Stamps

As I understand it, my Dad started a stamp collection as a young kid to get a Boy Scout badge. He was into it for a while past his scouting days and eventually kept his albums in a closet in our house. As a kid myself, what I saw of his "collecting" was watching him read the mail when he came home from the office everyday, and if there were any commemorative stamps on the envelopes, he'd cut them out and place them in a box upstairs. While in St. Lucia, I also started saving the stamps I received from fellow Peace Corps volunteers in the West Indies - mostly because they were so unique! Some time after my Dad died, I took the contents of his stamp box home with me to Maryland. A few years after we settled here, I brought back the old albums he started as a kid and put them in my closet. I still save the stamps I like and have to thank my family who indulge me in this with mail from home (and also don't mind when I go through their mail and cut up their envelopes!!). The other day I realized my "box of stamps" - a drawer near the kitchen - is getting pretty full. A partial shot of my "collecting" is above.