Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
11:06:40am
Bob
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Murdering philatelists - I guess it breaks the nerd stereotype.
That reminds me - does anyone remember a series of books about a hired killer who used the money from his hits to buy rare stamps for his collection??? Who was the author?
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My husband said -- tongue in cheek -- "Obviously if he was into stamp collecting he was capable of a heinous crime. They will exploit that as a warning sign in the film. It's almost as good a warning sign as being a tall albino!" Ha ha. He's joking. At least I THINK he's joking.
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12:02:48pm
The author is Lawrence Block - Keller series.
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Yes - that's the one! Thanks Parkin'!
I'll have to see if my local library has anything in the series. I'm so lucky - I can actually ride my bike to the library here. When we downsized and moved to Florida from Michigan, we vowed to stop buying so many books. We each have 4 3ft x 6 ft. bookshelves and we promised each other we'd limit our collection to what we can fit on our shelves. Half of mine is full of stamp stuff, so I'm really short on space for books. The library is a godsend not to mention lots cheaper! And - I don't have to dust all those books. Yay! The internet made it easier to part with most of my reference material - it's so easy to wiki whatever. Ain't technology the cat's meow?
Hubby has shelves full of military and general history, computer stuff and tons of sci-fi. I talked him into storing our mutual sci-fi collection on his shelves because I have the stamps. Heh heh. Sneaky me!
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"My husband said -- tongue in cheek -- "Obviously if he was into stamp collecting he was capable of a heinous crime.""
It's odd — stranger than odd! — that stamp collecting and stamp collectors are so misunderstood by society. Most people can't pronounce "philately" or "philatelist," and have no idea what the words mean anyway. Whenever I try to explain why stamps and covers interest me, my listeners' eyes invariably glaze over. I don't understand why it's generally understood that the fossils that palaeontologists deal with and the artifacts that archaeologists examine are so valuable that entire museums are built to house them, but stamps and covers, which are artifacts, are almost universally given short shrift. A stamp dealer here in Vancouver told me that he doesn't even bother to call the police anymore when they catch someone shoplifting. The attitude of the police seems to be, "Stamps? Why are you wasting our time?"
I especially deplore, with eye-rolling, scenes in film and on TV that involve stamps and stamp collectors. In the film Charade — here's a spoiler alert — the good guy has three rare stamps that the bad guys want and will go to any length to get. I won't tell you how they handle the stamps, but let's just say that the average kindergartener would probably handle them more carefully!
A few years ago (and this one is truly offensive!), the detective show Law & Order: Special Victims Unit featured the sexual molestation of a child. The detectives got a search warrant for the suspect's apartment, where they found (you guessed it), a stamp collection. Based on that "evidence," one of the characters says, "Looks like we've got our man." How's that for profiling?
And there's this: In 2005, Rolling Stone published a profile on a public prosecutor who sent two dozen people to jail on bogus sexual abuse charges even though he himself was apparently involved in pedophilia. The article characterized the prosector as "A subdued man with a prepubescent stamp collector's build…". We do live in one very sick, poorly educated society.
Bob
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Well that's one extreme. On the other hand, philatelists are portrayed as meek, mild mannered nerds who wouldn't hurt a fly. Sigh.
Hey! Let's break the stereotype! How about a Sexy Stampers Calender? Who wants to pose???
btw - What hubby said was meant to be humorous and silly. He wasn't serious!
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Woody Allen had a stamp collector put-down in Manhattan Murder Mystery:
Larry: "Jesus, couldn't you keep the conversation going a little longer in there? I was signalling you frantically."
Carol: "I was just trying to be neighborly."
Larry: "Neighborly? If this guy showed me his stamp collection one more time... I mean, my favorite thing in life is to, you know, look at cancelled postage."
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In my corner of the world, "parkinlot", movie theatres are going the way of post offices
and I do not know what viewers watch on their home theatres or video monitors.
From my reading of the print media, their "visuals" usually involve guns, very
sharp instruments, bludgeons, buckets of blood and double-digit body counts.
If the movie "Foxcatcher" is merely an account of a "routine" murder,
then it may not provoke much more than a collective yawn and is probably doomed
at the box-office.
The stereotype of the stamp collector is safe in my judgement.
Those who know of my hobby relegate me to that innocuous human subset
of scrapbook enthusiasts and papier-mâché modellers.
"Bobstamp's" comments - fascinating and perceptive as always -
offer a sharp criticism of the teachers of education (no longer a profession,
just another unionized trade) in Canada and the USA.
Indeed, the past is another country.
John Derry
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"'Bobstamp's' comments - fascinating and perceptive as always - offer a sharp criticism of the teachers of education (no longer a profession just another unionized trade) in Canada and the USA."
