These are rough notes, typed as the meeting was underway. They will be cleaned up later, and individual pages created for the new issues. -LdeV  [USPS notes added further down.]

Quarter 1:

Year of the Monkey date and city confirmed.

Sarah Vaughn March 29 Newark, NJ

Quarter 2 dates tentative

Shirley Temple Legends of Hollywood, FDOI TBD  painting by Tim O’Brien based on 193

New Eid Greetings stamp, horiz format, purple background

For World Stamp Show:

Stamp Act, previously revealed

Views of Our Planets and Pluto Explored souvenir sheet. (2 different issues)

2 souvenir sheets, only sold together, 12 stamps each, Similar to earlier designs. One pane is red, one is blue. Intaglio; earlier stamps were offset.

3rd Quarter:

Soda Fountain Favorites

Star Trek 50th anniversary, 4 stamps

first Halloween stamps: Jack O’Lanterns

Pickup Trucksi

Quarter 4:

More to come on the holidays; contemporary design still in development

Nativity

Florentine Madonna & Child

New Hanukkah design

New Kwanzaa stamp, 2016 is 50th anniversary

Mail Use:

Jan. 17, Washington, no ceremony, Columbia River Gorge Priority Express

Jan. 17 Washington, no ceremony, La Cueva del Indio (Puerto Rico) Priority Mail

New flag, Washington, no ceremony, January

10¢ Pears, Washington, no ceremony, January

Global is The Moon, February

1¢ Apple, no date or place

5¢ Grapes, no date or place

Star Quilts, presort, 2 designs, no date or place yet (Quilts made by Amish)

Q&A:

Envelopes for Priority Mail but not Express. (asked by Marty Frankevicz of Scott Publishing)

Asked by Wayne Youngblood: Star Trek issue never mentions the name. Licensing issue? No, says Mary-Anne Penner. “Space The Final Frontier” will be on the full pane’s selvage. Bill Gicher, USPS: The images are well-known enough that the name didn’t need to be stated.

(me) SF Authors? No, not in this year.

-0-

From the USPS:

Quarter 2
Legends of Hollywood: Shirley Temple (1 design)
FDOI: Information to come.
Format: Pane of 20

With the 20th stamp in the Legends of Hollywood series, the U.S. Postal Service® honors actress and diplomat Shirley Temple Black (1928–2014).

As a child, Temple was the most famous film star in the world.

As an adult, Black had a distinguished career in diplomacy, serving as a delegate to the United Nations, U.S. ambassador to Ghana and Czechoslovakia, and U.S. Chief of Protocol.

She received the Kennedy Center Honors in 1998 and a lifetime achievement award from the Screen Actors Guild in 2006.

The stamp art features a painting by Tim O’Brien based on a 1935 still image from Curly Top, one of her iconic movie roles. The selvage feature a publicity photo from the 1933 short film Managed Money.

Pets
Artist: Tim O’Brien
Art Director: Ethel Kessler
Pets (20 designs)
FDOI: Information to come.
Format: Booklet of 20
This issuance celebrates America’s love of pets.
The stamp art for the Pets booklet features 20 existing photographs. Each photograph represents an animal we love from these groups: puppies, betta fish, iguanas, hamsters, goldfish, parrots, guinea pigs, tortoises, rabbits, kittens, corn snakes, mice, hermit crabs, chinchillas, gerbils, dogs, parakeets, horses, cats, and geckos.
Existing Photos: Eric Isselée
Art Director: Derry Noyes

Indiana Statehood (1 design)
FDOI: Information to come.
Format: Pane of 20

This stamp celebrates the 200th anniversary of Indiana’s statehood. Known as the Hoosier State, Indiana became the 19th state of the Union on December 11, 1816. Indiana has often been considered the heartland of America. Its fertile soil has long made it ideal for crops like corn, which remains a staple of Indiana’s agricultural economy. The state is also known for the Indianapolis 500 and its devotion to the game of basketball.

