Free B Gee

"Free B Gee" is the nickname I'm going to assign my credit card. Never thought I'd be nicknaming a charge card, but the Pony Express asked me to do it. Sure, I've nicknamed cars, uncooperative major home appliances, toy bison and armadillos, but not My Buddy Visa. If you sign in at the USPS site to order stamps delivered to your mailbox, you'd better have a nickname ready for your Discover!

After I got all charged up about the new motorcycle postage stamps, I went to the USPS website to look at all the commemorative releases for 2006. The motorcycles are not even the grooviest! That title would belong to the August 24th release of Gee's Bend quilt stamps, photographs of ten quilts created between circa 1940 and 2001 by African-American women in Gee's Bend, Alabama.



Ben Franklin is getting some handsome new stamps, too. I'm squinting into my crystal ball, but I can't see any members of the current administration being honored with commemorative issues in 2206.



B. FREE FRANKLIN, POSTMASTER

Benjamin Franklin was vital to the organization of the American postal system, serving as postmaster of Philadelphia and a deputy postmaster for the American colonies before being appointed postmaster general by the Continental Congress in 1775. He marked postage-free letters with his unique personal signature: "B. Free Franklin."