The new Star Trek stamps: THEY didn't need a petition!

The news today about the four Star Trek stamps for the 50th anniversary next year is welcome, fun news. I love the crisp look by designers The Heads of State, though with a definite Prime TOS  tilt to them… which is, after all, appropriate for the 1966 anniversary. I didn't see a first day of issue listed anywhere, yet, but… Sept. 8, anyone?

And somehow, it is SO perfect that the sight of beaming, a Vulcan salute, the Big E and the delta shield patch with warp stars … should all be emblazoned with FOREVER in all caps.

(Yes, I know that the unending label is about the postage rate. Still,  it's awesome.)




We've come a long way since the USPS finally recognized Star Trek with a stamp, albeit through the backdoor via the 1960s edition of the "Celebrate the Century" millenium-looking decade by decade special stamp sheets, in 1999 (at right). It was a hoot to deal with helping announce the release of that issue in the old Communicator as the official source. Of course, nowadays the Postral Service is hip to giving pop-culturists (and promotion-cooperative media) exactly the nostalgia they crave on a dwindling communication art form.

What's almost forgotten now is that  Bill Kraft, a stamp collector from  Sauk Rapids, Minn., led a lonely, 17-year petition campaign for a Star Trek stamp all through the '70s, '80s and into the '90s to help that along—i.e., on paper with stamps!—way before The Big Bang Theory and the geek revolution made it mainstream. As both a Trek fan and a stamp collector, *I* was a party to that petition as well… and I'm so glad Bill shared the celebrity support letters and the saga of that effort in his book, Maybe We Should Get God to Write a Letter…. still available on Amazon.

How fitting that when news broke about the new bright and shiny pop-art Trek stamps for 2016, I got this short email from Bill about the story:

"I'm assuming it is in conjunction with Trek's 50th anniversary. I didn't even have to campaign this time."

We do still have our Star Trek campaigns to wage, Bill. It's just that commemorative stamps are not one of them! 

STV: Need your lost Vegas Trek wedding plaque?

We finally get back on track with our vidchats here—and while this was recorded a while back, the project is very much still in play:

Anyone who got married from 1998-2004 at the late, great Star Trek: The Experience at the old Las Vegas Hilton may not realize it, but there's an historical marker of their wedding they may not even be aware of.

And now, local fan J. Marty Dormany has rescued those markers—small plaques with each couple's name and wedding date that were once affixed to a plaque that hung at the venue—and is trying to reunite each couple with their piece of Trek history.  Just give a listen and learn how:





FYI: Portal 47 members got to view this video up to 72 hours early before it went public—one feature of their deep-dive Trekland access.