The stamp features a contemplative photograph of the expansive cornfields near Milford, Indiana, at sunset. The photographer, Michael Matti, grew up in Milford.

Existing Photo: Michael Matti
Art Director: Derry Noyes

EID Greetings (1 design)
FDOI: Information to come.
Format: Pane of 20

Featuring a design that evokes centuries of tradition, this stamp commemorates the two most important festivals—or eids—in the Islamic calendar: Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha. The gold-colored calligraphy on this stamp was created by world-renowned calligrapher Mohamed Zakariya of Arlington, Virginia.

The script reads Eidukum mubarak, “May your Eid be bountiful (or blessed).” The calligraphy on previous Eid stamps issued by the U.S. Postal Service® has read Eid mubarak, “may the religious holiday be blessed,” with the “your” implied, but Zakariya added the word to this new stamp to give the text more body within a horizontal frame.

“The script is the same as on the previous stamps, but elongated and simplified,” says Zakariya, who explains that he used a script known in Arabic as thuluth and in Turkish as sulus, “the choice script for a complex composition due to its open proportions and sense of balance.”

To the right of the script, a stylized olive branch rendered in gold carries connotations of abundance, family, hospitality, and peace. The background color is a rich purple.

As he has with all previous Eid stamps, Zakariya employed traditional methods and instruments to create this design. He used homemade black ink, and his pens were crafted from seasoned reeds from the Near East and Japanese bamboo from Hawaii. The paper was specially prepared with a coating of starch and three coats of alum and egg-white varnish, then burnished with an agate stone and aged for more than a year. The black-and-white design was then colorized by computer.

Art Director: Ethel Kessler

Issues at World Stamp Show-NY 2016:

Repeal of the Stamp Act, 1776 (1 design)
FDOI: May at the World Stamp Show – NYC 2016, Jacob Javitz Center
Format: Pane of 10

This issuance commemorates the 250th anniversary of the repeal of the Stamp Act, British legislation that galvanized and united the American colonies and set them on a path toward revolution. The act required payment of a tax on a wide array of paper materials, such as newspapers, pamphlets, legal documents, licenses, mortgages, contracts, and bills of sale. A stamp would be embossed on these papers to indicate payment.

The stamp art depicts a crowd gathered around a “liberty tree” to celebrate the repeal of the Stamp Act. The selvage area displays a proof print of a one-penny revenue stamp and includes a famous slogan from the era: “Taxation without representation is tyranny.” Verso text appears on the back of the pane.

Artist: Greg Harlin
Art Director: Antonio Alcalá

Views of Our Planets (8 designs)
FDOI: May at the World Stamp Show – NYC 2016, Jacob Javits Center
Format: Pane of 16

With this pane of 16 stamps, the U.S. Postal Service® showcases some of the more visually compelling full-disk images of the planets obtained during this era. Eight new colorful Forever® stamps, each shown twice, feature Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

Some show the planet’s “true” color—what we might see with our own eyes if traveling through space. Others use colors to represent and visualize certain features of a planet based on imaging data.
Still others use the near-infrared spectrum to show things that cannot be seen by the human eye in visible light.

The verso text explains what these images reveal and identifies the spacecrafts and powerful telescopes that helped obtain them.
Designer and Art Director: Antonio Alcalá

Pluto Explored! (2 designs)
FDOI: May at the World Stamp Show – NYC 2016, Jacob Javitz Center
Format: Souvenir Sheet of 4

With this issuance, the U.S. Postal Service® recognizes the history-making first reconnaissance of Pluto in
2015 by NASA’s New Horizons mission.

This souvenir sheet contains two new stamps (each appear twice on the sheet). The first stamp shows an artist’s rendering of the New Horizons spacecraft. The second shows the spacecraft’s striking image of Pluto taken near closest approach.

The view—which is color-enhanced to highlight surface texture and composition—is a composite of four images from New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), combined with color data from the imaging instrument Ralph. It clearly reveals the now-famous heart-shaped feature.

