postal Service has released a set of Sun Science stamps that use images from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory to illustrate different solar phenomena like plasma blasts, sunspots, and solar flares.
Printed with a foil treatment that adds a glimmer to the stamps, the images on these stamps come from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, a spacecraft launched in February 2010 to keep a constant watch on the sun from geosynchronous orbit above Earth. The striking colors in these images do not represent the actual colors of the sun as perceived by human eyesight. Instead, each image is colorized by NASA according to different wavelengths that reveal or highlight specific features of the sun’s activity.
One of the stamps highlights sunspots, two feature images of coronal holes, two show coronal loops, two depict plasma blasts, one is a view of an active sun that emphasizes its magnetic fields, and two show different views of a solar flare.
NASA has more on the science behind the images on the stamps and the whole set of stamps are available for purchase online.
See also A Decade of the Sun.
The spring, the USPS will be releasing a set of 10 stamps featuring droids from Star Wars movies and series. (These are the droids you’re looking for lolololol.)
Representing more than four decades of innovation and storytelling, the droids featured in this pane of 20 stamps are IG-11, R2-D2, K-2SO, D-O, L3-37, BB-8, C-3PO, a GNK (or Gonk) power droid, 2-1B surgical droid and C1-10P, commonly known as “Chopper.”
The characters are shown against backgrounds representing settings of memorable adventures. The selvage features a passageway from the floating Cloud City above the planet Bespin, introduced in “Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.”
(thx, caroline)
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