Fun ways to increase revenue: Postcrossing results

In the last installment of our "Fun Ways to Increase Revenue" series, we put the spotlight on Postcrossing, which is a website that connects people across the world using postcards (to see our original post, click here).

Postcrossing's mission is to make it possible for members to "send a postcard and receive a postcard from a random person somewhere in the world."

Membership is free. Currently, there are almost 307,000 participants from 204 countries.

Postmarks was intrigued and decided to try it out.

In short, it has been a wonderful experience. So much fun! Here's how it has gone so far:

After signing up on the site, we requested and received the names and addresses of five members, which we immediately received via email. We were assigned people from Germany, the Netherlands, Taiwan, China, and Russia.

Since February was Black History Month and we are a postal organization, we decided to send everyone on our list postcards that featured Black Heritage Series stamps.

International postcard stamps cost $1.05 each.

As of yesterday, all of our postcards have arrived at their destinations and have been recorded on Postcrossing by the recipients.

People who send postcards write an assigned number on them, and when somebody receives that postcard, that person logs into Postcrossing and records the number so that the sender will get participation credit.

The last postcard of ours that arrived was to Russia. It traveled 5,757 miles. In total, our five postcards traveled 30, 606 miles.

Soon after our postcards began arriving at various points across the globe, we started receiving random postcards from around the world, too.

Three times so far, we have found a lovely surprise in our mailbox.

The three that we have received have come from people in Holland, the Netherlands, and Scotland.

The hand-written messages on all of them were lovely, as were the stamps from their countries.

As soon as we received each of these postcards, we logged into Postcrossing to verify our receipt by recording the assigned number.

In this picture, you can see on the top and side of the postcard what the number looks like.

Participating in this project has been so enjoyable that we're going to remain active in it, and we want to encourage you and your friends and family to do the same.

And the winner is...Carrollton Clerk Kim Spencer

Last month, Learning, Development and Diversity held a contest to encourage post offices across Alabama to promote Black History Month and the new John H. Johnson stamp. 

Here are the guidelines that were announced in L,D&D's online newsletter:

John H. Johnson, legendary publisher of Ebony, Jet, and other magazines, is being honored on a Black Heritage forever stamp. To increase revenue and have fun in the process, we are having a contest. The office with the most creative Black Heritage Stamp display will receive a prize. Displays will be judged on creativity and neatness. 

An impartial committee reviewed all of the entries, and they concluded that the winner is the Carrollton Post Office. 

Carrollton Postmaster Paul Lavender (l) presented Clerk Kim Spencer with a $25 gift card from L,D&D. Kim volunteered to design the winning board.

"I saw that the stamp was coming out and thought that it was a good idea," Kim said. "Many customers have said how nice it is, and I know that we've sold some stamps because of it."

While we were there to talk to Paul and Kim, we couldn't help but notice the New Deal mural that was on a nearby wall in the lobby. It is one of only 24 Alabama WPA/New Deal post office murals. Artist Stuart R. Purser painted "Farm Scene with Senator Bankhead" in 1943.

During the course of his long artistic career, Purser's disdain for injustices done to both people and animals was voiced in his work. Opposed to racial inequalities as well as the abuses of dog fighting, he received threats from the groups of people his paintings exposed.

In total, Purser painted four post office murals in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. To see them all and to learn more about him, click here.

After seeing the Carrollton mural, one might ask Who is Senator Bankhead, and why is he on a farm? 

Senator John H. Bankhead, Jr., was an Alabama senator from 1931 - 1946 who must not have aged gracefully because he is much better looking on Purser's mural than he is in this photograph to the left.

Bankhead had been responsible for securing funds for the Carrollton federal building/post office to be built and is primarily remembered for two things: his strong support of farmers, and his staunch opposition to civil rights.

The citizens of Carrollton selected Bankhead on a farm as the theme for their mural, but perhaps if artist Purser had known about the senator's racist views, he would have portrayed him in a less-pleasing manner.

Nonetheless, we're glad that we got to see him as depicted by Purser thanks to Kim and her big win. Congrats, and we hope to visit again soon.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Click on the picture for easier reading.

Fact or Fiction?

True or false?

Story 1: 

On the hunt for illegal narcotics being shipped via Express Mail, a Michigan man allegedly repeatedly entered a sorting facility, claimed to be a postal inspector, and walked out with dozens of parcels, many of which contained marijuana, investigators charge.

 

According to a criminal complaint filed yesterday in U.S. District Court in Detroit, Calvin Coolidge Wiggins, 31, said, “You got me” when questioned Saturday morning by federal agents who had arrested him outside the Priority Mail Center in Romulus.

Wiggins, an investigator reported, admitted that he “previously had been involved in mailing marijuana via USPS Express Mail and was tired of having the parcels seized.”

So he allegedly sought to seize the parcels of other drug traffickers.

A surveillance team spotted Wiggins entering the facility on March 3 and walking “towards the area of the plant where the Express Mail was being processed.” There, Wiggins was seen taking two parcels and placing them into a wheeled hamper.