Just to set the record straight, at least for British Columbia:
• When my wife and I started teaching in BC, in the 1970s, our teachers' association (not a union) bargained directly with our local school board for wages and working conditions, including class size.
• In the 1980s, the provincial government offered two alternatives to teachers:
1. Continue dealing with our local school board, but without any power. The school boards would be able to dictate wages and working and learning conditions, or
2. Form a union and negotiate directly with the provincial government.
What would you choose? Without bargaining powers, we would have been subject to the whims of local school boards and the decreasing budgets they were being saddled with. There is no question that we would have had larger classes and less pay. With bargaining powers, we at least had a chance to maintain education at the same high level that we had enjoyed previously, and BC's record in education was worthy of emulation.
So, now teachers are members of a union which they did not really want, and accepted only in lieu of a better offer. But the provincial government has proved to be nearly impossible adversary. Most recently, teachers worked for several years without a contract and with the government refusing to budge on any contractual changes, despite ever-increasing inflation and fewer and fewer services being offered. For example, most schools in BC now operate without librarians, sufficient custodial service, and too few supplies. Our district used have an excellent Resource Centre, which loaned excellent films and other learning aids to teachers, but after "unionization" it was closed. We used to have a variety of specialists on call to help with providing instruction in French, physical education, and music, but those programs were shut down as well. Often, we didnt even have enough basic supplies for our classrooms. On several occasions, both my wife and myself bought sets of textbooks for our students because the school couldn't afford them.
As the situation stands today (after a record-breaking strike by teachers last spring and extending into fall), teachers have caught up somewhat with teachers in other provinces, but the salary of a teacher is too low to provide a living for a family. If teachers are married, their spouse simply has to work to make ends meet.
It's one thing to blame "unions" for the problems in education. It's another to blame them without getting the back story. (One interesting item in the backstory is this: Our current premier, Christy Clarke, enrols her daughter not in a public school, but in a pricy private school in Vancouver.)
Bob
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If everyone collected stamps, it would be a very peaceful world. Remember that stamp collectors pretty much sequester themselves in their rooms and work on their hobby by themselves.
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Philatelia - if you are looking for another book series where stamps are mentioned, try "The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie" by Alan Bradley. That is the first book of several, totally enjoyable, all of them. Stamp collecting is mentioned to some degree in all. Hope your library carries them.....Sally
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Thanks for the book suggestion! I'll go to the library website right now.
Back - they have it!! thanks!
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Michael numbers said:
"If everyone collected stamps, it would be a very peaceful world. Remember that stamp collectors pretty much sequester themselves in their rooms and work on their hobby by themselves."
But Michael, you know how we humans are; if everyone did that, war would break out between collectors of never-hinged and I-don't-care-about-the-back; used vs. mint; hinged vs. mounted; on-piece vs. soakers; back vs. front of book; lightly canceled vs. SON; etc.
Philatelia: I mentioned this discussion to a friend (in Vancouver actually!) and he noted this Canadian movie from 1988, Tommy Tricker and the Stamp Traveller. I looked it up on IMDB; here is the link.
Peter
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Here's a CBS news bit on stamp collectors . . .
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/centennial-stamp-show-breaks-down-stereotypes/
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Hello,
I have just published a 401 page A4 book on stamps and stamp collecting in movies. It is titled Stamps and Stamp Collecting in Popular Culture and Foxcatcher is not in it as there are no stamps in the story. My book also lists literature (novels, poetry, comics), plays, music, television and radio, if stamps or philately are in the story or have a mention.
The Keller stories of Lawrence Block are highly recommended for their thrills, humour and philatelic content.
My book took over four years to research and write it. Thanks
Howard
howcom: Telling us about your book is fine, but trying to sell it on the discussion board violates our policy against self promotion. I have edited your post here and elsewhere accordingly. Please read the rules regarding the discussion board HERE
Bobby Barnhart
Discussion Board Moderator
(Modified by Moderator on 2015-02-24 15:46:30)
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Foxcatcher sounds like it might be worth a night out to the movies..i have no interest in the herd mentality that goes to watch 50 shades of gray or American Sniper !
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Immediate Past President - West Essex Philatelic Society www.wepsonline.org
12 Nov 2014
11:06:40am
The movie Foxcatcher will be opening this Friday starring Steve Carell as John DuPont who murdered Olympic wrestler Dave Schultz. As most stamp collectors know DuPont was a philatelist and was the most recent owner of the British Guiana Penny Magenta. I'm just wonder if they will have anything in the movie about philately... and if they do, is it a good thing or a bad thing?
Bob
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re: The Movie Foxcatcher
Murdering philatelists - I guess it breaks the nerd stereotype.
That reminds me - does anyone remember a series of books about a hired killer who used the money from his hits to buy rare stamps for his collection??? Who was the author?
