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A special cancellation was offered by the Louisville,
Kentucky, post office on June 20, 1998 to commemorate the 200th anniversary
of the institution.
As an Edgar Rice Burroughs fan out in the state of Washington,
I knew of something very important at the university and made two special
covers using the ERB stamps which were available at the time, a sabre-tooth
cat stamp from ERB’s Pellucidar series and a Geronimo stamp from the Legends
of the West series, along with a 3-cent stamp honoring the Kentucky sesquicentennial
of 1792-1942. I sent several of each to the Louisville post office and
they canceled them for me and sent them back.
Sabre-tooth cats roamed Pellucidar and ate whatever they
liked and Geronimo, aka Go-yat-thlay, was a character in ERB’s Apache novels.
I didn't have a computer when I made these covers. But
I did have an electric typewriter which allowed me to change fonts and
font sizes, so I set the type with that and used a photocopy machine to
put the type and art on sheets of typing paper, which I then folded into
envelopes.
The important thing at the U of L is, of course, the Edgar
Rice Burroughs Memorial Collection, started and overseen many years by
ERB Fandom’s own George McWhorter.
At an ERB gathering several years ago, I had the opportunity to give George
a couple of these covers so they’re there at the Ekstrom Library in the
archives somewhere.
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On June 24, 1999, I drove to Rainier, Washington, to
have a few covers canceled with that day’s date, commemorating the 52nd
anniversary of the flight of Kenneth Arnold, of Chehalis, Washington, around
Mt. Rainier, where he spotted the nine discs he described as flying saucers.
And thus, the world became alerted to the existence of these intruders
and alert citizens began scanning the skies and spotting them everywhere.
One even crashed in Roswell, New Mexico, not long afterward, in July of
1947, although the government denies it to this day.
Since John Carter eventually learned how to transport
solid objects from Barsoom to Earth, it is also speculated that the aircraft
spotted by Arnold may have actually been Martian fliers, which Carter –
perhaps through the aid of Ras Thavas – had been able to transport to Earth
for reconnaissance forays.
For this cover, I made a sketch of what it may have been
like for Arnold and franked the cover with a 3-cent Mr. Rainier National
Park stamp, along with a 32-cent stamp from the Space Discovery series
issued by the U.S. Postal Service in 1998.
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ERB fan and mail art maven Keith Keith
O'Brien did this illustration of Tarzan and mailed it to me on June 28,
2005. Keith has done a few other Tarzans as well.
The Lion King stamp for the Disney Friendship series
issued that year proved a good match for this cover.
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Tigers prowl on this large-size cover, mailed July 2,
2018, by Darlene, once known by the mail art name of “Tarzana Savannah”
when she lived in Tarzana. Darlene is an artist who loves to draw animals
and also make “Local post stamps” to put on her covers, along with real
stamps, such as this Tiger Cub stamp. This stamp was a “semi-postal,” sold
for more than its value in postage, with the extra money donated to funds
aimed at saving endangered species.
Originally issued Sept. 20, 2011, this semipostal, depicting
an Amur tiger cub, was removed from sale Dec. 31, 2013, and was returned
to sale in October 2014. Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, had pushed the legislation
to continue sales of the semipostal at post offices nationwide through
Dec. 31, 2018.
According to statistics from the U.S. Postal Service,
more than 49.5 million of the stamps were sold, raising more than $5.5
million for multinational species conservation.
The stamp initially sold for 55¢ from September 2011
through Dec. 31, 2013, and at that time 25 million had been sold. When
it was returned to sale in 2014, it sold for 60¢, including an 11¢
surtax above the then-49¢ first-class letter rate.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which administers
the surtax collected from sales of the Save Vanishing Species stamp, reports
that 99 projects in 35 countries have been funded to help protect highly
threatened species
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The DC Comics stamps issued July 20,
2006, provided yet another opportunity to put Tarzan on a cover. Tarzan,
of course, also became a DC character for awhile, but was not among the
longtime DC-created heroes who were selected to grace the stamp images
issued that year. But, no matter, as far as the cover-maker is concerned.
Since DC had published some limited series involving Tarzan’s team-up with
both Batman and Superman, the covers of some of those comics were a logical
choice to use with the Superman and Batman stamps.
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Every now and then, just for a change
of pace, Tarzan or Korak like to dive down into the ocean to do battle
with a shark. Fortunately, these vivid action scenes have been preserved
for us on the canvases of a variety of artists and found their way onto
covers of comics books or other media.
"Other media" includes postal covers, since I used some
of these images on envelopes for the first-day-of-issue cancellation for
the shark stamps issued by the USPS July 26, 2017.