Wiggins told federal agents that on “numerous occasions” he had gone to the Romulus facility and “posed as a Postal Inspector in order to steal Express Mail parcels which he believed contained controlled substances,” according to an affidavit sworn by a postal inspector.

Many of the pinched parcels “did contain Marijuana,” revealed Wiggins, who estimated that he had swiped between 40 and 50 Express Mail packages.

 The probe of the mail thefts began in January, when postal inspectors determined that multiple packages destined for the Detroit area went missing. Many of the parcels were characteristic of packages that, in the past, had been found to contain controlled substances.

Last month, a review of surveillance footage showed a black male suspect entering the Romulus plant on Saturday, February 11 and walking out with eight packages ranging in weight from two to 28 pounds. The swiped parcels “all originated from known narcotic source areas,” noted Postal Inspector Edmond Rose.

Anticipating that the suspect would return, federal agents Saturday staked out the Priority Mail Center, where they allegedly caught Wiggins in the act.

Wiggins was named in a two-count felony complaint charging him with theft of mail and impersonating a government employee. At a court appearance yesterday, a magistrate judge freed Wiggins on a $10,000 unsecured bond.

Story 2:

Kevin Glennon's Vikings, Vampires, and Mailmen is a novel about a secret government agency that exterminates the undead. The United States Vampire Service (USVS) is the pseudonym of a licensed contractor of the Postal Inspector’s Office, the police arm of the United States Postal Service.

When an outbreak of undead in Alabama threatens to become an epidemic, Chief Othniel O’Connor and his fistful of men have to stop it before more innocent lives are lost. The discovery of a strange, ancient Viking chamber compounds the problem, and the USVS is forced to reach out for help, only to discover that sometimes vampires aren’t the most malevolent force that must be defended against.

The book brings military tactics, action-adventure, and horror back to a genre that's been hijacked by high school romance and monsters who like wine tasting classes. This is a story about a fellowship of fighters and friends - of their loyalty, sacrifice, and determination to battle for good in the face of evil.

Click here to see the answers.

Mr. Zip bobbles in Bama

In January, the Western Area Postal blog, Your Postal Blog, held a contest. The question was, "What does the mail mean to you?" The best entries were awarded postal-related bobble heads.

Postmarks told our readers about the contest (you can see that post by clicking here), and what do you know, one of our Alabama co-workers was one of the lucky winners!

Birmingham Vehicle Maintenance Manager Jan Woodruff remembered when her children were little and how much they enjoyed receiving letters in the mail from their grandmother, so she asked her daughter, who is now an adult, to submit her story.

Here is what she wrote:


From as far back as I can remember, my grandmother would write me letters. She would use stickers to tell a story or ask me questions when I was too young to read and write .

I  remember asking my Mom if I received any letters when she went to the mail box and later checking  the mailbox myself.  I would be thrilled when I had mail.

My mom would read the letters to me, and when the word was replaced by a sticker, my mom would ask me what that was a sticker of. My grandmother would fill the pages with stickers.  Some examples were "When you and your Mom went outside to play, did you hear the birds singing?"  She would replace the word "play" with a sticker of children playing and birds with a sticker of birds, so we were reading the letter together. This is how I learned to read.

These letters are so special to me that I still have them tucked away in my baby book 30 years later.  My Grandmother died before I was 20 from complications of Alzheimer's. This makes the letters more precious to me because I can always go back and see how much time she spent writing me letters before she got sick. It puts a tear in my eye when I read these and think of the love my grandmother put into words and stickers.

Candace Woodruff-Craig

Cottage Hill trio set safety standard

In order to earn membership into the National Safety Council's One Million Mile Club,  employees who drives as a part of their duties must have 30 years of service or have driven 1,000,000 documented miles (of course) on the job without being involved in a preventable accident.

That's a long time and a lot of miles.

If you were to hop in your car and drive around Planet Earth -- if it were possible to leave your driveway and steer your car in a straight line for days until you eventually ended up back home again -- you would only travel about 25,000 miles.

So people who earn the Million Mile Award have driven accident-free the equivalent of 40 trips around the world.

What is even more amazing is that the Cottage Hill Post Office in the Mobile area recently recognized three Million Mile recipients. 

Pictured above from left to right: Manager Sharon Shelter and Million Mile Carriers Aaron Cook, Roger Stephenson, and Larry Taylor.

Other Cottage Hill employees also received Safe Driving recognition:

Everyone in the picture above received 5-year safe driver pins unless otherwise noted. Front row:  Bob Stock, Laurie Reynolds, Cynthia Tallant, Harvey Sumrall, Sheila Glover. Back row: Brian Gilley, Tommie Crews (3 years), Bob Tolson,  Donnie Simmons.

About her safety-conscious staff, Manager Sharon Shelter said, " These are great guys to work with here at Cottage Hill Station. They care about their jobs and work together to get the job done. I have really enjoyed my detail here as Manager, Customer Services, and would like to say congratulations to all of them,  especially to my Million Mile carriers,  for such a great accomplishment. Continue to be safe, and keep up the good work."

Birmingham Passport Fair on March 10, 2012

Click on the image for easier reading.