Login to Like
this post
re: The Movie Foxcatcher
My husband said -- tongue in cheek -- "Obviously if he was into stamp collecting he was capable of a heinous crime. They will exploit that as a warning sign in the film. It's almost as good a warning sign as being a tall albino!" Ha ha. He's joking. At least I THINK he's joking.
2 Members
like this post.
Login to Like.
Immediate Past President - West Essex Philatelic Society www.wepsonline.org
12 Nov 2014
12:02:48pm
re: The Movie Foxcatcher
The author is Lawrence Block - Keller series.
1 Member
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re: The Movie Foxcatcher
Yes - that's the one! Thanks Parkin'!
I'll have to see if my local library has anything in the series. I'm so lucky - I can actually ride my bike to the library here. When we downsized and moved to Florida from Michigan, we vowed to stop buying so many books. We each have 4 3ft x 6 ft. bookshelves and we promised each other we'd limit our collection to what we can fit on our shelves. Half of mine is full of stamp stuff, so I'm really short on space for books. The library is a godsend not to mention lots cheaper! And - I don't have to dust all those books. Yay! The internet made it easier to part with most of my reference material - it's so easy to wiki whatever. Ain't technology the cat's meow?
Hubby has shelves full of military and general history, computer stuff and tons of sci-fi. I talked him into storing our mutual sci-fi collection on his shelves because I have the stamps. Heh heh. Sneaky me!
Login to Like
this post
re: The Movie Foxcatcher
"My husband said -- tongue in cheek -- "Obviously if he was into stamp collecting he was capable of a heinous crime.""
It's odd — stranger than odd! — that stamp collecting and stamp collectors are so misunderstood by society. Most people can't pronounce "philately" or "philatelist," and have no idea what the words mean anyway. Whenever I try to explain why stamps and covers interest me, my listeners' eyes invariably glaze over. I don't understand why it's generally understood that the fossils that palaeontologists deal with and the artifacts that archaeologists examine are so valuable that entire museums are built to house them, but stamps and covers, which are artifacts, are almost universally given short shrift. A stamp dealer here in Vancouver told me that he doesn't even bother to call the police anymore when they catch someone shoplifting. The attitude of the police seems to be, "Stamps? Why are you wasting our time?"
I especially deplore, with eye-rolling, scenes in film and on TV that involve stamps and stamp collectors. In the film Charade — here's a spoiler alert — the good guy has three rare stamps that the bad guys want and will go to any length to get. I won't tell you how they handle the stamps, but let's just say that the average kindergartener would probably handle them more carefully!
A few years ago (and this one is truly offensive!), the detective show Law & Order: Special Victims Unit featured the sexual molestation of a child. The detectives got a search warrant for the suspect's apartment, where they found (you guessed it), a stamp collection. Based on that "evidence," one of the characters says, "Looks like we've got our man." How's that for profiling?
And there's this: In 2005, Rolling Stone published a profile on a public prosecutor who sent two dozen people to jail on bogus sexual abuse charges even though he himself was apparently involved in pedophilia. The article characterized the prosector as "A subdued man with a prepubescent stamp collector's build…". We do live in one very sick, poorly educated society.
Bob
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likes this post.
Login to Like.
re: The Movie Foxcatcher
Well that's one extreme. On the other hand, philatelists are portrayed as meek, mild mannered nerds who wouldn't hurt a fly. Sigh.
Hey! Let's break the stereotype! How about a Sexy Stampers Calender? Who wants to pose???
btw - What hubby said was meant to be humorous and silly. He wasn't serious!
Login to Like
this post
re: The Movie Foxcatcher
Woody Allen had a stamp collector put-down in Manhattan Murder Mystery:
Larry: "Jesus, couldn't you keep the conversation going a little longer in there? I was signalling you frantically."
Carol: "I was just trying to be neighborly."
Larry: "Neighborly? If this guy showed me his stamp collection one more time... I mean, my favorite thing in life is to, you know, look at cancelled postage."
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this post
The past is a foreign country, they do things different there.
12 Nov 2014
03:44:45pm
re: The Movie Foxcatcher
In my corner of the world, "parkinlot", movie theatres are going the way of post offices
and I do not know what viewers watch on their home theatres or video monitors.
From my reading of the print media, their "visuals" usually involve guns, very
sharp instruments, bludgeons, buckets of blood and double-digit body counts.
If the movie "Foxcatcher" is merely an account of a "routine" murder,
then it may not provoke much more than a collective yawn and is probably doomed
at the box-office.
The stereotype of the stamp collector is safe in my judgement.
Those who know of my hobby relegate me to that innocuous human subset
of scrapbook enthusiasts and papier-mâché modellers.
"Bobstamp's" comments - fascinating and perceptive as always -
offer a sharp criticism of the teachers of education (no longer a profession,
just another unionized trade) in Canada and the USA.