Designer and Art Director: Antonio Alcalá

World Stamp Show-NY 2016 commemorative sheets (2 designs on 2 panes)
FDOI: May at the World Stamp Show – NYC 2016, Jacob Javitz Center
Format: Two Panes of 12

This souvenir sheet commemorates the decennial World Stamp Show that will be held from May 28 to June 4, 2016, at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York City. The design will be based on the two stamps issued in 2015 to announce the upcoming World Stamp Show-NY 2016 and inviting philatelists and amateur stamp enthusiasts to attend. Printed in Intaglio.

Designer: Michael Dyer and Antonio Alcalá
Art Director: Antonio Alcalá

Quarter 3
Jaime Escalante (1 design)
FDOI: Information to come.
Format: Pane of 20

Beloved and charismatic California educator Jaime Escalante (1930–2010) used unconventional methods to inspire his inner-city students not only to learn calculus but also to pass Advanced Placement tests in the subject. With his colleagues at Garfield High School in East Los Angeles, he proved that students judged to be “unteachable” could master even the most difficult subject.
The stamp art features Escalante in a digital illustration that resembles an oil painting. The illustration is based on a 2005 photograph taken by Jaime W. Escalante, in a classroom where his father formerly taught.

Artist: Jason Seiler
Art Director: Greg Breeding

Soda Fountain Favorites (5 designs)
FDOI: Information to come.
Format: Booklet of 20

This issue celebrates soda fountain favorites—the cold, sweet treats beloved by people of all ages. [Note that the middle stamp is wider than the other 4. -LdeV]

This First-Class Mail® Forever® booklet of 20 features five different illustrations: a double-scoop ice cream cone, an egg cream, a banana split, a root beer float, and a hot fudge sundae. The geometric silver-toned patterns in the selvage and on the booklet cover evoke a classic chrome-accented soda fountain.

Art Director: Ethel Kessler
Illustrator: Nancy Stahl

Star Trek (4 designs)
FDOI: Information to come.
Format: Pane of 20

Celebrating the television show Star Trek on the 50th anniversary of its premiere, these four new stamps showcase four digital illustrations inspired by elements of the classic program:

• the Starship Enterprise inside the outline of a Starfleet insignia against a gold background,
• the silhouette of a crewman in a transporter against a red background,
• the silhouette of the Enterprise from above against a green background, and
• the Enterprise inside the outline of the Vulcan salute (Spock’s iconic hand gesture) against a blue background.

The words “SPACE…THE FINAL FRONTIER,” from Captain Kirk’s famous voice-over, appear beneath the stamps against a background of stars.
The designer of the stamps and the artist who created the artwork. was the project’s art director.
Art Director: Antonio Alcalá
Design Firm: Heads of State

Jack O’Lanterns (4 designs)
FDOI: Information to come.
Format: Pane of 20

In the spirit of Halloween, the U.S. Postal Service® issues these delightfully eerie stamps featuring photographs of four different jack-o’-lanterns.

These creatively carved pumpkins have been symbols of Halloween in the United States since the late 19th century, not long after celebrations of the holiday began here.

These stamps are the first Halloween-themed stamps to be issued by the U.S. Postal Service.

Art Director: Derry Noyes
Jack-O’-Lantern design and carving: Paul Montanari
Photographer: Sally Andersen-Bruce

Pickup Trucks (4 designs)
FDOI: Information to come.
Format: Booklet of 20

Celebrating the rugged and reliable work vehicles that Americans have driven for nearly a century, each of the four new stamps features one of the following iconic models:

• the 1938 International Harvester D-2,
• the 1948 Ford F-1,
• the 1953 Chevrolet, and
• the 1965 Ford F-100.

The strong, sturdy 1938 International Harvester D-2 had a distinct barrel-shaped grille and its elegant styling mirrored the look of luxury automobiles of the era.

