Daily printout: March 15, 2024

The Postal Service has two stamp releases on tap this weekend.

Bluegrass, a Forever stamp celebrating the singularly American musical style, will be released Friday, March 15.

Born in the mid-20th century, bluegrass blends old-time folk and fiddle music with elements of the blues, jazz, country and gospel.

The stamp art is inspired by vintage concert posters and features four acoustic string instruments typical of bluegrass bands — guitar, five-string banjo, fiddle and mandolin — below the word “bluegrass.”

Text at the top of the stamp reads “high lonesome sound,” a nickname for the genre.

Antonio Alcalá, an art director for USPS, worked with designer and illustrator Heather Moulder to produce the art. Moulder created the design as a letterpress print, with each layer carved by hand from wood and linoleum.

USPS will dedicate the stamp March 15 at the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Owensboro, KY.

Garden Delights, four Forever stamps that celebrate the flora of spring and summer gardens, will be released Saturday, March 16.

Each stamp shows a female ruby-throated hummingbird hovering next to either a zinnia, cigar flower, spotted touch-me-not or sunflower.

Greg Breeding, an art director for USPS, designed the stamps using existing photographs by Ben King.

No national dedication ceremony is planned for the Garden Delights stamps.

The Bluegrass stamp will be available in panes of 20 and the Garden Delights stamps will be available in booklets of 20 at Post Offices and usps.com.

To help mark St. Patrick’s Day, here’s a look at five Americans with Irish lineage who were honored with stamps:

• John F. Kennedy, the 35th president, has been the subject of several stamps — most recently a 2020 release. During a presidential visit to the Emerald Isle, Kennedy (1917-1963) remarked: “When my great-grandfather left here to become a [barrel maker] in East Boston, he carried nothing with him except two things: a strong religious faith and a strong desire for liberty. I am glad to say that all of his great-grandchildren have valued that inheritance.”

• Nellie Cashman, a pioneering female entrepreneur in Tombstone, AZ, was honored with a stamp in 1994. Cashman (circa 1850-1925), who emigrated from Ireland in the 1860s, became known as “The Angel of Tombstone” for her contributions to social welfare and the arts.

• Tenor John McCormack (1884-1945) was featured on a 1984 stamp. McCormack was born in Ireland and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1917. The quality of his voice and extraordinary breath control made him one of the most celebrated singers of his time.

• James Hoban (circa 1762-1831), who emigrated from Ireland after the American Revolution, was honored with a stamp in 1981. The famed architect won a national competition to design the White House, and President George Washington placed him in charge of its construction. Hoban also supervised reconstruction of the White House after the War of 1812.

• Playwright Eugene O’Neill (1888-1953) was featured on a 1967 stamp. Although he was born in New York City, his father was an Irish immigrant and his mother was of Irish descent. “The one thing that explains more than anything about me is the fact that I’m Irish,” O’Neill said in 1946. He won the Nobel Prize in literature and wrote four Pultizer Prize-winning plays.

History runs deep in Church Creek, the hamlet on Maryland’s Eastern Shore where the dedication ceremony for the Postal Service’s Underground Railroad stamps was held last week.

“It’s a beautiful place,” said Ronnie O. Reynolds, a USPS retail associate who has been a mainstay at the Church Creek Post Office for more than 40 years.

The community is part of Dorchester County, where Harriet Tubman was born in 1822.

Around this time, Church Creek was a thriving shipbuilding center. The wharves bustled with maritime workers and free Black sailors who brought new ideas — including notions of liberty — to enslaved communities.

The land around the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park, where the dedication ceremony took place, likely played a big role in Tubman’s day-to-day life.

“Waterways were extremely important on the Eastern Shore,” said Dan Dunlap, an amateur historian and rector at Old Trinity Church, the heart of Church Creek and one of the oldest continuously operating churches in the United States, built in 1675.

“The center is around where Tubman would have been hauling timber by water,” Dunlap said, noting that she owned her own set of mules to assist with the labor.

It was on these waterways that Tubman first became privy to the unofficial maritime communication network that clued her in to routes and safe houses on the way north — also known as the Underground Railroad.

Church Creek was also home to a house built by an admirer of Abraham Lincoln patterned after Lincoln’s home in Springfield, IL. Its top floor was one of the first sites for the education of African Americans after the Civil War. Later, the school was moved to a building near the Post Office.

Unfortunately, the structure was razed in the 1990s.

“You can still see where the foundations were,” Dunlap said.

Today, Church Creek is home to about 100 residents, according to census data.

The impression it gives of being a typical tranquil Eastern Shore village belies its bustling past as a center of commerce and its importance in African American history.

“It was an interesting place,” Dunlap said. “Now, it’s very sleepy.”