Snowflake Stamp Unveiling, Winter Carnival Stamp Cancellation Saturday

The U.S. Postal Service will hold a special ceremony Saturday at the Memorial Union commemorating Winter Carnival and highlighting a local snowflake.

An enlargement of the 2006 Holiday Snowflake Stamps will be unveiled at 3 p.m. in the Memorial Union Ballroom. It features a square of four elegant snowflake photographs taken by Caltech physicist Kenneth Libbrecht. He snapped the one at the lower left in Houghton during a January 2005 visit to Michigan Tech.

Special guests will be Congressman Bart Stupak (D-Menominee); Kane Beauchamp, staff assistant for Senator Debbie Stabenow; Amy Berglund, U.P. regional representative for Senator Carl Levin; David Martin, district manager of the USPS; Paul Trybom, manager of post office operation, USPS; and Houghton Mayor Eric Peterson. In addition, John Jaszczak, professor of physics, will discuss the snowflakes and tell how one from the Upper Peninsula came to be featured by the USPS.

The event also offers a special opportunity for stamp aficionados or anyone with a yen for Winter Carnival memorabilia. Visitors can purchase the holiday stamps and have them hand-cancelled by postal officials from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., in the Peninsula Room, on the ground floor of the Memorial Union.

As a community service, the Postal Service offers pictorial postmarks to commemorate local events celebrated in communities throughout the nation.

This pictorial cancellation stamp, specially made in Marquette, will feature this year’s Winter Carnival logo. The Postal Service is providing post cards and Michigan Tech is offering envelopes to those wishing to have their stamps hand-cancelled during this special pictorial cancellation. You can also bring your own cards and envelopes.

Postal Service employees, including Pam Hiltunen, the postmaster of the Chassell Post Office, will be stamping envelopes with the special Winter Carnival stamp.

Hiltunen had the idea for a pictorial cancellation after learning that one of the holiday stamp snowflakes had fallen to earth in the Copper Country. "I contacted our district people and told them I thought it would be a good tie-in for a pictorial cancellation," she said. "And Blue Key thought it would be great to have the Winter Carnival logo on the cancellation stamp."

"The connection of the snowflake stamp to Michigan Tech and Houghton really makes this special," she added. "There are not many communities that have had such an opportunity, and it brings an added bonus to what is already such a great event."

The cancellation will also be available by mail for 30 days after the event by sending, under separate cover, a stamped addressed envelope to Pictorial Cancellation, Houghton Post Office, 701 Sheldon Ave., Houghton MI 49931-9998.

Michigan Technological University is a public research university founded in 1885 in Houghton, Michigan, and is home to more than 7,000 students from 55 countries around the world. Consistently ranked among the best universities in the country for return on investment, Michigan’s flagship technological university offers more than 120 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in science and technology, engineering, computing, forestry, business and economics, health professions, humanities, mathematics, social sciences, and the arts. The rural campus is situated just miles from Lake Superior in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, offering year-round opportunities for outdoor adventure.