True Value (cont.)

Perhaps the worst development of all is the virtual disappearance of hobbies for children. Sometimes, I believe that I learned more from stamp collecting than from any other single thing that I did as a child. To this day, my favorite category in trivia games is geography. I learned more about the world from stamps than I ever did from geography books in school. When I got a new stamp from some unknown or far away place, I would immediately look that place up in the dictionary or encyclopedia. I would learn its location, population, size, neighboring countries, crops, products, history, capital, leader or ruler, history and any other facts that I could find. The beginning stamp albums of the day sometimes simplified my task by summarizing this information and by providing pictures of the national flag and coat of arms. After learning what I could about the country, I mounted my new found treasures within the album. I learned that Thailand was once Siam, that Iran was Persia, and that, in 1955, the sun really never did set on the British Empire. Figure 1, Tom Sawyer and World Stamps, pictures a copy of Mark Twain’s novel "Tom Sawyer" with stamps of Persia (Iran), Thailand (Siam), and the British Commonwealth laying on top of the book.

Figure 1.  Tom Sawyer and World Stamps