The 1953 Chevrolet, featured large windshields that provided drivers with excellent visibility, a distinctive curvy grille that bulged in the middle, and a six-cylinder engine.

The 1948 Ford F-1 included features like the roomy “Million Dollar Cab,” a sharp horizontal five-bar grille, and a six- or eight-cylinder engine.

The 1965 Ford F-100 had a new grille that featured 18 small rectangular openings. It also featured what Ford dubbed “Twin-I-Beam” independent front suspension.

Art Director: Antonio Alcalá
Illustrator: Chris Lyons

Quarter 4
Nativity (1 design)
FDOI: Information to come.
Format: Pane of 20

The stamp art depicts a peaceful yet powerful image of the Holy Family silhouetted against a dawn sky. The baby Jesus lies in a straw-filled manger in the center of the picture with Mary kneeling to the right and Joseph standing to the left, holding a lantern. A bright star shines over the scene.

The Gospel of Luke relates how Mary and Joseph traveled to Bethlehem to register for the census decreed by the Roman emperor. The Gospel says: “And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.”

Art Director: Greg Breeding
Illustrator: Nancy Stahl

Florentine Madonna and Child (1 design)
FDOI: Information to come.
Format: Pane of 20

This Christmas stamp features a detail of Madonna and Child, a 15th-century tempera-on-panel painting in the Widener Collection at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The painting is dated to circa 1470, and its anonymous artist is known only as “a Follower of Fra Filippo Lippi and Pesellino.”

Art Director: William Gicker

Hanukkah (1 design)
FDOI: Information to come.
Format: Pane of 20

The 2016 Hanukkah stamp features a warm, elegant illustration of a holiday menorah in the window of a home.

Traditionally, the menorah is displayed in a doorway or window to proclaim the miracle of Hanukkah. The menorah is viewed as if from inside a room, looking through a window to the outside. The candles—one for each of the eight nights and days of Hanukkah, and the ninth, the shamash or “servant,” used to light the other candles—are a creamy white and have all been lit.

The artist added visual interest to the scene by highlighting the contrast between the hot candle flames and the cool snow, the vertical candles and the horizontal window frame, and the dark menorah with the brightly lit candles.

Art Director: Ethel Kessler
Artist: William Low

Kwanzaa (1 design)
FDOI: Information to come.
Format: Pane of 20

2016 marks the 50th anniversary of Kwanzaa.

The 2016 Kwanzaa stamp continues its tradition of honoring an annual holiday that celebrates African-American family, community, and culture with this vibrant new stamp design. Bold colors depict a young African-American woman as the embodiment of Africa. She wears a lavender dress with a collar of African design that also appears in her earring. In front of the woman sits a large purple bowl overflowing with fruits and vegetables, symbolizing the abundance of African first harvest celebrations that inspired the creation of Kwanzaa.

Artist Cynthia Saint James hand-sketched and then painted, using acrylic on canvas. Saint James also illustrated the first Kwanzaa stamp issued by the Postal Service in 1995.

Art Director: Greg Breeding

Mail Use

The Moon Global (1 design)
FDOI: January in Washington, DC (no ceremony)
Format: Pane of 10
This round stamp features a detailed photograph of the moon. Taken as the full moon rose over Fort Lauderdale, Florida, the image captures the brilliant surface of Earth’s only natural satellite. The selvage features a small tree line silhouetted against the night sky.

The moon has long had considerable impact on mankind. Its gravitational pull creates ocean tides and affects our planet’s motions. A full moon occurs approximately every 29.5 days when the moon is opposite the sun, with Earth between the two. From our planet, the visible surface of the moon appears fully illuminated and larger than anything else in the night sky. Since the rotation and orbit periods of the moon are the same, the same part of the moon is always seen from Earth.

Issued at the $1.20 price, this Global Forever® stamp can be used to mail a one-ounce letter to any country to which First-Class Mail International® service is available.

