Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.life From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: Madonna gets by on a loophole Date: Sat, 31 Oct 92 14:00:15 EST Message-ID: \SE B;LIFE;TIME OUT;THE STAMP AND COIN EXCHANGE \SS (WS) \HD Madonna gets by on a loophole \BY Peter M. Rexford \CR ASSOCIATED PRESS DATAFEATURES I tend to be an ardent Christmas traditionalist. That means I lean toward crackling fires, ornaments and decorations with New England overtones, and snow falling outside a bay window. While it may be too soon for anyone to begin serious preparations for the 1992 Christmas season, this week the U.S. Postal Service got the ball rolling with its annual offering of Christmas stamps. Each year two distinctive styles of Yuletide stamps are produced. One style always features a classic portrait of the Madonna and child. A far cry from the pop Madonna on MTV, with her new book, "Sex," published just in time for the holidays, the original Madonna on the postage stamp includes the Christ child. While illustrations of religious themes are strictly prohibited from postal issues, the Postal Service uses a brilliant loophole by featuring a classic painting of the mother and child. Ergo, the stamp isn't religious but merely a depiction of a historically significant piece of fine art. They call it the "traditional" issue. This year's traditional stamp features a colorful reproduction of the painting "Madonna and Child with Saints" by Italian Renaissance artist Giovanni Bellini. The original painting is on display at the National Gallery of Art. The second style of stamp is considered the "contemporary" issue. Intended primarily for patrons who don't wish to include a religious theme on their envelopes, past contemporary stamps have included illustrations of snowmen, Santa and other nonreligious icons. This year, even the contemporary offering can be considered traditional. The four stamps on the block contain vintage pull toys, including a pony and rider, locomotive, steam engine and steamship. Toys such as those on the stamps are reflective of the far simpler Christmas holidays of the late 1800s. All five 1992 Christmas stamps bear the 29-cent denomination and are available at most post offices. First-day-of-issue cancels can be obtained by purchasing the stamps, affixing them singularly or in combination to a self-addressed envelope and mailing them to: Customer Affixed Envelopes, Traditional Christmas Stamp, Postmaster, 900 Brentwood Road NE, Washington, D.C. 20066-9991, or Customer Affixed Envelopes, Contemporary Christmas Stamp, Postmaster, 315 W. Pershing Road, Kansas City, Mo. 64108-9991. * * * If you've been to Boston and not visited the historic sites, you've definitely missed the real city. For more than a century, one of the most fantastic pieces of American history has been the USS Constitution, oldest commissioned warship in the U.S. Navy. Now the allure of the ship is even more compelling with the discovery of more than 160 historic coins that were carefully placed beneath the masts of the ship 195 years ago. Coins placed under a ship's mast date to Roman times, when shipwrights placed them there during construction to pay Charon, the ferryman who rowed the souls of sailors who died at sea across the river Styx. Although Charon is purely mythological, ship builders have continued to place coins under the masts even to this day. The oldest of the coins from the USS Constitution dates from the year 1797, the year the ship was launched. The coins removed from the ship, along with many other related historical artifacts, will be on display at the Constitution Museum in Boston for the next year while the ship undergoes reconditioning. This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM