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July 29, 2005
Michael Dukakis and health care--can IT help?
I just had lunch with Michael Dukakis (and 20 other people). Dukakis, the 1988 US presidential candidate, is a lifelong Bostonian and teaches at Northeastern University. Tom Hopcroft, president of the New England Business and Technology Association, persuaded him to join our leadership luncheon series, with a change in focus from leadership to health care. Most of the people in the room were from Boston health care industry companies--hospitals and medical research are big business here. Dukakis explained that his big concern is the cost of health care in Massachusetts: we are the most expensive state in the most expensive nation in the world, when it comes to the costs of health treatment.
What astonished me was the sense of helplessness people seem to feel about a crisis in what Anna Sabasteanski pointed out is a basic human right in other advanced nations. Can it be true that we don't really know where the money is going, and exactly how our spending differs from that of other countries (and even other states)?
Dukakis proposed that NEBATA companies collaborate in a document setting out how information technology could be configured to improve our health system, and save money. Ironically, some of the technology people there (though not those from health care companies!) were vehement in saying that technology wasn't the solution. What struck me is that we need both leadership and effective cooperation to solve a problem that is social, economic, and political.
I asked where the money was going and, sadly, got a vague answer from Dukakis. But a quick web search provided this information: "One important difference between costs of care in the United States and those in other developed nations is the price per unit of care—physician fees, payments per hospital day, and pharmaceutical prices (10, 11). Even though the United States does not provide a greater quantity of physician visits per capita than other nations, physician income is 3 times higher in the United States than in the average nation that belongs to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The ratio of average physician income to average employee compensation is 5.5 in the United States compared to 1.5 in the United Kingdom and Sweden (11). Physicians in the United States receive higher fees (prices) for similar services than do physicians in other nations (11, 12)." from "High and Rising Health Care Costs. Part 3: The Role of Health Care Providers" at the Annals of Internal Medicine.
And, if you can access it through your library, the article Dukakis referred us to: "U.S. Health Care Spending In An International Context."
Posted by Karen Christensen at 3:59 PM | Comments (0)
July 28, 2005
In memory: Josie Hernandez de Leon
It isn't just libraries we love. We love the wonderful editors and contributors who share our dreams and visions. It was heartbreaking to hear this morning from Josie Hernandez de Leon's husband Dave that she had passed away last night. It was a shock, even though she, and then he, had so regularly kept in touch. I've communicated about Josie today from Jun-hee Kim, our project editor for the Encyclopedia of Modern Asia who first recruited Josie. Jun-hee is now in Seoul, and Francesca Forrest now works from her home office, while Marcy Ross is still with us here in Great Barrington. They all have stories about how Josie was a key part of our Asia team, and how she stepped in to help with more than one editorial crisis. She was also working on our new Global Perspectives project. Given her expertise in international relations and security, we might well have tried to persuade her to help with our latest work on terrorism and global security. Josie was an assistant professor of political science at Laurentian University. We will miss her.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 5:11 PM | Comments (0)
July 27, 2005
Business Week notice
Business Week is becoming the magazine to follow, seems to me: that major article on cooperation (a topic soon to be a Berkshire publication, we hope), and then the news this week that editor in chief John Byrne of Fast Company had skipped to Business Week. Finally, an article in Business Week Online about CEOs and technology that included a short interview with me, and revealed perhaps a little more than I really wanted to! I enjoy talking about technology, publishing, and the future: all of which are very much part of business, every week.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 9:13 PM | Comments (0)
July 25, 2005
Thoughts from the bike: on publishing and women's sports
I wore my 1999 Women’s World Cup tshirt while cycling this morning, and it reminded me of one reason we decided to start publishing independently: speed.
I got the tshirt when we attended a World Cup game at Foxborough stadium, on a blazing summer’s day in 1999. We were then putting final touches on the International Encyclopedia of Women & Sports, published by Macmilllan. As you’ll see from the extract below, this event presented a special opportunity to talk to women athletes from around the world. When we got to our hotel at midnight, the teams were there, so after picking up an autograph or two I spent an hour running around trying to interview someone from the North Korean team because we really wanted to fill in the sketchy information we had about women’s sports in that country.
But the encyclopedia wasn’t published till 2001-—and it had no update for the 2000 Olympic Games! This was done on big-box publisher time, not on a Berkshire schedule, which goes from start to finish in under two years. From the point we were at when we watched the World Cup would have been no more than two months to press.
Today, I'm happy to say, we get articles out faster, often, than academic journals do, to the amazement and pleasure of our authors. This speed keeps costs down and is good for libraries because their patrons get fresh, accurate information.
Most of our final work on the International Encyclopedia of Women & Sports took place during the Women’s World Cup of 1999 and we were lucky enough to attend a double header at Foxboro Stadium in Massachusetts. The thrill of the matches and the huge crowd was compounded when we returned to our hotel at midnight and found the lobby full of players from the U.S., Mexican, and North Korean teams we had watched play earlier in the evening. Instead of studying women’s sports, we were in the midst of it. We watched the players sign soccer balls and pose for photographs with their fans, and we talked to several members and coaches of the three teams.
It was enlightening to be among the calm and confident American players and their friends and families, talking to North Korean officials as the team dined on a buffet of American Chinese food, and chatting with 16-year old Monica, the youngest member of the Mexican team, in the corridor outside our room. Perhaps most striking was the fact that they were wide awake, happy, excited, and hungry, although it was midnight and they had just played 90 minutes of end to end soccer at the height of a heat wave.
The encyclopedia wasn’t forgotten. We had been unable to include an article on North Korea (though we do have one about South Korea) and we were hoping that Mr. Kim, the team’s spokesman, would be able to help us. Our efforts to meet him were unsuccessful, but the experience left us hopeful that sports - and particularly women’s sports - will continue to be a means of bringing peoples and cultures together, with increasing understanding and appreciation.
[Here's what we added to cover ourselves--and Macmillan--as far as the unfortunate delay in publication!!]
It is fitting that this encyclopedia will appear in print soon after the closing of the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia. The Olympics is perhaps the most important showcase for women’s sports, with events broadcast around the world and reported daily by the media. Women gold medalists become instant celebrities in their homelands and sometimes around the world. Because of the significance of the Olympics, we considered delaying publication of this encyclopedia to allow us to cover the Year 2000 Games.
But we did not want to see the publication of this much-needed resource delayed a day longer than necessary. Olympics results and biographical updates will be readily available on numerous websites and in the media, and an assessment of the importance of these particular Olympics in the history of women’s sorts requires both time and a broader framework than here-and-now event analysis. This encyclopedia is not a source of current events - though we have updated articles through June 2000 - and has a different mission from that of a TV news channel.
The International Encyclopedia of Women & Sports covers all aspects of the history and culture or women’s sports, the sports themselves, and women’s sports in the their societal context. Its 500 detailed articles provide context, background information, significant ethnographic and anecdotal information on women’s sports in the 2000 (and future) Olympic Games.
Karen Christensen and David Levinson
Berkshire Reference Works, part of Berkshire Publishing Group LLC
http://www.berkshirepublishing.com
Great Barrington, Massachusetts
Posted by Karen Christensen at 2:10 PM | Comments (0)
July 24, 2005
Libraries are the "public power houses of the information age"
We do love libraries, and I have to share this article by the architecture critic of the Financial Times, "A turn-up for the books," because it relieved my mind about the state of libraries in the UK (my other home). I had read about the rebranding of urban libraries as "Idea Shops"--in fact, I see they use US terminology and call them "Idea Stores." This sounded quite desperate, and I was told the surge of US interest in libraries as vital civic spaces didn't seem to have resonated over there (perhaps because the British have pubs!). The community building aspect of libraries is something we are only beginning to understand--and build upon. Now that I think about it, Berkshire needs to turn its appendix from the Encyclopedia of Community about how libraries can build community into a free ebook. Coming soon....
Posted by Karen Christensen at 11:47 AM | Comments (2)
July 22, 2005
Chinese values
So the yuan has finally been revalued. I thought I'd missed something big when I got the Economist pop-up this afternoon, but it took place only yesterday. Thank goodness. I get so immersed in activities here on the ground that I don't always pay the attention I'd like to the wide world. (The BBC's news alerts help.)
BTW, the yuan is also called RMB, the acronym for the Chinese words for "the people's currency."
China's relationship with the US and the rest of the world is one of the topics of greatest interest to me, especially because my son Tom (19) is in Shanghai right now. I called him this morning and he said, "I can't believe I come home in 2-1/2 weeks--there are so many things I want to do. I just want to live here." He was in Beijing last spring studying Chinese but this trip is very different because he's there thanks to arrangements made by one of our editors for the Encyclopedia of Modern Asia, who comes from Shanghai. Tom's been with Chinese people the entire time and is getting to know Chinese life in a completely new way (and loving it). He says that everyone is talking about the London bombings, that they are not feeling friendly towards Japan, and that girls are scared of him (he is 6'2). Until they get to know him, that is. He had been treated with wonderful hospitality, and his job--teaching English--has gone well (and is much easier, he says, than the customer service work he was doing at Berkshire Publishing!). His Chinese is much improved, too, apparently, which will be a help when he goes back to college next month. And we'll certainly put it to good use if he comes back to work for us.
Meanwhile, I am trying out a wide variety of Chinese language tapes and CDs; I'll be able to put a critical review online before long. I am making slow progress, but I can now understand some words and phrases. I have no idea yet if anyone will be able to understand me!
Posted by Karen Christensen at 2:26 PM | Comments (0)
July 20, 2005
The impact of HCI
People are always surprised when they find we've been publishing for such a short time--only 10 months--and, to be frank, I am too. It seems like a long, long time! Publishing is an intense and complicated activity together, far from the gentlemen's pursuit that it was in years past.
We began our independent publishing with the Berkshire Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction because we were intensely aware of the impact online activity--human-computer interaction--was having our our industry. We thought that instead of being afraid, as too many of our colleagues are, we should embrace change and understand it--and also build a network of hundreds of experts in the subject. (Nothing like having a fall-back position, right? And we reference publishers do love turning to the experts!)
This has proved to be an approach that makes sense, and we were thrilled when our friend John Bryans at Information Today books faxed a review from cousin publication Online Magazine. I'm at home and don't have the text handy, but it couldn't have been better. Well, at 3-1/2 stars, maybe it could have been a little bit better. But we're happy (and I'll quote a few lines tomorrow and you'll wonder how it could get better)!
I'm more convinced than ever that HCI is a topic that merits much attention, in our industry as well as in society at large. I spent an hour or so yesterday touring the New Jersey warehouse of Baker & Taylor, the major book distributor (who are doing a great job with Berkshire publications, BTW), and was staggering by the warehouse management system--a software system that manages books and entertainment products by title and size and gets them into boxes and en route to users within 24 hours. It was a great opportunity for someone steeped in editorial work to see how what we do gets processed and moved into the world, and I have to thank Don for the tour, and Jean and Mark for sharing this part of their world with me.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 7:38 PM | Comments (0)
July 19, 2005
The pursuit of publishing
Many people miss the days when publishing was a gentleman’s pursuit. Publishing is still a convivial world, in which people share information quite freely. But it isn’t a world where we talk about business processes as much as we should. If we manufactured widgets, there would be clearer standards and working practices.
But I didn't take to business easily. I was horrified the first time I heard someone refer to a book as a “product.” I was at the Gale offices in Detroit in 1995, and like many people in publishing and in libraries, I didn’t think of what I was about to embark on as business, with the same profit-and-loss and ROI (return on investment) issues as people face in less literary and scholarly endeavors. Over time, though, I had to learn the business of publishing, and I’ve seen the business models evolve within reference publishing companies. There are costs involved in creating good reference publications, and if we all understand the factors of production it’ll be easier to talk about the important issues that face us today, from pricing and licensing to copyright and collaboration.
Reference is a human creation, a design executed more or less successfully. It happens over a period of years, has many people involved, and involves many choices--intellectual and economic. The economic choices we face today are the subject of the article I'm working on this week for Against the Grain's September reference issue, a continuation of last year's article on Information Quality.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 6:01 AM | Comments (0)
July 17, 2005
Peanuts and Cracker Jacks
David's watching the Red Sox play, after a long day of gardening interspersed with the British Open (he does devote himself to sports study!). And I've just found these notes Marcy sent me for posting when we were in Chicago, at ALA, about Oak Park, the area we stayed in--away from the downtown traffic and expressways.
I think I put it off then because the lovely area, where architect Frank Lloyd Wright built his first homes, had been the scene of a murder only a few days before. This murder hit close: the victim, professor Peter D'Agostino, was a friend and former student of Martin E. Marty, one of our eminent contributors whom we were meeting at ALA for the first time.
Here's Marcy Ross's article on the Chicago Columbia Exposition from the Berkshire Savant, along with some details about Wright's work. We love the idea of this early attempt at global thinking, and it's fun to imagine a time when soda and Cracker Jacks were brand new inventions.
"The World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago was visited by more than 27 million people during its six-month run from May-October 1893. It included a hugely popular midway of amusements with exotic dancers and carnival rides, including the world’s first Ferris wheel. Carbonated soda, hamburgers, and Cracker Jack were also introduced at the fair. Although much of the fair was devoted to extolling industrial progress, there was also a glorious Palace of Fine Arts and a woman’s building, designed by Sophia G. Hayden, the first woman to receive an architecture degree from MIT. Some 700,000 people attended a variety of “world congresses.” The World’s Congress of Representative Women drew 150,000 attendees, who heard addresses from Jane Addams, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and many others. The World’s Parliament of Religions brought together spiritual leaders from around the globe. Thousands of African Americans attended the eight-day “Congress on Africa”; Frederick Douglass and other key black leaders participated in the congress and in a “Colored American Day.” The Palace of Fine Arts (now the Museum of Science and Industry) still stands, along with a replica of Daniel Chester French’s “Statute of the Republic” that appeared in the fair’s Court of Honor. And Jackson Park, the site of the fair, still remains as a popular oasis for Chicagoans and visitors." (Marcy Ross, whose mother was a Chicago native, is an editor at Berkshire Publishing Group.)
From the time of the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 with the Japanese "Ho-o-Den" display, American architect Frank Lloyd Wright was influenced by Japanese art. Wright reported that he found Japanese art "nearer to the earth . . . than any European civilization alive or dead." Wright's work had some influence in Japan, too: the building known as the Japanese "White House" is inspired by his designs.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 9:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 14, 2005
The friends we love
I interviewed someone yesterday (we’re looking for a managing editor/operations manager) and was disconcerted to find tears welling in my eyes as I explained something about Berkshire Publishing. It was something I’ve said dozens of times before, that our small enterprise is all about people and ideas, and that it’s the people we work with who make what we do possible. I said, “Those networks, those relationships, are the most important thing”—-and felt the warm rush of tears! I’m pretty sure the person I was talking to didn’t notice, but I’ve been thinking about how deeply I feel that, and wondering how I can ensure that as we grow we maintain the human connections that make the work we do so rewarding.
This isn’t abstract, some generalized good will. It’s Becky Clark’s emailing Marcy, Margaux, and me a hilarious account of going to the emergency room, after being in a car accident, and having to explain that she is deaf and isn’t pregnant before she could finally get the treatment she needed. Becky says she’s still in touch with Ben Manning, an editorial assistant from England who left us in 2000! It’s seeing Bill McNeill, as we will this evening, and being inspired by his graciousness and insight, and talking about another project we might do together. It’s the world history teachers we’re getting to know, people like Monty Armstrong and Kik Kimball who are deeply committed to their work and their students, and amusing to boot. I could write about many publishing and librarian friends, too—-and I know we’ll be making many more of them over the next year, as we develop a US and then an international book about “The Libraries We Love.”
Those who know me may be surprised at this display of emotion, but that, too, is what blogs are for!
Posted by Karen Christensen at 6:14 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 12, 2005
Is a bomber always a terrorist?
A month after 9/11, we published a volume on Fundamentalism, and a few months later the Encyclopedia of Crime & Punishment. I shouldn't be surprised to find our current global terrorism project echoed in the world at large, but I am comforted to know that we have some more upbeat projects in the works! My own favorite is a major work on sustainability, in early stages.
But global terrorism is on our minds, and we're struggling with how to promote our reference set without sensationalizing or distorting the topic. We're not having a red and black cover, for starters. Terrorism is a fearful thing, though: it is meant, after all, to produce terror.