Art Director: William Gicker
Designer: Greg Breeding

US Flag (1 design)
FDOI: January in Washington, DC (no ceremony)
Format: Booklets of 10 and 20, Coils of 100

The American flag has long symbolized the strength and spirit of our nation.
This U.S. Flag First-Class Mail® Forever® stamp features a detail of Emmanuel Faure’s vivid photograph of a flag waving against the background of a blue sky.

Art Director: Terrence W. McCaffrey
Designer: Greg Breeding

Apples 1-Cent (1 design)
FDOI: Information to come.
Format: Information to come.

In 2016, the U.S. Postal Service® will issue a new one-cent definitive stamp featuring Albemarle Pippin Apples.
The stamp design features two apples on a branch surrounded by leaves.

Art Director: Derry Noyes
Illustrator: John Burgoyne. Burgoyne used pen and ink and watercolor to produce the original art.

Grapes 5-Cent (1 design)
FDOI: Information to come.
Format: Information to come.

In 2016, the U.S. Postal Service® will issue a new five-cent definitive stamp featuring two clusters of deep-purple Pinot noir grapes growing on vines among several green leaves.
Art Director: Derry Noyes
Illustrator: John Burgoyne. Burgoyne used pen and ink and watercolor to produce the original art.

Pears 10-Cent (1 design)
FDOI: January in Washington, DC (no ceremony)
Format: Information to come.
In 2016, the U.S. Postal Service® will issue a new ten-cent definitive stamp featuring two red pears on a white background.

Art Director: Derry Noyes
Illustrator: John Burgoyne. Burgoyne used pen and ink and watercolor to produce the original art.

Columbia River Gorge (1 design)
Priority Mail Express
FDOI: January in Washington, DC (no ceremony)
Format: Pane of 10

With this new Priority Mail Express™ stamp, the U.S. Postal Service® celebrates the grandeur of the Columbia River Gorge.
Approximately 80 miles long and up to 4,000 feet deep, the gorge runs along the Columbia River, which forms part of the border between Oregon and Washington.

The stamp art captures the beauty of the Columbia River as it winds its way through the steep cliffs of the Cascade Mountain Range.
The historic Vista House, sitting atop Crown Point and overlooking the river 725 feet below, shimmers in the golden light of the setting sun.

Art Director: Phil Jordan
Illustrator: Dan Cosgrove

La Cueva del Indio (1 design)
Priority Mail
FDOI: January in Washington, DC (no ceremony)
Format: Pane of 10

With this new Priority Mail® stamp, the U.S. Postal Service® celebrates one of Puerto Rico’s many magical and mysterious caves, La Cueva del Indio.
The stamp art depicts a sunset view of La Cueva del Indio, or the Cave of the Indian, which is located near Arecibo on Puerto Rico’s north coast.
The cave gets its name from the great number of engravings, known as petroglyphs, found on its walls.

Art Director: Greg Breeding
Illustrator: Dan Cosgrove

Star Quilts Presorted First-Class (2 designs)
FDOI: Information to come.
Format: Coils of 3,000 and 10,000

With evocative names like Blazing Star, Touching Stars, and Starburst, stars are one of the most popular design motifs for American quilters. The 2016 Presorted First-Class Mail® stamps feature two versions of one of those favorites, the Lone Star pattern. [This implies to me there will be future “quilts” stamps. -LdeV]

Each stamp shows a detail from a photograph of one of the two quilts highlighting the intricate work involved in creating the star design. As the name implies, the Lone Star design is one large star that covers the quilt top, created by stitching together many small diamond shaped pieces of fabric.

The Lone Star design has been known by several names, including the Mathematical Star, the Star of the East, and, among Native Americans, the Morning Star. The first dated example that carried the name “Lone Star” is inscribed “1835” and was made in Texas the year before the fall of the Alamo. The quilts featured in the stamp art were made by Amish quilt makers.

Art Director: Derry Noyes