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Cloudscapes
Fri Nov 05, 2004
Listen in RealAudio 
Cloudscapes, coming up on The Weather Notebook.
On October 4th, at the Blue Hill Observatory, outside of Boston, representatives from the Postal Service, the National Weather Service, the Weather Channel, and other agencies gathered for the release of fifteen cloud set of stamps, called “Cloudscapes.” Hi, I’m Bryan Yeaton for The Weather Notebook.
Bob Cannon is US Postal Service Public Affairs Manager for Massachusetts. I asked him: why clouds?
Stamps are issued for a number of different reasons. If there’s any common theme, basically. Generally we like to issue stamps on a subject that has not been touched on before; clouds and the sky has really not appeared on stamps before to my knowledge.
The Post Office releases many new stamps in the course of a year, but according to Cannon, these stamps are a bit more special: We’re very excited about this—there’s a reason this stamp was picked to be the official stamp of National Stamp Collecting Month.
The image on each of the fifteen stamps was taken by a different photographer: from stratus opacus (low, obscuring clouds) to cumuluonimbus incus (run-for-cover clouds). They were taken as far back as, like, 1988, and some as recently as last year.
B: So, what’s the significance of the folks coming here and getting a stamp cancelled on the first day?
It’s a collector’s item. It bears a special significance to have “first day of issue” cancellation. They almost always increase in value.
B: So, when I am 84, I can sell this and make some retirement money?
Somebody told me one time that the two things that always go up in value: stamps and oriental rugs.
Yeah, but an oriental rug can’t get your greeting card out to Seattle. I’m sticking with the stamps. The Weather Notebook is a program of the Mount Washington Observatory, funded by Subaru of America. Connect to Cloudscapes information at our website: www.weathernotebook.org.
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