News & Announcements

Martin Oakes Wins Silver Medal for Comprehensive Maps Exhibit

Martin Oakes, Silver Medal, ATA-NTSS 2011-06

A new exhibit by Society journal editor Martin Oakes, entitled “Have You Read a Map Lately?” received a Silver Medal at the National Topical Stamp Show (NTSS) held in Milwaukee, WI, USA in late June 2011. The NTSS is the large annual meeting of the American Topical Association (ATA) and featured many exhibits and dealers. Martin’s exhibit also received the Women Exhibitors Medal given to the exhibit that has the highest potential to develop into a gold medal winner. Martin’s exhibit contained 160 pages spread across 10 frames. The comprehensive exhibit covered the entire range of maps on stamps from latitude and longitude to map projections to maps featuring explorers and exploration. Martin will make some scans of his exhibit and a link will be available in the near future.
[ Congratulations Martin! Next time we hear about this, you will have won a gold medal! This is also a good opportunity to encourage other members who may have exhibited in the past and would like to show scans of their exhibits online. The Society can provide online storage for scans of the exhibit. Please contact Martin or the web admin if you are interested in showing an exhibit on the Society’s web site. –web admin ]

Appointment of New CartoPhilatelic Society Officers (Spring 2011)

The CartoPhilatelic Society is happy to announce that two of the remaining vacant appointed positions were filled earlier this Spring.

Secretary

We are please to welcome Ms. Marybeth Sulkowski who has recently volunteered to become our Society’s secretary, a vacancy created when longtime Secretary/Treasurer Alf Jordan “retired.” Marybeth has collected stamps for many years, beginning at age nine for a Girl Scout project. She now collects stamps from Italy, the US, Canada, Greece, New Zealand and Poland, as well as naval first day covers (in addition to map stamps!). In addition to the CartoPhilatelic Society Marybeth is a member of the APS, the Rhode Island Philatelic Society, the Universal Ship Cancellation Society, and the Washington Map Society. Marybeth will be the point of contact for those seeking information about the Society. She will also maintain the membership list. All notices of change of postal or email addresses should be sent to Marybeth.

Representative at Large

We are also pleased to announce that long time member Mr. Phil Coop has recently volunteered to become our Society’s Representative at Large, a position that has been vacant since Ed Vallery accepted the Treasurer position. Phil began collecting maps on stamps in the 1960’s and is especially interested in Panama #8-13, including reissues, perf and color variations, covers and fakes of those issues. In addition to philately, Phil is a member of the local business community, and participates with his wife in endurance horseback riding events around the world.

The Society is happy to have both Marybeth and Phil on board.

New Members

We also welcome a number of new members this Spring and we look forward to getting acquainted with you all.

The revised Officers for the CartoPhilatelic Society for the term 2010-2013 are as follows:

Martin Oakes will continue as Editor of The New CartoPhilatelist and David Wolfersberger will continue as Checklist Editor.

Distribution News About The New CartoPhilatelist Journal

Digital Edition

A secure web page has been setup for downloading the current issue of the Journal and digital subscribers have that option instead of receiving it as an email attachment. Some of the digital subscribers were having problems receiving the email with such a large attachment, so this download page will solve that problem. Our Editor, Martin Oakes has contacted all of the members using email to verify their contact information, and record their options for receiving the digital edition.

Hardcopy Edition

Over the past couple of months the Officers have been investigating the use of a Print On Demand (POD) service to print the Journal for the hardcopy subscribers. During the summer we made a test printing of a sample issue using a new self-publishing web service from HP called MagCloud. MagCloud enabled us to create a commercial quality Journal, printed on demand with no up-front costs or minimum print runs. Its a fascinating service with a very easy to use interface. Other philatelic societies should definitely give it a try.

The officers were happy with the printing quality and production costs and wanted to give the hardcopy subscribers an opportunity to see an issue printed by MagCloud and receive their comments. Please send your comments to the Editor.

“We have been examining such options for a few months and the Officers feel that outsourcing the production of the Journal using a POD service is a win-win situation for both the hardcopy subscribers and also the Society,” said President David Wolfersberger. “We are sure you will be very happy with the printing quality and production of the MagCloud issue. When some of our digital subscribers see the quality of the new printing, they may want to change back to the hardcopy subscription plan!”

The October 2010 issue of TNCP has been printed by MagCloud. Our Editor, Martin Oakes, is doing the shipping of the issues to hardcopy subscribers the first few days of October. We are also considering additional options to make back issues available on MagCloud and more information will be announced later.

Closed Album: Lillian Kent

Closed Album: Lillian Kent  2009-06

Lillian Kent

I was saddened to learn that Lillian Kent, long time Society member and Secretary/Treasurer Emeritus had passed away on June 18, 2009 at the age of 91.  Ms. Kent was born in Johnstown, Pennsylvania in 1917.  Lillian was active in the Society for many years, and I am sure that many of our veteran members will remember her activities and contributions to the CartoPhilatelists.

“I remember Lillian — she was a geography teacher in Lowell , MA at that time.  She had a special interest in polar maps,” wrote Society Treasurer Ed Vallery, “she sent me my first map stamps, and from then on, I was hooked on cartophilately.”

President Emeritus Miklos Pinther wrote, “Lillian and I became officers (treasurer & president) about the same time, in the beginning of 1986.  Unfortunately, we never had a chance to meet personally, but of course, we corresponded and spoke on the phone frequently, dealing with Society matters.  I knew she was a geographer who had assumed a bookkeeping job with a travel agency after her retirement.  She did an excellent job as a treasurer and wrote several very fine articles for our journal. She impressed me as a modest person who meticulously carried out her tasks, someone who always showed great civility. I remember that Lillian was quite unhappy when the Society had to suspend its operations.   I am sure she felt very gratified that she was an important connection to resurrecting our activities.”

As Miklos mentioned, Lillian carried on after the Society became dormant in 1995.  She continued to compile new issues checklists which she graciously shared with me when I first began to update the Maps on Stamps Checklist.  The updating work Lillian had done on the new issues saved much time, and eliminated the need to go back and cover those several years while the Society was inactive.  She also maintained the funds remaining in the account, so we were able to have some “money in the bank” when the Society was restarted.

Our thanks go out to Ms. Kent for all of her contributions over the years to the CartoPhilatelic Society, and our sympathy to her son, Michael.