June 6, 2022
We had 10 people participate in our June club meeting—including Jeannie Smith, a previous club member who has returned to our area from Maine. She brought ice cream, cupcakes and other treats for the participants. We did introductions all the way around with each person identifying what they are currently working on in their philatelic endeavors. We then got into an open discussion on how we identify what country a stamp originates from and reference material we may use to support doing that. Reference material ranged from an old Whitman Stamp Identifier text through the internet. Googling it was brought up with a warning that what you find presented on the internet may in fact not be correct. I know that comes as a surprise to everyone (being facetious) but amazingly it was to some of my students in the Nuclear Technology Program at CBC when I told them that. A blessing we have today is the amount of information that is readily available for us to use through the internet. A potential curse associated with that is the lack of teaching and mentoring students (and therefore, the current generations of younger adults) receive in the art of critical thinking. When information is provided through unreviewed/unrefereed media of any form it is up to the individual to judge the quality of it through critical thinking.
Some examples of references used were passed around for review. Jerry Johnson presented a handout showing how he goes about identifying the markings found on postal history items (covers). Lawrence Clay and Mike Monahan presented examples of fiscal or revenue stamps and we discussed the difficulty of identifying this material because it is so similar to postal material. We went on to talk about special catalogs that are available for the fiscal/revenue material from some countries.
After a little more discussion about potential topics for future monthly meetings and upcoming events in July and August, we called it an evening.
Joe Voice, President
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