For our edition of the US State Department's 20 years of Patterns of Global Terrorism reports, we are adding introductions to the documents which explain why the documents are important and where they come from. We are also adding a selection of government documents not included in the reports. These include press announcements, transcripts from Congressional hearings, research reports, and policy statements. These pertain mainly to government responses to global terrorism and thereby add to the POGT reports by telling readers what the government has done or is doing and why.
Journalists struggle with terminology, and in the UK it seems that the more conservative perspective is battling with the politically correct. The Telegraph newsletter is critical of the BBC's avoidance of the word terrorist, in fact: 'Consequently, "the word 'terrorist' itself can be a barrier rather than an aid to understanding" and its use should be "avoided", the [BBC] guidelines say.' Read article.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 4:12 PM | Comments (1)
July 11, 2005
Encyclopedia of Community UK nomination
Serendipity indeed. We're putting the final touches on our first mailing to European libraries, which will include a copy of the first Berkshire Savant, and Margaux just discovered that the Encyclopedia of Community: from the village to the virtual world (Christensen, Levinson, et al.) has been nominated for the 2004 UK best reference award. It's won quite a number of US awards, but for me this nomination is quite moving; I began studying community in London, and Camberwell, in south London, is still a place I call home.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 11:14 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 9, 2005
Backwoods or not?
I was getting used to people expecting a publishing bumpkin when we first meet, but the Berkshires--a range of small mountains, in fact, as well as the westernmost county in Massachusetts--is starting to appear on urban mental maps. This weekend's Financial Times has an article about the Berkshires which calls it "the thinking person's Hamptons." Yesterday's Wall Street Journal reviewed "Follies," the Barrington Stage production we're seeing Tuesday. And this morning's New York Times has a review of "Rinaldo," the opera we are seeing tonight in the Mahaiwe Theater, which is in the same building as our offices. (In fact, David suggested we save $75 each by sitting in my office and putting paper cups against the wall. But the new soundproofing put paid to that idea.)
The question on my mind is how this new awareness of the Berkshires, admittedly as an alternative to the Hamptons, will affect business. Will it make it more likely that talented people will want to move here, and that companies like ours will be able to expand and form a more extensive professional job base? One of my goals has long been to create career opportunities in the region, as well as to build the intellectual and human capital of Great Barrington so we can more easily tackle the challenges that face this community.
Things could go either way, I think, to the Hamptons model (the rich and those who provide services to them), or to well-managed development ('smart growth') and diverse, engaged community life('social capital'). I'm busy planning, with some friends and colleagues, how to steer us on the latter course.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 5:01 PM | Comments (0)
July 7, 2005
London terror
How awful to write about violence and terror in London the day after the Olympics announcement. Just a few days ago I reminded Anna Sabasteanski, who writes and produces the Terrorism Central newsletter, that she and I had both lived within a couple of blocks of the Harrods bombing in the early 1980s. Yesterday David Levinson and our accountant Frank Francis discovered that they had been on Pan Am 103 exactly a week before the Lockerbie bombings. This morning I am a long way from London but my heart is there, imagining each of the known target sites and thinking of friends and colleagues in the area. Macmillan's headquarters, for example, are just north of King's Cross, and the Goodenough Club where I (and now friends) stay is just a little south, near Russell Square where apparently there was also a bomb.
Anna, by the way, is hard at work on Berkshire's forthcoming Patterns of Global Terrorism: the complete reports of the U.S. State Department, juggling that project with her daily intake of news from around the world.
Our thoughts are with the brave and stalwart people of London.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 8:50 AM | Comments (0)
July 6, 2005
London wins the bid!
We've been waiting eagerly for the IOC's announcement of the location for the 2012 Olympics. New York would have been closer, and any opportunity to go to Paris is welcome, to have the next but one Olympics in London, which I think of as my home city (Great Barrington is my home town), is perfect. Especially since the 2008 Olympics will take place in Beijing, the other global city looming large on our horizon.
In fact, the hallway our offices are on are lined with Beijing Olympic posters, brought back in 2001. We were in Beijing during the bidding process and the entire city seemed to be plastered with gorgeous posters. Even the elevator at our modest hotel was lined with them. I told Shaoping, a Chinese friend, that I was planning to take a couple with me. She was horrified, and the next morning turned up with a whole roll of posters and pamphlets: she had travelled to the Chinese Olympic Committee's office to get me a supply, to ensure that I didn't get into trouble at the hotel!
