On the death of an old acquaintance...

Quite by accident, I learned last night of the death of Walter K., who was the best friend of a close friend of mine from my working-in-the-USSR years. Galina and I visited Walter and his wife a few times shortly after Galina was allowed to leave the USSR after our marriage, and I still remember his warm smile and easygoing manner.

Though we had a number of friends in common, we never developed a close friendship with Walter and his wife, mostly because we moved away from New York, to Florida, and regrettably, I never kept in touch.

I just got back from our cluster mailbox, where I deposited my letter of condolence in the "Outgoing Mail" slot. I don't send a lot of snailmail, and when I do, it usually involves a trip to the post office, so slipping an envelope into that slot felt strange. For a moment, I imagined the slot fed a shredder, which probably represents the germ of a short story, but I digress...

I wrote my letter out in longhand, and though the words clearly conveyed my meaning, the act of writing something longer than a brief "to-do" description in my BulletJournal made me realize that, frankly, my longhand needs work. As I sealed the envelope, it occurred to me the enclosed letter may convey the idea it was written by a person of frail hand (not the case), but I put the thought aside, because le mieux est l'ennemi du bien, and anyway, I may be judging myself a bit severely in this department.

That said, I think what I need to do to ameliorate this state of affairs is to regularly write some serious longhand (in terms of penmanship, not content).

Back to work!

Memento mori...

Have I mentioned how much I despise the Scott catalog?

Different philatelic catalogs offer different features (or bugs, if you choose to view them in that light).

On the plus side, it's pretty easy to track classic French definitives in the Scott catalog, because they're all bunched together, regardless of when a particular stamp was issued. For example, Scott numbers 138 through 154 represent stamps displaying la Semeuse (the Sower) that were issued between 1903 and 1938. My two French catalogs (Yvert & Tellier and Maury) show (and number) said stamps by the year of issue, which can be frustrating when stamps of the same design (and sometimes, the same denomination, but different color) were issued years apart. (The Y&T catalog makes up for this with a section at the front of the catalog that acts as a visual aid, showing images and associated catalog numbers of stamps arranged in ascending order of the printed denominations. By contrast, the Maury catalog just assumes you're smart—or experienced—enough to figure this out on your own.)

Hovever, one aspect of the Scott catalog that really annoys me is how "semi-postal" stamps are segregated from the listing of definitives and commemoratives. (A semi-postal stamp is sold for its face value plus a surcharge that is collected to fund a purpose postal authorities consider worthy. The United States has actually issued a few such stamps—for 9/11 and breast cancer research, for example—but the designs do not actually show the cost breakdown. By contrast, France Scott No. B84, issued to benefit the children of the unemployed, clearly states a face value of 95 centimes plus a 35-centimes surcharge.)

However, the thing that really irks me about the Scott catalog is the reduced reliance on stamp illustrations, which play merry havoc with visually oriented users like me. I just spent ten minutes trying to find the entry for a stamp issued in 1938 to commemorate the discovery of radium because I could not find an illustration of the stamp in either the definitive/commemorative section or the semi-postal section. Even after I got up to take a good look at the stamp to confirm that it was a semi-postal (so I could focus where to direct my attention), I could not find it in the Scott catalog, at least not by its illustration.


Only after I consulted the catalog index was I able to find a catalog value for the stamp (as it turns out, $21 in mint-never-hinged condition), but what I found vexing was the lack of illustration and only the description "Curie issue—Common design type" for the stamp, which indicates that the same design was used for stamps issued in several French colonies.

All that being said, the Scott catalog remains valuable on a couple of counts. First, it is (I believe) dated 2016—I cannot tell for sure because I bought the electronic version from the publisher—so it is relatively current, as my Y&T and Maury catalogs date from 2009, and second, the prices are a bit more realistic (read: lower) than the somewhat inflated prices quoted in the French catalogs. This is very likely due to the fact that the French catalogs are published by folks that'd be more than happy to sell you stamps. (That same radium-discovery semi-postal, for example, is quoted in Y&T at €27, which is about the same price quoted by Maury.)

Ah, well. I suppose there is nothing to do but get used to it (unless I am prepared to compile my own catalog, which ain't gonna happen, let me tell you!).

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My thoughts keep returning to Walter K. His passing has affected me more than I realize. I'm trying to cheer myself up with some oddball pieces of music.