National Postal Museum

I didn't have high expectations about the Smithsonian's National Postal Museum. I figured the place would be mostly about stamps, a subject in which I'm not particularly interested. So it took me longer to get around to visiting the museum than it should have. When I finally did go recently, I was very pleasantly surprised. As you descend into the museum on an escalator, you immediately know you've arrived at a special place. Colorful old airplanes are suspended in a bright, 90-foot-high atrium.

W. Wilson Hulme II, a leading collector and historian of postage stamps who became the first curator of philately at the National Postal Museum, died Jan. 10 of a heart attack while on museum business in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. He was 60. A stamp collector since childhood, Hulme had a career as a Navy officer and corporate executive before joining the postal museum, a branch of the Smithsonian Institution, in 2002.

W. Wilson Hulme II, a leading collector and historian of postage stamps who became the first curator of philately at the National Postal Museum, died Jan. 10 of a heart attack while on museum business in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. He was 60. A stamp collector since childhood, Hulme had a career as a Navy officer and corporate executive before joining the postal museum, a branch of the Smithsonian Institution, in 2002.

I didn't have high expectations about the Smithsonian's National Postal Museum. I figured the place would be mostly about stamps, a subject in which I'm not particularly interested. So it took me longer to get around to visiting the museum than it should have. When I finally did go recently, I was very pleasantly surprised. As you descend into the museum on an escalator, you immediately know you've arrived at a special place. Colorful old airplanes are suspended in a bright, 90-foot-high atrium.

Beatles star John Lennon collected stamps as a schoolboy -- and the public will soon have a chance to see them. The Smithsonian Institution's National Postal Museum announced it had acquired Lennon's stamp album from a British stamp dealer and planned to display it in October. The album contains more than 550 stamps from around the world including many from former British colonies.

Folklore cowboy Pecos Bill and legendary lumberjack Paul Bunyan as well as designs on riverboats and marathon running will adorn U.S. postage stamps next year. Most of the new stamps will be unveiled Tuesday at a ceremony at the National Postal Museum. Other stamps of local interest will be unveiled in a series of briefings in 11 cities over three days.

The National Postal Museum has received an $8-million donation to build a new street-level gallery in Washington. Officials said Tuesday that the gift from William H. Gross, founder of Pacific Investment Management Co., was the largest donation in the museum's history. Gross is also lending the museum some of the world's rarest stamps from his personal collection. Director Allen Kane says the museum will be able to move from its somewhat hidden basement into a street-level space that's about 40% bigger.

Beatle John Lennon produced lots of popular albums in his career. The one that is probably least known went on display in Washington Thursday. It's his stamp album. The Smithsonian's National Postal Museum purchased the album from a British stamp dealer in June but declined to disclose the price. Stanley Parkes, Lennon's older cousin, began the collection and later gave it to the future Beatle when Lennon was 9 years old.

Among the 1,500 people who died on the doomed Titanic were five mail clerks, men who gave their lives trying to drag huge mail sacks up to the deck of the sinking liner in the vain hope of transferring them to another ship. The National Postal Museum opened an exhibit last month recalling their sacrifice. Entering the exhibit, a visitor hears a strange sound like radio static. A pattern quickly emerges --static and quiet, static and quiet, static and quiet.

The Garcias never figured they would care that much about a pile of postcards. "It started because we were always forgetting the camera," explained Marie Garcia, the mother of three who lives in White Bear Lake, Minn. "We'd buy a postcard wherever we went and write a little bit on the back about our day." Soon the Garcia kids got an album for their cards. When they filled that, they got another.

Deck a country mailbox with cornstalks, chickens or cowboy motifs and you may have a work of folk art, two connoisseurs believe. The artists are creative customers along Rural Free Delivery routes around the nation who personalize their mailboxes. The dedicated art historians of this minor genre of Americana are two Rhode Island anthropologists, William and Sarah Turnbaugh. They are tracking down the boxes to record them before they disappear from the American landscape.

The legend of the Titanic disaster has been plumbed, plundered and presented in 3-D, but the ship that famously sank 100 years ago today in the North Atlantic has shown remarkable tenacity in its grip on popular imagination. Some argue about what keeps the tale of the Titanic sailing . Is it the money? The 1997 movie, James Cameron's film , depicting the interrupted journey of the British passenger liner from Southampton, England, to New York, certainly had something to do with it. "Titanic" burned dramatic images into the collective conscience.