Posted by Karen Christensen at 10:26 AM | Comments (0)
July 5, 2005
One possible future
My former boss now advisor and friend Peter Saugman got our July newsletter and decided to tone down my excitment about the future: "If ever you worry that your optimism may be getting you a bit carried away then, if you have not already seen it, put EPIC 2014 into Google, and start worrying about the future!" Click here to watch our present from a possible future. Tomorrow, I'll tell you how we can make sure that doesn't happen! (Yes, in England I was considered a bit too positive and even a little wild. But in the Wild West of the technological future, maybe that'll turn out to be a good thing.)
Posted by Karen Christensen at 4:56 PM | Comments (0)
July 4, 2005
The 4th of July
After a cold late spring and then a month of hideously hot weather interspersed with deluges, the weather gods granted us a 4th of July weekend of sheer splendor: clear warm days ideal for hiking and gardening. Our IP attorney and his partner, who had fascinating stories to tell about her representation of Guantanamo Bay internees, happened to have booked this weekend for a stay in the Berkshires. I think they have good karma!
I associate the 4th of July with softball, because during the years I lived in England I used to organize softball games and a traditional American BBQ for the 4th of July. This wasn't easy, because it so often conflicted with the Wimbledon finals and because teaching English people the rules of softball was hard work. It was an exercise in translation: the women wanted the game explained in terms of rounders (a game I was unfamiliar with), while the men thought in terms of cricket (a game few Americans can comprehend, though over time I came to love it). The thing they found most baffling, and never really accepted, is that someone could be out in one inning and yet go up to bat again later in the game. In cricket, when you're out, it's over--but then again people stay in to get hundreds of runs.
There was always strawberry shortcake, invariably enjoyed. But I could never convince an English person that iced tea was a civilized beverage. (Personally, I was quite happy to add Pimms to my 4th of July menu.) I miss those days of international sport in London, and felt quite homesick when my friend Emma emailed photos of her son playing village cricket.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 6:24 PM | Comments (0)
July 2, 2005
Our first DVD
We watched Nanook of the North last night. I'd ordered it from Netflix for Rachel, who has always been fascinated for survival in the icy North. She's away at camp but David said we should watch it, and what an amazing film it is, a documentary made in an Eskimo community near the Hudson Bay in 1920! Eighty-five years ago.
This reinforced my growing interest in making film part of our reference enterprise. Watching Nanook and his family was simply thrilling, and funny too. In one scene, he docks his kyak (yes, that's how it was spelled--think how students who kayak would enjoy watching this film) and starts helping his family out. One person after another climbs out, till it starts to look like a magician's trick. The very last family member to be lifted out is a puppy who looks overjoyed to be free.
We started doing a little filming last year and have a first world history DVD ready now. This is just a beginning, and you can expect to hear more about Berkshire's multimedia content development in the months ahead.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 10:28 AM | Comments (0)
July 1, 2005
Flying the flag?
Marcy just asked how we feel about flags. I didn't even remember that it's the Fourth of July weekend; my first thought was about the draft cover for Global Perspectives on the United States, which does include a lot of flags. But it turns out that she was wondering about flags on stamps--postal stamps. Instead of the neutral first-class stamps we generally use, or the historical sports stamps we prefer but can never get enough of, someone had bought rolls of stamps bearing the American flag.
No, I said, after a moment's reflection, we don't want flags on our letters. We're busy trying to convince our colleagues and contributors that we really, truly want to know what they think, that we have a global perspective. I lived in England for years and left, in part, because I no longer wanted to live in a country where I couldn't vote (or run for office), and I simply couldn't bring myself to apply for UK citizenship--because I am, in my bones, an American. But I still hate the pomp and posturing that are so often part of US patriotism, and I want to see something on the letters and packages that Berkshire Publishing sends around the world that will better represent this nation's diversity, creativity, and rich history. On Tuesday the flag stamps will go back and we'll see if we can get football players instead--or wild flowers.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 3:30 PM | Comments (0)