Indeed, the past is another country.
John Derry
Login to Like
this post
re: The Movie Foxcatcher
"'Bobstamp's' comments - fascinating and perceptive as always - offer a sharp criticism of the teachers of education (no longer a profession just another unionized trade) in Canada and the USA."
Just to set the record straight, at least for British Columbia:
• When my wife and I started teaching in BC, in the 1970s, our teachers' association (not a union) bargained directly with our local school board for wages and working conditions, including class size.
• In the 1980s, the provincial government offered two alternatives to teachers:
1. Continue dealing with our local school board, but without any power. The school boards would be able to dictate wages and working and learning conditions, or
2. Form a union and negotiate directly with the provincial government.
What would you choose? Without bargaining powers, we would have been subject to the whims of local school boards and the decreasing budgets they were being saddled with. There is no question that we would have had larger classes and less pay. With bargaining powers, we at least had a chance to maintain education at the same high level that we had enjoyed previously, and BC's record in education was worthy of emulation.
So, now teachers are members of a union which they did not really want, and accepted only in lieu of a better offer. But the provincial government has proved to be nearly impossible adversary. Most recently, teachers worked for several years without a contract and with the government refusing to budge on any contractual changes, despite ever-increasing inflation and fewer and fewer services being offered. For example, most schools in BC now operate without librarians, sufficient custodial service, and too few supplies. Our district used have an excellent Resource Centre, which loaned excellent films and other learning aids to teachers, but after "unionization" it was closed. We used to have a variety of specialists on call to help with providing instruction in French, physical education, and music, but those programs were shut down as well. Often, we didnt even have enough basic supplies for our classrooms. On several occasions, both my wife and myself bought sets of textbooks for our students because the school couldn't afford them.
As the situation stands today (after a record-breaking strike by teachers last spring and extending into fall), teachers have caught up somewhat with teachers in other provinces, but the salary of a teacher is too low to provide a living for a family. If teachers are married, their spouse simply has to work to make ends meet.
It's one thing to blame "unions" for the problems in education. It's another to blame them without getting the back story. (One interesting item in the backstory is this: Our current premier, Christy Clarke, enrols her daughter not in a public school, but in a pricy private school in Vancouver.)
Bob
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06:17:29pm
re: The Movie Foxcatcher
If everyone collected stamps, it would be a very peaceful world. Remember that stamp collectors pretty much sequester themselves in their rooms and work on their hobby by themselves.
Login to Like
this post
re: The Movie Foxcatcher
Philatelia - if you are looking for another book series where stamps are mentioned, try "The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie" by Alan Bradley. That is the first book of several, totally enjoyable, all of them. Stamp collecting is mentioned to some degree in all. Hope your library carries them.....Sally
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Login to Like.
re: The Movie Foxcatcher
Thanks for the book suggestion! I'll go to the library website right now.
Back - they have it!! thanks!
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06:15:58am
re: The Movie Foxcatcher
Michael numbers said:
"If everyone collected stamps, it would be a very peaceful world. Remember that stamp collectors pretty much sequester themselves in their rooms and work on their hobby by themselves."
But Michael, you know how we humans are; if everyone did that, war would break out between collectors of never-hinged and I-don't-care-about-the-back; used vs. mint; hinged vs. mounted; on-piece vs. soakers; back vs. front of book; lightly canceled vs. SON; etc.
Philatelia: I mentioned this discussion to a friend (in Vancouver actually!) and he noted this Canadian movie from 1988, Tommy Tricker and the Stamp Traveller. I looked it up on IMDB; here is the link.
Peter
Login to Like
this post
re: The Movie Foxcatcher
Here's a CBS news bit on stamp collectors . . .
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/centennial-stamp-show-breaks-down-stereotypes/
Login to Like
this post
02:56:33pm
re: The Movie Foxcatcher
Hello,
I have just published a 401 page A4 book on stamps and stamp collecting in movies. It is titled Stamps and Stamp Collecting in Popular Culture and Foxcatcher is not in it as there are no stamps in the story. My book also lists literature (novels, poetry, comics), plays, music, television and radio, if stamps or philately are in the story or have a mention.
The Keller stories of Lawrence Block are highly recommended for their thrills, humour and philatelic content.
My book took over four years to research and write it. Thanks
Howard
howcom: Telling us about your book is fine, but trying to sell it on the discussion board violates our policy against self promotion. I have edited your post here and elsewhere accordingly. Please read the rules regarding the discussion board HERE
Bobby Barnhart
Discussion Board Moderator
(Modified by Moderator on 2015-02-24 15:46:30)
Login to Like
this post
re: The Movie Foxcatcher
Foxcatcher sounds like it might be worth a night out to the movies..i have no interest in the herd mentality that goes to watch 50 shades of gray or American Sniper !
Login to Like
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