The US Postal Service (USPS) has issued a Harry Potter series of stamps.

There is an advisory committee that approves new stamp designs, but the USPS bypassed them, and they're ticked. One of the former members said:

“Harry Potter is not American. It’s foreign, and it’s so blatantly commercial it’s off the charts,” John Hotchner, former president of the American Philatelic Society, and a member of the advisory committee for 12 years until 2010, told the Post. “The Postal Service knows what will sell, but that’s not what stamps ought to be about. Things that don’t sell so well are part of the American story.”

American story: ugly stamps nobody cares about. Not that I care about Harry Potter and will buy anything but.

Don't forget my previous post about stamps: Stamping Out Childhood Obesity. I have to admit that the stamps that celebrate some obscure person have led me to do some research to learn who they were and why they deserved a stamp. So they can serve an educational function.

If you've ever gotten a mailed letter from me, most likely it had a bunch of old stamps on it making up the postage. It's kind of fun looking at these old issues from 20 or more years ago. Some of them are hard to part with, and of course you'll never know the angst that went into deciding to use that Toonerville Trolley or Alfred Hitchcock or Computers stamp.

Right now, I'm working my way through a fifteen cent series encouraging people to mail more letters: "letters instruct us, letters create memories, letters lift spirits, etc." And some of the stamps in that series say "P.S. write soon!" I don't like to use those, because I know darn well most of the people I'm writing to will never write, much less soon.